My Abandonment

Living with her father in a nature preserve in Portland, Oregon, thirteen-year-old Caroline only merges with the civilized world once a week when they go into the city, but an encounter with a backcountry jogger derails their entire existence.

NOW A MAJOR FILM, LEAVE NO TRACE. Inspired by a true story, a riveting and unsettling novel about a girl and her father who live off the grid, in the shadows at the edge of civilization. Thirteen-year-old Caroline and her father live in Forest Park, an enormous nature preserve in Portland, Oregon. They inhabit an elaborate cave shelter, wash in a nearby creek, store perishables at the water’s edge, use a makeshift septic system, tend a garden, even keep a library of sorts. Once a week they go to the city to buy groceries and otherwise merge with the civilized world. But one small mistake allows a backcountry jogger to discover them, which derails their entire existence, ultimately provoking a deeper flight. Told through the startlingly sincere voice of its young narrator, My Abandonment is a riveting journey into life at the margins and a mesmerizing tale of survival and hope.

Like Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's groundbreaking On Death and Dying, Susan Anderson's book clearly defines the five phases of a different kind of grieving--grieving over a lost relationship. An experienced professional who has specialized in helping people with loss, heartbreak, and abandonment for more than two decades, Susan Anderson gives this subject the serious attention it deserves. The Journey From Abandonment to Healing is designed to help all victims of emotional breakups--whether they are suffering from a recent loss, or a lingering wound from the past; whether they are caught up in patterns that sabotage their own relationships, or they're in a relationship where they no longer feel loved. From the first stunning blow to starting over, it provides a complete program for abandonment recovery.

FINALLY, THE BREAKTHROUGH BOOK THAT PUTS YOU BACK IN CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE Most of us have met our Outer Child once too often. The self-sabotaging, bungling, and impulsive part of the personality. This misguided, hidden nemesis—the devil on your shoulder—blows your diet, overspends, and ruins your love life. A menacing older sibling to your emotionally needy Inner Child, your Outer Child acts out and fulfills your legitimate childlike needs and wants in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in counterproductive ways: It goes for immediate gratification and the quick fix in spite of your best-laid plans. Food, attention, emotional release—your Outer Child usually gets what it wants, and your Adult self can feel powerless to stop it. Now, in a revolutionary rethinking of the link between emotion and behavior, veteran psychotherapist and theoretician Susan Anderson offers a three-step, paradigm-shifting program to tame your Outer Child’s destructive behavior. This dynamic, transformational set of strategies—action steps that act like physical therapy for the brain—calms your Inner Child, strengthens your Adult Self and releases you from the self-blame and shame that are the root of Outer Child issues, and paves new neural pathways that can lead to more productive behavior. Discover • the common Outer Child personality types, including the Drama Queen; the Master of Disguise; My Way or No Way; and Love the Getting, not the Having • proven techniques to resolve underlying sources of self-sabotage • insights that will allow you to stop blaming your supposed “lack of willpower” for your problems • key strategies for healing the painful issues of your past • mental exercises that effectively deal with Outer Child challenges around food, procrastination, love, debt, depression, and more As your head, heart, and behavior come together and learn to help, not hurt, one another, your strong Adult Self, contented Inner child, and tamed Outer child will become a reality. The result is happiness and fulfillment, self-mastery, and self-love. From the Hardcover edition.

A powerful workshop-in-a-book for healing from loss One day everything is fine. The next, you find yourself without everything you took for granted. Love has turned sour. The people you depended on have let you down. You feel you’ll never love again. But there is a way out. In The Abandonment Recovery Workbook, the only book of its kind, psychotherapist and abandonment expert Susan Anderson explores the seemingly endless pain of heartbreak and shows readers how to break free—whether the heartbreak comes from a divorce, a breakup, a death, or the loss of friendship, health, a job, or a dream. From the first shock of despair through the waves of hopelessness to the tentative efforts to make new connections, The Abandonment Recovery Workbook provides an itinerary for recovery. A manual for individuals or support groups, it includes exercises that the author has tested and developed through her decades of expertise in abandonment recovery. Anderson provides concrete recovery tools and exercises to discover and heal underlying issues, identify self-defeating behaviors of mistrust and insecurity, and build self-esteem. Guiding you through the five stages of your journey—shattering, withdrawal, internalizing, rage, and lifting—this book (a new edition of Anderson’s Journey from Heartbreak to Connection) serves as a source of strength. You will come away with a new sense of self—a self with an increased capacity to love. Praise for Susan Anderson’s The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: “If there can be a pill to cure the heartbreak of rejection, this book may be it.” — Rabbi Harold Kushner, bestselling author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People

From the New York Times–bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend, this novel of a deserted wife’s descent into despair—and rage—is “a masterpiece” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). The Days of Abandonment is the gripping story of an Italian woman’s experiences after being suddenly left by her husband after fifteen years of marriage. With two young children to care for, Olga finds it more and more difficult to do the things she used to: keep a spotless house, cook meals with creativity and passion, refrain from using obscenities. After running into her husband with his much-younger new lover in public, she cannot even refrain from assaulting him physically. In a “raging, torrential voice” (The New York Times), Olga conveys her journey from denial to devastating emptiness—and when she finds herself literally trapped within the four walls of their high-rise apartment, she is forced to confront her ghosts, the potential loss of her own identity, and the possibility that life may never return to normal. “Quick, furious, simultaneously steely and unhinged, and completely mesmerizing.” —The New York Times “Intelligent and darkly comic.” —Publishers Weekly “Remarkable, lucid, austerely honest.” —The New Yorker

A charming and heartwarming true story for anyone who has ever longed for a place to belong. “Anne of Green Gables,” My Daughter, and Me is a witty romp through the classic novel; a visit to the magical shores of Prince Edward Island; and a poignant personal tale of love, faith, and loss. And it all started with a simple question: “What’s an orphan?” The words from her adopted daughter, Phoebe, during a bedtime reading of Anne of Green Gables stopped Lorilee Craker in her tracks. How could Lorilee, who grew up not knowing her own birth parents, answer Phoebe’s question when she had wrestled all her life with feeling orphaned—and learned too well that not every story has a happy ending? So Lorilee set off on a quest to find answers in the pages of the very book that started it all, determined to discover—and teach her daughter—what home, family, and belonging really mean. If you loved the poignancy of Orphan Train and the humor of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, you will be captivated by “Anne of Green Gables,” My Daughter, and Me. It’s a beautiful memoir that deftly braids three lost girls’ stories together, speaks straight to the heart of the orphan in us all, and shows us the way home at last.

Everyone thrives on love, comfort, and the safety of family, friends, and community. But if you are denied these basic comforts early in life, whether through a lack of physical affection or emotional bonding, you may develop intense fears of abandonment that can last well into adulthood—fears so powerful that they can actually cause you to push people away. If you suffer from fears of abandonment, you may have underlying feelings of anger, shame, fear, anxiety, depression, and grief. These emotions are intense and painful, and when they surface they can lead to a number of negative behaviors, such as jealousy, clinging, and emotional blackmail. In Love Me, Don’t Leave Me, therapist Michelle Skeen combines acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), schema therapy, and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) to help you identify the root of your fears. In this book you’ll learn how schema coping behaviors—deeply entrenched and automatic behaviors rooted in childhood experiences and fears—can take over and cause you to inadvertently sabotage your relationships. By recognizing these coping behaviors and understanding their cause, you will not only gain powerful insights into your own mind, but also into the minds of those around you. If you are ready to break the self-fulfilling cycle of mistrust, clinginess, and heartbreak and start building lasting, trusting relationships, this book will be your guide.

God is to be found in the simplest of our daily activities and especially through total surrender to whatever is His will for each of us. That is the message of this 18th-century inspirational classic by Jean-Pierre de Caussade. Its encouragement to ""live in the present moment,"" accepting everyday obstacles with faith, humility and love, has guided generations of believers to holiness and spiritual peace. This special volume of the famous spiritual treatise also includes the many insightful letters of Father de Caussade on the practice of self-abandonment. These numerous letters provide a great additional source of wisdom and practical guidance for how to grow in abandonment and to deepen our union with God in our daily lives. De Caussade shows that this practice of self-abandonment to God's will is the key to attaining true peace and virtue, and that it is readily available to all people - from beginners to those well advanced in the spiritual life. He also shows how to determine what God's will is for us. He reveals that it is not extraordinary feats that God expects for our growth in holiness, but rather heroic attention to every detail in our lives and humble acceptance of our daily lot in life as coming from His hand. The rich spiritual lessons in this book have stood the test of time, offering real and practical assistance to all people because its message is simple and clear, one that the reader will find to be a rare treasure of inspiration and direction to be referred to again and again.

A beautiful, lyrical exploration of the places where nature is flourishing in our absence "[Flyn] captures the dread, sadness, and wonder of beholding the results of humanity's destructive impulse, and she arrives at a new appreciation of life, 'all the stranger and more valuable for its resilence.'" --The New Yorker Some of the only truly feral cattle in the world wander a long-abandoned island off the northernmost tip of Scotland. A variety of wildlife not seen in many lifetimes has rebounded on the irradiated grounds of Chernobyl. A lush forest supports thousands of species that are extinct or endangered everywhere else on earth in the Korean peninsula's narrow DMZ. Cal Flyn, an investigative journalist, exceptional nature writer, and promising new literary voice visits the eeriest and most desolate places on Earth that due to war, disaster, disease, or economic decay, have been abandoned by humans. What she finds every time is an "island" of teeming new life: nature has rushed in to fill the void faster and more thoroughly than even the most hopeful projections of scientists. Islands of Abandonment is a tour through these new ecosystems, in all their glory, as sites of unexpected environmental significance, where the natural world has reasserted its wild power and promise. And while it doesn't let us off the hook for addressing environmental degradation and climate change, it is a case that hope is far from lost, and it is ultimately a story of redemption: the most polluted spots on Earth can be rehabilitated through ecological processes and, in fact, they already are.