Has it ever felt like a back-handed compliment to be called a "Strong Black Woman"? That statement says more about your weaknesses than your strengths. The stereotypical strong Black woman does it all. She wades through the barrage of racism and misogyny designed to drown her, yet serves as the life vest for everyone else. They need her, but who tends to her needs? Practicing self-care means something different for black women that are faced with the unfairness of having to live in a constant state of duality. Strong Black women take care of what is necessary despite their limited resources, systemic, and how they feel. It is very difficult to uphold what it means to be a strong Black woman in the Black community and make self-care a priority. Which births the difficult question, are Black women that embrace this stereotype able to practice self-care?Selfish Women's Group is a story about strong Black women attempting to heal through self-care during a pandemic and traumatic racial tensions. This story highlights the importance of practicing self-care and how easy it is to lose sight of it. Selfish Women's Group addresses the issues that make it problematic for Black women to practice self-care and provides encouragement to overcome them.Meet the women of Selfish Women's Group: Three black women from Lynn and Malden, Massachusetts meet each other at a local self-care group. Ida, Faith and Michelle build a sisterhood while dealing with their own complex emotional-health issues. Will the support and tools from Selfish Women's Group be enough to provide the balance that they need in their life? Will they learn to be Selfish with self-care?Nobody knows more than Ida how having problems down below can severely impact your quality of life. As if having fibroids aren't enough, Ida must cope with the stress of being a strong black woman. She was taught that showing weakness as a Black woman is intolerable. We all know what gets said about a Black woman that loses her ability to cope. What happens when she just can't take it anymore? Will Ida be strong enough to ask for help or will she suffer in silence due to shame? Do Black women really have bounce-back magic?Faith is a people pleaser. She tries her best to use the tools that she's learned from Selfish Women's Group to help navigate her more challenging relationships. Meanwhile, she finds out at the last minute that her mom is getting released from prison. Will those tools be enough to help her set healthy boundaries from the energy drainers in her life? What's the best way to please people who have betrayed you? Will Faith ever learn to please herself before anyone else?Michelle is a woman who has it all together; a great career, supports her community, is politically astute, and will let you know that she's unapologetically Pro-Black. She is goal-driven with an intense desire to succeed. She's a planner that likes to be in control. Find out what happens when Mother Nature throws Michelle a reproductive curveball. Will she put down her cape? Does having it all together keep Michelle from falling all apart?

This book proceeds from a single and very simple observation: throughout history, and up to the present, women have received a clear message that we are not supposed to prioritize ourselves. Indeed, the whole question of "self" is a problem for women – and a problem that issues from a wide range of locations, including, in some cases, feminism itself. When women espouse discourses of self-interest, self-regard, and selfishness, they become illegible. This is complicated by the commodification of the self in the recent Western mode of economic and political organization known as "neoliberalism," which encourages a focus on self-fashioning that may not be identical with self-regard or self-interest. Drawing on figures from French, US, and UK contexts, including Rachilde, Ayn Rand, Margaret Thatcher, and Lionel Shriver, and examining discourses from psychiatry, media, and feminism with the aim of reading against the grain of multiple orthodoxies, this book asks how revisiting the words and works of selfish women of modernity can assist us in understanding our fraught individual and collective identities as women in contemporary culture. And can women with politics that are contrary to the interests of the collective teach us anything about the value of rethinking the role of the individual? This book is an essential read for those with interests in cultural theory, feminist theory, and gender politics.

Sixteen literary luminaries on the controversial subject of being childless by choice, in this critically acclaimed, bestselling anthology One of the most provocative and talked-about books of the year, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed is the stunning collection exploring one of society’s most vexing taboos. One of the main topics of cultural conversation during the last decade was the supposed “fertility crisis,” and whether modern women could figure out a way to have it all—a successful career and the required 2.3 children—before their biological clocks stopped ticking. Now, however, the conversation has turned to whether it’s necessary to have it all (see Anne-Marie Slaughter) or, perhaps more controversial, whether children are really a requirement for a fulfilling life. In this exciting and controversial collection of essays, curated by writer Meghan Daum, thirteen acclaimed female writers explain why they have chosen to eschew motherhood. Contributors include Lionel Shriver, Sigrid Nunez, Kate Christensen, Elliott Holt, Geoff Dyer, and Tim Kreider, among others, who will give a unique perspective on the overwhelming cultural pressure of parenthood. This collection makes a smart and passionate case for why parenthood is not the only path to a happy, productive life, and takes our parent-centric, kid-fixated, baby-bump-patrolling culture to task in the process. In this book, that shadowy faction known as the childless-by-choice comes out into the light.

I wrote this book because I feel there is a reason for all that is going on in the world; a cauldron of misery, suffering, anguish, and strife. Everyone is caught up in it and those who feel they are not or feel they have an educated reason and philosophy for what they see, are not seeing the bigger picture. Most people come up with the biggest, most elaborate questions and answers, but most do not tap into another reason or meaning for what life is about and what is transpiring. What if there is a very deeper meaning, deeper purpose besides the basic fundamentals of life that we know of, and our purpose here. What if everything we say, do and think about are just conforming to our own selfish reasons. I am trying to put forth the argument of what the real reasons are. The answers so many accept and try to figure out based on nothing else but the theoretical speculation and trial and error. The most brilliant minds in the world, the most compelling arguments, explanations and theories have played and still play a major role into where we are, where we are going and what we have reduced ourselves to. While many may look to rationalize an incoherent world with rational thought, many are ignoring what could be a devastating calamity taken place right under our noses. Something so subtle that it is less resound then a feather hitting the ground half way around the world, yet would have the impact to wipe out humanity or create hell on earth.

Why do so many women with gambling addiction relapse? Lifelong recovery requires much more than to just stop gambling. Women’s groups provide long-term benefits and support and have proven to be highly successful in promoting recovery from gambling addiction. By following the story of a real women’s group for problem gambling over the course of a year, Liz Karter explains how, for women, both the cause of and the cure for gambling addiction lies in relationship. Karter shows clearly how learning to face and cope with real life situations and relationships is essential to maintain recovery. She shares the themes which run through each women’s group, such as fear of trusting others, and the guilt, shame and risk associated with being truly seen and heard. Women’s Groups for Problem Gambling shows that with a combination of specialist intervention, women’s group support, courage and compassion, women can learn to stop running from their addiction and instead find joy and support in building relationships and communities. This highly accessible book provides a unique opportunity to gain a very personal insight into the group process, both for therapists and clinicians and for women wishing to better understand their addiction.

Finding Meaning in Later Life: Gathering and Harvesting the Fruits of Women’s Experience is an exploration in understanding the psychological tasks inherent for women in creating and maintaining purpose as they mature and enter their later years. With ever-increasing lifespan for elders, it becomes important for a society that glorifies youth to meet the challenges of this developmental milestone. Many books and articles on post-midlife are written from a biological and behavioral stance—with quantitative data supporting concrete lifestyle recommendations for "successful aging." Using this lens, successful aging is often defined as having good to excellent health, no disabilities in activities of daily living, good cognitive functioning, and living in the community. That "received wisdom" leads to the conundrum that the only path to successful aging is by not aging! This book challenges current thoughts on aging, expanding our perspective such that purpose and meaning in later years derives from inner resources that are not dependent on biological and physical states of being. Its conclusions stem from the direct experience and voices of mature women, obtained through qualitative research. The results of this study shed light on existential theories, bringing them to life with added weight and traction. Ultimately, the ideas explored here unfold as a map to navigate this often-misunderstood stage in life.

Social psychology studies one of civilization's most central concerns: human relationships. By understanding people's beliefs, attitudes, and desires, individuals can fashion relationships that benefit all involved, rather than one person or group at the expense of another. Written with a friendly style and engaging, accessible language, the second edition of the popular textbook Knowing People selects some of the best research in social psychology and shows how it can improve people's lives. This revised and updated edition includes clear descriptions of the latest research and adds a new chapter on leadership and emotion. Not only does Knowing People appeal to individual readers interested in improving their relationships, but it is also valuable as a supplemental text in a wide variety of social science, business, and professional courses—in all areas where successful interaction with other people is important.

Ava, Charlene and Evelyn's story is like a reality show on paper. Any woman that's ever felt like they've been made a fool of by a man that they've slept with will gravitate toward this story and take notes! BITTER tells the story of three women from Boston, Massachusetts that were violated, deceived and beaten down by love and their struggle with restoring trust in their current relationships. Ava, a pharmaceutical sales representative is married to Brian, a good looking, college educated postal worker. His problem is that he is cheap and has a different agenda that Ava is not aware of. This new agenda brings out a side of Ava that she thought was buried in her past. Charlene, a human resources director at an insurance company, is engaged to Derek. Derek is gorgeous, never finished college and only works retail jobs. Charlene and Derek have plans to get married, but one of them is withholding a secret from the other. This secret will either allow room for forgiveness once it is revealed or leave one of them standing alone at the altar. Evelyn is a program director at a non-profit organization. She is dating Fritz, a very sexy man with an exotic look, who works in corporate America. He is giving, patient, and treats her so well that she thinks he's too good to be true. Her last relationship left her with major trust issues. Will Evelyn's paranoia cause her to lose Fritz?

Are social groups real in any sense that is independent of the thoughts, actions, and beliefs of the individuals making up the group? Using methods of philosophy to examine such longstanding sociological questions, Margaret Gilbert gives a general characterization of the core phenomena at issue in the domain of human social life. After developing detailed analyses of a number of central everyday concepts of social phenomena--including shared action, a social convention, a group's belief, and a group itself--she proposes that the core social phenomena among human beings are "plural subject" phenomena. In her analyses Gilbert discusses the work of such thinkers as Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Max Weber, and David Lewis. "Gilbert's book aims to ... exhibit some general and structural features of the conceptual scheme in terms of which we think about social groups, collective action, social convention, and shared belief.... [It] offers an important corrective to individualistic thinking in the social sciences...."--Michael Root, Philosophical Review "In this rich and rewarding work, Margaret Gilbert provides a novel and detailed account of our everyday concepts of social collectivity. In so doing she makes a seminal contribution to ... some vexed issues in the philosophy of social science.... [An] intellectually pioneering work."--John D. Greenwood, Social Epistemology

People will be interested in this book because it offers insight and a different look at the cycle of life and death and why they are never ending. The who, what, where and why are just fill-ins for the curious, but logical questions and answers that we ponder as humans. I hope to take it further by examining the meaning behind the meaning. The possibilities and the consequences of ignoring the very basis of not just life, but the survival of humanity that we are not here by some kind of accident in the cosmos. What happens and transpires when people no longer feel a purpose to life and this feeling causes an insurrection and destruction of one's soul, where not only do they lash out at each other, they eventually despise themselves. This issue is what happens in the absence of God in one's life and how the soul starves while the flesh feasts in misery and selfishness. The absence of purpose which is a greater good (God) causes a systematic breakdown where the tentacles of misery and chaos run wild as one adopts the mentality of every man, women and child. The more selfish people become the less they care about those further and further away from their "personal space" to the point where they do not care about their own country, their own state, community right up to their own backyard. As evil advances the faithless retreat, one grows more and more selfish in the absence of God. Good and evil, right and wrong become meshed together and a vail of gray causes one unable to discern between the two.