Essays Health

Melissa Broder always struggled with anxiety. In the fall of 2012, she went through a harrowing cycle of panic attacks and dread that wouldn't abate for months. So she began @sosadtoday, an anonymous Twitter feed that allowed her to express her darkest feelings and that quickly gained a dedicated following. In So Sad Today, Broder delves deeper into the existential themes she explores on Twitter.

What If This Were Enough? is a mantra and a clarion call. In its chapters--many of them original to the book, others expanded from their initial publication--Havrilesky takes on those cultural forces that shape us. We've convinced ourselves, she says, that salvation can be delivered only in the form of new products, new technologies, new lifestyles.

Sometimes in medicine the only way to know what is truly going on in a patient is to operate, to look inside with one's own eyes. This book is exploratory surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science not in its idealized form but as it actually is - complicated, perplexing, and profoundly human.

Echoing Socrates' statement that the unexamined life not worth living, psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz draws on his twenty-five years of work and more than 50,000 hours of conversations to form a collection of beautifully rendered tales that illuminate the human experience. These are stories about everyday lives, and the resulting journey will spark new ideas about who we are and why we do what we do.

These essays are ultimately designed for long term members of 12 step fellowships to help them be better sponsors and to help them be of service to others without allowing it to become their whole identity. In recovery, we get a chance to help others, but, in attempting to do so, we end up making mistakes, and coming face to face with our own characters defects. Service to other is a chance for us to exercise our own personal demons.

I grew up in the Southern Baptist church of the '90s during the height of the True Love Waits movement, accompanied by Joshua Harris’ best seller, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. If you don’t know what I am referring to, consider yourself blessed. Many of the ideas perpetuated by this culture were infused with fear and shame, offering no practical help or guidance in equipping young people to become healthy sexual human beings.

Grapevine, the international journal of Alcoholics Anonymous, has collected some of the most inspiring articles that Bill Wilson, a.k.a. Bill W., wrote specifically for the magazine. Whether participating in AA groups for decades or just beginning to find their way through the Twelve Steps of recovery, listeners will relate to Bill’s sincere and personal reflections on topics that range from faith and fear to honesty, humility, and love. This edition of The Best of Bill also includes Bill W.’s classic essay on the spiritual meaning of anonymity.

In today's challenging and busy world, don't you wish you knew how to quiet your mind and focus on yourself? In On Meditation, renowned spiritual leader, Sri M, answers all your questions on the practice and benefits of meditation. With his knowledge of all the various schools of practice and the ancient texts, he breaks down the complicated practice into a simple and easy method that any working man or woman, young or old, can practice in their everyday lives.

In Dead Weight, Emmeline Clein recounts her struggle with disordered eating alongside the stories of other women: historical figures, pop culture celebrities, and the girls she’s known and loved. Through the story of her own sickness, the raw recollections of interview subjects, and dispatches from social media rabbit holes, Clein challenges stereotypes and renders statistics and science deeply personal and urgent.

It happens to us all: We think we’ve settled into an identity, a self, and then out of nowhere and with great force, the traces of our parents appear to us, in us - in mirrors, in gestures, in reaction and reactivity, at weddings and funerals, and in troubled thoughts that crouch in dark corners of our minds. In this masterful collection of new essays, the apple looks at the tree.

In Against Football Steve Almond details why, after 40 years as a fan, he can no longer watch the game he still loves. Using a synthesis of memoir, reportage, and cultural critique, Almond asks a series of provocative questions: Does our addiction to football foster a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia? What does it mean that our society has transmuted the intuitive physical joys of childhood--run, leap, throw, tackle--into a billion-dollar industry?

Early in her career, Katie Pryal learned that being a professor isn’t easy if your brain isn’t quite right. “I was a junior in college when I finally realized that I was different in a way that my medically inclined parents would call ‘clinical.’” In these deeply personal, fiery essays, Pryal tells her story of transformation that began the moment she chose to publicly disclose her own mental illness and leave her career in higher education to begin fighting for a better world for people with psychiatric disabilities.

Let Dan help you dig a little deeper into how life’s truths show up in the weight room and on the field of play. What you learn in this selection will get you thinking more broadly into how it all fits together - fitness, health, longevity, and easy strength.

Mental illness is the great isolator - and the great unifier. Almost half of us will suffer from it at some point in our lives; it affects everybody in one way or another. Yet today, Australia’s mental health system is under stress and not fit for purpose, and the pandemic is only making things worse. What is to be done? In this brilliant mix of portraiture and analysis, Sarah Krasnostein tells the stories of three women and their treatment by the state while at their most unwell.

From birth to death, a lyrical exploration of the role of transformation in human life. To be alive is to be in perpetual metamorphosis: Growing, healing, learning, aging. In Shapeshifters, physician and writer Gavin Francis considers the inevitable changes all of our bodies undergo - such as birth, puberty, and death, but also laughter, sleeping, and healing - and those that only some of our bodies will: Like getting a tattoo, experiencing psychosis, suffering anorexia, being pregnant, or undergoing a gender transition.

Author Lucy-Anne Holmes has spoken to women from around the globe, ranging in age from 19-75, as they reveal their innermost thoughts and feelings during sex. The result is an incredible compendium of true disclosures that are funny and sad, shocking and tender. Women on Top of the World will be a provocative collection of female voices. It promises to contribute to the changing way women are now talking about their sexuality, and their journeys toward self-discovery.

Are you a Christian man looking to be free from your regular use of pornography? Shame and self-hatred are terrible motivators for transformation. There must be a better way to outgrow our unhealthy dependence on pornography. Religious communities often fall short engaging pornography in a meaningful way, quality resources are scarce. We must strip away the sexuality of our porn use, face the complexity of our own sexual development and stories head-on. We must get beneath to what is driving our hunger to use women as objects of our pleasure, and learn how to honor not objectify.

Actress and author of the courageous New York Times best-selling memoir High on Arrival, Mackenzie Phillips - Hollywood's go-to person on substance abuse and a visible and outspoken advocate for addiction awareness and education - brings her knowledge and voice on the subject of recovery for the first time and shares her experiences for those who are trying to overcome addiction.

In this collection of interviews with survivors of suicide, individuals talk candidly and intimately about how their lives have been impacted by the suicide of a family member or close friend. Over 50 individuals were willing to share their personal tragedies as a way of helping others who face a similar loss as well as educating the public about the issues survivors of suicide face. Their willingness to share their stories is a testament to their endurance and strength in the face of adversity.

In her first memoir, award-winning novelist Yiyun Li offers a journey of recovery through literature. Startlingly original and shining with quiet wisdom, this is a luminous account of a life lived with books. Written over two years while the author battled suicidal depression, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life is a painful and yet richly affirming examination of what makes life worth living.