Showing titles in Dysfunctional Families

Co-parenting occurs after a divorce when both parents continue to jointly participate in their children’s upbringing. Co-parenting will require a great amount of interaction between both parents. You must be fully committed to maintaining civility and setting aside your differences with your co-parent for the greater good of your children in order to have a healthy co-parenting relationship.

In this compelling and heartfelt memoir, writer Molly McAleer chronicles the discovery of her father's addiction and subsequent death, how true love saved her life and how she kind of sort of got tricked into going to rehab. She knows you'll probably never believe her side of the story, so she also interviews friends, ex-friends, and her acupuncturist about her history of substance abuse, flailing through her twenties and what kind of person she really is.

Heavily tattooed and foul-mouthed, Nadia Bolz-Weber, a former stand-up comic, sure as hell didn't consider herself to be religious-leader material - until the day she ended up leading a friend's funeral in a smoky downtown comedy club. Surrounded by fellow alcoholics, depressives, and cynics, she realized: These were her people. Maybe she was meant to be their pastor. Using life stories, Nadia uses humorous narrative and poignant honesty to portray a woman who is both deeply faithful and deeply flawed, giving hope to the rest of us along the way.

Coercive control will see an abuser dominate their victim's life, from the food they eat, the people they see, the places they can go, and the things they can say. A controlling partner, through fear and intimidation, will seek to ensure their victim is subdued, to the point of accepting any and all abuse that's fired their way.

Marley's personal narrative details her journey through the complex dynamics of a relationship with a narcissist and her courageous path toward reclaiming her sense of self. By drawing parallels to the love story of Titanic, Marley uses this iconic film as a metaphor to illuminate the deceptive nature of narcissistic bonds. Eventually, she discovers the path to self-love, freedom, and reclaiming her narrative as the hero of her own life.

After taking a few weeks off work, Casey is presented with a new foster child: 14-year-old Elise, whose Mum left her at just five years old. At first, she’s no trouble at all, that is until she falsely accuses another carer, Jan, of acting inappropriately towards her. It turns out this isn’t the first lie Elise has told—her previous carer was constantly following up allegations Elise had made of people bullying her, trying to have sex with her or hurting her physically.

Imagine being an innocent seven-year-old girl with a broke, single mum. Now imagine your mum meets a man who can give her a nice house and a better life in exchange for you. That’s what happened to me. For years, I suffered neglect and psychological and sexual abuse from him, with my mum being a silent witness. When I was finally able to get rid of him and escape, I didn’t know that my life was only going to get worse.

Emma Jane has lived a thousand colourful lives. She escaped a small town and a traumatic childhood by moving to Sydney, where she made an indelible imprint on the oppressively blokey mediascape. She played in an all-girl band, married a rock star she hardly knew, had a baby, ditched journalism for academia and changed her name from Emma Tom to Emma Jane. But all the while, she was struggling with her mental health. Then, during the first Sydney lockdown she was accidentally sectioned in a psychiatric ward.

Actor, writer and hopeless romantic Rebecca Humphries had often been called crazy by her boyfriend. But when paparazzi caught him kissing his Strictly Come Dancing partner, she realised the only crazy thing was believing she didn't deserve more. Forced into victimhood by the story, Rebecca chose to reclaim her power, posting her thoughts on social media, including advice for other women who might be experiencing what she realised she'd managed to escape: a toxic, oppressive relationship.

Born in the tough East End of Glasgow and married into one of the city's most notorious criminal families, Janey Godley's young life was far from ordinary. From the grim and far-from-swinging '60s, to the discos of the '70s, to the tidal wave of heroin addiction which engulfed Glasgow's East End during the '80s, Janey was witness to an extraordinary underworld - as well as religious sectarianism, abject poverty and a frightening family of in-laws. Throughout it all, her indomitable spirit - and her vivid sense of humour - kept her alive.

The moving true story of a little girl with Asperger syndrome, controlled and abused by the one person she called her friend. Taylor had always struggled to make friends - she felt 'different'. Taylor never knew her father, and her mother wasn't around much. She just didn't understand people and was alone and scared most of the time. That was until, aged just 11, an older married man called Tom befriended her. She loved having someone who would talk to her, listen to her - a protector. But when he moved away a few months later, she was easy prey.

This haunting yet wry coming-of-age memoir set at an all-girls summer camp fast-forwards decades into the future as Barbara Graham grapples with the knowledge that the "love affair" she believed she'd shared with her female camp counselor in the 1960s fits every definition of sexual abuse. The book will appeal to anyone who has experienced a betrayal of trust or conflated love and abuse.

One out of three married women sitting in an average conservative Christian church is in a confusing and painful marriage relationship. These women believe they are alone. I want them to know they aren't. They believe they can't find peace. I want them to know they can. They believe they don't have choices. I want them to know they do.

Power of You: Learning How To Leave is dedicated to freeing those stuck within toxic relationships including codependent victims of narcissistic abuse. Compassionately grounded in science and embedded in the author's 30 years plus of clinical experience, this is nevertheless an easy and powerful read. Learn how to spot the warning signs of unhealthy relationships, understand how they develop and take practical steps to escape safely, heal fully and avoid getting hooked again in the future.

The first in a brand-new series by the foster 'super-gran', Wicked Girl is the shocking true story of the very first case Jeanie Doyle dealt with: a baby girl who was found abandoned on the steps of a church just before Christmas. While the 14-year-old mother was tracked down, Jeanie took her little daughter into her own care. But while she tried to help the two of them heal and bond, the terrible truth about the baby's father was revealed.

One cold November night, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, fifteen-year-old Richard Jahnke Jr., ROTC leader and former Boy Scout, waited for his parents to return from celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the night they met. When his father got out of the car, the boy blasted him through the heart with a twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun. Richard's seventeen-year-old sister, Deborah, was sitting on the living room couch with a high-powered rifle - just in case her brother missed.

If your partner: seems irritated or angry at you several times a week, denies being angry when he clearly is, does not work with you to resolve important issues, rarely or never seems to share thoughts or plans with you, or tells you that he has no idea what you’re talking about when you try to discuss important problems…you need this audiobook.

They are five kids with five different fathers and an alcoholic mother who leaves them to fend for themselves for weeks at a time. Yet through it all, they have each other. Rosie, the youngest, is fawned over and shielded by her older sister, Regina. Their mother, Cookie, blows in and out of their lives "like a hurricane, blind and uncaring to everything in her path". But when Regina emancipates herself as a minor and escapes, her siblings are separated.

Imagine never being able to close your eyes and remember the feel of your mother’s arms wrapped around you. Now imagine closing your eyes and remembering your mother’s tears splashing down on your face as she is on top of you, crying as she is trying to choke you to death. My mother left me these memories and many more during my traumatic childhood. After many years of struggling with trying to understand "Why me?" I took back control of my life and started saying, "It was me, now what am I going to do?" The answer is my book, "Why Me?"

Meredith Maran lived a daughter's nightmare: she accused her father of sexual abuse, then realized, nearly too late, that he was innocent. During the 1980s and 1990s, tens of thousands of Americans became convinced that they had repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, and then, decades later, recovered those memories in therapy. Journalist, mother, and daughter Meredith Maran was one of them.