I am a therapist, and I work with people from all walks of life and with all manner of suffering. I am drawn to memoirs because I consider it the real self-help genre of literature. Like good therapy, a good memoir will make sense of a story: how it happened, why it happened, how it affected the person, and what they did (do) to face it, and thrive in spite of it. As a writer, I take pride in bringing that same quality to my work. I have been asked many times, âHow can you bear to reveal all that stuff about yourself, especially when itâs unflattering?â The answer is always âIsnât that the part that matters? Isnât that the part where the growth occurred? Isnât that what makes the story worth telling?â
Wendy Plumpâs VOW is the only memoir I have ever read that reveals what it is like to be the âcheatingâ partner (there are many books that address being cheated on). This is NOT a book touting infidelity or polyamory. It is simply an extremely honest accounting of a marriage riddled by affairs (both partners), how the author coped with the fallout, and grew into a more mature and insight-driven version of herself. This very topic activates so much judgment by so many people (just read some of the seething, scathing reviews on Amazon), but the truth is, human beings DO cheat, they DO commit infidelity, and Wendy Plump, who is a terrific, elegant writer and storyteller, has addressed this topic with great candor. It takes an extremely brave person to tell this type of story; hence, this book is brave and beautiful.
There are so many ways to find out. From a cell phone. From a bank statement. From some weird supermarket encounter. One morning in early January 2005, Wendy Plump's friend came to tell her that her husband was having an affair. It was not a shock. Actually, it explained a lot. But what Wendy was not prepared for was the revelation that her husband also had another child, living within a mile of their family home.
Monogamy is one of the most important of the many vows we make in our marriages. Yet it is a rare spouse who doesâŚ
At sixteen years old, Darin Strauss had just received his first driverâs license and was on his first unsupervised drive, when a classmate, on a bicycle, swerved in front of his car. She was killed instantly. There was never a question of actual culpability: bystanders described the girl on the bike as literally driving in front of his vehicle, as though intentionally (a theory corroborated by suicidal thoughts recorded in her last diary entry the night before the accident). But this did not alleviate the trauma of killing someone, and the anguish and guilt that Darin Strauss carried forward for many, many years into his adult life, and probably always will. âHalf a Lifeâ refers to how he lived thereafter; halfway in his own existence, and the other half in constant preoccupation with the girl whose life was no more. This book will fill you with such empathy and compassion for the author, and a horrified fascination with the story, for who among us has not been afraid of being implicated in something that was not really our fault?
In this powerful, unforgettable memoir, acclaimed novelist Darin Strauss examines the far-reaching consequences of the tragic moment that has shadowed his whole life. In his last month of high school, he was behind the wheel of his dad's Oldsmobile, driving with friends, heading off to play mini-golf. Then: a classmate swerved in front of his car. The collision resulted in her death. With piercing insight and stark prose, Darin Strauss leads us on a deeply personal, immediate, and emotional journeyâgraduating high school, going away to college, starting his writing career, falling in love with his future wife, becoming a father.âŚ
In May 1941, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, hums with talk of spring flowers, fishing derbies, and the growing war in Europe. And for the residents of a quiet neighborhood boarding house, the winds of change are blowing.
Self-proclaimed spinster, Bessie Blackwell, is the reluctant owner of a new pair of glasses. TheâŚ
This is a book about grief, and wrenching loss, of the nature that most people (fortunately) wonât face: having a stillborn baby. Elizabeth McCracken was nine months pregnant with her first child when the baby, a little boy, suddenly died, in utero. This is a book about facing unthinkable loss, and the unique impact of this sort of loss on community, who has been waiting with joyful anticipation for the new arrival. McCracken writes about her loss with such poignancy; it is one of those books that leaves you feeling amazed at the resilience of the human spirit.
"This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending," writes Elizabeth McCracken in her powerful, inspiring memoir. A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel, and waiting for the birth of her first child.
This book is about what happened next. In her ninth month of pregnancy, she learned that her baby boy had died. How do you deal with and recover fromâŚ
LIT is Mary Karrâs third memoir, and my favorite (which says a lot because I could not put down The Liarâs Club or Cherry). It is a book about something fairly common â alcoholism â but it is a true, no holds barred, let-me-tell-you-just-how-much-of-a-wreck-I-was account of the way drinking skewed her thinking, affected her relationships and her work, and how she finally turned to prayer to work her way out. This is NOT a book about Jesus-is-your-savior, nor is it preachy about âto booze or not to booze.â It is a book about how, if you are willing to tell the truth about yourself, to be brave enough, and self-aware enough to not hold back, you will find your way out of the s**t.
The long awaited sequel to the beloved and bestselling 'The Liars' Club' and 'Cherry' - a memoir about a self-professed 'blackbelt sinner's' descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness, and her astonishing resurrection.
'If you'd told me, even a year before I start taking my son to church regular that I'd wind up whispering my sins in the confessional or on my knees saying the rosary, I would've laughed myself cockeyed. More likely pastime? Pole dancer. International spy. Drug mule. Assassin.'
Mary Karr's prizewinning 'The Liars' Club' chronicled her hardscrabble Texas childhood and sparked a renaissance in memoir, crestingâŚ
Two sisters. One opulent hotel. A chance to change everything.
For 17-year-old Clara Wilson, the glamour of the Roaring Twenties feels worlds away. With her family on the brink of eviction, Clara pins her hopes on a position at the grand Hotel Hamilton. But when her adventurous sister impulsively followsâŚ
Kerry Cohen has written an unflinchingly honest memoir about how her craving for love as an adolescent and young adult led her into one situation after another where she used her body as currency, believing it the way to secure a relationship. Of course, this distorted thinking created other problems â abuse, relationships with inappropriate people - that she then needed to find her way out of. She does, eventually, and shows us the great power that comes from learning to love yourself. Cohenâs storytelling is vivid, and of great value to anyone (which means most everyone) who has ever grappled with low self-esteem, and taken a dead-end path to feeling better.
Loose Girl is Kerry Cohen's captivating memoir about her descent into promiscuity and how she gradually found her way toward real intimacy. The story of addiction-not just to sex, but to male attention-Loose Girl is also the story of a young woman who came to believe that boys and men could give her life meaning.
For everyone who knew that girl.
In rich and immediate detail, Loose Girl re-creates what it feels like to be in that desperate moment, when a you try to control someone by handing over your body, when the touchâŚ
Something unexpected occurs when Kristin Louise Duncombe moves to New Orleans to begin her adult life as a psychotherapist: She falls madly in love with a MÊdecins Sans Frontières doctor, abandons all of her plans, and follows him on a medical mission to East Africa. Just when she has managed to establish a life for herself in Nairobi, a violent carjacking catapults her into a state of acute post-traumatic stress, and her life thereafter devolves into a world of intense anxiety that permeates every aspect of her existence. Forced to examine questions about her relationship, career, and personal identity, she struggles to save her marriage while facing the most difficult fight of her life: saving herself.
Probing deeply into her tumultuous search for identity, she captures the essence of the experience with extraordinary authenticity and honesty.
Sacred Psychiatry describes the holistic approach I take to healing in my practice which serves as a template for meeting these times of accelerated transformation on our planet with resilience and courage.
At the heart of the book are recommendations for developing a multi-dimensional sense of yourself through a varietyâŚ