Under the guidance of the spirit Leon Denis, the spirit author Camilo Castelo Branco, using the pen name Camilo Cândido Botelho, describes to the médium Yvonne A. Pereira, his dreadful experience after having discarnated by committing suicide. The book entails invaluable instruction, demonstrating the greatness of the Divine Mercy toward repentant suicides and providing them with the opportunity to understand the universe and life in its fullest dimension. The beginnings of planet Earth, the evolution of the human being, the immortality of the soul, Christian morality, and other relevant themes are presented for the understanding that “… no attempt at moral growth will work if we remain imprisoned in self-ignorance.” A complete reading of this work shows that there is a road of reconstruction for those who repent. There is always hope because rehabilitation is possible.

At twenty-years-old, Craig Miller attempted suicide. He sat on the edge of a bed and swallowed two hundred and fifty pills, never imagining that a note he wrote to himself fourteen years earlier would save his life. That note simply read, "Don't ever forget how this feels." From the time he was six-years-old, Craig lived his life by those words. He believed that if he needed to remember the feelings behind his life's most significant events, then there must be a reason why they happened. And for three extraordinary days following his suicide attempt, as he lay in the Intensive Care Unit floating in and out of consciousness, he found those reasons. He relived days from his childhood when his only friend became his assailant. He relived years of building a troubled relationship with God. He remembered when the pain of his life's tragedies finally caught up to him and he became the victim of severe obsessive compulsive disorder, relentless anxiety, and devastating irrational fear. After each memory, he awoke to the blurred reality of his suicide attempt. The struggle to fight his childhood assailant became a battle with doctors who worked to restrain him. The pain from a fist to his nose became the sting of a tube as it was pushed down his throat. And the memory of freezing alone on a cold winter night became the reality of a dark, lonely hospital room. But after each memory ended, Craig was left with the feeling that remained from reliving it. He felt the imprint it left within him- the deep desire to love, the desperate need to change, and the fiery will to fight. Craig Miller lay in a hospital bed for three days while his body fought for life, but his soul stood undecided on the threshold of existence. He relived the most pivotal moments of his life and saw himself from an entirely new perspective. He learned that God does not punish, and that love, no matter how bad it hurts, is worth it. He learned that compassion is to see the hurt in the eyes of another, no matter how bad we hurt ourselves. He learned that living in the darkness of mental illness can be one of the most powerful paths to self-discovery. And he learned that life, no matter how hard it gets, is worth living.

“It is so nice to be happy. It always gives me a good feeling to see other people happy. . . . It is so easy to achieve.” —Kim’s journal entry, May 3, 1988 On the night of April 15, 1990, Jill Bialosky’s twenty-one-year-old sister Kim came home from a bar in downtown Cleveland. She argued with her boyfriend on the phone. Then she took her mother’s car keys, went into the garage, closed the garage door. She climbed into the car, turned on the ignition, and fell asleep. Her body was found the next morning by the neighborhood boy her mother hired to cut the grass. Those are the simple facts, but the act of suicide is anything but simple. For twenty years, Bialosky has lived with the grief, guilt, questions, and confusion unleashed by Kim’s suicide. Now, in a remarkable work of literary nonfiction, she re-creates with unsparing honesty her sister’s inner life, the events and emotions that led her to take her life on this particular night. In doing so, she opens a window on the nature of suicide itself, our own reactions and responses to it—especially the impact a suicide has on those who remain behind. Combining Kim’s diaries with family history and memoir, drawing on the works of doctors and psychologists as well as writers from Melville and Dickinson to Sylvia Plath and Wallace Stevens, Bialosky gives us a stunning exploration of human fragility and strength. She juxtaposes the story of Kim’s death with the challenges of becoming a mother and her own exuberant experience of raising a son. This is a book that explores all aspects of our familial relationships—between mothers and sons, fathers and daughters—but particularly the tender and enduring bonds between sisters. History of a Suicide brings a crucial and all too rarely discussed subject out of the shadows, and in doing so gives readers the courage to face their own losses, no matter what those may be. This searing and compassionate work reminds us of the preciousness of life and of the ways in which those we love are inextricably bound to us.

After a series of tragic events in Jay's life, she found the courage to trace back to the events that led to such despair. Abuse, lies, addiction, mental illness, and insecurities all played a significant part in her life's journey. After enduring overwhelming trials, she felt hopeless, as if her life was over. Gripped with despair, she decided to give up. Faced with death multiple times, she asked herself a question, "Why didn't I die?" She answered, "I didn't die because my life would give birth to "Her.'" "Her" is a little black girl, brown girl, white girl, yellow, girl. "Her" is a poor girl, rich girl and a multi-talented girl. "Her" is a woman, a Christian, a pastor's wife, a leader's wife, a member of an influential family. "Her" is a preacher, singer, public figure, a fashionista, classy woman, an educated woman, a mother, daughter, and friend. "Her" is You, "Her" is Me. This book was designed to help you unlock, birth, heal, and deliver your own "Her," and it is the author's prayer and belief that it will do just that!

When Robert Imbeault began writing this book, he did so with the intention of ending his life once the book was finished. Robert was in the midst of a five-year suicidal drug and alcohol binge that began after the sudden resurfacing of a buried memory from when he was eight years old. Robert turned to writing, determined to chronicle his life befor.

The first book-length study of the psychoanalytic memoir, this book examines key examples of the genre, including Sigmund Freud's mistitled An Autobiographical Study, Helene Deutsch's Confrontations with Myself: An Epilogue, Wilfred Bion's War Memoirs 1917-1919, Masud Khan's The Long Wait, Sophie Freud's Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family, and Irvin D. Yalom and Marilyn Yalom's A Matter of Death and Life. Offering in each chapter a brief character sketch of the memoirist, the book shows how personal writing fits into their other work, often demonstrating the continuities and discontinuities in an author's life as well as discussing each author's contributions to psychoanalysis, whether positive or negative.

A complete collection of Robert Lowell’s autobiographical prose, from unpublished writings about his youth to reflections on the triumphs and confusions of his adult life. Robert Lowell's Memoirs is an unprecedented literary discovery: the manuscript of Lowell’s lyrical evocation of his childhood, which was written in the 1950s and has remained unpublished until now. Meticulously edited by Steven Gould Axelrod and Grzegorz Kosc, it serves as a precursor or companion to his groundbreaking book of poems Life Studies, which signaled a radically new prose-inflected direction in his work, and indeed in American poetry. Memoirs also includes intense depictions of Lowell’s mental illness and his determined efforts to recover. It concludes with Lowell’s reminiscences of other writers, among them T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Hannah Arendt, and Sylvia Plath. Memoirs demonstrates Lowell’s expansive gifts as a prose stylist and his powers of introspection and observation. It provides striking new evidence of the range and brilliance of Lowell’s achievement. Includes black-and-white photographs