Resilient Memoir

The Close sisters are descended from very prominent and wealthy ancestors. When the Close sisters were very young, their parents joined a cult called the MRA, or Moral Rearmament. The family was suddenly uprooted to a cult school in Switzerland and, ultimately, to the Belgian Congo where their father became a surgeon in the war-ravaged republic, and ultimately the personal physician to President Mobutu.

Hugh van Cuylenburg was a primary school teacher volunteering in northern India when he had a life-changing realisation: despite the underprivileged community the children were from, they were remarkably positive. By contrast, back in Australia Hugh knew that all too many children struggled with depression, social anxieties and mental illness. His own little sister had been ravaged by anorexia nervosa. How was it that young people he knew at home, who had food, shelter, friends and a loving family, struggled with their mental health, while these kids seemed so contented and resilient?

On the flight to their "babymoon" in Hawaii before their first child arrived, Allison Pataki's husband turned to her to ask if his eye looked strange, and then suddenly lost consciousness. After making an emergency landing, they discovered that Dave, a lifelong, healthy athlete and orthopedic surgery resident at Rush Medical School in Chicago, had suffered a rare, and often fatal, stroke. Dave was one of the lucky ones though, and he survived, but the man who woke up from his coma was not the same man Allison had fallen in love with at Yale.

"From the cover to the words in between, this book is a triumph & a learning tool for those with chronic illness & their families." - Jennie Louwes - Reedsy Discovery Once a person who seemed happy and healthy, Lisa Peachey's world was turned upside down as chronic illness crept in, shifting her focus from carefree living to the constant management of her body's needs. With raw honesty, Lisa shares hard-earned lessons learned on a long, painful, and expensive road. She seeks to share this knowledge with others whose doctors don't know what to do with them, offering hope to anyone feeling ...

For decades, Kathleen Buhle chose to play the role of the good wife, beginning when, as a naïve young woman from a working-class family on the South Side of Chicago, she met the dashing son of a senator in Oregon. Within months, Kathleen found herself pregnant and engaged. Determined to build her family on a foundation of love, Kathleen was convinced her and Hunter’s commitment to each other could overcome any obstacle. But when Hunter’s drinking evolved into dependency, she was forced to learn how irrevocably a marriage can fall apart under the merciless power of addiction.

What happens when a young woman’s spontaneous trip turns into a lifelong adventure in Japan? At just 24, Suzy left behind her familiar life in Israel, chasing the allure of the Far East. What began as a brief escape to Thailand—quickly turned into a bold leap into the unknown. There, she became a hostess in Tokyo, married a local businessman in a traditional Oriental marriage, and bravely adapted to Japanese culture, balancing stark contrasts between Israel and Japan. This autobiography offers more than a tourist’s view of Japan, revealing the real challenges of cultural adaptation, ...

We all fail. We all fall. We all need to know how to get back up. Few know this better than New York Times best-selling author Neil Pasricha. Before selling over a million copies of his Book of Awesome series and touring the world to teach Fortune 500 CEOs, Ivy league deans, and members of the royal family how to unlock a positive mind-set, Pasricha’s life hit rock bottom. In this Audible Original, you'll hear for the first time Neil's very personal story of failure and resilience - and you'll learn how you, too, can find the strength to get back up.

When Emily Halnon lost her beloved mother to a rare uterine cancer at just sixty-six years old, she wanted to do something monumental to honor the person her mother had been. Emily's mom had taken up running in her late forties; she ran her first marathon at fifty. She even went skydiving to celebrate her sixtieth birthday. Emily, already an accomplished ultrarunner, decided to try to break the record for the Fastest Known Time by a woman on the Pacific Crest Trail's 460 miles across Oregon.

In Campfire Stories: Close Calls, Steven Rinella invites seasoned hunters, anglers, adventurers, and outdoor professionals to share their tales of perilous adventures in the natural world, from run-ins with black bears and grizzlies to bad falls and severe hypothermia.

In 2012, on his third tour of duty in Afghanistan, an improvised explosive device left Dan Crenshaw's right eye destroyed and his left blinded. Only through the careful hand of his surgeons, and what doctors called a miracle, did Crenshaw's left eye recover partial vision. And yet, he persevered, completing two more deployments. Why? There are certain stories we tell ourselves about the hardships we face—we can become paralyzed by adversity or we can adapt and overcome. We can be fragile or we can find our fortitude. Crenshaw delivers a set of lessons to help you do just that.

D Esperanza was just thirteen years old when he lost his caregivers, his beloved grandmother and uncle. Since both of his parents were working and living in the United States, D was left on his own in a small town in Honduras. He quickly realized he simply could not make enough money to survive so he made the difficult decision to head north with his cousins and hopefully reunite with his parents in el norte. Together, the boys struggled to survive a long and treacherous journey through Central America and Mexico.

On April 25, 2015, Jim Davidson was climbing Mount Everest when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake released avalanches all around him and his team, destroying their only escape route and trapping them at nearly 20,000 feet. It was the largest earthquake in Nepal in 81 years and killed about 8,900 people. That day also became the deadliest in the history of Everest, with 18 people losing their lives on the mountain.

Wallace is an award-winning journalist who has built his career on writing unforgettable profiles, bringing a provocative and engaged sensitivity to his subjects. Now he turns the focus on himself, examining his own life and the circumstances that frame it—to make sense of seeking refuge from homelessness with a young single mother, living in a ghostly white Pennsylvania town, becoming a partner and parent, raising two teenagers in what feels like a collapsing world.

Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life. Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write a different story.

While on the campaign trail, Elizabeth Edwards met many others who have had to contend with serious adversity in their lives, and in Resilience, she draws on their experiences as well as her own, crafting an unsentimental and ultimately inspirational meditation on the gifts we can find among life's biggest challenges.

A tenderhearted and fierce memoir of healing from loneliness, despair, and excruciating physical pain. Born to a troubled mother, who passed her trauma on to her daughter, Hertha Lund carried this burden throughout her life, always struggling with a sense of not belonging to any group, to any point on the map, to humanity as a whole.

"The Fantastic Journey of a Young Medical Doctor" is a captivating and inspiring memoir that takes readers on an exhilarating adventure through the life of a medical professional. Dr. Francesco Chirico, the author and protagonist of this thrilling tale, invites readers on a journey that is both heartwarming and educational. Through vivid storytelling and poignant interviews, Dr. Chirico portrays the challenges faced by occupational practitioners in developing and developed countries. This eye-opening perspective sheds light on the daily struggles of workers who are often overlooked and ...

An unexpected journey. An unbreakable spirit. At 26, Non Reyes had it all—a loving family, a promising future, and an adventurous spirit. But in a single instant, everything changed. A devastating accident left him paralyzed from the neck down, forcing him to rebuild his life in ways he never imagined. In An Unexpected Ride, Non shares his deeply personal journey of resilience and rediscovery of purpose after tragedy. With raw honesty and a touch of humor, he reflects on the struggles, triumphs, and everyday victories of life with a disability—offering hope to anyone facing their own ...

Driven by childhood trauma, a passionate engineer turned doctor confronts the suffering within the medical system. Expecting to find compassion and care, he instead encounters a broken, inhumane and corrupt system. As his journey leads him to question his own deeply held beliefs, he uncovers an urgent need for strategies prioritising human connection over technical fixes. Through profound encounters with patients and wise teachers, the author discovers a new scientific reality where healing flourishes and miracles occur daily – insights with the potential to transform medical practice. ...

The riveting, heartbreaking, and inspiring story of two sisters who survived a childhood riddled with violence, neglect, and abandonment, but went on to become gifted healers - one a theologian, the other as a therapist. Their stories, inextricably woven together, narrate how they pulled each other out of the hell of shame, fear, poverty caused by their parents and toxic religion, and into lives of profound meaning and service to the world.