8 Inspirational Memoirs for the Soul
Contributor
Written by
Lauren Wise
July 2016
Contributor
Written by
Lauren Wise
July 2016

Catching Homelessness: A Nurse's Story of Falling Through The Safety Net, by Josephine Ensign

August 9, 2016

At the beginning of the homelessness epidemic in the 1980s, Josephine Ensign was a young, white, Southern, Christian wife, mother, and nurse running a new medical clinic for the homeless in the heart of the South. Through her work and intense relationships with patients and co-workers, her worldview was shattered, and after losing her job, family, and house, she became homeless herself. She reconstructed her life with altered views on homelessness―and on the health care system. In Catching Homelessness, Ensign reflects on how this work has changed her and how her work has changed through the experience of being homeless―providing a piercing look at the homelessness industry, nursing, and our country’s health care safety net.

In the Game: The Highs and Lows of a Trailblazing Lawyer, by Peggy Garrity

August 9, 2016

Peggy Garrity began her life as a small-town Irish Catholic girl in the Midwest. Initially convent-bound, she became determined to escape a life like her mother’s, and in the mid-1970s she reinvented herself as a high-profile Los Angeles trial lawyer and single mother of four. At a time when there were virtually no women solo practitioners, she represented David against Goliath―and risked it all in the process.

Including compelling courtroom dramas featuring would-be presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore, celebrities Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, and Cheryl Tiegs, and some of Los Angeles’s most notorious murder cases, In the Game is the groundbreaking story of a thrill-seeking solo trial lawyer―and single mother―who beat the odds at a time when working mothers, especially those in male-dominated professions like the law, faced the gauntlet of discrimination.

Supervision Matters: 100 Bite-Sized Ideas to Transform You and Your Team, by Rita Sever 

August 23, 2016

Supervision is a critical function of leadership that is often overlooked, and yet the quality of supervision is often what makes or breaks a leader―and an organization. Supervision Matters is full of bite-size ideas for how to become a more effective supervisor, including advice on how to be clear about expectations, giving helpful feedback, manage yourself, and more. Each chapter is structured around how you approach a part of your work as a supervisor: how you talk, how you think about others, how you run meetings, how you lead, and more.

Whether you’re a front-line supervisor or a CEO, this book will help you sharpen your skills and improve morale by transforming your supervision skills into user-friendly tactics that work.

Change Maker: How My Brother's Death Woke Up My Life, by Becky Austill-Clausen

September 13, 2016

Change Maker is Rebecca Austill-Clausen’s story of her discovery that she could communicate with her brother after he died. Following this realization, a world she never imagined opened up to her―even as she doubted her sanity and feared she would lose the respect of her colleagues, as well as the love and support of her family. Austill-Clausen struggled with how her spiritual awakening and eventual spiritual transformation could mesh with the practical everyday world―the one where she had a rapidly growing rehabilitation business to run, and where she was known as a knowledgeable, science-based expert in the field of occupational therapy.

Each chapter of Change Maker explores spiritual beliefs and understanding, includes an original black-and-white illustration by Micki McAllister, and ends with an “Illumination”―guidance, suggestions, encouragement, and inspiration for readers who wish to pursue their own spiritual journey. The end result is a book that blends the best of memoir, self-help, new-age philosophy, and inspiration.

All Set for Black,Thanks: A New Look at Mourning, by Miriam Weinstein

September 13, 2017

When Miriam Weinstein’s good friend died unexpectedly, and other losses followed close behind, it led to a year of introspection and black outfits. All Set For Black, Thanks ditches the sanctimony to give us the help, and the laughs, that we actually need in times of mourning and grief. She explores such topics as how we keep our dead with us even as we learn to let them go; why we should not bring casseroles; how to write the Best Eulogy Ever. Part memoir, part how-to, this book will help you get through the rough bargain of human existence: none of us gets out of here alive, but we live as if the lives of our loved ones had no end.

Body 2.0: Finding My Life Through Loss and Mastectomy, By Krista Hammerbacher Kaapala

September 20, 2016

To honor her mother's deathbed advice to head off breast cancer to “be there” for her boys, Krista Hammerbacher Haapala chose to trade healthy breasts for longevity and peace of mind. In Body 2.0, Haapala chronicles the personal research, medical process, bodily changes, and the emotional toll involved in the more than two-year odyssey of what she referred to as her “Body 2.0 vision quest.”

Through it all, Haapala shares her insights for living awake during even the darkest times, and captures the raw ebbs and flows she and her family experience in the face of her wrenching decision. She takes on body image, the sexualization of breast cancer, motherhood, and maternal relationships, as well as how to sustain an intimate, loving partnership. An unflinching, irreverent take on preventative double mastectomy, Body 2.0 is a guide to reframing adversity, finding inspiration, and shaping your own life.

Stepmother: A Memoir, by Marianne Lile

September 27, 2016

Stepmother tells the story of Marianne Lile, who met a man, fell in love, got married, and arrived home from the honeymoon with a new label: stepmom. It was a role she initially embraced―but she quickly discovered she was alone in a difficult situation, with no handbook and no mentor. Here, Lile describes the complexities of the stepmom position, in a family and in the community, and shares her experience wearing a tag that is often misunderstood and weighed down by the numerous myths in society. Candid and poignant, Stepmother is a story of love and like, resentments and exasperation, resignation and hope―and a story, ultimately, of family.

Miracle at Midlife: A Transatlantic Romance, by Roni Beth Rower

October 25, 2016

They first meet in Paris in the spring of 1996. David is a divorced American attorney living on a converted barge moored on the banks of the Seine; Roni Beth is an empty-nested clinical and research psychologist working from her home in Connecticut. Now in their fifties, both have signed off on loving again―until they meet each other.

Miracle at Midlife tells the inspiring story of Roni Beth and David’s intense and transformative transatlantic courtship. Along the way, David the loner, living amid the beauty, freedom, and pleasures of Paris, brings Roni Beth, a responsible and overextended professional haunted by earlier loss and trauma, back to her core as a woman, while she helps him reclaim connections that tie him to a larger world. They wrestle internal demons (mostly hers) and external threats (friends, family and different perspectives) as they share adventures in their respective worlds. Throughout their journey, stories of courage, joy and integrity bring hope and delight to those who wonder how romantic love appears and evolves; inspiration to people in mid-life who, knowingly or unknowingly, have completed a chapter in their lives and are ready to move on; and comfort to anyone who longs to wrestle and conquer the demons of fear, born of history or of the unknown, and win. Testimony that love is real.

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