Download or read book An Unimaginable Act written by Erin Merryn and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By sharing her personal journey through the pain she has suffered at the hands of her perpetrators, author Erin Merryn proves that one person can make a difference in the lives of others. Simply by speaking out and bringing the subject of child sexual abuse to the forefront, she has created a wave of change—change not only in legislature, but also in the hearts of those around her and the world. In this thought-provoking book, readers will discover an in-depth, personal account of Erin's story and how—through using positive outlets—she was able to rebuild her life and heal from a childhood filled with sexual abuse. Part memoir, part resource guide, Erin shares with readers key organizations that provide essential support for victims and caregivers, warning signs that a child who is being abused might display, and why Erin's Law is so essential.

Download or read book Living for Today written by Erin Merryn and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silence Broken and Stigmas Shattered -- Help for Incest Survivors Is Here Fans of Erin Merryn's heart-wrenching debut memoir Stolen Innocence were left wondering at the end what would become of an emotionally fragile Erin after her confrontation with the reality of being a child of incest and molestation. In Living for Today, readers find that Erin cultivated the strength to face her abuser and eventually facilitated and experienced relief from years of emotional restlessness, while also igniting the beginnings of a new fearless journey. Living for Today chronicles that journey, which began with the unearthing of private shame and releasing of ugly memories and letting go of guilt and becoming the mouthpiece of millions of her generation. Through her compelling narrative, readers will learn how they, too, can: Learn to look forward, in spite of an abusive past Block off any impending guilt from outing an abuser Deal with interfamily strife as a result of incest and molestation Shake off the "victim" tag and replace it with one that reads "survivor" Living for Today is Merryn's contribution to an audience that has felt victimized, ashamed, isolated, and silenced by its abusers and offers a roadmap for self-discovery, forgiveness, and empowerment to help readers rid the stigma they have attached to their trauma and live fully and fearlessly for today.

Download or read book Stolen Innocence written by Erin Merryn and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eleven-year-old Erin Merryn's life was transformed on the night she was sexually abused by her cousin, someone she loved and trusted. As the abuse continued, and as she was forced to see her abuser over and over again in social situations, she struggled with self-doubt, panic attacks, nightmares and the weight of whether or not to tell her terrible secret. It wasn't until a traumatic series of events showed her the cost of silence that she chose to speak out-in the process destroying both her family and the last of her innocence. Through her personal diary, written during the years of her abuse, Erin Merryn shares her journey through pain and confusion to inner strength and, ultimately, forgiveness. Raw, powerful and unflinchingly honest, Stolen Innocence is the inspiring story of one girl's struggle to become a woman, and a bright light on the pain and devastation of abuse. Stolen Innocence is written with conviction and clarity. [Erin Merryn] doesn't hold back, and I respect her honesty and openness...By the end of the book, I thought I was reading passages from a much older adult than a high school senior. Erin has grown into a strong, wise, intelligent, perceptive, spiritual, caring adult." —Susan Reedquist, The Children's Advocacy Center

Download or read book An Unimaginable Act written by Erin Merryn and published by Health Communications, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By sharing her personal journey through the pain she has suffered at the hands of her perpetrators, author Erin Merryn proves that one person can make a difference in the lives of others. Simply by speaking out and bringing the subject of child sexual abuse to the forefront, she has created a wave of change—change not only in legislature, but also in the hearts of those around her and the world. In this thought-provoking book, readers will discover an in-depth, personal account of Erin's story and how—through using positive outlets—she was able to rebuild her life and heal from a childhood filled with sexual abuse. Part memoir, part resource guide, Erin shares with readers key organizations that provide essential support for victims and caregivers, warning signs that a child who is being abused might display, and why Erin's Law is so essential.

Download or read book Preparing for the Unimaginable written by Laura Usher and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While most government agencies are trained in how to react to a mass casualty event such as a terrorist attack or natural disaster, few are prepared to deal with the psychological fallout for first responders. Preparing for the Unimaginable fills that void. This book is the product of the National Alliance on Mental Illness’s work with the Newtown, Connecticut, police force in efforts to cope with the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school that left twenty six people, including twenty children, dead. This unique publication offers expert advice and practical tips for helping officers to heal emotionally, managing the public, dealing with the media, building relationships with other first responder agencies, and much more. Complete with firsthand accounts of chiefs and officers that have guided their departments through mass casualty events, Preparing for the Unimaginable seeks to provide practical, actionable strategies to protect officer mental health before and after traumatic events.

Download or read book Covering written by Kenji Yoshino and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-11-02 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lyrical memoir that identifies the pressure to conform as a hidden threat to our civil rights, drawing on the author’s life as a gay Asian American man and his career as an acclaimed legal scholar. “[Kenji] Yoshino offers his personal search for authenticity as an encouragement for everyone to think deeply about the ways in which all of us have covered our true selves. . . . We really do feel newly inspired.”—The New York Times Book Review Everyone covers. To cover is to downplay a disfavored trait so as to blend into the mainstream. Because all of us possess stigmatized attributes, we all encounter pressure to cover in our daily lives. Racial minorities are pressed to “act white” by changing their names, languages, or cultural practices. Women are told to “play like men” at work. Gays are asked not to engage in public displays of same-sex affection. The devout are instructed to minimize expressions of faith, and individuals with disabilities are urged to conceal the paraphernalia that permit them to function. Given its pervasiveness, we may experience this pressure to be a simple fact of social life. Against conventional understanding, Kenji Yoshino argues that the work of American civil rights law will not be complete until it attends to the harms of coerced conformity. Though we have come to some consensus against penalizing people for differences based on race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, and disability, we still routinely deny equal treatment to people who refuse to downplay differences along these lines. At the same time, Yoshino is responsive to the American exasperation with identity politics, which often seems like an endless parade of groups asking for state and social solicitude. He observes that the ubiquity of covering provides an opportunity to lift civil rights into a higher, more universal register. Since we all experience the covering demand, we can all make common cause around a new civil rights paradigm based on our desire for authenticity—a desire that brings us together rather than driving us apart. Praise for Covering “Yoshino argues convincingly in this book, part luminous, moving memoir, part cogent, level-headed treatise, that covering is going to become more and more a civil rights issue as the nation (and the nation’s courts) struggle with an increasingly multiethnic America.”—San Francisco Chronicle “[A] remarkable debut . . . [Yoshino’s] sense of justice is pragmatic and infectious.”—Time Out New York

Download or read book The Last Act of Love written by Cathy Rentzenbrink and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-07-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Richard and Judy Book club selection. In the summer of 1990, Cathy's brother Matty was knocked down by a car on the way home from a night out. It was two weeks before his GCSE results, which turned out to be the best in his school. Sitting by his unconscious body in hospital, holding his hand and watching his heartbeat on the monitors, Cathy and her parents willed him to survive. They did not know then that there are many and various fates worse than death. This is the story of what happened to Cathy and her brother, and the unimaginable decision that she and her parents had to make eight years after the night that changed everything. It's a story for anyone who has ever watched someone suffer or lost someone they loved or lived through a painful time that left them forever changed. Told with boundless warmth and affection, The Last Act of Love by Cathy Rentzenbrink is a heartbreaking yet uplifting testament to a family's survival and the price we pay for love.

Download or read book Why Does He Do That written by Lundy Bancroft and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking bestseller, Lundy Bancroft—a counselor who specializes in working with abusive men—uses his knowledge about how abusers think to help women recognize when they are being controlled or devalued, and to find ways to get free of an abusive relationship. He says he loves you. So...why does he do that? You’ve asked yourself this question again and again. Now you have the chance to see inside the minds of angry and controlling men—and change your life. In Why Does He Do That? you will learn about: • The early warning signs of abuse • The nature of abusive thinking • Myths about abusers • Ten abusive personality types • The role of drugs and alcohol • What you can fix, and what you can’t • And how to get out of an abusive relationship safely “This is without a doubt the most informative and useful book yet written on the subject of abusive men. Women who are armed with the insights found in these pages will be on the road to recovering control of their lives.”—Jay G. Silverman, Ph.D., Director, Violence Prevention Programs, Harvard School of Public Health

Download or read book Once More We Saw Stars written by Jayson Greene and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A gripping and beautiful book about the power of love in the face of unimaginable loss.” --Cheryl Strayed For readers of The Bright Hour and When Breath Becomes Air, a moving, transcendent memoir of loss and a stunning exploration of marriage in the wake of unimaginable grief. As the book opens: two-year-old Greta Greene is sitting with her grandmother on a park bench on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A brick crumbles from a windowsill overhead, striking her unconscious, and she is immediately rushed to the hospital. But although it begins with this event and with the anguish Jayson and his wife, Stacy, confront in the wake of their daughter's trauma and the hours leading up to her death, Once More We Saw Stars quickly becomes a narrative that is as much about hope and healing as it is about grief and loss. Jayson recognizes, even in the midst of his ordeal, that there will be a life for him beyond it--that if only he can continue moving forward, from one moment to the next, he will survive what seems unsurvivable. With raw honesty, deep emotion, and exquisite tenderness, he captures both the fragility of life and absoluteness of death, and most important of all, the unconquerable power of love. This is an unforgettable memoir of courage and transformation--and a book that will change the way you look at the world.

Download or read book Diary of the Cat Named Carrot written by Erin Merryn and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrate a year in the life of The Cat Named Carrot, as she goes from humble beginnings in a shelter to a loving home with a family of three adorable little girls and internet stardom. Bailey was certainly no ordinary cat—an orange tabby who gained fans around the world when his humanlike antics went viral. Sadly, when 14-year-old Bailey died, his family grieved their loss. They’d never find a cat quite like him—or would they? Then along came Carrot, an orange tabby kitten born as a stray, who appeared just as Erin Merryn and her young girls Abby, Hannah, and baby Claire were mending their broken hearts. Written in the voice of Carrot, follow her remarkable journey from shelter cat to top Instagram celebrity feline. Much like Bailey did, she loves spending time with her human family: making mischief with her girl gang; going joyriding in a pint-sized pink Barbie Jeep; doing arts-and-crafts projects; modeling a pink tutu and flowery headband; enjoying a spa day complete with fluffy robe and cucumber eye treatments; celebrating Christmas, Easter, and every holiday in between. It’s no wonder that Carrot’s videos have gone viral—garnering millions of views on Ellen, the Dodo, Good Morning America, Access Hollywood, People, and many more. Complete with four-color photos that will leave readers purring with delight, the journal of this sweet, adorable kitty with personality to spare shows us that the human-animal bond runs more than fur deep. It is love that will last a lifetime!

Download or read book Tom Clancy Presents Act of Valor written by Dick Couch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-01-10 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Navy SEALs have been fighting terrorists around the world for over a decade. And for all that time, the Bandito Platoon SEALS from SEAL Team Seven have been on continuous combat rotation. Now they have drawn a shipboard assignment off Central America—an easy day. But for a Navy SEAL, the only easy day was yesterday. In a powerful story of global anti-terrorism inspired by real life missions, Act of Valor combines stunning combat scenes, up-to-the minute battlefield technology, and heart-pumping emotion for the ultimate action adventure. Act of Valor takes you deep into the secretive world of today’s most elite, highly trained group of warriors. When the rescue of a kidnapped CIA operative leads to the discovery of a deadly terrorist plot against the United States, a team of SEALs is dispatched on a worldwide manhunt. As the men of Bandito Platoon race to stop a coordinated attack that could kill and wound thousands of American civilians, they must balance their commitments to country, team, and their families back home. But each time they accomplish their mission, a new piece of intelligence reveals another shocking twist to the plot, which stretches from Chechnya to the Philippines and from Ukraine to Somalia. The widening operation sends the SEALs across the globe as they track the terrorist ring to the U.S.-Mexico border—where they engage in an epic firefight with potentially unimaginable consequences for America…

Download or read book The Courage to Act written by Ben S. Bernanke and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller “A fascinating account of the effort to save the world from another [Great Depression]. . . . Humanity should be grateful.”—Financial Times In 2006, Ben S. Bernanke was appointed chair of the Federal Reserve, the unexpected apex of a personal journey from small-town South Carolina to prestigious academic appointments and finally public service in Washington’s halls of power. There would be no time to celebrate. The bursting of a housing bubble in 2007 exposed the hidden vulnerabilities of the global financial system, bringing it to the brink of meltdown. From the implosion of the investment bank Bear Stearns to the unprecedented bailout of insurance giant AIG, efforts to arrest the financial contagion consumed Bernanke and his team at the Fed. Around the clock, they fought the crisis with every tool at their disposal to keep the United States and world economies afloat. Working with two U.S. presidents, and under fire from a fractious Congress and a public incensed by behavior on Wall Street, the Fed—alongside colleagues in the Treasury Department—successfully stabilized a teetering financial system. With creativity and decisiveness, they prevented an economic collapse of unimaginable scale and went on to craft the unorthodox programs that would help revive the U.S. economy and become the model for other countries. Rich with detail of the decision-making process in Washington and indelible portraits of the major players, The Courage to Act recounts and explains the worst financial crisis and economic slump in America since the Great Depression, providing an insider’s account of the policy response.

Download or read book Surviving Autocracy written by Masha Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.” —The New York Times “A reckoning with what has been lost in the past few years and a map forward with our beliefs intact.” —Interview As seen on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and heard on NPR’s All Things Considered: the bestselling, National Book Award–winning journalist offers an essential guide to understanding, resisting, and recovering from the ravages of our tumultuous times. This incisive book provides an essential guide to understanding and recovering from the calamitous corrosion of American democracy over the past few years. Thanks to the special perspective that is the legacy of a Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, Masha Gessen has a sixth sense for the manifestations of autocracy—and the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate their emergence to Americans. Gessen not only anatomizes the corrosion of the institutions and cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years changed us from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility. Surviving Autocracy is an inventory of ravages and a call to account but also a beacon to recovery—and to the hope of what comes next.

Download or read book When I Was a Child I Read Books written by Marilynne Robinson and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marilynne Robinson has built a sterling reputation as a writer of sharp, subtly moving prose, not only as a major American novelist, but also as a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. In When I Was a Child I Read Books she returns to and expands upon the themes which have preoccupied her work with renewed vigor. In "Austerity as Ideology," she tackles the global debt crisis, and the charged political and social political climate in this country that makes finding a solution to our financial troubles so challenging. In "Open Thy Hand Wide" she searches out the deeply embedded role of generosity in Christian faith. And in "When I Was a Child," one of her most personal essays to date, an account of her childhood in Idaho becomes an exploration of individualism and the myth of the American West. Clear-eyed and forceful as ever, Robinson demonstrates once again why she is regarded as one of our essential writers.

Download or read book Godshot written by Chelsea Bieker and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Imagine if Annie Proulx wrote something like White Oleander crossed with Geek Love or Cruddy, and then add cults, God, motherhood, girlhood, class, deserts, witches, the divinity of women . . . Terrifying, resplendent, and profoundly moving, this book will leave you changed." —T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen–year–old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it’s an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms. In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. He promises, through secret “assignments,” to bring the rain everybody is praying for. Lacey has no reason to doubt the pastor. But then her life explodes in a single unimaginable act of abandonment: her mother, exiled from the community for her sins, leaves Lacey and runs off with a man she barely knows. Abandoned and distraught, Lacey May moves in with her widowed grandma, Cherry, who is more concerned with her taxidermy mouse collection than her own granddaughter. As Lacey May endures the increasingly appalling acts of men who want to write all the rules and begins to uncover the full extent of Pastor Vern’s shocking plan to bring fertility back to the land, she decides she must go on a quest to find her mother no matter what it takes. With her only guidance coming from the romance novels she reads and the unlikely companionship of the women who knew her mother, she must find her own way through unthinkable circumstances. Possessed of an unstoppable plot and a brilliantly soulful voice, Godshot is a book of grit and humor and heart, a debut novel about female friendship and resilience, mother–loss and motherhood, and seeking salvation in unexpected places. It introduces a writer who gives Flannery O’Connor’s Gothic parables a Californian twist and who emerges with a miracle that is all her own. “[A] haunting debut . . . This is a harrowing tale, which Bieker smartly writes through the lens of a teenager on the cusp of understanding the often fraught relationship between religion and sexuality . . . It's a timely and disturbing portrait of how easily men can take advantage of vulnerable women—and the consequences sink in more deeply with each page."—Annabel Gutterman, Time “Drawn in brilliant, bizarre detail—baptism in warm soda, wisdom from romance novels—Lacey's twin crises of faith and femininity tangle powerfully. Fiercely written and endlessly readable, a novel like this is a godsend. A–.”—Mary Sollosi, Entertainment Weekly

Download or read book The Dispossessed written by John Washington and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive, in-depth book on the Trump administration’s assault on asylum protections Arnovis couldn’t stay in El Salvador. If he didn’t leave, a local gangster promised that his family would dress in mourning—that he would wake up with flies in his mouth. “It was like a bomb exploded in my life,” Arnovis said. The Dispossessed tells the story of a twenty-four-year-old Salvadoran man, Arnovis, whose family’s search for safety shows how the United States—in concert with other Western nations—has gutted asylum protections for the world’s most vulnerable. Crisscrossing the border and Central America, John Washington traces one man’s quest for asylum. Arnovis is separated from his daughter by US Border Patrol agents and struggles to find security after being repeatedly deported to a gang-ruled community in El Salvador, traumatic experiences relayed by Washington with vivid intensity. Adding historical, literary, and current political context to the discussion of migration today, Washington tells the history of asylum law and practice through ages to the present day. Packed with information and reflection, The Dispossessed is more than a human portrait of those who cross borders—it is an urgent and persuasive case for sharing the country we call home.

Download or read book Ditch the Act Reveal the Surprising Power of the Real You for Greater Success written by Leonard Kim and published by McGraw Hill Professional. This book was released on 2019-10-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Be human. It’s the only way to get ahead in business today. Competition today is fiercer than ever. It seems that every job candidate is flashing a world-class resume and every business competitor is the absolute best at what they do. Don’t be fooled. People exaggerate. And don’t be discouraged. By revealing stories of failures, setbacks, and personal flaws without shame or fear, you exhibit greater self-confidence than your competition. You cultivate connections with serious, smart people, and you build loyalty that lasts. Ditch the Act shows how to present your humanness—imperfect and flawed but honest, resilient, and willing to learn—in strategic ways to achieve clear, defined goals. It provides an actionable program for building an authentic, long-lasting personal brand, explaining why exposure is important and how it cultivates more durable connections than any polished persona can. By creating a personal brand that’s honest and authentic and that reveals personal struggles, you’ll build stronger, longer-lasting relationships—and achieve greater success. Careers and businesses based on authenticity and truth aren’t just more rewarding than those founded on hyperbole and the “hard sell.” Because they’re founded on durable, robust relationships, they’re rock-solid—and better withstand business uncertainty and tough times. Ditch the act, be real—and jump ahead of the competition before they even know you are there.