Showing titles in People with Disabilities

My stroke occurred on December 10, 2021. During the hours that my mind was deteriorating, my life was sent down an inevitable pathway that would include emergency medical intervention, brain surgery, and months of therapy addressing physical and emotional health as well as speech and cognitive skills. What was not inevitable in all of this was the unique inner duality that emerged. Buddy (right brain) embraced the realm of peace and tranquility. Sir! (left brain) controlled the management of the brain: order, details, time, and knowing the feeling of being in charge.

In this tenth and final instalment, Deborah talks about her dramatic health scare, and how her fitness from triathlon saw her through. Deborah speaks honestly and openly about the challenges she experienced and how she uses her determination and resilience to get back on her feet. She also looks for new ways to continue her passion for triathlon.

Blindness. A tough topic to discuss? Not anymore. In this groundbreaking book, listeners will see blindness in a whole new light. In fact, the compelling and entertaining stories will not only change perceptions of blindness, they’ll make listeners forget the people featured are actually blind.

If you're skeptical about changing society's discriminatory treatment of people with dwarfism and other disabilities, Van Etten offers hope with these words: "Advocacy makes change possible when people call out what is wrong, care enough to stand up for what is right, commit to the cause for as long as it takes, and have confidence in God's power to change hearts". Van Etten repeatedly demonstrates the power of advocacy in this audiobook.

Raising Will is a heartfelt, humbling memoir written by a Texan-turned-Minnesotan mother and child psychologist. Her heart breaks for Will when he is repeatedly banned from Fun Friday in first grade shortly after he is diagnosed with ADHD. The family zigzags through an obstacle course of therapy, medication side effects, tutoring, and sleepless nights, while shining a light on Will's inherent strength - blues guitar. Listeners will surely recognize themselves in this story and find solace, laughter, and hope as they celebrate the surprising blessings ADHD can bring.

In April of 2004, the long downward spiraling of Amy Bingaman's mental illness could no longer be hidden or ignored much less written off as a side-product of a colorful and quirky character. With no family able to help and no resources, she was involuntarily locked up in the draconian, archaic labyrinth that is the Wyoming Mental Health System. Armed with only a pocket dictionary and any paper she could find to write on, Amy wrote not only as a journal but at times as her only coping mechanism to salvage what was left of a breaking mind in a love/hate relationship with her alter-ego.

In 1972, at the age of 21, John Callahan was involved in a car crash that severed his spine and made him a quadriplegic. A heavy drinker since the age of 12, the accident could have been the beginning of a downward spiral. Instead, it sparked a personal transformation. After extensive physical therapy, he was eventually able to grasp a pen in his right hand and make rudimentary drawings. By 1978, Callahan had sworn off drinking for good and begun to draw cartoons. Over the next three decades, Callahan would become one of the nation's most beloved cartoonists.

Three months into her pregnancy with her first child, Hilary Yancey received a phone call that changed everything. As she learned the diagnosis - cleft lip and palate, a missing right eye, possible breathing complications - Hilary began to pray in earnest. Even in the midst of these findings, she prayed that God would heal her son. God could do a miracle unlike anything she had seen. Only when Hilary held her baby, Jack, in her arms for the first time did she realize God had given her something drastically different than what she had demanded.

Stephen Kuusisto was born legally blind - but he was also raised in the 1950s and taught to deny his blindness in order to "pass" as sighted. Stephen attended public school, rode a bike, and read books pressed right up against his nose. As an adult, he coped with his limited vision by becoming a professor in a small college town, memorizing routes for all of the places he needed to be. Then, at the age of 38, he was laid off. With no other job opportunities in his vicinity, he would have to travel to find work.

In this author's second book, she details her personal "Roadmap to Healing" that she discovered in order to overcome chronic depression, PTSD, agoraphobia, anxiety, night terrors, obsessive worrying, fibromyalgia, TMJ, plus more! So much devastation was heaped on her as a child due to the selfish act of sexual abuse, but her life has been transformed - and she wants to share what she has learned to help you heal.

The Awakening of HK Derryberry is the inspiring story of how one man was willing to step out of his upper-middle-class world into the life of a young, disabled boy with a dismal future but an amazing ability. Little did Jim Bradford know the transformational potential of that friendship - for HK and himself.

Eight Fingers and Eight Toes: Accepting Life's Challenges is a story of the power of a mother's love for her children and her journey of self-love. It is a story of struggles and learning to accept and overcome challenges. One takes a front row seat as the author learns answers to questions asked decades ago that result in part from the family being the first ever to have their entire genome sequenced.

Adventurous international teacher, Amy Bovaird, is diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a hereditary eye disease that will blind her. In spite of that, she manages to continue teaching overseas. Then her father's final illness brings her back home for good. There, friends and acquaintances begin to notice that she doesn't always recognize them and sometimes stumbles as if drunk! Insensitive students ridicule her in the classroom.

When John Tovey lost his sight at the age of 42, he thought his life was over. He was wrong, it was just beginning. John had followed a bad path drifting in and out of trouble. He was sent to improvement schools, a young offenders institute and eventually a prison. John was on self-destruct and thought nothing or no one could help him. Then he became the victim of a vicious attack by a notorious train ‘steaming’ gang. John knew he had to take the witness stand.

Former high school teacher and New York-based comedian Mimi Hayes is a brain injury survivor. She wrote her first humorous memoir while recovering from a traumatic head injury at the age of 22. Her honest take on trauma and love followed her to the stage as a stand-up comedian, where she has performed on stages such as Denver Comedy Works, Broadway Comedy Club, Stand Up NY, Dangerfield's, and The Upright Citizen's Brigade.

Hiroshima was one of the great tragedies of WWII. But out of the devastation of the first atomic bomb, some survivors emerged, 25 courageous Japanese women who became part of a remarkable humanitarian epic. Victims of the atomic blast that ushered in the Nuclear Age, these women were brought to the United States in 1955, where they underwent reconstructive surgery to repair the ravages of the bomb. Schoolgirls when the bomb destroyed their futures, they began to remake their lives and re-create themselves. This is the compassionate, often bittersweet chronicle of the Hiroshima Maidens.

A young man once called unteachable journeys across America to investigate the lives of those, like himself, who are forced to create new ways of living in order to survive.

As a child, Matt Hay didn’t know his hearing wasn’t the way everyone else processed sound—because of the workarounds he did to fit in, even the school nurse didn’t catch his condition at the annual hearing and vision checks. But by the time he was a prospective college student and couldn’t pass the entrance requirements for West Point, Hay’s condition, generated by a tumor, was unavoidable: his hearing was going, and fast. A personal soundtrack was Hay’s determined compensation for his condition.

Andrew, 8, is autistic and bilingual. He speaks English and Chicken. With words limited by autism, Andrew lives in a fantastic world where chickens talk and superheroes come alive. But when he tells his pet chicken Frightful that his body is trying to kill him, it launches Andrew's family and an entire medical community into a decade-long quest for answers. This beautiful, fierce, and refreshingly honest memoir takes listeners on a mother's journey through the complex landscape of modern medicine to discover the healing bond between a boy and Frightful, the chicken who saves them all.

My Autistic Fight Song is a memoir that follows Rosie Weldon’s journey from a college drop out as she tries to achieve her dream of being a qualified accountant. With the odds stacked against her and the stakes high, she refuses to give up on her dream. Of two things Rosie was sure. First, she wanted to be an accountant. Second, she was destined to be alone. But when life threw at her an autism diagnosis and a mystery girl, she was left asking: Who would employ her and was she capable of falling in love?