Showing results for "mother" in Sports & Outdoors

As the adopted son of two cult leaders, Benjamin Risha was raised to someday assume a place of leadership in the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation with the Bible, and his parents’ interpretation of it, as his guide. He believed the prophecies of his adoptive mother and father. However, when none of it happened, and the foundation slid from bucolic communal lifestyle to insufferable criminality that included absolute obedience to the Alamos, Benjamin knew he had to escape.

No one has done more to transform our understanding of trees than the world-renowned scientist Suzanne Simard. Raised in the forests of British Columbia, where her family has lived for generations, Professor Simard did not set out to be a scientist. She was working in the forest service when she first discovered how trees communicate underground through an immense web of fungi, at the centre of which lie the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful entities that nurture their kin and sustain the forest.

For fans of The Lost City of Z, Walking the Amazon, and Turn Right at Machu Picchu comes naturalist and explorer Paul Rosolie’s extraordinary adventure in the uncharted tributaries of the Western Amazon - a tale of discovery that vividly captures the awe, beauty, and isolation of this endangered land and presents an impassioned call to save it.

The sweet-natured Laura Meer dreams of a superhero and spends days trying to provide for herself while being half-neglected by her parents, who couldn’t take good care even of themselves. Her father constantly tries to kill her mother, and the police refuse to help. Developing faith in God is Laura’s only strength. But will she be able to protect her mother?

Whether you're into dirt bikes, road bikes, ride a Yamaha, scooter or Laverda, if you've ever experienced the primal rush of riding a motor bike, the pain of crashing, the suffering of healing and the epiphanies of speed, then this book is for you. My Mother Warned Me About Blokes Like Me is about friendship, treachery, girls in tight pants, and motorcycles that have been possessed by Satan.

Maria Compton was born and raised in a strict Christian sect. Encouraged to keep her distance from outsiders, she grew up in a world of Church meetings, banishments and with the fear that the end of the world - known as the Rapture - was nigh. When she was still in her late teens, she married a man she barely knew. To those around her she lived the perfect life; dutiful wife, loving mother, devout Christian woman. But underneath the surface, this life was far from perfect.

In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominantly white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013, with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant in their gardens.

Every day, we hear about and experience griefs, large and small, in our families, friendships, communities, and worldwide. The grief of a loved one passing. The grief of a way of life ceasing to exist. The grief of global pandemic, war, climate collapse. As her mother’s dementia advances and she can no longer live independently, Tessa McWatt confronts personal and political losses, and finds herself wandering in a forest asking, how do we grieve? And what can we learn from nature and those whose communities are rooted in nature about not only how to grieve but also how to live?

At seven months pregnant, Victoria Bennett was looking forward to new motherhood and all that was to come. But when the telephone rang, the news she received changed everything. Her eldest sister had died in a canoeing accident. Five years later, struggling with grief, the demands of being a parent-carer for her young son, and the impact of deeper austerity, life feels very different to the future she had imagined. A move to a new social housing estate in rural Cumbria offers Victoria and her family a chance to rebuild their lives.

In My Life in Football Keegan tells the story of his remarkable rise through the sport, from the Peglers Brass Works reserve team in Doncaster to helping Liverpool become the kings of Europe, winning a Bundesliga title with Hamburg and captaining England. Keegan was recognised around the world as one of the sport's genuine superstars and remains the only Englishman to win the Ballon d'Or twice....

On the morning of Saturday 15th April 1989, Jenni Hicks, her husband and their two teenage daughters, Sarah and Vicki, went to watch a football match. That was to be their last day as a family. Sarah and Vicki didn't come home, and Jenni's world was changed forever. Since that fateful day, Jenni has tirelessly campaigned for justice for her own and others' families. But this is not the story of the Hillsborough tragedy. This is a story of what came before and after that day.

Beware! The sordid lives of plants behaving badly. A tree that sheds poison daggers; a glistening red seed that stops the heart; a shrub that causes paralysis; a vine that strangles; and a leaf that triggered a war. Amy Stewart, best-selling author of Flower Confidential, takes on over two hundred of Mother Nature's most appalling creations in an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend.

The Dene in Canada’s Northwest Territories have lived alongside nature for many generations. From battling environmental racism on the front lines of historical environmental protests, to innovating sustainable resources, to living a balanced life through effective individual and collective governance, the Dene have long protected Mother Earth from destruction through their intricate knowledge systems, natural laws, and age-old principles.

Survive the unexpected. Statistically, you're more likely to die from a vending machine than a shark. But, Rob Nelson knows many shark survivors. His college girlfriend was attacked by a crocodile and his roommate, a grizzly bear. His wife was sucked by a wave down a blowhole, he was left stranded at sea after a storm sank his sailboat, and the list goes on and on. To Rob, these "improbable" altercations are "random acts of nature," and he's learned how to survive them.

In the days before Homeira Qaderi gave birth to her son, Siawash, the road to the hospital in Kabul would often be barricaded because of the frequent suicide explosions. With the city and the military on edge, it was not uncommon for an armed soldier to point his gun at the pregnant woman’s bulging stomach, terrified that she was hiding a bomb. Frightened and in pain, she was once forced to make her way on foot.

Disillusioned with overly competitive organized sports and concerned about her lively daughter’s growing shyness, author Angie Abdou sets herself a challenge: to hike a peak a week over the summer holidays with Katie. They will bond in nature and discover the glories of outdoor activity. What could go wrong? Well, among other things, it turns out that Angie loves hiking but Katie doesn’t. Hilarious, poignant, and deeply felt, This One Wild Life explores parenting and marriage in a summer of unexpected outcomes and growth for both mother and daughter.

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.

When most Americans think of environmentalism, they think of the political left, of vegans dressed in organic-hemp fabric, lofting protest signs. In reality, writes Jacob Darwin Hamblin, the movement - and its dire predictions - owe more to the Pentagon than the counterculture.

What does it mean to be a mother in an era of climate catastrophe? And what can we learn from the plants and creatures who mother at the edges of their world's unraveling? Becoming a mother in this time means bringing life into a world that appears to be coming undone. Drawing upon ecology, mythology, and her own experiences as a mother, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder confronts what it means to "mother": to do the good work of being in service to the living world. What if we could all mother the places we live and the beings with whom we share those places? And what if they also mother us?

Jennifer Coburn has always been terrified of dying young. So she decides to save up and drop everything to travel with her daughter, Katie, on a whirlwind European adventure before it's too late. Even though her husband can't join them, even though she's nervous about the journey, and even though she's perfectly healthy, Jennifer is determined to jam her daughter's mental photo album with memories - just in case.