In today’s world, we are constantly juggling expectations and trying to manage the many pressures we feel around us. We all have issues, struggles, and habits that we feel guilt or shame about. We all have beliefs and expectations of ourselves and life that hold us back. Society is also always pressuring us to look a certain way, live a certain way, and project happiness and joy through it all. Essentially, we are surrounded by expectation, which can make just being alive a complex, exhausting, and daunting task. For many of us, we are following a path that doesn’t quite fit right. What if you could live every day feeling like you are exactly where you should be? What does being authentic mean, look, and feel like to you? What would it take for you to unravel yourself and discover who you really are? It is this search for authentic living that so many of us seek but have trouble achieving. Wendy Blaskovic struggled with the same thing. She felt a separation between who she truly was and what she was being/doing on the outside. That disconnection manifested in many challenges along the way: an eating disorder, the abuse of drugs and alcohol, self-imposed isolation, overworking. The feeling of living the wrong life was what pushed her to discover who she truly was. As a life-long learner and educator herself, Wendy only truly unravelled from an unsatisfying life while she was writing her master’s thesis on the connection between living, being, and teaching authentically. My Journey. My Story. is a rather unique approach to self-discovery. In this book, she shares her thesis—her journey to healing—so that others may find the kernel within to nurture their own true selves. Though self-discovery is a solitary process, this book helps to reassure you that you are not alone.

I dedicate this book to my father and mother. Without them I would not have become the person I am. I was born in 1938 to a wonderful set of parents; my mother and father were people who gave of themselves. They instilled so many virtues in me that I am very thankful for. To my family who had to put up with me through the good times and the bad. To everyone that I have met along the way while I was following my life’s path. And most of all to God, whose help has given me the desire for knowledge and the courage to follow my heart. Without that, I would not have accomplished the things I’ve done.

I was born in 1926 in a town in Silesia, Germanys south eastern Province bordering Poland to the east and Czechoslovakia to the south. That is how it was for 2000 years until 1945 when Hitlers war ended, and our Heimat Schlesien no longer existed. The peace treaty demanded that Silesia be annexed to Poland meaning the eviction of our people. Six months after my 17th birthday, shortly before Christmas 1943, I was called up to military service and after my training sent to Italy, where five months later, on Sunday 4th June 1944 I was captured by the U.S. Army just outside Rome. They brought us to Norfolk Virginia from where a train journey took us to a POW camp in Oklahoma, moving soon to Fort Bliss, El Paso. In autumn 1945 fifty POWs travelled by bus to the Napa Valley to pick tomatoes, prunes, and work in the vineyards, and after New Year 1946 south to pick cotton. In early March 1946 we received black-dyed U.S. Army uniforms, boarded a troop ship in Oakland and were sent back to Europe via the Panama Canal, to arrive three weeks later in Liverpool, UK. From there we travelled by train to the north of Scotland where now over sixty years later, I continue to live. My book will tell my journey.

As a young girl growing up in southeast Georgia, she couldn't wait to graduate high school, if not for anything but, to no longer have to go to church. Monica was eager to experience a world that she had only heard of but, was forbidden to take part in because of her mother's Christian values. She became tired of hearing all the fun that the other girls had over the weekend while all she did was attend school and church. Her desire to go to a football game, a club or maybe on a date, grew tremendously and all she dreamed about was getting out of her parents house. She finds herself in the hands of a repeated rapist and murderer and now it's no longer her mother's faith but, her faith that will be put to the test.

This book is my personal story of being raped, dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and my journey in healing. It includes my personal journal through the years and how I have been recovering. I wrote this book because I wanted to tell my story and to help others to now that he or she is not alone. "Well written! Powerful!! "This problem has finally hit the headlines. It is brave women like Honey Badger who help us understand the lifetime of pain that is left when these crimes are committed. We need to hear these hard stories. The conversation must continue. From sex abuse in the churches, to the college campus, to the military sexual abuse and rape must be understood. Not just from a legal angle but what happens to these women and men who work a lifetime to learn to love themselves again, to trust again, to stand in the light and feel no shame." "No words can express or give proper condolences of a failed system. Six times...I look at you as a strong woman and survivor. God bless and keep the faith. "

"Life Is A Prism: My Journey to Becoming a Banker" narrates my life's story from the innocence of childhood to the pivotal moment I secured a job at the bank. This memoir captures the struggles, joys, and lessons learned along the way. From overcoming personal challenges to celebrating small victories, each chapter reveals the experiences that shaped me. Through perseverance and determination, I navigated life's twists and turns, ultimately achieving my dream of a banking career. Join me on this reflective journey, and discover how every step, no matter how small, contributed to the person I am today.

Woven throughout my story are themes of perseverance, self-discovery, and turning life’s stumbling blocks into stepping stones. I’ve experienced more than my fair share of grief, anxiety, and heartache. But those difficulties also pushed me to grow. Today I have deeper empathy, strength and an appreciation for life’s fleeting precious moments. Writing this memoir has been an exercise in retrospection and introspection. As I reflect on the different phases of my life, I see how even the most painful experiences contained important lessons. Life is a patchwork of joy and pain, success and failure. I’m grateful for it all because it has shaped the person I am today – someone who is fulfilled, self-aware, and emotionally whole. This is not a fairytale story. It’s simply the journey of one ordinary woman. I hope by sharing my stumbles and triumphs, I can help give others courage to embrace their own stories.

Every person has a story to tell. This is the story of a Bangladeshi who was born one cold December morning in the village of Lostimanika in East Pakistan and went on to traverse the world during the next sixty plus years. It is a story of growing up in the peaceful Hindu-Muslim community of Narayanganj, of a Muslim boy being educated in Catholic schools, and of leaving home to study in the West when he was merely seventeen. That started a fifty-year journey from his homeland to his present home in Canada. Through it all, he lived and worked in six continents and experienced the beauty and diversity as well as the complexities and hardships faced by peoples worldwide. This book is a personal story, a collection of snippets from his eventful journey through life. The author shares many delightful anecdotes, the scary moments that spelt danger, and his occasional brush with death. It is also a story of visits to many historical, cultural, and religious sites, and of learning about man’s contribution to humanity. The author has worked with many governments, civil society organizations, academics, the military, and the media under challenging circumstances and often in hazardous environments. It is in the end a story of surmounting all obstacles and of having lived a full and happy life.

In this wise, introspective, and touching memoir, Dr. Ethel Hall recounts the little journeys throughout her life which prepared her to become the first African American woman elected to the Alabama State Board of Education. Her experiences with racial tension, discrimination, and poverty are interspersed with portraits of the family and love which transformed her from a farmers daughterdetermined to achieve the higher education others thought to be impossibleto a dedicated mother and educator, and even further to a statewide political leader. Dr. Hall also provides a detailed account of the problems facedboth solved and unsolvedduring her more than two decades of service to the Alabama State Board of Education. Despite the difficulties she faced, Dr. Halls stories are filled with faith and hope, leaving the reader with memorable anecdotes for their own hardships.

Lydia Bright has A LOT to shout about. From her childhood in a foster family full of love, to essentially growing up on one of the UK's biggest TV reality shows, in LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE, ALWAYS LYDIA: MY STORY, Lydia leaves no stone un-turned. Sharing everything from first kisses, first times and first holidays to all the TOWIE goss and what really happened in her relationship with Arg, this is a story of adventure, fun and love from one of the nation's favourite TV stars. *LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE, ALWAYS LYDIA: THE STORY is an abridged version of LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE, ALWAYS LYDIA, first published in June 2017*