Willow, a 23 year-old artist, has secluded herself for so long for the sake of keeping her art true to who she is. A bad relationship with her mother, and being turned away by friends while in high school, has caused Willow to do the unthinkable and she turns to a knife for the only comfort she knows. Being a cutter for almost half her life, Willow doesn't know any other way to deal with her emotions. Although she is a successful artist, she still feels a sense of emptiness and loathing inside. She knows that she needs to learn to love herself again, but she doesn't even know where to begin...
With all odds against him, sixteen-year old Simon struggles with the loss of his alcoholic mother, which leaves him fending for himself. Later that day he finds out that his best friend is a victim of sexual abuse and witnesses this horrible act when visiting her home. Simon finds himself an orphan who turns to self-mutilation, violently lashing out against the evils of the world. This novel is based on one boy's true-life tragedies and has given him the passion to be the voice for the forgotten children of the world.
In this run-of-the-mill police procedural from bestseller Kellerman, his 23rd novel to feature L.A. consulting psychologist Alex Delaware (after Compulsion), high school miscreant Chance Brandt has been assigned to perform community service at the Bird Marsh, a nature sanctuary near Marina del Rey. After Chance dismisses as a prank an anonymous phone call warning him that there's a corpse buried in the marsh, Lt. Milo Sturgis, now Special Case Investigator for the LAPD, and Sturgis's team find four bodies there, all women missing their right hand. When Sturgis identifies one of the victims as Selena Bass, who worked as a piano teacher for the wealthy Vander family, the police focus on Travis Huck, the manager of the Vanders' Pacific Palisades estate, as the prime suspect because Travis has a criminal past. Kellerman fans wanting more of the same should be satisfied, though Sturgis gets less benefit from Delaware's psychological expertise than usual.
Cat's Eye is the story of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter, a lover, an artist, and a woman--but above all she must seek release from her haunting memories. Disturbing, hilarious, and compassionate, Cat's Eye is a breathtaking novel of a woman grappling with the tangled knot of her life.
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It's not a large aspect of the novel but there's a scene where it's revealed that Elaine self-injures to deal with the suffering caused by Cordelia.
Cutting Out the Pain: A Guide to Teen Depression is a collection of poetry based on the author’s own bout with the disease as well as self-mutilation. The purpose of the publication is to educate people about the disorder and relate to those who already have it. It is a blend of sadness, hope, depression and reason. Through these firsthand words, the reader will see what it is like to feel pleasure through pain, relief through blood. Thousands of teens all over the world suffer from this disorder. Now you can read why and how.
Simone, a popular but troubled high school teacher, is very adept at hiding her emotional turmoil, until it lands her in an inner-city outpatient psychiatric hospital where hers is the only white face. She inadvertently alienates Satch, a fullback of a woman who relentlessly taunts her for her denial and cheerful demeanor. In the weeks that follow, Simone and Satch are thrown together both inside and outside the hospital. Their surprising and often tumultuous friendship becomes essential to both women's quests to uncover the hidden truths of their pasts that propel them toward self-destruction. Alternately heart-wrenching and funny, Edgewise is a timely story of love, abuse, and the hope of redemption. Wally Lamb says, “Edgewise is a harrowing story of injury and feeling, despair and hope. Vivid and unflinching in the telling, Stites' novel is courageous, heartfelt and unforgettable.”
Some widows face their loss with denial. Sophie Stanton's reaction is one of pure bafflement. "How can I be a widow?" Sophie asks at the opening of Lolly Winston's sweet debut novel, Good Grief. "I'm only thirty-six. I just got used to the idea of being married." Sophie's young widowhood forces her to do all kinds of crazy things--drive her car through her garage door, for instance. That's on one of the rare occasions when she bothers to get out of bed. The Christmas season especially terrifies her: "I must write a memo to the Minister of Happier Days requesting that the holidays be cancelled this year." But widowhood also forces her to do something very sane. After the death of her computer programmer husband, she reexamines her life as a public relations agent in money-obsessed Silicon Valley. Sophie decides to ease her grief, or at least her loneliness, by moving in with her best friend Ruth in Ashland, Oregon. But it's her difficult relationship with psycho teen punker Crystal, to whom she becomes a Big Sister, that mysteriously brings her at least a few steps out of her grief. Read more »
Perennial bestseller Picoult (Change of Heart) delivers another engrossing family drama, spiced with her trademark blend of medicine, law and love. Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe's daughter, Willow, was born with brittle bone disease, a condition that requires Charlotte to act as full-time caregiver and has strained their emotional and financial limits. Willow's teenaged half-sister, Amelia, suffers as well, overshadowed by Willow's needs and lost in her own adolescent turmoil. When Charlotte decides to sue for wrongful birth in order to obtain a settlement to ensure Willow's future, the already strained family begins to implode. Not only is the defendant Charlotte's longtime friend, but the case requires Charlotte and Sean to claim that had they known of Willow's condition, they would have terminated the pregnancy, a statement that strikes at the core of their faith and family. Picoult individualizes the alternating voices of the narrators more believably than she has previously, and weaves in subplots to underscore the themes of hope, regret, identity and family, leading up to her signature closing twists.
My name is Gabrielle and I am twenty-eight years old. I began to self-injure at age fifteen -- so nearly thirteen years -- minus a two year period. This website was made to let self-injurers know that they are not alone and to help their friends and family learn more about self-injury and how it affects their loved one.
