Showing titles in People with Disabilities

It all started out pretty normal: Paige lived in the countryside with her parents and brother Graham. She went to school, hung out with friends, and all the while everything seemed so much harder than it needed to be. A break in routine threw off the whole day. If her teacher couldn't answer 'why?' in class, she dissolved into tears, unable to articulate her own confusion or explain her lack of control. But Paige was normal. She was popular and well-liked. And until she had a full mental breakdown, no one believed her when she claimed that she was not okay.

This powerful, honest, hilarious and furious memoir from journalist and advocate Lucy Webster looks at life at the intersection; the struggles, the joys and the unseen realities of being a disabled woman. From navigating the worlds of education and work, dating and friendship; to managing care; contemplating motherhood; and learning to accept your body against a pervasive narrative that it is somehow broken and in need of fixing, The View From Down Here shines a light on what it really means to move through the world as a disabled woman.

On Good Friday 2010, Melanie Reid fell from her horse, breaking her neck and fracturing her lower back. She was 52. Paralysed from the top of her chest down, she was to spend almost a full year in hospital, determinedly working towards gaining as much movement in her limbs as possible and learning to navigate her way through a world that had previously been invisible to her.

This intimate memoir reveals the woman inside one of autism’s most prominent figures, Jennifer O'Toole. At the age of 35, Jennifer was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, and for the first time in her life, things made sense. Now, she exposes the constant struggle between carefully crafted persona and authentic existence, editing the autism script with wit, candor, passion, and power. Her journey is one of reverse-self-discovery not only as an Aspie but - more importantly - as a thoroughly modern woman.

Amit Patel is working as a trauma doctor when a rare condition causes him to lose his sight within 36 hours. Totally dependent on others and terrified of stepping outside with a white cane after he's assaulted, he hits rock bottom. He refuses to leave home on his own for three months. With the support of his wife, Seema, he slowly adapts to his new situation, but how could life ever be the way it was? Then his guide dog, Kika, comes along....

A short, inspirational audiobook from Henry Fraser, a young quadriplegic motivational speaker and artist. Henry Fraser was a 17-year-old sports enthusiast and senior prefect when he broke his spinal cord and was left paralysed from the shoulders down. Life as he knew it was over, and yet, through extraordinary determination and a positive attitude, he has forged a successful career as an inspirational speaker and an artist.

After years of unexplained health problems, Polly Atkin's perception of her body was rendered fluid and disjointed. When she was finally diagnosed with two chronic conditions in her thirties, she began to piece together what had been happening to her - all the misdiagnoses, the fractures, the dislocations, the bone-crushing exhaustion, the not being believed. Some of Us Just Fall combines memoir, pathography and nature writing to trace a fascinating journey through illness, a journey which led Polly to her current home in the Lake District.

In The Anti-Ableist Manifesto, founder of Diversability and creator of the viral TikTok Anti-Ableism series Tiffany Yu takes listeners on a revelatory examination of disability. Yu celebrates the power of stories and lived experiences to foster the proximity, intimacy, and humanity of disability identities that have too often been 'othered' and rendered invisible

Martin Hibbert was left paralysed from the waist down by the Manchester Arena bombing which killed twenty-two people on 22 May 2017. Martin’s teenage daughter Eve was one of the 940 injured, in Eve’s case, gravely. The dad from Bolton has since become a leading campaigner both for victims of the atrocity and those with spinal cord injuries. Determined to make a difference he took on the ultimate challenge, scaling Kilimanjaro in a wheelchair, becoming the second paraplegic to do so, and raising a million pounds for charity.

Nicolas Hamilton has been exceeding expectations since day one. Born with a form of cerebral palsy, Nicolas was told that he would never walk and would need a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Today he not only walks everywhere but he is the first disabled athlete to ever compete at the top level of British motorsport, The British Touring Car Championship, where he lines up on the grid alongside some of the world's best drivers. Now That I Have Your Attention follows Nicolas's remarkable journey and shares the valuable, tough, and often surprising lessons learned throughout his life.

One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent - but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people.

Sixteen-year-old Alex Noble was a high school rugby star with a promising sporting career ahead of him when an on-field injury left him fighting for his life in the ICU. Following a four-day coma and a diagnosis of C4 quadriplegia, Alex’s first words to his brother Zac were, ‘If I fight, you fight.’ These words became a war cry as Alex’s friends, family and community rallied around him, watching in awe as he fought to regain control over his body and defy his diagnosis.

What do you do when you wake up in your mid-40s and realize you've been living a lie your whole life? Do you tell? Or do you keep it to yourself? Laura James found out that she was autistic as an adult, after she had forged a career for herself, married twice and raised four children. Odd Girl Out tracks the year of Laura's life after she receives a definitive diagnosis from her doctor, as she learns that 'different' doesn't need to mean 'less' and how there is a place for all of us, and it's never too late to find it.

In The Future Is Disabled, Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks some provocative questions: What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled—and what if that's not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it's possible to survive fascism, climate change, and pandemics and to bring about liberation?

Theirs was an unlikely life together. Sheila gave birth to Josephine on 11th May 1993 and for twenty-three years they co-existed in a loving mother-daughter relationship, but one with a difference. Josephine suffered catastrophic brain injury at birth, never spoke to Sheila, rarely smiled and was barely able to see the faces of the people who loved her.

Diagnosed with pathological demand avoidance (PDA) in his teenage years, Harry Thompson looks back with wit and humour at the ups and downs of family and romantic relationships, school, work and mental health, as well as his teenage struggle with drugs and alcohol. By embracing neurodiversity and emphasising that autistic people are not flawed human beings, Thompson demonstrates that some merely need to take the 'scenic route' in order to flourish and reach their full potential.

At the age of sixty, and having lived with Parkinson’s disease for over ten years, Guy Deacon CBE set out on one last adventure: to drive solo from his home in the UK 18,000 miles and through twenty-five countries to Cape Town on the southern tip of Africa. This incredible journey, across Europe and down the full length of Africa, took the former British Army officer over twelve months. Along the way, he broke down five times, underwent one emergency evacuation, and took 3,650 prescription pills.

In this honest and open account of life with her PDA daughter, Sasha, Steph Curtis reveals the everyday struggles and explores the milestones of raising a child diagnosed with Pathological Demand Avoidance. This book guides you through the Curtis family's 'lightbulb moment' of recognising Sasha's PDA profile following her autism diagnosis at the age of two, their experiences of various education settings and attempts to access support, everyday life at home and relationships with family and friends.

"La situazione di Cesare è molto grave. È giusto che te lo dica. Fate tutto quello che potete con lui, non rimandate." La storia di Valentina, Federico, Ale, Terry e Cece si è interrotta qui, tra le mura di un ospedale e la paura di non avere più tempo. Loro, però, si erano Fatti una promessa: anche nei momenti più bui, tra le ombre, avrebbero cercato la felicità. Così, tra feste di compleanno e gite in canoa, la loro storia continua, e con l’estate ormai alle porte il loro viaggio diventa molto di più.

Katherine and Jay Wolf were a young couple living the dream in Southern California, but all was nearly lost when Katherine suffered a shocking near-fatal brainstem stroke and struggled to find hope in a life that looked nothing like the one they had before.