Stir


Book Description

A national bestseller and winner of a Living Now Book Award, Stir is an exquisite memoir about how food connects us to ourselves, our lives, and each other. At 28, Jessica Fechtor was happily immersed in graduate school and her young marriage, and thinking about starting a family. Then one day, she went for a run and an aneurysm burst in her brain. She nearly died. She lost her sense of smell, the sight in her left eye, and was forced to the sidelines of the life she loved. Jessica’s journey to recovery began in the kitchen as soon as she was able to stand at the stovetop and stir. There, she drew strength from the restorative power of cooking and baking. Written with intelligence, humor, and warmth, Stir is a heartfelt examination of what it means to nourish and be nourished. Woven throughout the narrative are 27 recipes for dishes that comfort and delight. For readers of M.F.K.Fisher, Molly Wizenberg, and Tamar Adler, as well as Oliver Sacks, Jill Bolte Taylor, and Susannah Cahalan, Stir is sure to inspire, and send you straight to the kitchen.




Diary of a Broken Mind


Book Description

The funniest, most popular kid in school, Charles Aubrey Rogers suffered from depression and later addiction, then ultimately died by suicide. "Diary of a Broken Mind" focuses on the relatable story of what lead to his suicide at age twenty and answers the "why" behind his addiction and this cause of death, revealed through both a mother's story and years of Charles' published and unpublished song lyrics. The closing chapters focus on hope and healing-and how the author found her purpose and forgave herself.




Emotionally Naked


Book Description

Discover effective strategies to help prevent youth suicide In Emotionally Naked: A Teacher's Guide to Preventing Suicide and Recognizing Students at Risk, trainer, speaker, and suicide loss survivor Anne Moss Rogers, and clinical social worker and researcher, Kimberly O'Brien, PhD, LICSW, empower middle and high school educators with the knowledge and skills to leverage their relationships with students to reduce this threat to life. The purpose of this book is not to turn teachers into therapists but given the pervasive public health problem of suicide in our youth, it's a critical conversation that all educators need to feel comfortable having. Educators will learn evidence-based concepts of suicide prevention, plus lesser known innovative strategies and small culture shifts for the classroom to facilitate connection and healthy coping strategies, the foundation of suicide prevention. Included is commentary from teachers, school psychologists, experts in youth suicidology, leaders from mental health nonprofits, program directors, and tudents. In addition, readers will find practical tips, and sample scripts, with innovative activities that can be incorporated into teaching curricula. You'll learn about: The teacher's role in suicide prevention, intervention, postvention, collaboration The different and often cryptic ways students indicate suicidality What to do/say when a student tells you they are thinking of suicide Small shifts that can create a suicide-prevention classroom/school environment How to address a class of grieving students and the empty desk syndrome Link to a download of resources, worksheets, activities, scripts, quizzes, and more Who is it for: Middle/high school teachers and educators, school counselors, nurses, psychologists, coaches, and administrators, as well as parents who wish to better understand the complex subject of youth suicide.




Memoir of a Broken Brain


Book Description

Journey with Kimberly through one crisis that set her up for failure and another life-altering experience that remapped her brain for success. Had the road sign read, Take a sharp right turn here and follow the path to your life-altering destiny, I would have turned and gone in another direction. The path was marked with two color-coded shapes: the green circle indicated a widely groomed, easy trail, and the blue square led to an intermediate slope. I needed the green trail that led to the lodge at the bottom of the mountain. I had taken a hard fall on the catwalk and wasnt feeling so good. To get to the trail, I needed to take a sharp right turn. The only problem was, I suddenly didnt know what right meant. I could not find my right side. Everything right was gone! Kimberly fell into her defining role and lifes purpose (quite literally) when she skied over a cliff and sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI). One day, Kimberly was a vibrant career woman who enjoyed a successful lifestyle and an active social life. The next, she had to learn basic life skills to survive. Kimberlys quest for survival sent her in search of the missing pieces of her past. She learned that survival is a multifaceted anvil that shapes our decisions and forges our future. Merely existing then becomes a double-edged sword: you may have managed to keep breathing, but are you really living? The only way for survival to triumph is to acknowledge the role of fear in the face of crisis: affirmed fear liberates; coddled fear incapacitates. Denial keeps us stuck!




Broken Brain


Book Description




Broken Brain Better Life


Book Description

This is a short memoir about my brain injury, the events that led up to it, the long and difficult road to recovery, and most importantly how it changed me... for the better. This book is not just for those who may have had the misfortune of suffering a brain injury; it's for anyone. It's just a story; one that I hope you find interesting, perhaps a little bit light, a touch sad, and above all else, brimming with hope. Hope, in my opinion, is the single most important emotion to grab and hold on to like you're holding on for dear life. Because if you are like me, hope is what gets you through today and to tomorrow. If you let go of hope, life lets go of you. I wrote my story with the hope that it might inspire others to not give up and keep fighting the good fight - whatever challenges life throws your way.




Broken Brain


Book Description

Huerta's BROKEN BRAIN: SURVIVING A TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY details his firsthand experience of living through a near-fatal brain injury. During a ski vacation in Colorado, Huerta fell off a fifteen-foot cliff and shattered his skull in countless pieces. For twelve days, he was in a coma and eventually woke up to the long journey of recovery. Told in a riveting & animated voice, this memoir delivers an intimate perspective on what it means to beat the odds.




Broken Brain, Fortified Faith


Book Description

The terms "mental illness” and “mental health” are often used casually, but many don’t believe mental illness is relevant to their lives. However, studies show that more people live with mental illness than heart disease, lung disease, and cancer combined. Broken Brain, Fortified Faith is the story of one family’s journey through schizophrenia, navigating the uncharted waters of mental illness to find help for their daughter, Amber, and support for their family. This memoir is an honest look at the stress, anger, education, and finally, hope experienced through eyes of a mother. Along the way, she questions her trust in God as their family encounters setbacks, inadequate treatments, and additional family health crises, but with the help of trusted family, friends, education, and support groups, author Virginia Pillars learns to rely on her faith as she faces the challenges that often accompany mental illness.




My Bipolar Memoir of Poetry and Hope


Book Description

My memoir shares my story of what it's like to live, survive and eventually thrive with Bipolar 1 Disorder. Through my unique and creative approach of using poetry and prose, I take the reader with me on my journey full of pain, sorrows, losses, suicide attempts, homelessness, the ups and downs of bipolar and how I learned how to cope, reached recovery and became a bipolar survivor. My journey shows my strength and perseverance to overcome many obstacles and struggles and is full of hope, love, inspiration and my faith in God. My collection of poetry and prose express my pain, sorrow, courage, resiliency, inspiration and hope, all at the same time. Honestly and openly, I share my deep and most inner thoughts in a manner that lets the reader enter inside my mind showing what it's like to live with bipolar, which can be very sad, lonely and painful, but can also be a very positive life full of hope, love and the joy of living and survival. I hope my book will inspire and give hope to everyone that reads it.




Zig-Zag Boy: A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood


Book Description

“By turns an eloquent meditation on the power of nature and a terrifying exposé of…parenting a mentally ill child into adulthood.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice A compassionate, heartrending memoir of a mother’s quest to accept her son’s journey through psychosis. One night in 2009, Tanya Frank finds her nineteen-year-old son, Zach—gentle and full of promise—in the grip of what the psychiatrists would label a psychotic break. Suddenly and inexplicably, Tanya is thrown into a parallel universe: Zach’s world, where the phones are bugged, his friends have joined the Mafia, and helicopters are spying on his family. In the years following Zach’s shifting psychiatric diagnoses, Tanya goes to war for her son, desperate to find the right answer, the right drug, the right doctor to bring him back to reality. She struggles to navigate archaic mental healthcare systems, first in California and then in her native London during lockdown. Meanwhile, the boy she raised—the chatty, precocious dog-lover, the teenager who spent summers surfing with his big brother, the UCLA student—suffers the effects of multiple hospitalizations, powerful drugs that blunt his emotions, therapies that don’t work, and torturous nights on the streets. Holding on to startling moments of hope and seeking solace in nature and community, Tanya learns how to abandon her fears for the future and accept the mysteries of her son’s altered states. With tenderness, lyricism, and generous candor, this compelling story conveys the power of a mother’s love. Zig-Zag Boy is both a moving lamentation for things lost and a brave testament to the people we become in difficult circumstances.