My Lion Cub

Elena Pirin My Lion Cub The Adventure of Raising a Child with a Handicap Leo is a wonderful little person. He does just fine, just not at the pace that development tests and school plans expect. When Elena Pirin and her husband adopted a baby, they didn't realize their child was developmentally...

The Great Departure

Sabine Mehne The Great Departure How I Lost the Fear of Death Through my near-death Experience Dying doesn't have to be a deadly serious thing. After Sabine Mehne had a near-death experience during her battle with cancer, the thought of death no longer makes her worry. On the contrary, she now...

The Street Collector

Peter Schmidt The Street Collector The Incredible Adventures of an Autistic World Traveler Travel is by nature unpredictable. And autistic people hate unpredictability. That makes it all the more surprising that Peter Schmidt, diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, wants to collect all the roads of...

Utterly Alone

Ann Helena Neudek Utterly Alone The Scars of my Childhood and How I Found my Way in Life »The beating had stopped. I cowered in the small tub. My mother sat in front of me and cried as she massaged her swollen hands.« For years, Ann Helena Neudek was beaten and humiliated by her parents. From the...

Zoe Means Life

Zoe Katharina Zoe Means Life I Risked 20 Years of Prison for Rescuing Hundreds of People at Sea - And Would Do It Again After passing her university-entrance exam and during her training as a boat builder, the 20-year-old Zoe joined the German Jugend rettet (Youth Rescues) organisation to save the...

Out of the Ordinary

Peter Schmidt Out of the Ordinary Practical Autism Information by Someone Who Knows About It There are many prejudices about autistic people, as conveyed by films like “Rain Man” that still shape the prevailing view of them to this day. But what is autism really and how can we better understand the...

Let’s Be Honest

Christina Hecke Let´s Be Honest My Glimpse Behind Our Lives The actress Christina Hecke impresses with her sensitive, caring and simultaneously intensive approach, which she also teaches by means of the Hecke Method: Truth in Acting. The background of this attitude is the conviction that we human...

I Used to be a Snazzy Bird, But Now I´m a Lame Duck

Sigrid Tschöpe-Scheffler I Used to be a Snazzy Bird, But Now I’m a Lame Duck My Old Mother, Her Eastern European Caregivers and I More than four million elderly people in need of care live in the German-speaking regions. In most cases, their sons and daughters assume responsibility and decide what...

How to Build a Castle from Ruins

Dörte Maack How to Build a Castle from Ruins The Story of How I Went Blind and Regained My Joy in Life Dörte Maack leads the life of a dazzling circus performer – until she is blindsided with the diagnosis of an incurable eye disease. She makes two plans: A: Not to become blind. B: If she does, she...

Beautiful in a Different Way

Ilka Brühl Beautiful in a Different Way How I Learned to Love Myself Ilka Brühl looks different. She was born with a facial cleft, which is a malformation of the nose, forehead and eyes. As a child, she was berated as a witch. As a young woman, she withdrew from the world and struggled with her...