Memoir Dysfunctional

The fifth of eight children, Chris Forhan was born into a family of silence. He and his siblings learned, without being told, that certain thoughts and feelings were not to be shared. On the evenings his father didn't come home, the rest of the family would eat dinner without him, his whereabouts unknown, his absence pronounced but not mentioned. And on a cold night in 1973, just before Christmas, Forhan's father killed himself in the carport. Forty years later Forhan "bravely considers the way he is and is not his father's son" (Larry Watson).

From their first kiss, 27-year-old writer Danielle Trussoni is spellbound by a novelist from Bulgaria. The two share a love of jazz and books and travel, passions that intensify their whirlwind romance. Eight years later, hopeful to renew their marriage, Danielle and her husband move to the south of France, to a picturesque medieval village in the Languedoc. It is here, in a haunted stone fortress built by the Knights Templar, that she comes to understand the dark, subterranean forces that have been following her all along.

This powerful and haunting memoir details the years Paula McLain and her two sisters spent as foster children after being abandoned by both parents in California in the early 1970s. As wards of the State, the sisters spent the next 14 years moving from foster home to foster home. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of the most compelling memoirs in recent years - a book in the tradition of Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club.

Meet Dan Marshall - 25, good job, great girlfriend, and living the dream life in sunny Los Angeles without a care in the world. Until his mother calls. And he ignores it, as you usually do when Mom calls. Then she calls again. And again. Dan thought things were going great at home. But it turns out his mom's cancer, which she had battled throughout his childhood with tenacity and a mouth foul enough to make a sailor blush, is back.

Little Billy Eiland grew up in the projects having never known his real father. Julie, his mother, a white prostitute with a penchant for black men, would always change the subject when Billy asked her about his origins. Thus, Billy grew up not knowing who he was, but knowing that he was different. Billy’s siblings' fathers were all 100 percent black, but Billie had blond hair and blue eyes. Julie’s other children had the last name of Clark. Billy was the only child whose last name was Eiland. Not knowing his true identity, Billy was forced to forge a new one.

In this darkly funny, surprising memoir, the original "Lit Girl" and author of the era-defining Slaves of New York considers her life in and outside of New York City, from the heyday of the 1980s to her life today in a tiny upstate town that proves that fact is always stranger than fiction.

Kelly Thompson and her older sister, Meghan, are proof that sisterhood doesn’t always equate to friendship. Growing up within a military family, the girls were close despite being temperamental opposites—Kelly, anxious and studious, looked to her big sister for comfort, and Meghan, who battled kidney cancer as a toddler, was gregarious and protective. But as she approached adulthood, Meghan spi­ralled into a cocaine and opioid addiction, and Kelly’s relationship with her sister was torn apart.

Chronicling her childhood of abuse, her diagnosis of BPD in her twenties, and her ultimate road to recovery, Born Under the Gaslight is a memoir like none you have ever listened to before. Offering a rare and insightful glimpse into the inner struggles of someone who lives with BPD, Born Under the Gaslight is a must-listen for therapists, others living with BPD, and anyone wanting to understand the complexities of BPD and how to offer practical and emotional support.

Constance was always a California dreamer, though her circumstances gave her no right to be. She grew up in 1980s San Diego as the fourth of nine children. The crowded two-bedroom apartment where she spent her childhood was far from a safe cocoon that could nurture her dreams into reality. Constance began caring for her siblings while she was still a child herself, stepping in for her overwhelmed mother and her often absent, unpredictable father.

One dramatic day in her college dorm, self-injury lands a young woman in the surreal world of a psych ward for 74 hours. Those traumatic hours define her life for many years, until she comes to see the trauma through the lens of self-forgiveness, ongoing recovery, and God’s grace of revelation. Within Discovering My Scars, Stephanie Kostopoulos makes herself vulnerable and invites listeners into her reality with raw and visceral depictions of non-suicidal self-injury. The journey encapsulates life during her 20s, while stepping back to childhood, revealing abuse....

In this brave and shocking memoir, the author masterfully guides us through the pivotal points of her life, from an abusive upbringing that destroys her self-confidence, to the wreckage of an ill-conceived marriage, and on to a defining moment, full of grace and mercy, which gave her the wings to become the conquering and triumphant phoenix she is today.

This is the story of a courageous young woman who grew up in a home headed by a sexual predator and an abused mother who lost her mind when Christine was only 14, disappearing until she was a mother herself. It recounts the secrets and lies that were designed to protect the darkest family secret of all, which had the effect of making the eight children strangers to each other, and then prisoners of the passions that disordered their lives, and set them against each other. Christine's story is filled with intense dramas and the saga of Christine's climb out of the family wreck.

In this award-winning memoir, two sisters reckon with the convalescence and death of their outlandishly tyrannical mother and the care of their psychologically terrorized father, all relayed with dark humor and brutal honesty.

As a young girl, Alda Sigmundsdóttir yearns to be close to her beautiful, distant mother, yet is never able to win her affection. When her parents divorce, a dark symbiosis between mother and daughter is forged, with devastating consequences that threaten to derail everything—especially Alda’s chance at intimacy and love.

Was it My Fault? is intended to offer solace and guidance to those ensnared in toxic relationships, dispelling the notion that abuse is solely physical. Inspiring self-discovery, healing, and empowerment, Alana offers a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, a rallying cry for survivors to reclaim their narrative—urging them not just to survive, but to thrive.

With the advent of TV dinners in the 1950s, an intense and entrepreneurial father rises from poverty to build a multi-million-dollar trucking empire hauling frozen food throughout the Northwest. His determination, combined with generosity and strict punishment, leaves his family in a state of emotional paralysis. After his untimely death, his survivors implode in a maelstrom of brutal courtroom drama, illness, and dementia. The estate and family are destroyed.

Set in the bucolic, yet brutal South of his youth, My Mother’s House is a memoir by novelist David Armand. It recounts the young author’s early memories of being born to a schizophrenic mother, then given up for adoption, only to be raised in a home with an alcoholic and abusive step-father.

Domestic Abuse - Parent Abuse, Children’s Story, Those Left Behind, Our Stories & More of Our Stories Bundle. These are stories about the friends and families who have lost loved ones. Some have been forced to leave their abuser by going into hiding. Others haven't been as lucky. These people that are left behind tell their heartbreaking stories of their losses and grief.

Leaving home was not easy for Irene Sardanis. Born into a Greek family in the Bronx in the 1940s, she was the youngest child of an unhappy mother and a father who drank, gambled, and enjoyed other women—and then, when Irene was 11, abandoned the family altogether. Irene's older siblings found a way out, but Irene was trapped, held hostage to her mother's rage and despair. When she finally escaped her mother as a young adult, she married a Greek man who controlled and dominated her just like her mother always had. But Irene wasn't ready to let her story end there.

When Heather Havrilesky was a kid in the seventies, it seemed there were only disaster movies. Burning towers, devouring earthquakes, careening airliners, alien pod invasions. To be prepared, she and her siblings fabricated elaborate plans to escape any and every emergency. But what began merely as a childhood game grew into a way of life where something shocking lurked around every corner.