Books - Memoirs
Bloodletting: A Memoir of Secrets, Self-Harm and Survival
Sat, 2009-04-04 15:27 — GabrielleA darkly compelling story, this memoir examines one woman's secret overwhelming desire to physically hurt herself. Any casual observer of Victoria's life would not have seen that this confident, pretty, and articulate young woman was intensely struggling with the all-encompassing need to injure her body. This powerful account chronicles her stresses and insecurities, as well as the mental anguish that led to her wanting to physically turn on herself. Frequently an unspoken and unacknowledged disease, this psychological ailment affects an often hidden population; Victoria's story explores both the disease and the forces that drive it.
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Borderlines: A Memoir
Sun, 2010-02-07 15:15 — GabrielleLess than a year after her mother's death from cancer, recent college grad Kraus packs up and moves from St. Louis to San Francisco, eager to begin an independent life. Working at a Palo Alto bookstore, she meets Jane, another employee who becomes her friend, temporary lover, constant companion and, ultimately, "worst enemy." In her first book, Kraus skillfully delineates the arc of her relationship with Jane, which initially brings love and happiness to the author, who's been grieving and looking for an emotional anchor in her mother's absence. Attractive, charismatic Jane, a few years older than Kraus, listens to her, calls her "Honey" and gives her an "endorphin rush" in the wake of "exclusive attention." Kraus soon learns that Jane cuts herself with razor blades, sucks her thumb and claims to have been sexually molested as a child, yet Kraus remains loyal. When a roommate tells Kraus she thinks Jane has "a strange power over you," Kraus can't see the problem. Read more »
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Comes the Darkness, Comes the Light: A Memoir of Cutting, Healing, and Hope
Sat, 2009-04-04 15:27 — GabrielleTexas teacher Vega's horrific account of her lifetime of self-abuse alternates between an intimate diary of pain and a healing dialogue with her counselor. In piecemeal details of her years growing up the eldest daughter of an ambitious, well-educated disciplinarian father and an efficient caretaker mother, Vega portrays herself as a child so eager to please her exacting parents that she began to punish herself for her perceived (by them, but mainly by herself) shortcomings. She would hit herself until she passed out, and cut or starve herself to cause a punishing pain that allowed a release to anger and frustration she was not allowed to express. Her mother's diabetes, her parents' divorce and abandonment by her father led to mounds of guilt, and Vega's abuse of diet pills put her in the emergency room. By the time she seeks therapy she is in her mid-30s, married and no longer able to control her increasingly dire self-mutilation. Her work is cleanly wrought and raw with emotion, especially the passages that take place during group therapy with several other deeply troubled women. Read more »
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Creating Myself: How I Learned That Beauty Comes in All Shapes, Sizes, and Packages, Including Me
Fri, 2010-02-19 03:00 — GabrielleThis is a paean to self-acceptance and self-esteem. Initially, though, first-time author Tyler—famous as a reality-TV star, a plus-size model, and a daughter of Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler—sketches a life fraught with addictions to drugs, cutting, and eating disorders. Fortunately, she gains valuable insight into her destructive patterns to re-create herself as a healthy, loving adult. For teens and twenty-somethings who can identify with Tyler's struggle.
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CUT by Cathy Glass
Wed, 2010-09-29 12:33 — outsidenikki- Add new comment
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Cut: The True Story Of An Abandoned, Abused Little Girl Who Was Desperate To Be Part Of A Family (Cathy Glass)
Sun, 2012-04-08 06:35 — GabrielleThe author of "Damaged "tells the story of the Dawn, a sweet and seemingly well-balanced girl whose outward appearance masks a traumatic childhood of suffering at the hands of the very people who should have cared for her. Dawn was the first girl Cathy Glass ever fostered. Sweet and seemingly well balanced girl, Dawn's outward appearance masked a traumatic childhood so awful, that even she could not remember it. During the first night, Cathy awoke to see Dawn looming above Cathy's baby's cot, her eyes staring and blank. She sleepwalks--which Cathy learns is often a manifestation in disturbed children. It becomes a regular and frightening occurrence, and Cathy is horrified to find Dawn lighting a match while mumbling it's not my fault in her sleep one night. Cathy discovers Dawn is playing truant from school, and struggling to make friends. More worryingly she finds her room empty one night, and her pillow covered in blood. Dawn has been self-harming in order to release the pain of her past. When Dawn attempts suicide, Cathy realizes that she needs more help than she can give. Dawn's mother eventually confides in her that Dawn was sent away to live with relatives in Ireland between the ages of 5 and 9, and Cathy soon realizes that the horrors Dawn was exposed to during this time have left her a very disturbed little girl.
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Cutting It Out: A Journey Through Psychotherapy And Self-harm
Sat, 2009-04-04 15:27 — Gabrielle"Cutting it Out" is a largely autobiographical account of a young woman's battle with self-harm. Carolyn's story documents her own challenging journey, offering unique insights into her feelings about self-harming and also her attitudes towards the therapy sessions commonly employed to help people who self-harm. It explores the complex nature of her relationship with the therapist, her initial resistance to recovery and her eventual progression towards self-knowledge and taking responsibility for her own actions. The first-person narrative offers a vividly honest voice to the feelings and compulsions that drive someone to harm themselves and explores the conflict between the desire to self-harm and the struggle to control and overcome this addictive, self-destructive behaviour. This timely book breaks the silence surrounding a difficult subject. It will provide valuable insights for therapists, counsellors, people who self-harm and their families and friends.
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From Innocence to Insanity: The Diaries of the Spiral into Darkness
Sat, 2009-04-04 15:27 — GabrielleLet me begin my story...
At twelve years old, Marie Winters experiences life as any typical pre-teen girl. Talkative and full of energy, she transcribes her world of friends, crushes and school life into a diary of bittersweet innocence. At times poignant but mostly whimsical, Winters barely treads beyond her bubble of childhood dreams and optimism as she sprinkles her heart among the pages.
At sixteen, the world she sees begins to change, like a dark cloud moving slowly across a clear blue sky. Withdrawn and confused, she runs to her journals, her only reliable outlet, to sift through the rubble of the world that has begun to crumble around her. Soon, the shadows emerge from the back of her mind, each delivering their own form of distress. Depression, anxiety, panic, cutting, eating disorders and insomnia culminate in a mind-shattering experience that obliterates everything she thought she knew, making each journal a downward spiral from innocence...to insanity.
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Go Ask Ogre: Letters from a Deathrock Cutter
Sat, 2009-04-04 15:27 — GabrielleWhen she was 17, Siana wrote a series of letters to punk rocker Ogre, the front man of the '80s band Skinny Puppy. The letters speak of depression and cutting, drug abuse and sex, music and poetry. At one concert, Ogre told her that he saved all her letters and one day would return them. True to his word, two boxes arrived at her door nine years later; inside were illustrated letters and journals filled with her most intimate thoughts and fears. Like most cutters, those who injure themselves as a physical manifestation of their inner pain, Siana felt powerless as her life spun out of control. Rereading the letters years later, she realized that expressing herself through this way had saved her life. The letters share what it's like to grow up weird and how one girl could rise above her background. Almost every page of the book is filled with heartbreaking artwork and photos, which brilliantly link the journal entries and letters together, allowing readers to get a look inside the mind of a very creative but disturbed young woman. Read more »
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God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem (Darrell Hammond)
Sun, 2012-04-08 07:51 — Gabrielle
A raw, poignant, and often hilarious look inside the troubled life and mind of an American comic icon
From his harrowing childhood filled with physical and emotional abuse, to a lifetime of alcoholism and self-mutilation, psychiatric hospitalizations and misdiagnoses, to the peak of fame and success as the longest-tenured cast member of Saturday Night Live (where his hilarious dead-on impressions of Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Chris Matthews, and a hundred other prominent figures ushered him to the peak of stardom), Darrell Hammond delves into the darkest corners of his life, both in front of and behind the camera, with brutal honesty and fierce comic wit.
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