Mind-altering drugs shackle her father to dementia. As if it were a holding pen for rotting trash, authorities in the nursing home system dispensed him to that dark cell.

For the second time in their lives, Judy desperately searches for the answer to free her father. While growing up in an alcoholic environment, she struggled to find what drove him to drink. She was sure if she found it she could cure her father of alcoholism and make everyone happy.

Judy finds the liberating key to his present imprisonment, but she cannot turn the lock until she revisits and reveals the shameful secret carefully and faithfully guarded for decades. While doing so, she confronts her fears and emotional wounds carved within a dysfunctional family. That is not enough, though, to rescue him, for the two are now ensnared by an unfamiliar adversary nursing home neglect and abuse that Judy must battle every day for her defenseless father.

Through it all she longs for him to believe he is and always was important, worthy, loved. Are you a child of an alcoholic? a caregiver of the elderly? a seeker of love s passages? This heart-gripping story shares pain and victory.

""Before the Door Closes" is very well written and revealing of the pains and triumphs of Judith Hall Simon's journey with an alcoholic father. While reading this book I felt that I was reading the journey of only one person not two. Judith reveals just how overwhelming an alcoholic father can be and how one's identity can be taken over by an alcoholic parent. Her book teaches and touches at the same time. I recommend it to the millions of adult children of alcoholics and to those who love them. Nice work "

ROBERT J. ACKERMAN, Ph.D., author of "Perfect Daughters" and a co-founder of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics

There are not many books that candidly tackles issues of identity, relationships, personal growth, leadership and many other topics that people shy away from discussing, as much as this book, I Wish I Knew. In this book, Portia Mathimbi shares about the principles that she discovered can help you deal with every day challenges and situations people dare not to discuss and yet they are critical in assisting you and me becoming the best we were destined to be.

The book contains a collection of topics that are considered taboos, and yet they are seemingly part of most people's everyday struggles.

Through reflections of her own life struggles, the author takes you on a journey of how to break free from unnecessary made-made self-inhibiting beliefs of life and will help bring you to an understanding of how to live above perceived limitations. The book will also help you have free, open and truthful conversations about your interests, dreams, plans, goals, fears, failures and struggles.

"I never imagined that the wind would blow me here, to a kind of isolation I have never experienced... There is never anything out here but my shadow, that no one treads on any more"

When Jade's partner leaves the barn that they moved into just weeks before, he leaves a dent in the wall and her life unravelled. Numbed from years in a destructive, abusive relationship, she faces an uncertain future and complete solitude. Slowly, with the help of Devon's salted cliffs and damp forested footpaths, Jade comes back to life and discovers the power of being alone.

As Jade reacclimatizes, she considers what it means to live alone. Through conversations with other hermits across the world, Fitton sheds light on the myriad - and often misunderstood - ways of living alone: from monks to hikikomori, and the largely ignored female hermit. Jade questions whether hermitic living is possible in an era of constant communication and increased housing costs as she finds herself financially unstable and itinerant. She realises that home doesn't exist within walls, but within the landscape of her childhood home county.

Lyrically written, this is an inspirational story of recovery, of finding home, and of celebrating solitude in the natural world.