Always Too Soon

While the death of a parent is always painful, losing both is life-altering. When author Allison Gilbert lost both parents at age 32, she could not find any books that spoke to her with the same level of compassion and reassurance that she found in the support group she belonged to, so she decided to write one of her own. The result is a sensitive and candid portrayal of loss that brings together experiences from famous and ordinary grief-stricken sons and daughters that explores the regrets, heartache and sometimes, relief, that accompanies pain and healing. Always Too Soon provides a range of intimate conversations with those, famous and not, who have lost both parents, providing readers with a source of comfort and inspiration as they learn to negotiate their new place in the world. Contributors include Hope Edelman, Geraldine Ferraro, Dennis Franz, Barbara Ehrenreich, Yogi Berra, Rosanne Cash, and Ice-T, as well as those who lost parents to the Oklahoma City bombing, the World Trade Center bombings, drunk driving, and more.

Does fear of failure keep you from exploring new ventures? Are convinced that success comes easily to other people, but always eludes you? Has adversity driven you to the point of giving up? Then you need to know that It s always too soon to quit!. Through observation and experience, Lewis Timberlake has discovered the dynamics of prevailing over failure. This book offers six steps to stand on when you are overwhelmed by difficulties and reveals the secrets of conquering defeatist attitude.

The beloved bestselling collection of common sense wisdom from a celebrated psychologist and military veteran who proves it's never too late to move beyond the deepest of personal losses After service in Vietnam, as a surgeon for the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in 1968-69, at the height of the war, Dr. Gordon Livingston returned to the U.S. and began work as a psychiatrist. In that capacity, he has listened to people talk about their lives--what works, what doesn't, and the limitless ways (many of them self-inflicted) that people find to be unhappy. He is also a parent twice bereaved; in one thirteen-month period he lost his eldest son to suicide, his youngest to leukemia. Out of a lifetime of experience, Gordon Livingston has extracted thirty bedrock truths, including: We are what we do. Any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Only bad things happen quickly. Forgiveness is a form of letting go, but they are not the same thing. The statute of limitations has expired on most of our childhood traumas. Livingston illuminates these and twenty-four other truths in a series of carefully hewn, perfectly calibrated essays, many of which focus on our closest relationships and the things that we do to impede or, less frequently, enhance them. Again and again, these essays underscore that "we are what we do," and that while there may be no escaping who we are, we have the capacity to face loss, misfortune, and regret and to move beyond them--that it is not too late. Full of things we may know but have not articulated to ourselves, Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart offers solace, guidance, and hope to everyone ready to become the person they'd most like to be.

“[Art Buchwald] has given his friends, their families, and his audiences so many laughs and so much joy through the years that that alone would be an enduring legacy. But Art has never been just about the quick laugh. His humor is a road map to essential truths and insights that might otherwise have eluded us.”—Tom Brokaw When doctors told Art Buchwald that his kidneys were kaput, the renowned humorist declined dialysis and checked into a Washington, D.C., hospice to live out his final days. Months later, “The Man Who Wouldn’t Die” was still there, feeling good, holding court in a nonstop “salon” for his family and dozens of famous friends, and confronting things you usually don’t talk about before you die; he even jokes about them. Here Buchwald shares not only his remarkable experience—as dozens of old pals from Ethel Kennedy to John Glenn to the Queen of Swaziland join the party—but also his whole wonderful life: his first love, an early brush with death in a foxhole on Eniwetok Atoll, his fourteen champagne years in Paris, fame as a columnist syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, and his incarnation as hospice superstar. Buchwald also shares his sorrows: coping with an absent mother, childhood in a foster home, and separation from his wife, Ann. He plans his funeral (with a priest, a rabbi, and Billy Graham, to cover all the bases) and strategizes how to land a big obituary in The New York Times (“Make sure no head of state or Nobel Prize winner dies on the same day”). He describes how he and a few of his famous friends finagled cut-rate burial plots on Martha’s Vineyard and how he acquired a Picasso drawing without really trying. What we have here is a national treasure, the complete Buchwald, uncertain of where the next days or weeks may take him but unfazed by the inevitable, living life to the fullest, with frankness, dignity, and humor.

Too High, Too Far, Too Soon is the humorous, tragic and searingly honest memoir of a man who survived childhood tragedy, Catholic boarding school and chronic drug addiction. Simon Mason graphically details his experience of teenage angst in a tatty seaside town before he ran away to London and then onwards to the crack-infested streets of LA. He recounts his numerous decadent adventures at Glastonbury Festival and the notoriety that came during his stint as personal chemist to the biggest bands of the '90s, before he himself descended into a helpless period of heroin addiction. After several incidents of petty crime stemming from his drug problem, Simon launched numerous failed attempts to become a bona fide rock 'n' roll star and even more failed attempts to get clean, finally being ‘rescued’ by Banksy from a stolen camper van, covered in blood in the Spanish countryside. Too High, Too Far, Too Soon is a rock 'n' roll memoir with a difference, written by a man who lived the life and attained the drug habits of the most extreme rock stars, yet whose attempts to break through to the big time always eluded him.

This illustrated book describes how to forgive in a healthy way by moving through the five stages of forgiveness. This is a forgiveness that renounces vengeance and retaliation, but does not passively acquiesce to abuse in any form.

Jim Talley and Bobbie Reed outline simple yet effective methods of building quality relationships while curtailing premature intimacy in this plain-spoken and experience-tested manual. A study guide at the end of the book features discussion questions and creative assignments for each chapter. Previous edition: 0840730454

Book 2 in the Anaya's World series. Things are looking up for Anaya Goode after the deaths of her brother and mother. She is the youngest (and highest paid) executive in Alameda County. She is in an adoring relationship with the love of her life, her natural twists are on point, and she runs a six-minute mile. What else matters? When Anaya is tasked with leading negotiations for the most significant development agreement in County history, her world unravels. If the antics of inept officials and her micromanaging boss aren't enough to drive Anaya mad, she discovers that her ex-boyfriend Jeff is commissioned as a consultant on the development agreement. Anaya hasn't had contact with Jeff since their messy break-up six years ago. As negotiations for the development agreement intensify, an internal scandal threatens Anaya's reputation---and her job. Amid bureaucratic indecision and public outrage, Anaya leans on Jeff for support, and unresolved feelings resurface. As Anaya questions her steady relationship, her extended family's perception of her as Goode matriarch puts her in the middle of every aunt's and cousin's problem. She is tired of serving as supplemental income to her scripture-quoting, ever-pregnant sister, and would love to burn the imaginary pedestal her family has perched her on. Can she see her work and family commitments through and still maintain her love life---and more importantly, her sense of self? Ripe with witty dialogue and relatable characters, "Never Too Soon" offers a look into complicated relationships and haunting pasts, and shows the importance of the familial ties that bind.

Jeff is heading to college on a debating scholarship. Until his girlfriend tells him she is pregnant. He can't debate his way out of this dilemma.

Recollections of the daughter of John Barrymore and Blanche Oelrichs Thomas.