Showing results for "Father" in Dysfunctional Families

In the best-selling tradition of Smashed and The Glass Castle, this raw, eye-opening memoir tells the powerful story of Elizabeth Garrison's fractured childhood, descent into teenage drug addiction, and struggle to overcome nearly insurmountable odds. Elizabeth invites the listener behind the closed doors of a picture-perfect Christian family to reveal a dark, hidden world of child abuse, domestic violence, and chilling family secrets all performed in the name of God under the tyrannical rule of her father.

Bekhal Mahmod was one of six siblings from a Sunni Muslim family in Iraqi Kurdistan who sought a new life as asylum seekers and arrived in London in 1998. When Bekhal's father tried to force her into an arranged marriage at 15, she ran away. This caused her father to ‘lose respect’ within the Kurdish community and Bekhal became the target of an honour killing and her younger sisters Banaz and Payzee were quickly married off to restore the family's reputation. When Banaz left her husband, Mahmod decided this 'shame' to the family meant Banaz must die. Within weeks, she had vanished.

Is your father ruining your life? Discover if He is a Narcissist and Learn How to Neutralize His Manipulations! Are you tired of people minimizing or denying your experience? Are you tired of being told, "Forgive him, he's still your father!"? Caroline Foster is on your side. She has distilled all the information and advice you need to take the hardest step toward emotional independence and self-realization: the first one.

To the outside world, she was a bright, popular, all-American adolescent. But at home, behind closed doors, lived another Katherine - shamed, isolated, afraid - locked in a forbidden embrace from which there was no escape. It was a secret too terrible to silence. It had to surface, shattering her life, changing it radically - but with its release, bringing at last a new hope, not just to Katherine and her family, but to all the Katherine Bradys everywhere who will recognize themselves as they hear her story.

Do you feel like you're not living your life the way you want? Have you felt like you've been in living in your father's shadow? Or is your marriage in shambles because of your husband's behavior? It's likely you are a victim of a narcissistic parent. Unfortunately, you are just realizing the issue now, but on a good note, it's never too late to turn your life around.

From bestselling author and psychotherapist Terri Cole comes The Father Wound, the first book of its kind on the impact of emotionally unavailable, absent, immature, or harmful father figures. Damaging father-daughter relationships persist, creating lifelong problems for women into adulthood. In...

Written in the form of a letter to his ailing father, this debut memoir from the bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook explores the complicated burden of caring for an abusive parent who is dying—this is Matthew Quick’s most personal and potent work to date. On the surface...

Kind and loyal, Elva was a shy young girl from a typical English seaside town who was swept off her feet by a handsome older Italian bodybuilder. It was all she had ever wanted; the promise of life as a loving mother and devoted wife. But a dark secret from her past left her vulnerable to Bruno's brooding, possessive nature, and behind closed doors, Elva's family idyll turned into a reign of terror of both mental and physical abuse for her and her children. Their daughter Natalia speaks for the first time about how the family suffered.

Frank Senko had always known how to have a good time. But after a job change forced Frank to begin a long car commute every day, his daughter Jen noticed changes in his personality and beliefs. Long hours on the road listening to talk radio commentators like Rush Limbaugh sucked her father into a suspicion-laden worldview dominated by conspiracy theories, fake news, and rants about the "coastal elite" and "libtards" trying to destroy America.

Unheard Screams is based on a true story about a girl named Thelma who grew up as a CODA and struggled between two worlds: the hearing and the deaf. Isolated in a farming country outside of town, she lived a life of silence and loss of identity. Thelma was the only one in her biological family that could hear and speak.

Following the unexpected death of her alcoholic mother, 16-year-old Terry Sue decides her biological father, whom she doesn't know, could change her life for the better. However, by the time she finds him - after decades of searching - she understands that the nurture she thought she needed from him is something she's already cultivated for herself.

This book is focused on prevention of child sexual abuse. It elaborates on the possibility of preventing abuse by avoiding a potentially abusive setup. The book discusses the numerous challenges faced in trying to work effectively with the various "systems". However, it also demonstrates that even an ordinary citizen can do something effective to prevent child sexual abuse.

The macho society that held John Wayne as a role model has created an emotional wasteland where 80 percent of men are unable to accurately express their feelings, and that same percentage feel estranged from their fathers. The stifled male, disconnected and out of touch, fills the void with apathy or anger, and the toll is staggering: short, unhealthy lives, ruined relationships, and damaged children. This destructive behavior repeats itself in the next generation as the sins of the father continue the cycle.

As a child, author Olivia S. Benson was puzzled by her relationship with her father and his absence in her life. It took many years and much soul searching for her to understand her life experiences and how profoundly his absence affected her. Benson finally solved the puzzle, when she began to understand the nature of the Universe: what GEFS—God, Energy, Force, Spirit—really was and how her suffering could serve for good in her life.

The memoir is a personal story but also touches on broader themes of identity, family, and the impact of war on the lives of children left behind. It explores a child's quest for connection and understanding when there is loss of a parent at an early age.

Weaving between preparations for his father’s funeral and memories of life on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, Obed Silva chronicles his father’s alcoholism—a lifelong love that ended only at his death at the age of forty-eight, having poisoned himself one Carta Blanca at a time. Addiction respects no borders; the havoc Silva’s father wreaked on his family not only followed them north, where mother and son moved to escape his violent drunken rages, but would make itself felt even from the grave.

The story spans from rural Germany to New York City. It is about a little girl growing up in an unstable environment. In a desperate attempt to escape her cage of fear and shame, she makes some gut-wrenching decisions as a teenager. This is a gripping tale that could only come from life itself.

It was Devin Galaudet’s job to take the ashes and pour them into the waters of Cadiz, Spain, after his father’s death. Carrying them across Spain by car, train, and backpack, this was their swan song, their “buddy picture” come to life. Half a mile from the Mediterranean, though, Devin lost his father’s ashes. Standing in the middle of a windy cobblestone street in Old Town Cadiz, he wondered what the hell just happened - not just in that moment, but the 40 years prior.

Our news media seems to have daily stories of individuals who have been abused by clergy, church leaders, and even church organizations. Countless numbers of formerly faithful people avoid church because they were abused, while others, who are not religious participants, avoid experiencing faith communities because of what they have been hearing in news stories. How do clergy, church leaders, and congregations help in the healing of these abused people and assist them to move beyond the pain of abuse toward healing and even forgiveness?

The stories in Paul Alan Ruben's Terms of Engagement explore father and son as intimate enemies, each yearning to be understood, acknowledged, and validated by the other. Raw and gripping as delivered by a cast of incredible narrators, these nine stories take place in collision territory - where father and son engage in trying to repair their alienation.