Heather Chauvin-now a TEDx speaker, host of the Mom Is In Control podcast and personal development coach-takes you through her journey with honesty, humor, and strength.
Moms are under so. much. pressure. Pressure that weighs us down and threatens to wipe us out. Are you ready for relief? Mom Set Free will empower you to parent in the confidence of God's grace and to experience the freedom you were created for. We moms are told that we have to get it all right so our kids turn out right. We’re told that their entire futures are riding on our ability to perfectly orchestrate their lives. And we’re told that the strength of their faith hinges on ours. And we begin to believe that if we just try hard enough, we can actually “be enough.” These impossible standards leave us stuck in worry, anger, guilt, comparison, and shame. Jeannie Cunnion gets it. And in Mom Set Free she reveals how the Good News of the Gospel empowers us to live—and parent—in the freedom for which Christ has set us free. Jeannie invites us to journey alongside her as we learn to: -Lay down what God has not asked us to carry so we can thrive in what He has. -Embrace our significance in our children’s lives in light of God’s sovereignty. -Trust God with the children He has entrusted to us. -Receive God’s grace so we can reflect God’s heart to our kids. It’s time to breathe deeper, walk lighter, and reclaim the wonder and adventure of parenting.
In an era of mommy blogs, Pinterest, and Facebook, The Good Mother Myth dismantles the social media-fed notion of what it means to be a "good mother." This collection of essays takes a realistic look at motherhood and provides a platform for real voices and raw stories, each adding to the narrative of motherhood we don't tend to see in the headlines or on the news. From tales of mind-bending, panic-inducing overwhelm to a reflection on using weed instead of wine to deal with the terrible twos, the honesty of the essays creates a community of mothers who refuse to feel like they're in competition with others, or with the notion of the ideal mom—they're just trying to find a way to make it work. With a foreword by Christy Turlington Burns and a contributor list that includes Jessica Valenti, Sharon Lerner, Soraya Chemaly, Amber Dusick and many more, this remarkable collection seeks to debunk the myth and offer some honesty about what it means to be a mother.
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • The gripping true story of a murder on an Indian reservation, and the unforgettable Arikara woman who becomes obsessed with solving it—an urgent work of literary journalism. “I don’t know a more complicated, original protagonist in literature than Lissa Yellow Bird, or a more dogged reporter in American journalism than Sierra Crane Murdoch.”—William Finnegan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Barbarian Days In development as a Paramount+ original series WINNER OF THE OREGON BOOK AWARD • NOMINATED FOR THE EDGAR® AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Publishers Weekly When Lissa Yellow Bird was released from prison in 2009, she found her home, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, transformed by the Bakken oil boom. In her absence, the landscape had been altered beyond recognition, her tribal government swayed by corporate interests, and her community burdened by a surge in violence and addiction. Three years later, when Lissa learned that a young white oil worker, Kristopher “KC” Clarke, had disappeared from his reservation worksite, she became particularly concerned. No one knew where Clarke had gone, and few people were actively looking for him. Yellow Bird traces Lissa’s steps as she obsessively hunts for clues to Clarke’s disappearance. She navigates two worlds—that of her own tribe, changed by its newfound wealth, and that of the non-Native oilmen, down on their luck, who have come to find work on the heels of the economic recession. Her pursuit of Clarke is also a pursuit of redemption, as Lissa atones for her own crimes and reckons with generations of trauma. Yellow Bird is an exquisitely written, masterfully reported story about a search for justice and a remarkable portrait of a complex woman who is smart, funny, eloquent, compassionate, and—when it serves her cause—manipulative. Drawing on eight years of immersive investigation, Sierra Crane Murdoch has produced a profound examination of the legacy of systematic violence inflicted on a tribal nation and a tale of extraordinary healing.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A moving memoir about the legendary author’s relationship with her own mother. Emma Watson’s Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick! The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple bestselling autobiographies. But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother. For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence—a presence absent during much of Angelou’s early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old Maya and her older brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The subsequent feelings of abandonment stayed with Angelou for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never before been told. In Mom & Me & Mom, Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them. Delving into one of her life’s most rich, rewarding, and fraught relationships, Mom & Me & Mom explores the healing and love that evolved between the two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou’s rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights. Praise for Mom & Me & Mom “Mom & Me & Mom is delivered with Angelou’s trademark good humor and fierce optimism. If any resentments linger between these lines, if lives are partially revealed without all the bitter details exposed, well, that is part of Angelou’s forgiving design. As an account of reconciliation, this little book is just revealing enough, and pretty irresistible.”—The Washington Post “Moving . . . a remarkable portrait of two courageous souls.”—People “[The] latest, and most potent, of her serial autobiographies . . . [a] tough-minded, tenderhearted addition to Angelou’s spectacular canon.”—Elle “Mesmerizing . . . Angelou has a way with words that can still dazzle us, and with her mother as a subject, Angelou has a near-perfect muse and mystery woman.”—Essence
When Maxine wakes up on the wrong side of the bed one morning, she wonders if the problem might be her mother. What if she could try out a new mom who doesn’t make her brush her teeth or comb her hair? Enlisting Mom to help her with the search, Maxine interviews various prospects to be her new mother at the park, the toy store, and the zoo. Unfortunately, these other mothers present a host of new problems and concerns. Maybe her “old mother” was the best mother of all? For every child who’s ever wondered if the grass is greener, The Best Mother affirms that there’s nothing better than your own mother’s love.
Through a systematic comparison of the life circumstances, child-rearing practices, and personalities of the FulBe and their former slaves, the RiimaayBe, this book develops an alternative theory of the way personality is formed in the Fulani society of West Africa. Riesman discusses the different characters, economies, and life plans of adult men and women of both groups, focusing on their ideas about the value of relatives. He further presents detailed observations of child-rearing practices, and concludes that the FulBe and RiimaayBe do not differ in these practices. Contrasting Fulani and Western notions of parenting, he suggests that child-rearing practices are themselves irrelevant to the formation of adult personality, but that a people's ideas about the meaning of life, social relations, and the development of character are very important. Finally, Riesman outlines a sociocultural theory of personality and its formation, and uses this theory to make sense of the differences between FulBe and RiimaayBe.
Moms feel guilty about everything... They think they're not doing enough for themselves, for their children and for their spouses. They question their decisions about working vs. staying at home. They agonize over keeping up with housework, struggle in their relationship with their husband, wrestle with negative feelings about their children from time to time and worry that they don't measure up to their own or others' expectations. In short, feeling guilty is pervasive among mothers; it just seems to come with the territory. Motherhood without Guilt uses a question-and-answer format to address all the issues that cause a mother to feel bad about her mothering, and shows how to: --Reconcile working vs. staying at home --Be emotionally available to your kids in just the right way --Take good care of yourself, too --Create partnership in parenting with your husband --Nurture friendships and get support from others Related title: The New Mom's Companion 1-4022-0014-5
“The courtroom scenes are sharp and suspenseful, the twists in the plot are unexpected, and the tension ratchets up until we are truly eager to find out what happens.” -New York Times Book Review A Library Journal Best Debut Novel of Spring and Summer 2021 A gripping debut thriller about two young mothers, one shocking murder and a court case that puts them both on trial. When a soldier is found stabbed through the heart at a US Army base, there is no doubt that his wife, Luz, is to blame. But was it an act of self-defense? An attempt to save her infant daughter? Or the cold-blooded murder of an innocent man? Ambitious public defender Abby is determined to win at all costs. As a new mother herself, she wants to keep Luz out of prison and with her daughter. But when the surprises stack up and shocking new evidence emerges, Abby realizes the task proves far more difficult than she suspected and will require a terrible sacrifice. As the trial hurtles toward an outcome no one expects, Abby, Luz and a captivated jury are forced to answer the question that will decide everything—what does it mean to be a good mother? “Lara Bazelon combines a riveting courtroom thriller with a nuanced and thought-provoking examination of gender, race, and justice. Helmed by an intelligent, complex, and flawed protagonist, A Good Mother is a beautifully written debut that kept me turning the pages late into the night.” —Angie Kim, author of Miracle Creek "Sexy, shrewd, and wholly contemporary, A Good Mother takes pitch-perfect characters, a page-whipping plot, and themes about marriage, lust, betrayal, and the juggling of new motherhood plus a hard-driving career and mixes it all into a deeply perceptive legal thriller that made me drop everything else and just READ." —Cathi Hanauer, New York Times bestselling author of Gone, The Bitch in the House and The Bitch Is Back