Lives Interrupted

From telemarketers to traffic jams to twenty-item shoppers in the ten-item line, our lives are full of interruptions. They're often aggravating, sometimes infuriating, and can make us want to tell people what we really think about them. But they also tell us something quite important about ourselves. The prophet Jonah's life was interrupted by a clear call of God that made him mad enough and scared enough to run in the completely opposite direction. Yet it wasn't really an interruption. It was an opportunity for Jonah to be involved in something the likes of which the Old Testament world had never seen: national revival in a Gentile country. What if Jonah had seen God's interruption for what it truly was—a divine intervention that held more adventure and possibility than any other thing he could have been doing at the time? What could have felt any better than being directly in the center of God's will? Yet we play it that same way—always running from major pains and minor problems that just don't seem to suit us at the time. Who knows what we're missing by being so interruption avoidant? In this very personal account of opportunities lost and lessons learned, popular conference speaker and author Priscilla Shirer shows how to embrace the amazing freedom and fulfillment that comes from going with God, even when He's going against your grain. .

Lives Interrupted: Psychiatric Narratives of Struggle and Resilience provides insight into the everyday experiences of individuals struggling with severe psychic distress during a six-month immersion program at the Fountain House headquarters, a New York-based organization that works to address the effects of serious mental illness. These narratives add complexity and objectivity to the expanding discussion of psychiatric treatment plans. Contributors to this collection argue that narratives are vital to treatment and should not be treated as secondary options to standard diagnosis and treatment practices that rely heavily on pharmaceuticals and often result in short-term revolving-door interventions for complex forms of human suffering.

"Life Interrupted is a powerful and intensely moving poetry book of one woman's journey into a life of chronic pain-and the unyielding resilience of the human spirit"--Back cover.

This is the story of three former soldiers who meet when serving lengthy prison sentences in a high security prison. Billy, Sam and Toby's friendship is forged at the table where they spend their days destroying CDs in the prison workshop and in the cell block they now call home. Over the years they spend inside, they come to know real tragedy and despair, but also find hope and, occasionally, see the humour and comedy that somehow manage to find their way into prison. Thrown together by the unhappiest of circumstances, and united only by their status as convicts, Billy, Sam and Toby become great friends, although only one of them will make it out of prison at the end of his sentence. Theirs is a story of lives interrupted by the sentences imposed by a red robed judge, of other lives destroyed by their violence and selfishness and of the life that goes on behind the walls of a high security prison. It is also, though, a story of hope, a story of love and of the indefatigable human spirit found in the most unlikely places.

Interrupted Life is a gripping collection of writings by and about imprisoned women in the United States, a country that jails a larger percentage of its population than any other nation in the world. This eye-opening work brings together scores of voices from both inside and outside the prison system including incarcerated and previously incarcerated women, their advocates and allies, abolitionists, academics, and other analysts. In vivid, often highly personal essays, poems, stories, reports, and manifestos, they offer an unprecedented view of the realities of women's experiences as they try to sustain relations with children and family on the outside, struggle for healthcare, fight to define and achieve basic rights, deal with irrational sentencing systems, remake life after prison; and more. Together, these powerful writings are an intense and visceral examination of life behind bars for women, and, taken together, they underscore the failures of imagination and policy that have too often underwritten our current prison system.

Being a mom is hard. Being a young mom has unique challenges. From a teen mom herself, Teen Mom speaks to your heart, sharing insight, encouragement, and practical advice to help you create a better life for yourself and your child. Everything changes the day you discover you're going to be a mom. It's not just yourself that you think about--you have a child to care for, too. While you wouldn't trade your child for the world, some days are just hard. Baby-daddy drama, dealing with your parents, and worries about school, work, and your future slam you. Your friends can't relate to your little family, and you wonder if God has turned His back on you, too. Tricia Goyer understands. A mom at age 17, Tricia remembers what it felt like to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, and she's here to help you through it too. In this book, she pours out her heart and shares practical advice on: Making decisions about work and school Dealing with changing relationships with friends Finding support as a single mom Relating to the baby daddy Handling hard days . . . and more! You are the great mom your child deserves! And you are stronger than you think. This book was previously titled Life Interrupted.

"A timely book that can help us have potentially life-saving conversations" - DEEPIKA PADUKONE, Actor & Founder, LiveLoveLaugh “A shocking fact and huge wake-up call is that suicide is the leading cause of death for young Indians. As a country — across all our expertise and fields of interest — we need to pay closer attention, and this book urges us to do just that, with clear policy level suggestions and a call to action.” -ABHINAV BINDRA In India we tend to have a fatalistic attitude towards suicide, tending to believe that nothing can be done to prevent it, focusing only on the politically volatile issue of farmer suicides, or periodically, when there is a death by suicide of a prominent personality or suicides in vulnerable groups (for example, students especially after Board exam results), there is a hue and cry in the popular press with opinion makers demanding immediate action. Why should you care? Because a disproportionate number of young Indians die by suicide and these are preventable deaths. The resulting knee-jerk reaction from policymakers is to offer some immediate solutions (appointing counsellors in colleges, etc.) which have little evidence of success. After a while, everyone forgets the issue, until the next such event and the cycle repeats itself. This book aims to present evidence-based strategies to tackle suicide, using interviews, case studies and conversations that lay readers can make sense of, while proposing an outline of steps that policymakers, journalists and key stakeholder groups can collaborate on to provide better solutions and save precious lives in India.

DIVLife Interrupted introduces us to survivors of human trafficking who are struggling to get by and make homes for themselves in the United States. Having spent nearly a decade following the lives of formerly trafficked men and women, Denise Brennan recounts in close detail their flight from their abusers and their courageous efforts to rebuild their lives. At once scholarly and accessible, her book links these firsthand accounts to global economic inequities and under-regulated and unprotected workplaces that routinely exploit migrant laborers in the United States. Brennan contends that today's punitive immigration policies undermine efforts to fight trafficking. While many believe trafficking happens only in the sex trade, Brennan shows that across low-wage labor sectors—in fields, in factories, and on construction sites—widespread exploitation can lead to and conceal forced labor. Life Interrupted is a riveting account of life in and after trafficking and a forceful call for meaningful immigration and labor reform. All royalties from this book will be donated to the nonprofit Survivor Leadership Training Fund administered through the Freedom Network.