Mia's two sisters are pretty much perfect, but Mia's life is a series of disasters.Fuelled by alcohol and insecurities, she betrays one of her best friends in the worst way imaginable.But will her little sister going missing finally make her realise making everything All About Mia just isn't going to cut it any more?It's time to grow up and face reality.
An Invitation to Community and Models for Connection After almost every presentation activist and writer Mia Birdsong gives to executives, think tanks, and policy makers, one of those leaders quietly confesses how much they long for the profound community she describes. They have family, friends, and colleagues, yet they still feel like they're standing alone. They're "winning" at the American Dream, but they're lonely, disconnected, and unsatisfied. It seems counterintuitive that living the "good life"--the well-paying job, the nuclear family, the upward mobility--can make us feel isolated and unhappy. But in a divided America, where only a quarter of us know our neighbors and everyone is either a winner or a loser, we've forgotten the key element that helped us make progress in the first place: community. In this provocative, groundbreaking work, Mia Birdsong shows that what separates us isn't only the ever-present injustices built around race, class, gender, values, and beliefs, but also our denial of our interdependence and need for belonging. In response to the fear and discomfort we feel, we've built walls, and instead of leaning on each other, we find ourselves leaning on concrete. Through research, interviews, and stories of lived experience, How We Show Up returns us to our inherent connectedness where we find strength, safety, and support in vulnerability and generosity, in asking for help, and in being accountable. Showing up--literally and figuratively--points us toward the promise of our collective vitality and leads us to the liberated well-being we all want.
From New York Times bestselling author of Archer’s Voice comes a slow burn, grumpy sunshine romance about finding the courage to move forward when the past has torn you apart, perfect for fans of Colleen Hoover and Lucy Score. Crystal learned long ago that love brings only pain. Feeling nothing at all is far better than being hurt again. She guards her wounded heart behind a hard exterior and carries within her a deep mistrust of men, who, in her experience, have only ever used and taken. Then Gabriel Dalton walks into her life. Despite the terrible darkness of his past, there's an undeniable goodness in him. And even though she knows the cost, Crystal finds herself drawn to Gabriel. His quiet strength is wearing down her defenses and his gentle patience is causing her to question everything she thought she knew. Crystal and Gabriel never imagined that the world, which had stolen everything from them, would bring them a deep love like this. Except fate will only take them so far, and now the choice is theirs: Harden their hearts once again or find the courage to shed their painful pasts.
A groundbreaking and always controversial musician, M.I.A. is an influential artist and an important cultural figure of the last decade. Here is a documentation of her entire visual output and a telling of her story in collages, photos, and prints from her early years in art school at Central Saint Martins London through to her hugely successful three albums, mixtapes, and live performances at PS1 MoMA, Coachella, various exhibitions, installations, and music video shoots. The artwork is comprised of a wide variety of materials and media: video stills turned to stencils pieced back together to make animated installations; spray-painted canvasses scanned then made into digital collages; photographs videotaped, then run through bad computer connections to create graphic prints; artwork on nails, walls, prints for T-shirts, handmade stage costumes—anything she could find while she was touring. Also included are assorted lyrics and portions of an exclusive interview in which she discusses candidly the personal events and themes which informed her art and music at the time of each campaign. Includes foreword by Steve Loveridge, friend since her art school days and frequent creative collaborator with M.I.A.
Fed up with her disheartening life in New York City, Mia takes a gamble and embarks on an invigorating journey abroad to business school in Spain. When Mia Fuentes moves to Spain for graduate school, desperately trying to leave her past behind, the last thing she ever imagined was getting involved with Leo Durant, the hottest and most sought after guy on campus. Leo is sexy, confident, and has the ultimate bad boy reputation. Something about him keeps pulling her in, when she knows she should be staying far away in the secluded world she has built for herself. Will she be able to overcome her fears and inner struggles that have brought her here? Or will Leo be able to teach her something about love and that not everything in life happens the way we expect? Contemporary, multicultural, and deeply moving, this is the story of a young woman’s trials and tribulations of leaving everything behind and trying to create a new life for herself in a foreign country. It is a relentless journey of self-exploration, healing, and maturity, with a lot of romance, wit and humor.
My book, Secrets of a Dysfunctional Family, is inspired on a true story about the struggle of three sisters’ determination to overcome the odds of drama as children who also were physically, mentally, and emotionally abused and were betrayed by their family. Trying to understand and cope with the hurt, the sisters couldn’t understand why someone who was supposed to care, love, and protect you would do the unthinkable. What the sisters went through as children and the lifestyle they had to grow up in because of what others decided to do to them took a drastic impact on their lives and also the reasons why one sister as a senior in high school, at seventeen years of age, left home as a loner to seek refuge after being abused, disowned, and abandoned by her parents.
A surprise pregnancy could be the ultimate betrayal—or her Cinderella moment—in this charming romance by the author of A Merger by Marriage. Meek and mild Mia Navarro has spent her entire life in her twin’s shadow. But a brief and secret affair with superstar singer/producer Nate Tucker is about to change all that. Their one night together on tour has left her pregnant and torn between her obligation to her pop-princess sister and claiming the life she longs for. But as Mia gears up to put her own needs first for once, she faces an even starker moment of reckoning: Will her pregnancy news strike the wrong chord . . . or be music to Nate’s ears? “The plot is a little Cinderella light with a touch of money thrown in. The characters are well scripted and have interesting quirks thrown in . . . This is a sweet tale designed to show the reader that it is okay to think about and stand up for yourself.” —Harlequin Junkie
