Navigating Life

Navigating Life PDF Author: Margaux Bergen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1594206295
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
You might learn a few useful things at school, but most of what matters, most of what makes you into a fully functioning human being, no teacher will ever tell you. This diamond-sharp, honest book of hard-earned wisdom is one mother's effort to equip her daughter for survival in the real world. Heartbreakingly funny, Navigating Life has invaluable tips for students of life of all ages. It will challenge you to lead a more meaningful life and to tackle the bumps along the way with grit, style, and ingenuity.

The Tapestry of My Life

The Tapestry of My Life PDF Author: Pauline Hanson - Gilman
Publisher: Marcia M Publishing House
ISBN: 9781916170186
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
This book represents a tapestry of my life and the raw profound emotions of each situation that I was dealing with at each point of my life. Putting words down on paper made me acquire a sense of solace which in turn, came with a freedom of comfort. My collection of poems will resonate, with someone. Our voices were not made to be stifled and quieten down. They are made to be heard. Let us not be afraid of the dark to come into the light, let our dreams become reality, break our shackles, let us all rise like the phoenix from the ashes.This book is about the awareness of emotions in all aspects of our lives and learning how to find and explore our coping mechanisms. Moreover, not to be too afraid to discover our different ranges of inner moods. Therefore, look and seek help. Share our experiences, and capture each other's imaginations.About The Author: My name is Pauline Gilman nee Hanson, I was born in the parish of St Elizabeth, Jamaica. I am a mother of three fine young men and a grandmother to one grandson.My mother and father are from the Windrush era. I arrived in England in 1970 alongside my mother and sister, at the tender age of three years and some months old. We settled in the northern town of Huddersfield, where I remained until 1992. I then relocated to the south for several years before returning to the north in 2000.I have fond memories of writing in primary school especially writing poems. Unfortunately, my creative writing skills lay dormant until my late thirties when the love of writing started to energise me again.

She Left Me the Gun

She Left Me the Gun PDF Author: Emma Brockes
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571275834
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
When Emma Brockes was ten years old, her mother said 'One day I will tell you the story of my life and you will be amazed.' Growing up in a tranquil English village, Emma knew very little of her mother's life before her. She knew Paula had grown up in South Africa and had seven siblings. She had been told stories about deadly snakes and hailstones the size of golf balls. There was mention, once, of a trial. But most of the past was a mystery. When her mother dies of cancer, Emma - by then a successful journalist at the Guardian - is free to investigate the untold story. Her search begins in the Colindale library but then takes her to South Africa, to the extended family she has never met and their accounts of a childhood so different to her own.She encounters versions of the life her mother chose to leave behind - and realises what a gift her mother gave her. Part investigation, part travelogue, part elegy, She Left Me the Gun is a gripping, funny and clear-eyed account of a writer's search for her mother's story.

Writing Women's History

Writing Women's History PDF Author: Marilyn Norry
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780987984425
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
The workbook for My Mother's Story outlining the challenge, exercises and encouragement needed to make sure women's history is saved by following a writing recipe: the facts of your mother's life from beginning to end, in less than 2000 words, where you're just a footnote. This worldwide campaign posts stories at mymothersstory.org

The Sharp End of Life

The Sharp End of Life PDF Author: Dierdre Wolownick
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
ISBN: 1680512439
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Wife and mother. Teacher and musician. Marathoner and rock climber. At 66, Dierdre Wolownick-Honnold became the oldest woman to climb El Capitan in Yosemite--and in The Sharp End of Life: A Mother’s Story, she shares her intimate journey, revealing how her climbing achievement reflects a broader story of courage and persistence. Dierdre grew up under the watchful eyes of a domineering mother and realized early on that her parents’ plans for her future weren’t what she wanted for herself. Later, what seemed like a storybook romance brought escape, with new experiences and eye-opening travel, but she quickly discovered that her husband was not the happy-go-lucky man he had first appeared. Adapting as best she could, Dierdre juggled work and raising two young children, encouraging them to be fearlessly confident. She noted with delight how her “little lady” Stasia took it upon herself to look out for her baby brother, and watched in amazement as Alex (Honnold of "Free Solo" fame) started climbing practically before he could crawl. After years of struggle in her marriage and her ultimate divorce, Dierdre found inspiration in her now-adult children’s passions, as well as new depths within herself. At Stasia’s urging, she took up running at age 54 and soon completed several marathons. Then at age 58, Alex led her on her first rock climbs. A world of friendship and support suddenly opened up to her within the climbing “tribe,” culminating in her record-setting ascent of El Cap with her son. From confused young wife and busy but lonely mother to confident middle-aged athlete, Dierdre brings the reader along as she finds new strength, happiness, and community in the outdoors--and a life of learning, acceptance, and spirit.

Behind the Tapestry

Behind the Tapestry PDF Author: M. Rose Peluso
Publisher: Writers Republic LLC
ISBN: 1637281366
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Behind the Tapestry is the compelling true story told from behind convent walls, of one woman's struggles to "make peace" with a mysterious chronic illness and her unfulfilled dream of being a Catholic nun. Maryanne was a 29 year old graphic designer working towards a lifelong desire to someday move to Hollywood and become an Academy Award winning art director. But an unexpected invitation to a Catholic prayer meeting would forever change Maryanne's life showing her desires she didn't know she possessed. After being abruptly fired from her job and spending a lot of time in prayer, Maryanne embarked on a journey to discover God's will for her life. This quest eventually led her to the Catholic Convent and the realization that all she's ever really wanted was to devote herself to Jesus. Entering Religious Life was all that Maryanne thought about for more than a year but there was a problem. She found herself plagued by a mysterious condition that caused widespread, chronic pain. However, in spite of this pain, Maryanne joined a group of Franciscan Sisters in 1999. Her life in the Convent was filled with many questions, struggles, challenges and a whole lot of physical pain. Then when already strained relationships with her superiors became even more fractured with the lines of communication practically severed, Sister Maryanne was forced to make a heart-wrenching decision. One that would not only impact her life but the lives of those around her. Should she remain in the Convent and go on to take final vows or leave her Religious Life behind and take care of herself instead?

A Child's Tapestry of War

A Child's Tapestry of War PDF Author: Anne Ipsen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781890676117
Category : Danish Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description


The Seasons of My Mother

The Seasons of My Mother PDF Author: Marcia Gay Harden
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501135724
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
In this lyrical and deeply moving memoir, one of America’s most revered actresses weaves stories of her adventures and travels with her mother, while reflecting on the beautiful spirit that persists even in the face of her mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. Marcia Gay Harden knew at a young age that her life would be anything but ordinary. One of five lively children born to two Texas natives—Beverly, a proper Dallas lady, and Thad, a young naval officer—she always had a knack for storytelling, role-playing, and adventure. As a military family, the Hardens moved often, and their travels eventually took them to Yokohama, off the coast of Japan, during the Vietnam War era. It was here that Beverly, amid the many challenges of raising her family abroad, found her own self-expression in ikebana, the ancient Japanese art of flower arranging. Using the philosophy of ikebana as her starting point, Marcia Gay Harden intertwines the seasons of her mother’s life with her own journey from precocious young girl to budding artist in New York City to Academy Award-winning actress. With a razor-sharp wit, as well as the kind of emotional honesty that has made her performances resonate with audiences worldwide, Marcia captures the joys and losses of life even as her precious mother gracefully strives to maintain her identity while coming to grips with Alzheimer’s disease. Powerful and incredibly stirring, The Seasons of My Mother illustrates the unforgettable vulnerability and beauty of motherhood, as Marcia does what Beverly can no longer do: she remembers.

Book of Mutter

Book of Mutter PDF Author: Kate Zambreno
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1584351969
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
A fragmented, lyrical essay on memory, identity, mourning, and the mother. Writing is how I attempt to repair myself, stitching back former selves, sentences. When I am brave enough I am never brave enough I unravel the tapestry of my life, my childhood. —from Book of Mutter Composed over thirteen years, Kate Zambreno's Book of Mutter is a tender and disquieting meditation on the ability of writing, photography, and memory to embrace shadows while in the throes—and dead calm—of grief. Book of Mutter is both primal and sculpted, shaped by the author's searching, indexical impulse to inventory family apocrypha in the wake of her mother's death. The text spirals out into a fractured anatomy of melancholy that includes critical reflections on the likes of Roland Barthes, Louise Bourgeois, Henry Darger, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Peter Handke, and others. Zambreno has modeled the book's formless form on Bourgeois's Cells sculptures—at once channeling the volatility of autobiography, pain, and childhood, yet hemmed by a solemn sense of entering ritualistic or sacred space. Neither memoir, essay, nor poetry, Book of Mutter is an uncategorizable text that draws upon a repertoire of genres to write into and against silence. It is a haunted text, an accumulative archive of myth and memory that seeks its own undoing, driven by crossed desires to resurrect and exorcise the past. Zambreno weaves a complex web of associations, relics, and references, elevating the prosaic scrapbook into a strange and intimate postmortem/postmodern theater.

Mother Daughter Me

Mother Daughter Me PDF Author: Katie Hafner
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812984595
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner’s remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions. Dreaming of a “year in Provence” with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoë, Katie’s teenage daughter. Katie and Zoë had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a seventy-seven-year-old woman set in her ways. Filled with fairy-tale hope that she and her mother would become friends, and that Helen would grow close to her exceptional granddaughter, Katie embarked on an experiment in intergenerational living that she would soon discover was filled with land mines: memories of her parents’ painful divorce, of her mother’s drinking, of dislocating moves back and forth across the country, and of Katie’s own widowhood and bumpy recovery. Helen, for her part, was also holding difficult issues at bay. How these three women from such different generations learn to navigate their challenging, turbulent, and ultimately healing journey together makes for riveting reading. By turns heartbreaking and funny—and always insightful—Katie Hafner’s brave and loving book answers questions about the universal truths of family that are central to the lives of so many. Praise for Mother Daughter Me “The most raw, honest and engaging memoir I’ve read in a long time.”—KJ Dell’Antonia, The New York Times “A brilliant, funny, poignant, and wrenching story of three generations under one roof, unlike anything I have ever read.”—Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone “Weaving past with present, anecdote with analysis, [Katie] Hafner’s riveting account of multigenerational living and mother-daughter frictions, of love and forgiveness, is devoid of self-pity and unafraid of self-blame. . . . [Hafner is] a bright—and appealing—heroine.”—Cathi Hanauer, Elle “[A] frank and searching account . . . Currents of grief, guilt, longing and forgiveness flow through the compelling narrative.”—Steven Winn, San Francisco Chronicle “A touching saga that shines . . . We see how years-old unresolved emotions manifest.”—Lindsay Deutsch, USA Today “[Hafner’s] memoir shines a light on nurturing deficits repeated through generations and will lead many readers to relive their own struggles with forgiveness.”—Erica Jong, People “An unusually graceful story, one that balances honesty and tact . . . Hafner narrates the events so adeptly that they feel enlightening.”—Harper’s “Heartbreakingly honest, yet not without hope and flashes of wry humor.”—Kirkus Reviews “[An] emotionally raw memoir examining the delicate, inevitable shift from dependence to independence and back again.”—O: The Oprah Magazine (Ten Titles to Pick Up Now) “Scrap any romantic ideas about what goes on when a 40-something woman invites her mother to live with her and her teenage daughter for a year. As Hafner hilariously and touchingly tells it, being the center of a family sandwich is, well, complicated.”—Parade