In Search of Meaning: Positive Psychotherapy Step by Step

Jessie Sholl

Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean about Her Mother's Compulsive Hoarding

A fascinating look at compulsive hoarding by a woman whose mother suffers from the disease. To be the child of a compulsive hoarder is to live in a permanent state of unease. Because if my mother is one of those crazy junk-house people, then what does that make me? When her divorced mother was diagnosed with cancer, New York City writer Jessie Sholl returned to her hometown of Minneapolis to help her prepare for her upcoming surgery and get her affairs in order. While a daunting task for any adult dealing with an aging parent, it's compounded for Sholl by one lifelong, complex, and confounding truth: her mother is a compulsive hoarder. Dirty Secret is a daughter's powerful memoir of confronting her mother's disorder, of searching for the normalcy that was never hers as a child, and, finally, cleaning out the clutter of her mother's home in the hopes of salvaging the true heart of their relationship--before it's too late. Growing up, young Jessie knew her mother wasn't like other mothers: chronically disorganized, she might forgo picking Jessie up from kindergarten to spend the afternoon thrift store shopping. Now, tracing the downward spiral in her mother's hoarding behavior to the ...

Janis Abrahms Spring

How Can I Forgive You?: The Courage to Forgive, the Freedom Not to

"If you are struggling with issues of betrayal--or the challenge of whether and how to forgive--here is the most helpful and surprising book you will ever find on the subject."--Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., author of The Dance of AngerEveryone is struggling to forgive someone: an unfaithful partner, an alcoholic parent, an ungrateful child, a terrorist. This award-winning book provides a radical way for hurt parties to heal themselves--without forgiving, as well as a way for offenders to earn genuine forgiveness.Until now, we've been taught that forgiveness is good for us and that good people forgive. Dr. Janis Abrahms Spring, a gifted clinical psychologist and award-winning author of After the Affair, proposes a radical, life-affirming alternative that lets us overcome the corrosive effects of hate and get on with our lives--without forgiving. She also offers a powerful and unconventional model for earning genuine forgiveness--one that asks as much of the offender as it does of the hurt party.Beautifully written and filled with insight, practical advice, and poignant case studies, this bold and healing book offers step-by-step, concrete instructions that help us make peace with others ...

Alexandra Stoddard

Choosing Happiness: Keys to a Joyful Life

Based on her more than thirty years as a noted thinker and speaker on personal contentment, Alexandra Stoddard shares what she has learned about the small but significant changes you can make to be happier day by day. A fun first step: quickly write down ten words that define who you are--perhaps beaches, family, food, home--and what else? This and dozens of other inventive ideas will help you pursue happiness wisely and well. In challenging times, it is easy to question whether happiness is a choice. Alexandra Stoddard affirms that not only is it possible to choose happiness but that happiness is the best choice we can make. It is the "first principle" of life that unites humankind because it is what we all desire. Happiness lies in the passions we pursue and in the pressures we decline. It is in knowing how to work and when to play. It is in the treasured objects we keep nearby and in the ordinary moments we elevate into small celebrations. It is in the note we write to a friend and the kindness we show a stranger. Happiness is what you make it, where you make it. Happiness is our best choice.