Disability Memoir

Despite a childhood affliction that left James Cabezas with the grim knowledge that he might one day go blind, he led a courageous career in law enforcement for more than four decades. With his vision intact, Jim proudly wore a police uniform, tracking drug dealers, thieves, and an armed robber in the precarious days before Baltimore cops wore bullet proof vests. He performed his duty relentlessly, despite interference from corrupt, racist and inept cops.While the world’s finest eye doctors kept him from going blind, Jim worked as a deep covert, driving a cab in Baltimore’s notorious ...

After starting a family and flourishing in his career, Tim Hague was struck by misfortune. The irritating tremor in his foot turned out to be early onset Parkinson's disease. He was only 46 years old. But what seemed to be an end became a new beginning. Just three years later, Hague won the inaugural The Amazing Race Canada (with his son, Tim Jr., as his teammate). His remarkable life story shows that perseverance is not just a matter of willpower: it is a skill that can be learned and honed.

Eight Fingers and Eight Toes: Accepting Life's Challenges is a story of the power of a mother's love for her children and her journey of self-love. It is a story of struggles and learning to accept and overcome challenges. One takes a front row seat as the author learns answers to questions asked decades ago that result in part from the family being the first ever to have their entire genome sequenced.

"Dandelion Roots Run Deep" is the true story of three generations of tenacious Midwestern women, one in Illinois and two in Michigan. Merry is the third generation, and her mother Merrill, fought for organic agriculture and Michigan's environment from 1967 - 2009. Merrill developed Alzheimer's before finishing her book, so Merry took her story to fruition.

We’ve all had moments of feeling like we didn’t belong, but imagine being born into a world where fitting in was never an option. Michele Sullivan, who has a rare form of dwarfism, shares how her physical posture taught her the most effective relational posture with others, which helped her become one of the most powerful women in philanthropy.

This is Nadina LaSpina's story - from her early years in her native Sicily, where she contracts polio as a baby, a fact that makes her the object of well-meaning pity and the target of messages of hopelessness, to her adolescence and youth in America, spent almost entirely in hospitals where she is tortured in the quest for a cure and made to feel that her body no longer belongs to her, and to her rebellion and her activism in the disability-rights movement.

Many people give up on God. It’s easy to trust in his goodness and strength when life is easy. But how do we persevere in our faith when life gets hard? Few people can show us how to do that better than Allan Schwartz.

Damaged is a story of survivor's guilt coupled with resentment tempered by love. It reveals the changing dynamics of a family faced with an injury no one could heal. Nancy Klein was in the first trimester of her second pregnancy when she made headlines as "Coma Mom." This intimate memoir, written by Klein's sister, reveals all that happened to her and her family after the news cycle moved on. The family: a mother who never gave up hope, even when hope was long gone, and a father who couldn't live without his wife's love.

Just before Christmas in 2012, at age 53, John LeMieux lost his left leg to a recurrence of sarcoma. The unique 20-hour rotationplasty surgery - never done on a man his age - was followed by six months of bed rest. It was only the beginning of years of physical, spiritual, and emotional growth. In this memoir, John recounts the lows and highs of a life forever altered.

The Umbrella Picker tells the true story of a woman who was lost for 45 years until she learned that she is Autistic. After a long and relentless journey of searching for answers, the hand of fate finally revealed to her what she had waited a lifetime for. Learning she was Autistic was life changing. She is no longer lost, and having found her own, unique way, Jane has written the (brutally honest!) book she wished was available to her years earlier.

One fine April day, Mary Ann Kenny’s husband died suddenly while jogging near their family home. In the months that followed, Mary Ann – who had no history of mental illness – began suffering from depression, and then from a terrifying succession of physical and psychological symptoms, including the delusion that her young children had been harmed by her medications.

Why the Cane? is a personal memoir which recounts the true story of a man’s regaining a level of activity he thought would not be possible after a devastating injury. It chronicles his medical journey, the upheaval suffered by his family, and the counsel and support which shifted his focus and provided a framework to make thoughtful decisions for the long term.

Defiant chronicles the remarkable life of Janine Shepherd, an elite ski racer whose bid to represent Australia in the Olympics was cut short by a tragic accident. She recalls the 10 days she hovered between life and death, faced with the difficult choice to let go or return to a body that would never be whole again. Defiant offers hope and encouragement for anyone facing a life challenge, sharing the author's hard-won wisdom and priceless advice for navigating one's way from loss to healing.

Seeing Beyond the Shadows provides a window into the life of a blind individual. Burton addresses some of the obstacles that people with visual impairments encounter, such as the issue of transportation, the low employment problem, and the overall lack of opportunities that impede progress. She provides firsthand accounts of her own experiences navigating these obstacles and relates her faith journey as she has come to rely on God’s guidance.

The yard was a huge piece of property with a forest out back (or at least a few dozen trees). We had a barn and a horse (really a very small pony, but I didn’t know that then) named Romeo, because he liked to roam—often ending up out of the fenced pasture and out on the street. We had chickens, as well, in a coop by the barn up at the edge of the forest.

What would you do if it happened to you? If you awoke one day when you were twelve years old to be informed that your life was suddenly over? Well . . . Here is what I did. If you became the wealthiest person you would ever know just three and a half years later? What would that be like? Well, this is what it was like when it happened to me.

Jump in the passenger seat as I navigate you through my journey of blindness, sexual abuse, mental illness, and various other medical conditions and tragedies. I will take you on the twists and turns of single motherhood and dating with a disability, all while only having the use of one arm. Join me for an emotional, yet exciting, ride to see how I end up at my current destination.

Darryl Jefferson was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at the age of eight and encountered many hurdles in life due to the condition. Despite this, he persevered through many challenges in school, work, relationships, and the military. In this story, he takes us on a journey through one man's experience of living with autism and its effects on school, work, relationships, friendships, and many other life challenges.

Monday, March 11, 2024, was remarkably uneventful—indeed, frankly dull—until around 5 p.m. that evening when Carl Davies collapsed in a heap. It was a day that would change his life forever. Stroke Me! Recounts the story of his recovery from a near-catastrophic brain haemorrhage. The author details, in often graphic detail, every step of his journey, from the stroke itself to the pain of physical and occupational therapy. He leaves no stone unturned as he describes the impact his illness has had on him and his family. Stroke Me!

Elaine, What Happened? A History follows the thirty year life of Elaine who was born without eyes and had other deformities. Besides trying to find out what caused her defects, it is a history of the changes that took place in the medical field, in public education and most notably in society's customs and attitudes regarding people with disabilities.