Disability Memoir

Over the last 18 years Tyler Hudson, father to a profoundly autistic boy named Lyric, has watched autism advocacy evolve from awareness, to acceptance, to what now borders on glorification—while the reality of children like his are rarely represented in society. Those on the deep end of the spectrum are easy to ignore because they often have no voice of their own. In The Missing Lyrics, Tyler shares his journey through grief to acceptance, offers cultural critique, and uncomfortable truths.

One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings...

When you hear the word “disability”, what comes to mind? Cheryl Schiltz tells her story of being introduced to disability. She shares her journey from a silent world to one that encased her in constant anxiety. Her life as she knew it had disappeared. It became one of a continuous fight between psychological and physical change. Noise. From her childhood, you’ll find yourself traveling with her as she discovers the power to gain control. She shares her story openly and honestly, raw and sensitive.

My body and its place in the world seemed quite normal to me. I didn’t grow up disabled, I grew up with a problem. A problem those around me wanted to fix. We have all felt that uncanny sensation that someone is watching us. The diagnosis helped but it didn’t fix everything. Don’t fear the...

When she was 54, Lisa Knopp’s weight dropped to a number on the scale that she hadn’t seen since seventh grade. The severe food restricting that left her thin and sick when she was 15 and 25 had returned. This time, she was determined to understand the causes of her malady and how she could heal from a condition that is caused by a tangle of genetic, biological, familial, psychological, cultural, and spiritual factors.

If I Were You, I’d Kill Myself is an unapologetic, hilarious, and triumphant memoir that revolutionizes what it means to be disabled. Imani Barbarin was two years old when she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a congenital motor disability that affects her ability to walk without crutches...

Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when you identify more with the Beast than Beauty? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference.

In 1959, the year Terry Galloway turned nine, the voices of everyone she loved began to disappear. No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children

Die Autorin Jennifer Mai berichtet in diesem Hörbuch von den Erfahrungen mit ihrer ersten Blindenführhündin namens »Daffy«. Humorvoll, nahbar und sehr ehrlich nimmt sie die Hörerschaft mit auf diese spannende und vor allem emotionale Reise. Der Weg zum Blindenführhund ist ereignisreich, neu und herausfordernd. Gleichzeitig entwickelt sich zwischen den beiden eine tiefe Verbindung und Freundschaft fürs Leben.

Begleite mich durch ein Jahr auf meiner Heilreise mit Fibromyalgie und anderen unsichtbaren Erkrankungen. Ich zeige dir offene und ehrliche Einblicke in meinen Alltag mit chronischer Erschöpfung und Schmerzen, und was mir hilft, mit meinen Erkrankungen zu leben, welche Rolle Akzeptanz und Dankbarkeit dabei spielen und welche Erfahrungen ich im Medizimdschungel gemacht habe. Erlebe mit mir, wie sich mein schwerer Schmerzgepäck-Rucksack leichter durchs Leben tragen lässt.

A collision with a moose on a dark highway left Susan Mockler with an incomplete spinal injury, suddenly compromising her ability to walk and to care for herself. She spent months in a rehabilitation facility learning how to adjust to her new reality, and though her body partially recovered, every aspect of her life changed.

Hannah Daly is a pediatric occupational therapist and an advanced sensory integration practitioner who is profoundly dyslexic, dyspraxic, and has sensory processing disorder. She has multiple university degrees but still cannot read or write. In Knowing No Boundaries, she gives an honest account of living with these hidden disabilities. This book is a unique coming-of-age, feel-good memoir that strikes the balance of vulnerability and humor.

In 2004, Mindy begins hearing a voice in her head, someone she calls "Joe," and sees signs everywhere that hold mysterious clues only for her. What she doesn't know at the time is that she is experiencing her first schizophrenic episode. For the next decade, she oscillates between two worlds -- a normal life and a secret voice-filled one -- until she begins the journey of merging her two worlds back into one. Becoming Whole documents her onset of schizophrenia and the subsequent years spent learning about it and how to live with it. It is her journey to find solace.

John Cotter was thirty years old when he first began to notice a ringing in his ears. Soon the ringing became a roar inside his head. Next came partial deafness, then dizziness and vertigo that rendered him unable to walk, work, sleep, or even communicate. At a stage of life when he expected to be emerging fully into adulthood, teaching, and writing books, he found himself “crippled and dependent” and in search of care.

From childhood hospital beds to a stroke at thirty-two, she faced pain, loss, and transformation yet chose to rise. Breath of Grace is her powerful story of Breath of Grace is her powerful story of faith, resilience, and healing through God, therapy, and yoga. This memoir offers hope to anyone navigating illness, trauma, or unexpected change. It reminds us that as long as we still have reminds us that as long as we still have breath, there is still grace and the strength to keep going

In 1959, the year Terry Galloway turned nine, the voices of everyone she loved began to disappear. No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted...

Paul Rivera never imagined that his life would be measured by oxygen levels, hospital bracelets, and the relentless uncertainty of serious illness. Diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis and later facing a life-threatening pulmonary embolism, he was forced into a fight he never chose—but one that would ultimately transform his life.

A striking memoir in the vein of The Glass Castle and Half a Life, in which a young Alaskan woman must relearn how to live after accidentally killing a cyclist. When she was sixteen, Ella Jacobson drove through an intersection as a cyclist ran his red light. He died shortly after impact, while...

Lina Hjalmarsson Lyons’s clarity about her own autism experience confronts the listener with the confusing anomalies inherent in this complex condition. “I think it’s so hard for people to incorporate the paradox of autism,” she writes. “I think that life with someone on the severe end of the spectrum is a life full of suffering and a life full of bliss.”

Darlene was a small-town single mother from Arkansas. Bert was a small-town preacher’s son from Oklahoma. Polio crippled both of them as teenagers. When their paths crossed at a rehab center in 1952, these young adults questioned how anything good could come from this crippling virus. Bert’s faith in the Biblical passage of Romans 8:28 gave him hope that “Polio was not good, but God would bring good out of it.” Darlene’s journey to the rehab center was “the one way for God to get me in the right place at the right time.”