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In her professional life, Shary Hauer was a confident, successful, high-caliber executive coach who advised big-time corporate leaders around the globe—but her personal life was an entirely different matter. When it came to love, she was insecure, clingy, desperate, willing to do anything and everything to win and keep a man. Because without a man by her side, what good was she? In Insatiable, Hauer fearlessly chronicles her emotional journey from despair to hope, rejection to redemption, and self-hate to self-love, one man at a time. In candid detail, she relates what it is like to be trapped in the torturous cycle of love addiction—what it’s like to be forever searching, needing, obsessing, scheming, and agonizing for love, suffering from a hunger that never ceases—and what it takes to break free of that cycle. An intimate, soul-baring tale that sheds much-needed light on one of the least understood and talked about addictions, Insatiable is the story of one woman’s journey through the hellish, the humiliating, and the humbling in her single-minded pursuit of the most addictive drug of all: love.
The aviation world is a man’s world—it always has been, and it continues to be so today. In fact, women make up a mere 5 to 6 percent of the total pilot population worldwide. But from the first time Erin Seidemann experienced what it was like to see the world from a small plane’s perspective, she was hooked—and she’s spent much of her time since then fighting her way into becoming one of that 5 to 6 percent. Postcards from the Sky: Adventures of an Aviatrix tells of the struggles and adventures one encounters as a woman in the male-dominated space of aviation. With humor and equanimity, Seidemann recounts her varied experiences as a female pilot—from the chauvinistic flight instructor she makes the mistake of falling in love with to the many, many customs agents who insist she can’t possibly be her plane’s owner (“Where’s your boyfriend?”)—while at the same time giving insight about just what makes flying so incredible . . . and so very addictive. Frank, funny, and full of adventure, Postcards from the Sky is an entertaining foray into a world few women have dared enter.
Carrie Highley was always a tomboy—and by the time she turned sixteen, she was wishing she were dancing with the girls instead of the boys at cotillion dances. In her early thirties, while living in West Virginia, she discovered a passion for road biking, finally stopped sequestering her deep feelings for women, and began an ill-fated love affair with a female cycling friend. Then, at thirty-six, she found herself skidding into Asheville, North Carolina, holding on tight to the coattails of her doctor husband and spending her time as a stay-at-home mother of two boys. Moving to North Carolina was Highley’s attempt to reembrace heterosexual married life after her tumultuous time in West Virginia. But in Asheville, she met Charlie, a fellow cyclist twenty-three years her senior, who became her mentor, friend, and father all rolled into one—and as they grew closer, she started unloading her fears into Charlie’s inbox. With Charlie’s support, Highley finally got the courage to do what she’d been waiting her whole life to do: go down the mountain with her hands off the brakes.
Candid, relatable stories by established and emerging women writers about being discarded by someone from whom they expected more: a close female friend. There are 161 million women in America today, and our friendships are still as primary and universal as back when Ruth and Naomi, Elizabeth and Susan B., and Thelma and Louise made history. When a romantic relationship breaks up, no problem—there’s an Adele song for that. Health concerns; problems in school; issues at the workplace? We’ve got our chums to prop us up. Until we don’t. When our most sustaining relationships dissolve—those with the women friends in our lives—there’s never been the fanfare that accompanies the loss of other relationships society deems “more important.” Until now. In Dumped: Stories of Women Unfriending Women, twenty-five established and emerging writers—including Jacquelyn Mitchard, Ann Hood, Carrie Kabak, Jessica Handler, Elizabeth Searle, Alexis Paige, and editor Nina Gaby—explore the fragile, sometimes humorous, and often unfathomable nature of lost friendship. These, like your own, are stories that stay with you—maybe for a lifetime.
Peggy Garrity began her life as a small-town Irish Catholic girl in the Midwest. Initially convent-bound, she became determined to escape a life like her mother’s, and in the mid-1970s she reinvented herself as a high-profile Los Angeles trial lawyer and single mother of four. At a time when there were virtually no women solo practitioners, she represented David against Goliath—and risked it all in the process. Including compelling courtroom dramas featuring would-be presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore, celebrities Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, and Cheryl Tiegs, and some of Los Angeles’s most notorious murder cases, In the Game is the groundbreaking story of a thrill-seeking solo trial lawyer—and single mother—who beat the odds at a time when working mothers, especially those in male-dominated professions like the law, faced the gauntlet of discrimination.
As a young girl growing up in the Midwest, Sunny experiences the shame and stigma of scandal when her father is banned from their church for having an affair with the pastor’s best friend’s wife. As Sunny grows older, she begins to build the life she’s always wanted: she marries, buys a house, enrolls in graduate school, and soon has a baby on the way. But when she experiences the psychological phenomena of orgasmic labor, it triggers a chain of bizarre events, and she gradually descends into a world of delusion and paranoia. As Sunny struggles to separate the real from the unreal, she relies upon friends and family to ground her in truth and love—and keep her from going over the edge into madness.
Chicken Soup delivers the perfect pocket-sized support group for everyone on the path to becoming whole. Chicken Soup for the Recovering Soul Daily Inspirations is the perfect book for the millions of people in recovery who live their lives “one day at a time.” These 365 daily passages will provide them with a year’s worth of wisdom and encouragement to help get through the rough spots or celebrate victories. The book covers universal themes, making it relevant to all types of recovery including chronic illness, behavioral disorders, destructive relationships, alcohol and drug addiction, depression, or eating disorders. Sample Daily Inspirational themes include: hope, courage, love, anger, forgiving, and more.
One day a teenage boy gets on his bike and rides forty miles up California’s Pacific Coast Highway to avoid causing an earthquake he fears will endanger his mother and sister. But the quake he is experiencing is not coming from beneath the earth; it’s the onset of bipolar illness. Blinded by Hope describes what it’s like to have an unusually bright, creative child—and then to have that child suddenly be hit with an illness that defies description and cure. Over the years, McGuire attributes her son’s lost jobs, broken relationships, legal troubles, and periodic hospitalizations to the manic phase of his illness, denying the severity of his growing drug use—but ultimately, she has to face her own addiction to rescuing him, and to forge a path for herself toward acceptance, resilience, and love. A wakeup call about the epidemic of mental illness, substance abuse, and mass incarceration in our society, Blinded by Hope shines a light on the shadow of family dynamics that shame, ignorance, and stigma rarely let the public see, and asks the question: How does a mother cope when love is not enough?
Shani Raviv is a misfit teen whose peer-pressured diet spirals down into full-blown anorexia nervosa—something no one in her early-nineties, local South African community knows anything about. Fourteen-year-old Shani spends the next six years being “Ana” (as many anorexics call it), on the run from her feelings. She goes from aerobics addict to Israeli soldier to rave bunny to wannabe reborn, using sex, drugs, exercise and, above all, starvation, to numb out everything along the way. But one night, at age twenty, Shani faces the rude awakening that if she doesn’t slow down, break her denial, and seek help, she will starve to death. Three years later, her hardest journey of all begins: the journey to let go of being Ana and learn to love herself. Being Ana is an exploration into the soul and psyche of a young woman wrestling with anorexia’s demons—one that not only exposes the real horrors of a day in the life of an anorexic girl but also reveals the courage it takes to stop fighting and find healing.
We all tell ourselves stories about who we are. Many of these stories are self-critical and disempowering. Through the practice of self-compassion, we can rewrite these stories and become more authentic and powerful versions of ourselves—transforming not only our own lives but also the lives of those around us. In short and personal pieces, Marianne Ingheim tells the story of how the practice of self-compassion has changed her life in ways big and small, helping her unlearn harsh self-criticism, survive multiple tragedies, and live more authentically. In the wake of a breast cancer diagnosis and her husband’s suicide, she discovers the power of self-compassionate storytelling and finds belonging within herself—and in doing so, she learns how to manage anxiety and stress, how to be authentic in relationships, and how to let go of comparison and be truly creative. Through stories and journaling prompts, Out of Love: Finding Your Way Back to Self-Compassion aims to inspire readers to unlearn the self-critical patterns holding them hostage—and begin to live a happier, more courageous life.