Showing results by publisher "----RM Alexander" in People with Disabilities

James Partridge was 18 years old in 1977 when his face and body were severely burned in a car accident. Refusing to succumb to society's expectations, James chose not to hide in the shadows, but to succeed despite his distinctive face and live a happy and hugely successful life, both personally and professionally. Face It tells the story of James' recovery and the work he has done ever since to support others with physical differences to cope with the isolation and discrimination they so often face.

From Beneath the Ice is more than a book, it is a triumph of the human spirit. Todd’s mind was hijacked, but he slowly took the helm and charted a new course. It was a difficult process for him to write this book, but in the end, it was empowering. Publishing was even harder, knowing that his darkest moments would be ‘out there’ for the world to see. He knew his primary focus was to help people and contribute to ending the stigma about mental illness. To do this, he had to be more courageous than he had ever been.

Sam always knew he was starting life on the back foot. When his parents split, Sam, his mother and his brother had to learn to survive in a world not built for single-parent families. Add to that Sam's diagnosis with a form of dwarfism and the odds seemed stacked against them. As surgeons kept breaking and resetting Sam's legs in attempts to keep him walking, disability and poverty collided, and it took all the family's strength not to crumple in the impact. In Broke, lawyer and disability advocate Sam Drummond weaves a poignant, stirring and deeply compassionate tale of life on the fringes.

Lucy Edwards is a UK-based blind broadcaster, content creator, Pantene Ambassador and disability activist. At only 17 her world went to black. In an instant Lucy lost her eyesight due to a rare condition called Incontinentia Pigmenti. She had to learn how to navigate her life all over again, the beginning of an extraordinary journey to find self-acceptance and happiness. Lucy took to the internet and started to upload her experiences. Through sharing her day-to-day routine in her viral 'How does a blind girl?' video series, Lucy's story gripped the nation.

While society called his disability an obstacle and limitation, Neil argued that his "flourishing dystonia" allowed him to think, explore, and create art in a way most people cannot. True to his words, Neil embraced every opportunity to experience life to its fullest, from navigating the Alaskan wilderness in a wheelchair to commanding the spotlight on stage. In this deeply personal account, Neil invites listeners into his world as he remembers adventures and escapades, triumphs and disappointments.

Drawing insights from the hard-won wisdom of disabled folks who've forged difference into fierce and luminous cultural dissent, Belser offers fresh and unexpected interpretations of familiar biblical stories, showing how disability wisdom can guide us all toward a powerful reckoning with the complexities of the flesh. She talks back to biblical commentators who traffic in disability stigma and shame, challenging interpretations that demean disabled people and diminish the vitality of disabled lives.

Mother of Courage is the inspiring true story of a young woman who loses both arms in a boating accident, yet valiantly finishes dental school, marries, raises two boys, teaches at an historically Black medical college, and becomes a nationally known advocate for people with disabilities. With grace, humor, faith, and a large dose of determination, Margaret Chanin transforms her tragic physical loss into a triumph of the human spirit—and shares her light with everyone she meets.

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.

By age 25, Tracie Bork is a rising scientist and half of a power couple who throws lavish faculty parties. But beneath the perfect surface lurks the chaos she’s tried to control since childhood—and alarming physical symptoms she’d rather dismiss. Each year, she works more fiendishly than the one before as the complications to her health compound and become more mysterious until finally, she hits a wall, body, mind, and soul. In a series of honest inquiries and reflections, Bork chronicles her journey as a patient, academic, former military brat, and woman in search of faith.

One fine April day, Mary Ann Kenny’s husband died suddenly while jogging near their family home. In the months that followed, Mary Ann – who had no history of mental illness – began suffering from depression, and then from a terrifying succession of physical and psychological symptoms, including the delusion that her young children had been harmed by her medications.

Jonathan Mooney blends anecdote, expertise, and memoir to present a new mode of thinking about how we live and learn - individually, uniquely, and with advantages and upshots to every type of brain and body. He explores the toll that being not normal takes on kids and adults when they’re trapped in environments that label them, shame them, and tell them, even in subtle ways, that they are the problem.

Having grown up on their great-grandfather’s stories, Royd Tolkien and his brother, Mike, have always enjoyed adventures. So when Mike is diagnosed with motor neurone disease, also known as ALS, the brothers decide to use the time they have left to tick off as much as possible from Mike’s bucket list, from remote camping in Norway to travelling through Royd’s beloved New Zealand. Yet, when Royd loses Mike, he discovers his brother had been writing another kind of bucket list: 50 things he wanted Royd to do after his death.

Just like fox, Heidi has lived on the outer. The ‘official record’ of her life has been her mental health record: primary diagnosis – schizoaffective; comorbidity – major depression, juvenile autism and not her own memories. This is the living, breathing version of Heidi’s mental health file that psych wards, doctors, mental health staff or rehab workers know little about or worse, use as evidence of diagnoses. This is Heidi’s account of what happened, shadowed by the story of a fox who knows he'll never belong.

Hey guys, you might know me already from one of my social media channels where I talk about the highs and lows of living with Tourette's syndrome. I've loved sharing those times with you and - as there are lots of things I can't fit into a 60-second video - I've decided to write a book! It's the full story of how I came to be diagnosed and how having Tourette's has changed my life. Writing it has given me an opportunity to talk about things I haven't felt ready to share before - for some reason it's easier to put down private things in written words than in a video!

What were you doing when you were 22? Where were you in the world? What did you want to do with your life? Ben Parkinson was a six-foot-four-inch paratrooper. He was in Afghanistan fighting for his country. He wanted to always be a soldier, to be a father and to get home in one piece. But we don't always get what we want. So the question is: how do we react when that happens? Easy: you find something new to fight for.

Armando Trinidad has been facing adversity his whole life, and what has he gotten from it? He's been able to be resilient and overcome it all with strength and optimism. This is a story of resilience, of power and overcoming the most difficult situations. When you think it can't get any worse, it can, and Mando teaches us that no one else but you can pull yourself out of that situation.

This short biographical work describes the experiences of Chimezie Ihekuna, a Nigerian man born with a facial deformity. From one scenario to the next, Chimezie encounters ostracisation and indifference from peers and elders alike. He reflects candidly here on the impact this has had on his life. His story is an invitation to empathy for all those who listen.

A journal-style book of what it's like to live with mental illness. Everyone is different, but this is how I experience mental illness every day.

Abdel Sellou and Philippe Pozzo di Borgo were two people marginalised by society: Sellou a wisecracking, unemployed immigrant, just out on parole; Pozzo a man born to wealth and privilege, recently paralysed from the neck down after a paragliding accident. How they came to help each other, and the unlikely friendship that became a lifeline for them both, is an uplifting story that's now been told and retold around the world.

At age 54, Chris Monnette is diagnosed with neovascular macular degeneration, an incurable retinal disease that slowly robs him of his eyesight. As each cell in his macula dies and his vision diminishes, he is forced, literally and figuratively, to see the world through different eyes. Raised in the shadow of an emotionally stifled father, Chris learns early on to mirror the belief that vulnerability equals weakness. A piercingly honest meditation on the emotional legacy of stoicism, Seeing Clearly is much-needed proof that being a man and being vulnerable are one and the same.