Jerry Arterburn's story parallels that of thousands of men who are troubled by homosexual desires, but want to change. Rejected, alienated, and seduced into the world of homosexuality, Jerry suffered the devastating effects of AIDS before finding hope, acceptance, and an escape. Jerry's story, told with his brother, Steve Arterburn, gives readers hope. They give a way out of homosexuality for those who want to escape. It's a frank story that tells the truth about homosexuality and about how to find freedom and a new life. Why do men become homosexuals? Is there a Way out? What should parents do when early signs of homosexuality develop? How should family and friends respond to gay loved ones? What about gays who have AIDS? Stephen Arterburn founded New Life Clinics, created the Women of Faith conferences attended by more than 1,000,000 women, and hosts the daily radio program, New Life Live. He is the author of more than 40 books, and has been featured in the New York Times and USA Today. Stephen lives with his family in Laguna Beach, California. He wrote this book with his brother, Jerry, who passed away from the effects of AIDS in 1988.

“You will devour these beautifully written—and very important—tales of honesty, pain, and resilience” (Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls) from fifteen brilliant writers who explore how what we don’t talk about with our mothers affects us, for better or for worse. As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than a decade to realize that she was actually trying to write about how this affected her relationship with her mother. When it was finally published, the essay went viral, shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, and many others. This gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers a candid look at our relationships with our mothers. Leslie Jamison writes about trying to discover who her seemingly perfect mother was before ever becoming a mom. In Cathi Hanauer’s hilarious piece, she finally gets a chance to have a conversation with her mother that isn’t interrupted by her domineering (but lovable) father. André Aciman writes about what it was like to have a deaf mother. Melissa Febos uses mythology as a lens to look at her close-knit relationship with her psychotherapist mother. And Julianna Baggott talks about having a mom who tells her everything. As Filgate writes, “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.” There’s relief in acknowledging how what we couldn’t say for so long is a way to heal our relationships with others and, perhaps most important, with ourselves. Contributions by Cathi Hanauer, Melissa Febos, Alexander Chee, Dylan Landis, Bernice L. McFadden, Julianna Baggott, Lynn Steger Strong, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, André Aciman, Sari Botton, Nayomi Munaweera, Brandon Taylor, and Leslie Jamison.

As a Nigerian Ibo woman living in the United States & raising daughters, the author frequently finds herself in conflict between her native culture & her adoptive culture. Her attempts to resolve this conflict are the basis of a fascinating autobiography.

'Seeing Mum lying in a hospital bed, in what would be the last few days of her life, it was hard to marry her with the mother I had known. She allowed me to help her in a way that she would have normally rebuffed. She was not the mother who had constantly battled with her own emotions, and with her inability to express them without anger, fear or regret. To say that throughout my life we hadn't always seen eye to eye might be something of an understatement...' In this intimate and entertaining autobiography, Sue Johnston recounts her working-class Liverpudlian childhood with her close-knit family; her teenage years in the Sixties, where she worked for Brian Epstein and was friends with the Beatles; and her acting success over the last three decades. But it is in her relationship to her mother that Sue has measured her life. They were close when Sue was a child, but when she moved to London to pursue her acting career her mother declared 'my life is over'. From then on, Sue and her dad had to choose what they would or wouldn't report back to Mum. Today, after nursing her mother in her final months, and with her own son recently married, Sue has been compelled to revisit her life and assess just what it was that she couldn't tell her mother - and to ask herself why.

"Autobiography of Judge Lynn Toler describing her sometimes difficult upbringing and the life-lessons she learned from her mother"--Provided by publisher.

My name is Sophie. This book is about me. It tells the heart-stoppingly riveting story of my first love. And also of my second. And, okay, my third love, too. It's not that I'm boy crazy. It's just that even though I'm almost fifteen I've been having sort of a hard time trying to figure out the difference between love and lust. It's like my mind and my body and my heart just don't seem to be able to agree on anything.

How Do You Forgive a Parent Who Has Failed You? One summer, Melissa Cistaro’s mother stepped into her baby-blue Dodge Dart and drove away, leaving behind Melissa and her brothers. Rarely seeing their mother as they were growing up, they blamed themselves for her leaving, turning to each other for support and seeking out often destructive ways to cope with living without their mom. Decades later, with children of her own, Melissa finds herself in Olympia, Washington, as her mother is dying. She has just days to find out what happened that summer and to confront the unthinkable fear that a “leaving gene” might be lying dormant inside of her. She knew she came from a long line of mothers who left their children. But when Melissa stumbles across a folder titled “Letters Never Sent” tucked away in her mother’s filing cabinet, she begins to feel the wreckage of her mother’s painful journey, before and after she abandoned her family. Alternating between Melissa’s tumultuous coming-of-age and her mother’s final days, Without My Mother is a haunting yet ultimately uplifting story of one woman’s quest to discover how our parents’ choices impact our own and how we can survive those choices to forge our own paths.

Through a series of letters from his parents' passionate World War II courtship, Morrison uncovers a startling, touching story. This follow-up to his critically acclaimed 1993 memoir paints the unforgettable picture of a quietly determined heroine and of a son's search to learn the truth about her.

In What My Mother Gave Me, women look at the relationships between mothers and daughters through a new lens: a daughter’s story of a gift from her mother that has touched her to the bone and served as a model, a metaphor, or a touchstone in her own life. The contributors of these thirty-one original pieces include Pulitzer Prize winners, perennial bestselling novelists, and celebrated broadcast journalists. Whether a gift was meant to keep a daughter warm, put a roof over her head, instruct her in the ways of womanhood, encourage her talents, or just remind her of a mother’s love, each story gets to the heart of a relationship. Rita Dove remembers the box of nail polish that inspired her to paint her nails in the wild stripes and polka dots she wears to this day. Lisa See writes about the gift of writing from her mother, Carolyn See. Cecilia Muñoz remembers both the wok her mother gave her and a lifetime of home-cooked family meals. Judith Hillman Paterson revisits the year of sobriety her mother bequeathed to her when Paterson was nine, the year before her mother died of alcoholism. Abigail Pogrebin writes about her middle-aged bat mitzvah, for which her mother provided flowers after a lifetime of guilt for skipping her daughter’s religious education. Margo Jefferson writes about her mother’s gold dress from the posh department store where they could finally shop as black women. Collectively, the pieces have a force that feels as elemental as the tides: outpourings of lightness and darkness; joy and grief; mother love and daughter love; mother love and daughter rage. In these stirring words we find that every gift, ?no matter how modest, tells the story of a powerful bond. As Elizabeth Benedict points out in her introduction, “whether we are mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, or cherished friends, we may not know for quite some time which presents will matter the most."