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Books : Parenting & Families : Family Relationships : Child Abuse
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Author of the NY Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller "Why Me"
I am a survivor of horrific physical and mental abuse inflicted on me by the one person in my life that was supposed to love and protect me and teach me right from wrong. I am a fighter because I did not allow my past to dictate my future and I fought for years to successfully overcome the demons left over from my childhood.
I spent my entire life punishing myself for the acts of my mother. I spent years trying desperately to figure out why she was the way she was and what I could have done so wrong to make her hate me so much. My journey to overcome my childhood demons was difficult and painful; but in the end, I realized that my past is what it is and it was up to me to decide my future.
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What is it that makes one person's life interesting to another? Could it be the reader's perceived shared experiences with the writer? A profound thankfulness for not having shared such experiences? A desire to know about a life not personally lived? A well-crafted, mesmerizing and professionally written read? A story that evokes reader emotion - whether it be relief, anger, fear, sadness or joy? A desire to see a situation through to the end? Our shared universal desire for entropy, balance, peace and happy endings?
Author Marlayna Glynn Brown has crafted an extraordinary tale of survival and resilience in spare and convincing prose. Written from a child's point of view from ages 4 to 17, this tale describes the precarious childhood of Marlayna in 1970s Las Vegas.
The desert perimeter serves as a hot, dry and dangerous barrier that shuts out the rest of the vibrant world and bleaches away any sense of the joy that colors childhoods. Born into an ongoing cycle of alcoholism, addiction and abandonment amidst fallen adults, Marlayna develops a powerful sense of self-preservation in contrast to the people entrusted with her care. Her story explores the personalities of the bizarre characters who populate her life as she moves from home to home, parent to parent, family to family and ultimately to homelessness at the age of fourteen. Out of the resources of her remarkab
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THE GIRL NOBODY WANTS' IS A TRAGIC & MOVING BOOK TO READ! BUT A WARNING! THE CONTENT IS VERY GRAPHIC & SHOCKING, AND THERE IS OFFICIAL DOCUMENTATION TO SUPPORT THIS TRUE STORY, THANK YOU.
It's my 40th birthday today and I'm trying to smile, but as I look in the mirror all I can see is an empty shell, someone waiting to die... You could never tell that anything was wrong with me by just looking at me, as I dress clean and I keep myself tidy, and I have a smile on my face that hides my emotions and over the years I've become an expert at hiding behind it" This is the shocking true story of an innocent girl abused by the very people who said they would take good care of her. Lily's family began the path to her destruction - they used her and abused her - but they never ever wanted or loved her. The little girl was also sexually physically and emotionally abused by many people around her who were able to hide behind the security of Ireland's Catholic Church-run institutions. She also suffered at the hands of other people around them who they called their friends. You only get one chance to live your life as a child, but Lilly was never given that chance - her childhood was taken from her before it ever begun. From the age of four, when she was first sexually abused, her life changed forever and when she walked through the institution's doors in Ireland, her life continued along the sam
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"Author Sarah Burleton writes a powerful and thought provoking story about children in abusive relationships, revealing a complexity of relationships that keeps the children trapped in the abusive pattern." ~ Indiereader.com
Now a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Bestseller!
In the blink of an eye, Mom ran up behind me and pushed me into the fence. Instinctively, I reached out my arms to stop my fall and ended up grabbing the live fence. My hands clamped around the thin wires, and my body collapsed to the ground as the electricity coursed through it. I opened my eyes and saw my mother standing over me with the strangest smile on her face. "Oh, my God, I'm going to die!" I thought in panic.
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?" I found my answers while writing my book. This is my childhood journey through the terrors of physical and mental abuse from first grade until the day I moved out. It is my way of letting the world know what was really going on behind closed doors.
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Stacey Danson, lived through and beyond horrific child abuse.
This book tells of her brutal beginnings, the streets of Sydney at the age of eleven were preferable to the hell she endured at home. She ran, and those streets became her home for five years.
She was alone, ill, and afraid.
Stacey also had an unshakeable belief that she would do more than just survive her life.
She would not allow her future to be determined by the horrors of her childhood.
She reached out for something different; there had to be more to life; if she could only find it.
She had a dream of a life where pain and humiliation had no place.
She was determined to find that life.
Empty Chairs is the beginning of the journey.
Now she is living the dream.
(SEVERAL REVIEWERS OF THIS BOOK WERE SO RIVETED BY IT THAT THEY FELT IT WAS FAR TOO SHORT AT 228 PAGES. GOOD NEWS! THE SEQUEL - 'FAINT ECHOES OF LAUGHTER' - WILL BE RELEASED BY NIGHT PUBLISHING IN NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2011)
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From the outside, there was no reason to suspect the family life of young schoolchild Keri was anything but unremarkable. Two loving parents, a backdrop of 1960’s Britain; life had provided for her, at least with the riches of modesty.
Keri herself however, would often confound teachers with her erratic behaviour, which was at best sullen and withdrawn; at worst violently disruptive. When challenged, she would only exacerbate her growing reputation as a fantasist; weaving terrible tales about the “abuse” she was suffering at the hands of her very creators.
But it was the much-celebrated age of innocence; the childhood of our modern culture. Big brother had not yet been born and Nanny was only looking out for her dearest, as opposed to the entire State. Who would take the word of child on such matters? After all, she was just a bad egg… wasn’t she?
Well, no. She wasn’t. She was indeed, for over a decade, the victim of an abuse so staggering that merely to read about it is enough to freeze even the thickest of blood. “Keri” is the story of what happens when truth is imprisoned in a little glass jar and buried deep within the Earth, condemned to a sentence of eternal silence. For truth may be repressed, but never supressed. It will always find light eventually. And, in this gut-wrenching account of her early life, author Kat Ward takes the reader through every shade of darkness, whilst never allowing the candle of hope to fully extinguish, so as that truth may indeed find its rightful freedom.
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.... the shocking and spirited sequel to the much-praised ?Empty Chairs?. Life on the streets of Sydney was preferable to the nightmare Stacey Danson had survived in the hell that was home. She hit the streets running at the age of eleven, and armed with a flick-knife and a fierce determination to live a different life, she began the journey from the 1960s to today. For those that came to know ?Sassy girl? in 'Empty Chairs', and for those caring people that asked how her life worked out from there, 'Faint Echoes of Laughter' continues the story. For those that haven?t met her yet, this book stands alone as a tribute to the kindness of strangers, the loyalty of true friendships and the way things really are on the streets of any town .... anytime.
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Vanessa was nearly destroyed until she discovered a secret that ultimately saved her life. From the age of 3, Vanessa lived in daily terror of her mother's unpredictable rage. If she was "naughty," her mother would lash out at her—with beatings, torture, starvation, and making Vanessa sleep in their garden's pigsty, tied up like an animal. Her mother said her punishments were God's revenge on her for being the devil's child. Her father lived in denial of her suffering. When she was 6 years old, Vanessa's grandfather began to sexually abuse her—to her despair, aided and abetted by both her mother and grandmother. At eight years old, she then discovered that the mother who hated her so much had adopted her as a baby and would never love her as her own. At the most horrific times of Vanessa's abuse, she nearly lost all hope that she would escape her prison, until mysterious things started to happen to her that allowed her to fight back. This is the story of how Vanessa survived a childhood that nearly destroyed her and how her secret led her out of the horrors of her past.
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I am the sister of the notorious James Phelge, of the Rolling Stones rock band. The book gives a rare insight into the home life I shared with my brother Les (James Phelge). Why he called himself Phelge I don’t know, but James is my father’s name: We shared a common mother. The story starts in Edmonton, London. It is the story of heartbreak and neglect in the relentless struggle for food amidst the filth of poverty.
What is it like for a small girl to starve? When she needs help, she is abandoned and left to struggle alone.
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Written in three distinct voices -- child, teen and adult -- Jane Devin takes readers on an intimate, imaginative and often harrowing life journey. Born unwanted and raised without love, the child-author invents a rich inner life to see her through years of trauma. Leaving home at 16, the teen-author struggles to find happiness and a sense of place in a world that feels confusing and unfamiliar. Then, years after stumbling into an adulthood mired in tragedy and broken dreams, the woman-author finds herself at a crossroads. The choice she ultimately makes is as stunning as it is brave.Told in unflinching and often lyrical prose, Elephant Girl goes beyond a singular life story to speak of powerful, universal truths and the ability of the human spirit to redeem itself.
From the soul of a broken child and the heart of a resilient woman comes a story about turning imagination into possibility and scars into art. - Rosie O'Donnell, Talk Show Host
In a culture of bootstraps and bromides, it has become unfashionable to talk about the long-term effects of child abuse and being raised without love or nurture. Unlike psychologist Harry Harlowe's infamous experiments with monkeys and maternal deprivation -- where all his subjects ended up abnormal or dead from what has been termed "emotional anorexia" -- abused children are supposed to be more resilient. In fact, it's a common belief that child abuse isn't really that big of a deal and that abused children will eventually enter into adulthood with the same knowledge and tools as those who were not abused, or at least be able to gain them quickly and easily. Less acknowledged is the fact that there can be long-term and even lifelong physical, social and emotional consequences of child abuse. Oftentimes, the one affected doesn't even realize what those consequences are until well into adulthood. High anxiety, hyper-vigilance, thwarted sexuality and brain damage that went undiagnosed until the age of 46 were just some of the after-effects experienced by the author of Elephant Girl: A Human Story.
The story of Precious ends with her teenage years. Jeannette Walls concludes Glass Castles as a college student. In A Child Called It, Dave Pelzer is removed from his abusive home by age 12 and eventually finds a loving foster family. In contrast, Elephant Girl: A Human Story is about what happens when there is no clear path to follow, no outside guidance and no dramatic rescue--when the only life-saving graces are imagination, self-determination and, ultimately, an undefeatable sense of hope.
This is not an easy story to read. Those who enjoy reading about miracles or quick solutions will surely be disappointed. Those looking to cast blame or buoy their belief that they could have survived better will find plenty of ammunition. However, those who are willing to see beyond the convenience and labels of bootstraps and bromides -- who believe that human experiences are as diverse and complex as those who have them -- will find much to relate to in this insightful and rarely told and ultimately hope-filled story.
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Praise for Bengali Girls Don't
"I've laughed, cried and relived some of my past through your words. Painfully beautiful."
-- Summer Yasmin, writer and blogger at TwoMangoes.com
"Wow! Bengali Girls DO . . . realize the American Dream, that is. It's a money-plot with everything desirable in it, tears and laughter and a wonderful ending."
-- André Jute, author of STIEG LARSSON Man, Myth & Mistress
"Your book looks great."
-- Anjali Banerjee, author of Imaginary Men and Invisible lives
"I like the style. Interesting the way she moves backward, forward. I like it."
-- Don Bruns, author of Too Much stuff and Jamaica Blue
"What an interesting--sometimes near tragic--life. The US of A really is a place where dreams can come true . . ."
-- Alan Nayes, author of Gargoyles and The Unnatural
"Thank you so much L.A. for sharing your brave story - - thanks for creating awareness!"
--Pamala Kennedy Chestnut, author of More Than Rice
Overview of Bengali Girls Don't:
Tells a triumphant story of a young woman achieving her own personal freedom after enduring years of oppression. You will travel with Luky to Bangladesh and England (and back again) while experiencing her painful journeys and betrayal by those closest to her. Her experiences will provoke an emotional response that causes the reader to rally behind Luky. --Nicole Renguso, Hillsborough County Chair at The Children's Movement of Florida
A modern day Cinderella story about the author Luky and her incredible journey from her birth during Bangladesh's liberation war to the present. Her desperation to be a 'normal teenager' turned into a nightmare when she was betrayed by her parents and forced into an arranged marriage with an older man at age 15. My heart ached when I read what horrendous conditions she endured. Her descriptive writing had me visualizing everything she suffered through. I was amazed at Luky's strength and determination she used to survive each day in the hope of one day being home again. This is one story that will forever be etched in my mind and heart. --Maureen Ruehl
5 out of 5 stars
"Your story has touched too many strings on my Heart and Soul, too many familiar cords. I need to breathe it all in and EXHALE. Let's just say your story has touched me. Yes some tears, yes some anger, and yes many smiles. I guess that's the definition of as they Aussie's say a GOOD READ."
-- Kevin Barrett
"I have had every emotion reading this book, from crying when her mom left her to anger with her being beaten . . . to loving the part with her grandmother and her talking about the fridge and washer and dryer - - LOL! best part - - she sounds like she was a wonderful person. So glad Luky's life is what she wants it to be now."
-- Jessica Cowart, full time mother and wife
More Praise . . .
"Despite all the struggles she went through in life, she still managed out strong! My god, she metamorphosed into a fabulous individual."
-- Rajesh Unnithan
"Her story will break your heart and at the same time you'll be thankful for the life you've had."
-- Rick Willard
"Really shows the other side and view of things that many people take for granted."
-- Alamin Hahs, lawyers without borders
"Would make a great movie."
-- Jlynn Evol
If you enjoyed The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri or Bricklane by Monica Ali, you are going to love Bengali Girls Don't!
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Introduction: This is the story of how in only two weeks the life of a child was forever changed. This is the story of a child whose life by all indications was destined for normalcy but had gotten derailed at the hands of someone from whom she never would have expected harm to come to her. This is the story of a child whose life of presumed destined normalcy became one of outlandish fears, anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, and psychotic episodes. This is the story of a child who, despite the negatives thrust upon her, found her own way in the world, discovered her true self and through this discovery has given back in ways which she had never thought possible. This is the story of a child who now as a grown woman has chosen to share her story. My name is Cheri Lane, and this is the story of me. Excerpt: My visit to the home of my aunt and uncle was only going to be for two weeks, but this was the two weeks that would change my life forever. ****** Uncle Emil was somewhat of a kidder and he would tease me and say, “I’ll bet I can find your tickle spots.” I would laugh and say that he could never find them. And you know what? He never did find my tickle spots. But you know what else? He wasn’t looking for my tickle spots. He would stroke my nipples with his big working man hands, though as a child it certainly didn’t do anything for me. Uncle Emil seemed to like it, however. He would close his eyes and hum as he rubbed my chest. He would kiss my cheek every night and pretend to “get my nose” before turning off the light.
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In his book, Losing the Hate, Simon Palmer has combined his mastery of storytelling with a raw hard look at the issues one faces as a result of child sexual abuse. It is an honest attempt to shed light on the darkest of subject matters. Simon has offered up his experiences in bone chilling detail, giving the reader a first hand account of his journey from innocence to depravity. His downward spiral is both shocking and heart wrenching, but most of all it is honest. Losing the Hate has been rightfully described as "jaw-dropping." It is brutally raw, and yet, despite the atrocious circumstances, the author manages to mesmerize his readers with a delicate hand and a bountifully open heart. In Simon's own words, "I have lived within this dark cloud for most of my life, with many complex issues still unresolved. There is a feeling of complete and utter loneliness within me, and, in desperation to rid my world of darkness, I have chosen to put my story into words . . . telling the world of my nightmare."
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Sexual abuse knows no religious or social boundaries. The Wounded Heart is an intensely personal and specific look at this form of abuse. Dr. Allender explores the secret lament of the soul damaged by sexual abuse and lays hold of the hope buried there by the One whose unstained image we all bear. Includes information about false memory issues.
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In September 2007, a packed courtroom in St. George, Utah, sat hushed as Elissa Wall, the star witness against polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, gave captivating testimony of how Jeffs forced her to marry her first cousin at age fourteen. This harrowing and vivid account proved to be the most compelling evidence against Jeffs, showing the harsh realities of this closed community and the lengths that Jeffs went to in order to control the women in it. Now, in this courageous memoir, Elissa Wall tells her incredible and inspirational story of her time in the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), detailing how she emerged from its confines to help bring one of America's most notorious criminals to justice.
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In an outer world that is impossible, an inner world grows out of the wreckage. Built by a little girl too young to know how it might be done, she did it her way and then lived with it all. This is her story. Searing, shocking, yet holding treasures deep where it matters.
Granddaughter to the man who invented The Lemonade Diet, the Master Cleanse, she knew a different man from what the world pegged as a new-age healer. Behind Stanley Burroughs' public face was another one. That was the face she saw. That was the man she knew. Knew too well.
This is an autobiography set in the present, during the time of its own writing, but rich with the experiences of a shattered childhood. It shows the consequences of abuse, corruption, and evil on a small child and the woman she grew into – a woman saved by her unique means of engaging with her own psychology. And equally saved by her unique appreciation of beauty. Beauty that can be found even in an ugly world.
94,700 words, around 270 paperback pages