Personal Memoirs Women

In raw, compelling honesty, Gael Garbarino Cullen articulates the complexities of grief and single motherhood, after the sudden, heart-breaking loss of her 40-year-old husband, beautifully illustrating the power of resilience, hope, and post-traumatic growth. It is an unflinching walk through the long and inevitably difficult stages of grief–confirming and validating the curves and turns that come with healing.

This is a story of hope. Of profound, personal change from a life of obesity and depression to a life of love and freedom.

Covering seven decades of living, traveling, and growing, Does My Voice Matter? follows James’ journey of self-discovery and authenticity as she gradually recognizes that she has a voice—and learns how to use it. She uses her own life experiences as a backdrop for her exploration of how the voice is used as a tool of engagement.

Sarah’s story is one for any parent; it is not just about the highs and lows of having a child with additional needs, but also simply as a mum of three. She talks candidly about coming to terms with the decision to move Oscar to a SEN (Special Educational Needs) school, another big milestone in Oscar’s young life. Whilst Sarah may have found herself on a different path to the one she’d imagined for herself, it has not been a bad one. There is sadness, certainly; and there have been struggles along the way; but there has been so much laughter and happiness, too.

Renowned as a diversity and inclusion strategist, Michelle Gadsden-Williams held C-Suite positions at major organizations for many years and then took the off-ramp to probe a different career path, launching Ceiling Breakers LLC, with the primary goal to help women and professionals of color reach their full potential. As a woman of color and corporate executive who has worked and traveled the world for several Fortune 500 companies - all while managing a chronic illness - she provides insight into overcoming the barriers facing professionals in today's workplace.

Detouring from the traditional timeline of marriage-kids-house, 26-year-old Vikki Warner skips straight to homeownership. She buys a run-down three-story house in Providence, Rhode Island, and suddenly finds herself responsible for a rotating cast of colorful tenants. Adulthood comes with unforeseen challenges: backed-up sewage, gentrification, global economic downturn. Tenemental is a candid portrait of how sharing space profoundly reshapes our lives, and forces us to grow into ourselves.

Paula and John met in Italy, fell in love, and married in Rome four years later. But less than a month after the wedding, tragedy struck. They had transferred from their Italian paradise to Warsaw and, while reporting on an uprising in Romania, John was shot and nearly killed by sniper fire. Although he recovered from his physical wounds in less than a year, the process of healing had just begun. Unable to regain his equilibrium, he sank into a deep sadness that reverberated throughout their relationship.

A Version of You is an introspective adventure that will take the listener upon a journey throughout the course of one year within a young woman’s life on the road. The story is a true tale that speaks with raw, poetic gravity about not only the endearing beauty of travel, but also the unspoken hardships faced when attempting to maintain a sense of personal identity against the world's ever-changing backdrop.

Because she refused to testify against her husband for actions she had already forgiven, Diana Weinberger, a former missionary, was incarcerated in an Idaho jail - a jail in which she had volunteered for a year in prison ministry! Diana's marriage was on the rocks. Years of wandering from her Christian roots had led this former YWAM missionary down paths she would later regret. She and her husband, both successful career professionals, divided their time between the world of work and the world of play - a world of bikers and wild parties.

The inspirational story of an American woman who moved mountains to secure medical treatments - and eventually a home - for a young Iraqi girl severely burned in a roadside terror attack. This is a story of the astonishing power of self-sacrificial love.

Confessions of a Military Wife is an honest, witty, and often hilarious look at the life of the new-generation military wife. Mollie Gross learned the hard way to laugh instead of cry at what she could not control as a military spouse - and as she quickly discovered, nearly everything was out of her control!

Gina Miller came to prominence when she brought one of the most significant constitutional cases ever to be heard in the British Supreme Court. Gina successfully challenged the UK government's authority to trigger Article 50 - the formal notification to leave the European Union - without parliamentary approval. For standing up for what she believed was right, Miller became the target of not just racist and sexist verbal abuse but physical threats to her and her family.

Whether you're becoming a mum for the first time or you have children who are growing up faster than you could have ever imagined, motherhood can feel like the most joyful and yet the most daunting of times. But you're not alone. From the moment I knew my first baby was a girl I started to plan, hope and dream. I couldn't wait to experience that special bond, but I wondered how I'd feel about being a working mum, how I'd hold on to the person I am.

Welcome to essayist Kimberly Harrington’s poetic and funny world of motherhood, womanhood, and humanhood, not necessarily in that order. It’s a place of loud parenting, fierce loving, too much social media, and occasional inner monologues where timeless debates are resolved such as Pro/Con: Caving to PTO Bake Sale Pressure (“Pro: Skim the crappiest brownies for myself. Con: They’re really crappy.”) With accessibility and wit, she captures the emotions around parenthood in artful and earnest ways.

In Autobiography of a Fat Bride, Laurie Notaro tries painfully to make the transition from all-night partyer and bar-stool regular to mortgagee with plumbing problems and no air conditioning. Laurie finds grown-up life just as harrowing as her reckless youth, as she meets Mr. Right, moves in, settles down, and crosses the toe-stubbing threshold of matrimony.

Despite her mother's tales of a rustic childhood in South Africa and bohemian years in London, Brockes grew up knowing that some crucial pieces of the past were left unspoken. Looking to unearth the truth after her mother Paula's death, Brockes begins a dangerous journey into the land - and the life - her mother fled from years before. She Left Me the Gun: My Mother's Life Before Me is a tale of true transformation, the story of a young woman who reinvented herself so completely that her previous life seemed to simply vanish - and of a daughter who transcends her mother's fears and reclaims an abandoned past.

After spending her high school years in Hawaii, Kathleen Norris was woefully unprepared for Bennington College in the 1960s, with its culture of drugs, sex, and bohemianism. But it was also at Bennington that she discovered her great love of poetry, which carried her to New York City at a time when a new generation of poets was emerging and shaking up the establishment of time and place.

Who doesn't want to know how to achieve real confidence - and who better to pass on the secrets than a woman who has overcome such gruelling physical and emotional hurdles and emerged on the other side smiling? In 2008 Katie Piper survived a brutal rape and acid attack which left her severely burned and disfigured and changed her life forever. Her previous audiobooks told the story of her long and painful journey back towards health and happiness. Now, in Confidence: The Secret, Katie takes the next step from recovery to empowerment.

A ruthless and illuminating exploration of the friendships that dominated, influenced, nourished, inspired, haunted - and sometimes tore her apart - Susanna Sonnenberg has written a book as searing and superb as her first book about her mother, Her Last Death. Childhood friendships, friendships with older women, friendships that play out with the passion and intensity of love affairs, the friendships between new mothers - each has its own subtleties, its own lessons that Sonnenberg examines and understands with astounding acuity.

Reality, as Eileen Robertson Hamra perceived it, was instantly altered the moment authorities confirmed that the plane her husband was piloting had crashed and he had not survived. With her three young children, Eileen entered the desolate world of grief and loss, but where she arrived was nothing short of miraculous. Between the valleys of grief and the peaks of hope, she discovered that keeping promises to the dead is a lifelong act, and honoring one love does not mean forgoing the freedom and joy that is found in reopening your heart.