In 1968, as Sue Skilton Orrell left her hometown, DeLand, Florida, she felt that the turmoil in her personal life was as chaotic as the widespread social and political unrest reported in the national news headlines. Despite the history that made her opt to stay away for over 54 years, she completed her formal education, built a successful career in Music Education, and dated every time she was single. Catastrophic weather events that impacted Houston and the onset of night driving limitation led Sue to consider returning to DeLand, the hometown she had never stopped missing. With resolute courage reinforced by numerous friends, family members, and strangers, she faced every decision and challenge to sell her house in Houston, buy another house in DeLand, and make the move within three months after first seriously considering the possibility of reclaiming the bucolic charm of DeLand, home of Stetson University, her undergraduate alma mater. This collection of short stories and journal entries covers the topics of Travel, Teaching, and Dating in Part One. Part Two addresses Weather, Real Estate, and Release. Sue links the topics by reflecting upon their effects on her personal growth, which enabled her ultimately to follow the path home and to be at peace not only within herself, but also in her hometown. For example, rather than writing a typical travelogue that stresses the geographical or cultural aspects of an area, she explored the dynamics of personal relationships and accidental adventures that occurred during some of her trips.

From the celebrated poet, speaker, and educator comes Welcome Home, a powerful blueprint for building a strong foundation of self-worth, belonging, and happiness. “A master class in self-actualization and compassion.”—Mari Andrew, New York Times bestselling author of Am I There Yet? The powerful metaphor of home provides a structure for you to customize your journey to personal transformation as Najwa Zebian shares her own experiences in building a home within herself, and shows you how to construct the following “rooms”: • Self-Love: Learn how to build an individualized self-care routine to reflect your daily needs. • Forgiveness: Learn how to allow yourself time, reflection, and space to accept and let go of painful events. • Compassion: Discover the three different types of compassion and learn how you can let people in while maintaining boundaries. • Clarity: Learn how to remove the walls you put up around your authentic self. • Surrender: Learn how to lower your defenses and give yourself space to feel and process your emotions. • The Dream Garden: Learn how to nurture your dreams and create an authentic, original path. With practical tools, poetry, and prompts for journaling and meditation to lead to self-understanding in each chapter, Zebian shows you how to build each room in your house. Written with her trademark power, candor, and warmth, Welcome Home is an answer to the pain we all experience when we don't feel at peace with ourselves.

Sydney's fluid prose lures you into 19182 Penobscot Road, a house of horror like no other, as his narrator Chris--a character who compels and repels at once, both knowing and unknowable--probes its many dark corners for answers and salvation. Welcome Home is authentic, engrossing, disturbing, challenging, and brilliant. I've been in jealous awe since I finished reading it. -- Joseph Miller, Screenwriter and Author

A unique anthology featuring adoption-themed fictional short stories from a diverse range of celebrated Young Adult authors. The all-star roster includes Mindy McGinnis, Adi Alsaid, Lauren Gibaldi, and many more.

Finding out at the age of fifty that her dad was not her biological father and feeling that her whole life was a lie, Cheryl started out on a journey to find out the truth of where she came from and who her biological father was. With very little information to go on, she was determined to find the truth. Her journey started out trying to find her biological father, but what she found along the way was beyond what she could have imagined. She was discovering that her digging into

“Leaving, according to the familiar political narrative, was a sign that someone was giving up on their country or wasn’t proud of his or her identity. Those who decided to emigrate were pigeonholed as dissidents. This stereotype was not only inaccurate, but made us one-dimensional in our apparent single-mindedness to leave behind a country we supposedly felt was no longer good enough.” Migration is a sensitive topic, especially for over one million Malaysians who choose to venture abroad. The act of leaving their own lives behind is fraught with challenges, ranging from loneliness to the elusive search for a better quality of life. But at the heart of their actions is the fact that their lives and identities are never going to be the same. In veteran journalist Julia Yeow’s book, her departure for Australia becomes a series of lessons about the personal and political aspects of leaving. Deeply personal and fiercely observant, Welcome Home is a book for an age of intolerance and new boundaries.