Primal Loss

Seventy now-adult children of divorce give their candid and often heart-wrenching answers to eight questions (arranged in eight chapters, by question), including: What were the main effects of your parents' divorce on your life? What do you say to those who claim that "children are resilient" and "children are happy when their parents are happy"? What would you like to tell your parents then and now? What do you want adults in our culture to know about divorce? What role has your faith played in your healing? Their simple and poignant responses are difficult to read and yet not without hope. Most of the contributors--women and men, young and old, single and married--have never spoken of the pain and consequences of their parents' divorce until now. They have often never been asked, and they believe that no one really wants to know. Despite vastly different circumstances and details, the similarities in their testimonies are striking; as the reader will discover, the death of a child's family impacts the human heart in universal ways.

Originally published in 1993, this classic piece of literature on adoption has revolutionised the way people think about adopted children. Nancy Verrier examines the life-long consequences of the 'primal wound' - the wound that is caused when a child is separated from its mother - for adopted people. Her argument is supported by thorough research in pre- and perinatal psychology, attachment, bonding and the effects of loss.

Mark Sisson’s 2009 release of The Primal Blueprint was the catalyst for the primal/paleo/ancestral health movement to gain mainstream awareness and acceptance. Both the hardcover and paperback editions enjoyed a seven-year run at the top of the primal/paleo charts and selling hundreds of thousands of copies. Sisson, publisher of the acclaimed MarksDailyApple.com, the acclaimed and most-visited primal/paleo blog, has spent the past six years diligently researching and evaluating recent the most up-to-date science and reflecting on thousands of users’ experiences going primal. The second edition of The New Primal Blueprint offers a comprehensively revised, expanded, and updated message from the original runaway bestseller. The New Primal Blueprint serves as the ultimate road map for anyone wishing to make the shift from flawed conventional wisdom about diet and exercise to a healthy, happy empowering lifestyle patterned after the evolutionary-tested behaviors of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The book details the ten immutable Primal Blueprint lifestyle laws that enable empower you to reprogram your genes to direct in the direction of weight loss, health, and longevity. The Primal Blueprint laws are validated by two million years of human evolution as well as an ever-expanding body of contemporary scientific research. Sisson’s philosophy was originally met with skepticism as he aggressively challenged numerous mainstream health tenets. Eight years later, mainstream medical and health science are validating the Primal Blueprint tenets assertions that a high-carb, grain-based diet will make you fat, tired, and sick; that a consistent routine of medium-to-difficult cardiovascular workouts can actually compromise your health and longevity and increase risk of heart disease; and that consuming (whole food sources of) fat and cholesterol does not lead to heart disease as we have been led to believe, but rather offers many health benefits. The New Primal Blueprint comes alive with a vibrant full-color presentation packed with photos, graphics, and cartoons to make for a fun, easy, and memorable read. Join hundreds of thousands of primal enthusiasts and embrace a new way of life where you take responsibility for your health, fitness, and happiness. Reject once and for all the flawed conventional wisdom that has left modern citizens struggling with fatigue, excess body fat, and elevated disease risk factors as a consequence of grain-based eating habits, exhausting exercise routines, sedentary lifestyle patterns, and high-stress existences that misdirect our genes and promote illness instead of wellness and longevity. Here is a quick overview of the ten Primal Blueprint laws that will help you quickly and effortlessly reprogram your genes in the direction of health, happiness, and longevity: Law #1 - Eat Plants and Animals: Enjoy the nutritious, satisfying foods that fueled two million years of human evolution. Law #2 - Avoid Poisonous Things: Avoid toxic modern foods (primarily refined vegetable oils, sugars, and grains) that make us fat, sick, and malnourished. Law #3 - Move Frequently: Enhance fat metabolism, improve cognitive function, and avoid the stress of chronic cardio by keeping active with aerobic workouts at a comfortable heart rate, increased everyday movement, and complementary flexibility/mobility activities throughout your day. Law #4 - Lift Heavy Things: Brief, intense sessions of functional, full-body resistance exercises supports muscle development, increases bone density, and prevents injury. Law #5 - Sprint Once in a While: Occasional all-out sprints turbo-charge fat reduction and deliver a boost of anti-aging hormones. Law #6 - Get Plenty of Sleep: Align your sleep with your circadian rhythm by minimizing artificial light and digital stimulation after dark, and creating a calm, quiet, dark sleeping sanctuary. Optimal sleep promotes healthy immune, brain, and endocrine function. Law #7 - Play: Balance the stress of modern life with some unstructured, physical fun! Both brief breaks and grand outings are essential to nurture a cognitively fluid mind and a free spirit. Law #8 - Get Plenty of Sunlight: Expose large skin surface areas frequently to optimize vitamin D production (increases energy, prevents cancer). Maintain a slight tan, but never burn. Diet alone doesn’t cut it. Law #9 - Avoid Stupid Mistakes: Learn to be mindful and vigilant against dangers, both extreme and routine. Cultivate risk management skills to stay safe and sensible and eliminate “avoidable suffering.” Law #10 - Use Your Brain: Engage in creative and stimulating activities away from your core daily responsibilities. This will keep you refreshed, energized, creative, and productive in everything you do.

The Primal Blueprint is a simple, flexible plan to help you look and feel your best without struggling or suffering, by adapting the simple lifestyle practices of our hunter-gatherer ancestors into modern life. Sisson presents the compelling premise that you can reprogram your genes in the direction of weight loss, health, and longevity by following 10 immutable Primal Blueprint lifestyle laws validated by two million years of human evolution. Weight loss is largely about insulin; moderate your production by eliminating sugar and grains, and you will lose the excess body fat you desire even while eating delicious, satisfying foods. Plus you will improve your energy level, reduce inflammation, and eliminate disease risk. Eating meat, eggs, and a generally high-fat diet not only is healthy but is the key to effortless weight loss, a healthy immune system, and boundless energy.Slowing down your typical cardiovascular workouts, and incorporating brief, intense strength sessions and occasional all-out sprints can produce fitness benefits far superior to workouts that are longer and more grueling -- and can eliminate the risk of burnout.

In November 2005, Bonnie Blodgett was whacked with a nasty cold. After a quick shot of a popular nasal spray up each nostril, the back of her nose was on fire. With that, Blodgett—a professional garden writer devoted to the sensual pleasures of garden and kitchen—was launched on a journey through the senses, the psyche, and the sciences. Her olfactory nerve was destroyed, perhaps forever. She had lost her sense of smell. Phantosmia—a constant stench of “every disgusting thing you can think of tossed into a blender and pureed”—is the first disorienting stage. It’s the brain’s attempt, as Blodgett vividly conveys, to compensate for loss by conjuring up a tortured facsimile. As the hallucinations fade and anosmia (no smell at all) moves in to take their place, Blodgett is beset by questions: Why are smell and mood hand-in-hand? How are smell disorders linked to other diseases? What is taste without flavor? Blodgett’s provocative conversations with renowned geneticists, smell dysfunction experts, neurobiologists, chefs, and others ultimately lead to a life-altering understanding of smell, and to the most transformative lesson of all: the olfactory nerve, in ways unlike any other in the human body has the extraordinary power to heal.

Fifty stories of marriages brought back from the brink of disaster. Fifteen more stories of heroic spouses standing for their marriages after spousal abandonment.

The social and political relevance of Julia Kristeva's work is perhaps the central question in Kristeva studies, and the essays in this collection provide a sustained interrogation of this complicated problematic from a variety of perspectives and across the various contexts and moments of Kristeva's forty-year writing career. Presenting Kristeva's thought as the sustained interrogation of a political problematic, the contributors argue that her use of psychoanalysis and aesthetics offers significant insight into social and political issues that would otherwise remain concealed. The collection addresses the entirety of Kristeva's oeuvre, from her earliest work on poetic language to her most recent work on female genius, and it includes two previously untranslated essays by Kristeva, as well as original contributions from scholars working in several countries and a variety of disciplines.

Few philosophers have devoted such sustained, almost obsessive attention to the topic of death as Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard and Death brings together new work on Kierkegaard's multifaceted discussions of death and provides a thorough guide to the development, in various texts and contexts, of Kierkegaard's ideas concerning death. Essays by an international group of scholars take up essential topics such as dying to the world, living death, immortality, suicide, mortality and subjectivity, death and the meaning of life, remembrance of the dead, and the question of the afterlife. While bringing Kierkegaard's philosophy of death into focus, this volume connects Kierkegaard with important debates in contemporary philosophy.