Memoir Dysfunctional

After a decade of caring for crazy and keeping her mother’s mental illness a secret from the outside world, 20-year-old Paolina Milana longs for just one year free from the madness of her home. When she gets the chance to go to an out-of-state school, she takes it, but her family won’t leave her be. Letter after letter arrives, constantly reminding her of the insanity rooted in her family tree. Even worse, the voices in her own head whisper words she’s not sure are normal.

How is it possible for a person who has suffered humiliation, violence, and abuse be able to live life so positively and love life so whole-heartedly? This audiobook contains true stories based on real life, testimonies from people who found love and hope in God's warmth.

In the years just before the Santa Clara Valley morphed into Silicon Valley, it was a sleepy agricultural basin dotted with cherry orchards. Carol Sveilich’s youth in San Jose was a combo platter of glass walls, cool music, useless gadgets, groovy neighbors, and worry. And, oh yes—sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. In Reflections from a Glass House, the indelible memories of fumbling through school and the passage through adolescence near the “City of Love” are masterfully awash with comedic prose, amusing storytelling, and gut-wrenching recollections.

Jeri takes the listener on a deeply personal story of her experience being the daughter of a notorious drug-trafficking kingpin serving a life sentence in maximum security federal prison. With candor and courage, Jeri writes about how her childhood trauma of witnessing domestic violence and finding out at the age of 10 that her dad was in prison instead of away at school broke her in ways she didn’t fully understand. Hers is the story shared by millions of sons and daughters of the incarcerated across the country.

With four young daughters and a miserably failed marriage, Debra Gwartney moves halfway across the country, to Eugene, Oregon, for a new job and what she hopes will be a new life for herself and her daughters. The two oldest, Amanda, 14, and Stephanie, 13, have a symbiotic relationship so intense they barely know where one begins and the other leaves off. They

One dramatic day in her college dorm, self-injury lands a young woman in the surreal world of a psych ward for 74 hours. Those traumatic hours define her life for many years, until she comes to see the trauma through the lens of self-forgiveness, ongoing recovery, and God’s grace of revelation. Within Discovering My Scars, Stephanie Kostopoulos makes herself vulnerable and invites listeners into her reality with raw and visceral depictions of non-suicidal self-injury. The journey encapsulates life during her 20s, while stepping back to childhood, revealing abuse....

An urgent and timely memoir exploring the reality of childhood sexual abuse, a scourge on too many neighborhoods, often hiding in plain sight. Millions of victims remain silent, buried under the weight of their own guilt, shame, and addiction. Breaking the Ruhls will resonate deeply with many who have experienced similar trauma, boundary violations, and abuse within the family, and struggle with the emotional and psychological effect.

Fearful of prison time - or lynching - for violating Indiana’s anti-miscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson's Black father and White mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry in Buffalo. Her mother simply vanished, evading an FBI and police search that ended with the declaration to her family that she was the victim of foul play, either dead or sold into white slavery.

Marilyn Elaine Lundberg’s true crime memoir, Jagger’s Eyes, is a brutally honest account of how one unfortunate little girl turned to animals for love, safety, and comfort. The trauma of incest and neglect occurred behind closed doors in her Christian home and crippled her psychologically as a child. Her attacks produced PTSD, suicidal depression, chronic anxiety, panic attacks, agoraphobia, anorexia, plus more, and she was housebound for many years as an adult.

A compelling book about dysfunction, forgiveness, a life-changing transformation, and the key to leaving trails of light. If you've struggled with a dysfunctional family, divorce, having mental illnesses, being overweight, being a single parent, having a life-threatening health issue, or challenged by dating again in mid-life, then you will want to find out how one woman found her way to forgive, survive, and thrive. Told with wit and wisdom, Leaving Trails of Light and Toilet Paper is a journey of discovery toward love and light.

If you gave me this book at age seven and told me the last couple of chapters would be my life one day, I would have said you were crazy and that you have the wrong family in mind. Because my mom and dad would still be married and living in a normal house with normal cars. We would have a golden retriever named Zach and a ginger cat named Ginger. A picture-perfect family. But that all came crashing down for me. No one should have to go through the things we did....

Domestic Abuse - Parent Abuse, Children’s Story, Those Left Behind, Our Stories & More of Our Stories Bundle. These are stories about the friends and families who have lost loved ones. Some have been forced to leave their abuser by going into hiding. Others haven't been as lucky. These people that are left behind tell their heartbreaking stories of their losses and grief.

Imagine, if you can, a shy, skinny young girl growing up in a small Southern Patriarchal town in the 1960s and '70s. All she wants is peace, love, normality, and freedom to dream and be who she wants to be. She also wants her mother and siblings to be safe and free from harm. When her alcoholic father - a member of the local KKK - beats the family into submission and demands silence about his ugly secret deeds, everyone is too frightened to cry out for help.

A brutal, frank, and extraordinary account of true-life stories by Nicole Flemming. Nicole was born into an Afghan/Irish family in London. Frequently, when people tell stories about their childhood, they remember happy memories playing in the park, their birthday parties, and even adventures with friends. Yet, such a reality is not part of everyone’s life...This audiobook takes you into the life of a British Afghan female where the male holds all the authority. She experienced abuse from the person who was supposed to look after her.