Download or read book If You Love Me written by Maureen Cavanagh and published by . This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maureen Cavanagh's gripping memoir If You Love Me is the story of a mother who suddenly finds herself on the frontlines of the opioid epidemic as her daughter battles--and ultimately reckons with--substance use disorder. Fast-paced and heartwarming, devastating and redemptive, Maureen's incredible odyssey into the opioid crisis--first as a parent, then as an advocate--is ultimately a deeply moving mother-daughter story. When Maureen and her ex-husband Mike see their daughter Katie's needle track marks for the first time, it is a complete shock. But, slowly, the drug use explains everything--Katie's constant exhaustion, erratic moods, and all those spoons that have gone missing from the house. Once Mike and Maureen get Katie into detox, Maureen goes to sleep that night hoping that in 48 hours she'll have her daughter back. It's not that simple. Like the millions of parents and relatives all over the country--some of whom she has helped through her nonprofit organization--Maureen learns that recovery is neither straightforward nor brief. She fights to save Katie's life, breaking down doors on the seedy side of town with Mike, kidnapping Katie outside a convenience store, and battling the taboo around substance use disorder in her picturesque New England town. Maureen is launched into the shadowy world of overcrowded, for-profit rehabilitation centers that often prey on worried parents. As Katie runs away from one program after another, never outrunning her pain, Maureen realizes that even while she becomes an expert on getting countless men and women into detox and treatment centers, she remains powerless to save her own daughter. Maureen's unforgettable story brings the opioid crisis out of the shadows and into the house next door.

Download or read book A Mother s Journey Through Her Daughter s Pain written by Alexis White Thomas and published by Author House. This book was released on 2015-01-05 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Mother's Journey Through Her Daughter's Pain contains a collection of poems that takes you on a journey that explores every aspect of emotions, such as joy, pain, sorrow, fear, hope, despair and victory. A true story revealing the raw emotions of a mother's ups and downs as her daughter battles breast cancer. In A Mother's Journey Through Her Daughter's Pain, you should be able to find hope and encouragement and know that the word "cancer" doesn't always mean death.

Download or read book Will I Ever be Good Enough written by Karyl McBride and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book specifically for daughters suffering from the emotional abuse of selfish, self-involved mothers,Will I Ever Be Good Enough?provides the expert assistance you need in order to overcome this debilitating history and reclaim your life for yourself. Drawing on over two decades of experience as a therapist specializing in women's psychology and health, psychotherapist Dr. Karyl McBride helpsyou recognize the widespread effects of this maternal emotional abuse and guides you as you create an individualized program for self-protection, resolution, and complete recovery.An estimated 1.5 million American women have narcissistic personality disorder, which makes them so insecure and overbearing, insensitive and domineering that they can psychologically damage their daughters for life. Daughters of narcissistic mothers learn that maternal love is not unconditional, and that it is given only when they behave in accordance with their mothers' often unreasonable expectations and whims. As adults, these daughters consequently have difficulty overcoming their insecurities and feelings of inadequacy, disappointment, sadness, and emotional emptiness. They may also have a terrible fear of abandonment that leads them to form unhealthy love relationships, as well as a tendency to perfectionism and unrelenting self-criticism, or to self-sabotage and frustration.Herself the recovering daughter of a narcissistic mother, Dr. McBride includes her personal struggle, which adds a profound level of authority to her work, along with the perspectives of the hundreds of suffering daughters she's interviewed over the years. Their stories of how maternal abuse has manifested in their lives -- as well as how they have successfully overcome its effects -- show you that you're not alone and that you can take back your life and have the controlyouwant.Dr. McBride's step-by-step program will enable you to:(1) Recognize your own experience with maternal narcissism and its effects on all aspects of your life (2) Discover how you have internalized verbal and nonverbal messages from your mother and how these have translated into a strong desire to overachieve or a tendency to self-sabotage (3) Construct a step-by-step program to reclaim your life and enhance your sense of self, a process that includes creating a psychological separation from your mother and breaking the legacy of abuse. You will also learn how not to repeat your mother's mistakes with your own daughter.Warm and sympathetic, filled with the examples of women who have established healthy boundaries with their hurtful mothers,Will I Ever Be Good Enough?encourages and inspires you as it aids your recovery.

Download or read book Comfort A Journey Through Grief written by Ann Hood and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-05-04 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Rarely do memoirs of grief combine anguish, love, and fury with such elegance.” — Entertainment Weekly In 2002, Ann Hood’s five-year-old daughter Grace died suddenly from a virulent form of strep throat. Stunned and devastated, the family searched for comfort in a time when none seemed possible. Hood—an accomplished novelist—was unable to read or write. She could only reflect on her lost daughter—“the way she looked splashing in the bathtub ... the way we sang ‘Eight Days a Week.’” One day, a friend suggested she learn to knit. Knitting soothed her and gave her something to do. Eventually, she began to read and write again. A semblance of normalcy returned, but grief, in ever new and different forms, still held the family. What they could not know was that comfort would come, and in surprising ways. Hood traces her descent into grief and reveals how she found comfort and hope again—a journey to recovery that culminates with a newly adopted daughter.

Download or read book Her Daughter s Mother written by Daniela Petrova and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She befriended the one woman she was never supposed to meet. Now she's the key suspect in her disappearance. For fans of The Perfect Mother and The Wife Between Us comes a gripping psychological suspense debut about two strangers, one incredible connection, and the steep price of obsession. Lana Stone has never considered herself a stalker--until the night she impulsively follows a familiar face through the streets of New York's Upper West Side. Her target? The "anonymous" egg donor she'd selected through an agency, the one who's making motherhood possible for her. Hungry to learn more about her, Lana plans only to watch her from a distance. But when circumstances bring them face-to-face, an unexpected friendship is born. Katya, a student at Columbia, is the yin to Lana's yang, an impulsive free spirit who lives life at the edge. And for pragmatic Lana, she's a breath of fresh air and a welcome distraction from her painful breakup with her baby's father. Then, just as suddenly as Katya entered Lana's life, she disappears--and Lana might have been the last person to see her before she went missing. Determined to find out what became of the woman to whom she owes so much, Lana digs into Katya's past, even as the police grow suspicious of her motives. But she's unprepared for the secrets she unearths, and their power to change everything she thought she knew about those she loves best...

Download or read book A Mother s Journey of Love Loss and Life Beyond written by Jennifer L. Scalise and published by Lakeland Press LLC. This book was released on 2011-12-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Mother's Journey is the powerful true story that is sure to offer undeniable hope to all. As she soaks in one of the last days of a perfect vacation in Costa Rica, Scalise has no idea that she is about to face an incomprehensible tragedy that will claim the life of her twelve-year-old daughter, Brooke. Hidden discoveries and simultaneous events too parallel to be deemed coincidence reveal that Brooke's life had a greater purpose and her soul was preparing for the journey home. As she begins to unravel Brooke's messages, somewhere between conviction and proof, Jennifer finds an unshakable faith in eternal life and peace, knowing that Brooke remains by her side with a love unabridged by death.

Download or read book I Am Intelligent written by Dianne Goddard and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This riveting memoir of extreme loss and unimaginable gain recounts the story of a child who, although unable to expressherself, lives fully aware of her limiting circumstances. Robbed of speech and bodily control, and despite her loving parents’ best efforts to help her, Peyton Goddard suffered neglect and ongoing abuse by many who dismissed her as autistic and severely mentally retarded. No one could have imagined that she possessed a brilliant mind in her uncooperative body until her first opportunity to communicate electronically at age 22 when she typed “i am intlgent,” a breakthrough reminiscent of The Miracle Worker. Today Peyton is following through on her vow to be an advocate on behalf of other devalued people. Her inspirational life helps readers transcend stereotypes and join her in the radical notion that, as she says, “All people are vastly valuable. Treasure all because great is each.”

Download or read book Losing Malcolm written by Carol Henderson and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2001 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The honest and compelling narrative about a naive mother whose carefully constructed life unravels when her infant son dies from devastating illness discusses emotional devastation and recovery, family taboos, and a newfound sense of self.

Download or read book My Mother s Pain written by Fae Bidgoli and published by Gallatin River Press. This book was released on 2021-01-13 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My Mother's Pain explores the progressive nature of cultural abuse and the tragic decisions women bound to such conventions must make in the name of love, often denying and even sacrificing their true selves. This is also a story of healing, rebirth, and reunion. Twenty-five years ago, Jennifer Thompson made a decision that would change the course of her life, and hopefully, protect her unborn child from the ravages of cultural abuse. A phone call from her daughter shatters the stitched-together memories of lost love and her mother's pain that make up Jennifer's fragile reality. Hours later, dressed in her nightgown and raincoat, wearing the red heels previously hidden for two decades in her garage, Jennifer sits in her car in front of a small house in Erie, Pennsylvania. She has driven straight through from San Francisco, but in her fugue state, she doesn't know where she is or why. My Mother's Pain follows Jennifer's journey as she unravels the threads of truth within her carefully constructed, now shattered, world. Grief denied, love lost, childhood memories, and an unexpected reunion are woven into the lives of the current owners of Jennifer's childhood home.

Download or read book About Natalie written by Christine Pisera Naman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mother traces her daughter's years-long battle with addiction in this compelling memoir that opens a raw and honest dialogue about substance abuse. A mother’s first, most basic instinct is to protect her child. Christine Naman’s daughter Natalie was the light of her life. She was a spirited child with sparkling eyes who was growing up and finding her way in the world. But by adolescence, she had ended up on the wrong road, meeting the wrong kind of people. Natalie was a full-blown addict, caught in a self-destructive spiral that was destroying her life and taking her family along for the nightmarish journey. Christine wondered how she could have missed the warning signs. Was there anything she could do to save Natalie from herself? About Natalie tells one woman’s heartbreaking story, one that is played out in homes across the country, and reveals the rollercoaster of emotions that loving an addict unearths. There is despair and joy; denial and acceptance; rage and tranquility. Christine’s reflections as she traces her daughter’s life are interspersed with Natalie’s compelling poems that tell the unvarnished truth of her side of this struggle: “I have handcuffs on/And no one can see them/My screams are so loud /Yet no one can hear ‘em”. By sharing the difficult days of isolation, pain, and humiliation that being the parent of an addict can bring, Naman offers comfort and consolation to others in similar circumstances. Ultimately, About Natalie is a story of loving no matter what, keeping the faith, battling hard, and getting back on the right road.

Download or read book Motherland written by Fern Schumer Chapman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-04-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A moving account of a mother and daughter who visit Germany to face the Holocaust tragedy that has caused their family decades of intergenerational trauma, from the author of Brothers, Sisters, Strangers Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award In 1938, when Edith Westerfeld was twelve, her parents sent her from Germany to America to escape the Nazis. Edith survived, but most of her family perished in the death camps. Unable to cope with the loss of her family and homeland, Edith closed the door on her past, refusing to discuss even the smallest details. Fifty-four years later, when the void of her childhood was consuming both her and her family, she returned to Stockstadt with her grown daughter Fern. For Edith the trip was a chance to reconnect and reconcile with her past; for Fern it was a chance to learn what lay behind her mother's silent grief. Together, they found a town that had dramatically changed on the surface, but which hid guilty secrets and lived in enduring denial. On their journey, Fern and her mother shared many extraordinary encounters with the townspeople and—more importantly—with one another, closing the divide that had long stood between them. Motherland is a story of learning to face the past, of remembering and honoring while looking forward and letting go. It is an account of the Holocaust’s lingering grip on its witnesses; it is also a loving story of mothers and daughters, roots, understanding, and, ultimately, healing.

Download or read book Mean Mothers written by Peg Streep and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawn from research and the real-life experiences of adult daughters, Mean Mothers illuminates one of the last cultural taboos: what happens when a woman does not or cannot love her own daughter. Peg Streep, co-author of the highly acclaimed Girl in the Mirror, has subtitled this important, eye-opening exploration of the darker side of maternal behavior, “Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt.” There are no psychopathic child abusers in Mean Mothers. Instead, this essential volume focuses on the more subtle forms of psychological damage inflicted by mothers on their unappreciated daughters—and offers help and support to those women who were forced to suffer a parent’s cruelty and neglect.

Download or read book I Will Never Forget written by Elaine C. Pereira and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2014 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is painfully difficult to watch a loved one decline as dementia ravages their mind, destroying memories, rational thinking, and judgment. In her touching memoir, I Will Never Forget, Elaine Pereira shares the heartbreaking and humorous story of her mother’s incredible journey through dementia. Pereira begins with entertaining glimpses into her own childhood and feisty teenage years, demonstrating her mother’s strength of character. Years later, as Betty Ward started to exhibit bizarre behaviors and paranoia, Pereira was mystified by her mom’s amazing ability to mask the truth. Not until a revealing incident over an innocuous drapery rod did Pereira recognize the extent of her mother’s Alzheimer’s. As their roles shifted and a new paradigm emerged, Pereira transformed into a caregiver blindly navigating dementia’s unpredictable haze. But before Betty’s passing, she orchestrated a stunning rally to control her own destiny via a masterful, Houdini-like escape. I Will Never Forget is a powerful heartwarming story that helps others know that they are not alone in their journey. “Poignant, shocking, and honest … far more than just words on paper. If you or someone you know is living through the hell of dementia, you need this book!” —Ionia Martin, developer of Readful Things Reviews and Alzheimer’s caregiver

Download or read book Strange Situation written by Bethany Saltman and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A full-scale investigation of the controversial and often misunderstood science of attachment theory, inspired by the author’s own experience as a parent and daughter. “A profound and beautiful work . . . searingly honest, brazenly fresh, and startlingly rich.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon When professional researcher and writer Bethany Saltman gave birth to her daughter, Azalea, she loved her deeply but felt as if something was missing. Looking back at her lonely childhood, dangerous teenage years, and love-addicted early adulthood, Saltman thought maybe she was broken. Then she discovered the science of attachment, the field of psychology that explores the question of why—from an evolutionary point of view—love exists between parents and children. Saltman went on a ten-year journey visiting labs, archives, and training sessions, while learning the meaning of “delight” from Mary Ainsworth, one of psychology’s most important but unsung researchers, who died in 1999. Saltman went deep into the history and findings from Ainsworth’s famous laboratory procedure, the Strange Situation, which, like an X-ray, is still used today by scientists around the world to catch a glimpse of the internal workings of attachment. In this simple twenty-minute procedure, a baby and a caregiver enter an ordinary room with two chairs and some toys. During a series of comings and goings, a trained observer studies the minutiae of the pair’s back-and-forth with each other. Through the science of attachment, what Saltman discovered was a radical departure from everything she thought she knew—about love and about her own family, her story, and herself. She was far from broken—she saw that love is too powerful to ever break. Strange Situation is a scientific, lyrical, life-affirming exploration of love. Not only will readers be taken on an emotional ride through one mother’s reckoning with her own past and her family’s future, but they will also be given the tools with which to better understand their own life histories and their relationships today. Praise for Strange Situation “A fascinating deep dive into attachment theory . . . Carefully researched and with copious endnotes, this is an excellent resource for anyone interested in child development.”—Publishers Weekly “Honest and complex . . . A thoughtful engagement with a topic that affects all parents.”—Kirkus Reviews

Download or read book Don t Call Me Mother written by Linda Joy Myers and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-02-13 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I wanted to tell the secret stories that my great-grandmother Blanche whispered to me on summer nights in a featherbed in Iowa. I was eight and she was eighty . . .” At the age of four, a little girl stands on a cold, windy railroad platform in Wichita, Kansas, watching a train take her mother away. For the rest of her life, her mother will be an only occasional—and always troubled—visitor who denies her the love she longs for. Linda Joy Myers’s compassionate, gripping, and soul-searching memoir tells the story of three generations of daughters who, though determined to be different from their absent mothers, ultimately follow in their footsteps, recreating a pattern that they yearn to break. Accompany Linda as she uncovers family secrets, seeks solace in music, and begins her healing journey—ultimately transcending the prison of her childhood and finding forgiveness for her family and herself. This edition includes a new afterword in which Myers confronts her family’s legacy and comes full circle with her daughter and grandchildren, seeding a new path for them.

Download or read book Everything Left to Remember written by Steph Jagger and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This will cast a spell on fans of Cheryl Strayed and Glennon Doyle." - Publishers Weekly Between Two Kingdoms meets Wild. In this heart wrenching and inspirational memoir a woman and her mother, who is suffering from dementia, embark on a road trip through national parks, revisiting the memories, and the mountains, that made them who they are. Steph Jagger lost her mother before she lost her. Her mother, stricken with an incurable disease that slowly erases all sense of self, struggles to remember her favorite drink, her favorite song, and—perhaps most heartbreaking of all—Steph herself. Steph watches as the woman who loved and raised her slips away before getting the chance to tell her story, and so Steph makes a promise: her mother will walk it and she will write it. Too aware of her mother’s waning memory, Steph proposes that the two take a camping trip out to Montana—which her mother, on the urging of Steph’s father, agrees to embark upon. An adventure full of horseback riding, hiking, and “tenting” out West quickly turns into one woman’s reflection on childhood, motherhood, personhood—and what it means to love someone who doesn’t quite remember the person she spent her lifetime becoming. A staggeringly beautiful examination of how stories are passed down through generations and from Mother Nature, Everything Left to Remember brings us the wisdom of who our memories make us under the constellations of the vast Montana sky.

Download or read book Motherland written by Elissa Altman and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I’m reading this book right now and loving it!”—Cheryl Strayed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild How can a mother and daughter who love (but don’t always like) each other coexist without driving each other crazy? “Vibrating with emotion, this deeply honest account strikes a chord.”—People “A wry and moving meditation on aging and the different kinds of love between women.”—O: The Oprah Magazine After surviving a traumatic childhood in nineteen-seventies New York and young adulthood living in the shadow of her flamboyant mother, Rita, a makeup-addicted former television singer, Elissa Altman has managed to build a very different life, settling in Connecticut with her wife of nearly twenty years. After much time, therapy, and wine, Elissa is at last in a healthy place, still orbiting around her mother but keeping far enough away to preserve the stable, independent world she has built as a writer and editor. Then Elissa is confronted with the unthinkable: Rita, whose days are spent as a flâneur, traversing Manhattan from the Clinique counters at Bergdorf to Bloomingdale’s and back again, suffers an incapacitating fall, leaving her completely dependent upon her daughter. Now Elissa is forced to finally confront their profound differences, Rita’s yearning for beauty and glamour, her view of the world through her days in the spotlight, and the money that has mysteriously disappeared in the name of preserving youth. To sustain their fragile mother-daughter bond, Elissa must navigate the turbulent waters of their shared lives, the practical challenges of caregiving for someone who refuses to accept it, the tentacles of narcissism, and the mutual, frenetic obsession that has defined their relationship. Motherland is a story that touches every home and every life, mapping the ferocity of maternal love, moral obligation, the choices women make about motherhood, and the possibility of healing. Filled with tenderness, wry irreverence, and unforgettable characters, it is an exploration of what it means to escape from the shackles of the past only to have to face them all over again. Praise for Motherland “Rarely has a mother-daughter relationship been excavated with such honesty. Elissa Altman is a beautiful, big-hearted writer who mines her most central subject: her gorgeous, tempestuous, difficult mother, and the terrain of their shared life. The result is a testament to the power of love and family.”—Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance