Becoming Myself

Bestselling writer and psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom puts himself on the couch in a lapidary memoir Irvin D. Yalom has made a career of investigating the lives of others. In this profound memoir, he turns his writing and his therapeutic eye on himself. He opens his story with a nightmare: He is twelve, and is riding his bike past the home of an acne-scarred girl. Like every morning, he calls out, hoping to befriend her, "Hello Measles!" But in his dream, the girl's father makes Yalom understand that his daily greeting had hurt her. For Yalom, this was the birth of empathy; he would not forget the lesson. As Becoming Myself unfolds, we see the birth of the insightful thinker whose books have been a beacon to so many. This is not simply a man's life story, Yalom's reflections on his life and development are an invitation for us to reflect on the origins of our own selves and the meanings of our lives.

God has dreams—just for you Becoming Myself is a hope-filled book for anyone who wonders if her life will ever change—if she will ever change.In Stasi Eldredge’s most intimate book yet, she shares her own struggles with self-worth, weight, and her past as she shows readers how God is faithfully unveiling who we truly are. Stasi urges you to lay down your past thoughts about yourself and receive God’s incredible dreams for you instead. We cannot heal ourselves. We cannot become ourselves by ourselves. But we are not by ourselves. The King of love wants to help us become. God desires to restore us—the real us. As he heals our inner life, he calls us to rise to the occasion of our lives. The most important journey any woman can take is the journey into becoming her true self through the love of God. It's a beautiful paradox. The more of God’s you become, the more yourself you become—the “self” he had in mind when he thought of you before the creation of the world. Discover your truest self—the woman God created you to be—in Becoming Myself.

A pioneering philanthropist and daughter of American royalty reveals what it was like to grow up in one of the world’s most famous families. The great-granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller, Eileen Rockefeller learned in childhood that while wealth and fame could open any door, they could not buy a feeling of personal worth. The privileges of having servants and lavish summer homes were offset by her parents’ thoughtful yet firm lessons in social obligation, at times by her mother’s dark depressions and mercurial moods, and the competition for attention among her siblings. In adulthood, Rockefeller has yearned to be seen not as an icon but as a woman and mother with a normal life, and like all of us, she had to learn to find her own way. Being a Rockefeller, Becoming Myself is an affirmation of how family shapes our identity and the ways we contribute to the larger family of life, regardless of our origins.

A deeply personal and electrifying memoir by Ellen Burstyn, renowned actress and six-time Academy Award nominee. By the time Ellen Burstyn arrived in New York to study acting, she'd already worked as a Texas fashion model, a Montreal chorus girl, suffered numerous toxic relationships, and just as many name changes and spiritual paths. Theater legend Moss Hart called her "a natural" but Ellen Burstyn was still trying to discover who she was. This is the graceful story of a personal and professional quest, a life-long journey-by turns triumphant and terrifying, tragic and funny, thoughtful and illuminating.

A new book, the first in over a decade, from acclaimed poet Jay Parini This volume revolves around his deep connection to nature and underlines his concerns about the impacts of pollution and climate change. In these beautiful, haunting poems, Parini writes about the landscapes of mining country, of the railroads of Pennsylvania, of farm country, of worlds lost and families dispersed. He explores faith and how it is tested. He limns the deepest crevices of the human heart and soul. He surprises and moves us. In addition to a complete volume’s worth of new work, called West Mountain Epilogue, offering more than fifty poems never before published in any form, Parini has collected the very best work from his previous four volumes, the poems, as he tells us, “written in the past forty years that I wish to stand by.’ Lavishly and deservingly praised over the decades for his work as an essayist, critic, biographer, novelist, and, especially, poet, Parini shines as never before in this generous volume.

"The women in this collection were asked, simply, to recall a significant memory of growing up female. They responded generously, with intimate stories of their lives. Instead of the superficial prepackaged blurbs of TV sound bites and press releases, they told stories from their hearts; they told secrets never spoken before. They revealed themselves through stories of personal confusion and discovery, pain and overcoming, rejection and celebration." --From Willa Shalit's Introduction The stories shared by these sixty-seven remarkable women -- writers, actors, musicians, journalists, activists -- include: --Kate Winslet on the media's eagerness to distort women's images. --Zane on her belief in a woman's right to satisfaction. --Lillian Vernon on being a trailblazing entrepreneur. --J.K. Rowling on the transformation wrought by giving birth. Filled with sparkling insights and powerful reflections, Becoming Myself is a gift for every woman.

A collection of thirty-nine anecdotes from the author's life in which she shares the secrets of her success: self-esteem, strong values, and a supportive family.

The basis for the movie starring Kathy Bates, Ambulance Girl is an inspiring story by a woman who found, somewhat late in life, that “in helping others I learned to help myself.” Jane Stern was a walking encyclopedia of panic attacks, depression, and hypochondria. Her marriage of more than thirty years was suffering, and she was virtually immobilized by fear and anxiety. As the daughter of parents who both died before she was thirty, Stern was terrified of illness and death, and despite the fact that her acclaimed career as a food and travel writer required her to spend a great deal of time on airplanes, she suffered from a persistent fear of flying and severe claustrophobia. Yet, this fifty-two-year-old writer decided to become an emergency medical technician. Stern tells her story with great humor and poignancy, creating a wonderful portrait of a middle-aged, Woody Allen–ish woman who was “deeply and neurotically terrified of sick and dead people,” but who went out into the world to save other people’s lives as a way of saving her own. Her story begins with the boot camp of EMT training: 140 hours at the hands of a dour ex-marine who took delight in presenting a veritable parade of amputations, hideous deformities, and gross disasters. Jane—overweight and badly out of shape—had to surmount physical challenges like carrying a 250-pound man seated in a chair down a dark flight of stairs. After class she did rounds in the emergency room of a local hospital. Each call Stern describes is a vignette of human nature, often with a life in the balance. From an AIDS hospice to town drunks, yuppie wife beaters to psychopaths, Jane comes to see the true nature and underlying mysteries of a town she had called home for twenty years. Throughout the book we follow her as she gets her sea legs, bonds with the firefighters who become her colleagues, and eventually, comes to be known as Ambulance Girl.