My favourite Healing books of 2021

I’m obsessed with reading. Ever since I got my little grubby hands on Charlotte’s Web in elementary school i’ve been immersing myself in books. Part escapism. Part learning fanatic. Part being intuitively led to each right word i’m meant to hear that day. Books are definitely a way that the divine interacts with me. Each book that lands on my bookshelf does so in a magical way. They find me. I show up and allow them to activate within me what deep down I already know. These are the books that moved me in 2021.

1- Untamed by Glennon Doyle

“Grief is a cocoon from which we emerge new”

“What if a responsible mother is not one who shows her children how to slowly die but how to stay wildly alive until the day she dies”

I started this book in 2020 as I was in the first 6 months of understanding and grieving my break up. In this memoir (memoirs are my 2nd favorite genre to healing books) Glennon describes how moving through her divorce and seeking a life that was better suited to who she truly is would allow her to thrive, be alive and live beautifully. She transmits the notion that not only is this okay to do but is also a part of the gift of what we can pass down to our children. That we are modeling how it is to live as a woman who allows her wildness and authenticity to shine and to follow what she knows in her bones is best for her. For many we are shown the mothering type of marytr who sacrifices it all. But what if we show our children how to live a fully joyful life instead. This book brought language to many feelings I have had in my 31 years as a woman on this planet. It inspired me to unlearn many ideas that we are culturally fed. She has a wonderful gift at describing what is wrong with society as a way of reducing the shame we may carry in our bodies.

2 - If women rose rooted by Sharon Blackie

“She dreams of a small stone cottage in the irish hills, of work that has heart and meaning, and time to simply be”

“If we allow to bring the feminine quality through ourselves, to manifest it honestly in our lives, then we give permission for it to come through in men, and that very necessary rebalancing of feminine and masculine energies can take place.”

I felt so dreamy reading this book. The themes of celtic mythology touched my heart. Her story doesn’t follow a forward progression but rather a circling labryinth and it gave me permission to have life unfold in it’s strange nature-y way. Her love of Ireland made me nostalgic and her heavy descriptions of nature and how it’s metaphors speak to our own healing journeys was an inspiration. Divine feminism, the importance and calling of land, the simplicity being outside with it all, the ups and downs of finding your way. Just all together a beautiful book that inspired me every time I read through it’s pages.

3-Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach

“We often distance ourselves from emotional pain- our vulnerability, anger, jealousy, fear-by covering it over with self judgement”

I was a bit late jumping on the Tara Brach train but i’m so glad I did. Buddhism to me can sometimes appear as a bit too much like mental suppression. Sometimes it seems like the goal is to have full control of the mind and to suppress feelings. For some reason I find the dogma and achievement of enlightenment can sometimes cloud the very purpose of what this religion is trying to achieve which is compassion. Tara Brach transformed that for me. She heavily focuses on the body and all of it’s sensations. She speaks not of enlightenment but of understanding that in our lives we are going to get triggered over again and that despite her entire life dedicated to this, it still happens to her (of course! We are human). She states that meeting our triggers with compassion, breathe and awareness is what’s key. Her meditations transformed how I see the entire topic of ‘sitting with sensation’ and it has stuck with me ever since. I find it a fundamental practice in light of anything that happens Where do you feel it in your body? What does it feel like? Breathe into it. Bring it compassion. It’s that simple.

4-My Grandmothers Hand’s by Resmaa Menakem

“This trauma has been passed down and compounded over many generations. They were likely passed down epigenetically as expression of people’s DNA. They were also passed down as habits, actions, sensations, urges, images, narratives, beliefs and ideas.”

This book so beautifully and compassionately explains the enormous levels of racial pain that exists in north America and how we are re-enacting this trauma in modern times. How history is not forgotten and how it lives in our bodies. He has different sections for black bodies, white bodies and police bodies and gives concrete amazing tips to allow us to learn how to self regulate and heal so that we do not continue this looping pattern of compounding pain on pain. His tips of how to regulate solo and within a community are amazing and the way he balances boldness and gentleness in his message left me deeply impacted. This book should be read by all who are interested in trauma and how it lies at the foundation the biggest social problems we face.

5-Calling in the one by Katherine Woodward Thomas

“It means opening our hearts fully and learning how to love in ways that are vulnerable, authentic, and undefended while at the same time remaining independent and autonomous in ways that would allow us to live 100 percent true to ourselves”

When a friend of mine approached me with this book at first I was apprehensive. It’s title makes me think of manifesting a soulmate which is not what i’m looking to do. I don’t have anything against manifestation but i’m much more about allowing the divine to do it’s thing. I rather have destiny and life meet me on it’s own terms. I was wary that this would be all about how to get that perfect man. This book was exactly the opposite of what i expected. I was so grateful for saying yes to this book because it changed so deeply how I see relationships. This book has a lesson a day for 7 weeks. The book is all about doing your own work, about focusing on you, not on having a partnership that you believe will solve your problems. She describes how important it is to create the life we want to live, rather than wait for a knight in shining armor that is going to create that. She dives into so many aspects that occur within relationship to be aware of and it drills into you that a partner isn’t going to change a thing. It is still a valuable and fast awakening pursuit where you get to practice moving through maintaining your autonomy while also remaining open to giving, communicating, loving, speaking your needs and keeping your heart open. Recommend to anyone who is single and has relationships on their mind.

6-Outrageous openness by Tosha Silver

“So here’s the deal. If you make God your source for all financial, emotional and spiritual abundance you open yourself to unexpected, unlimited good. Each individual person, place, or thing is just the temporary, transitory form the divine uses to bring you what you need. If one supply dries up there is always another”

This book is simple and short and each chapter only constitutes a page or two. But the inspiration that it filled me with was big. It opened up a connection directly with the divine that I did not have in this way until I opened this book. A connection that was deeply missing in my life. Her short stories inspire you to let go and let god and describe quirky ways in which the divine shows up in our lives. I am currently reading her newest book “change me prayers” and I think I like it even more. I now have more trust than ever before, have had direct evidence of this and offer my problems up to the divine rather than spending 24/7 believing it’s all up to me.

7-The body keeps the score by Bessel Van Der Kolk

“For many traumatized people re-exposure to stress might provide a similar relief from anxiety”

This book is a masterpiece. It is one of it’s kind and it has done big things for promoting the idea that the body records the history and trauma of a person and that to restore someone into wholeness we have to also include the body. Everything from emdr, the nervous system, severe case studies of trauma, repeating traumas, and tons of tested out modalities. This book was hard for me to read and I had to take it slow. Because the very descriptive nature of it and it’s clueing in somatically made my body open up and begin showing me difficult feelings. Still worth it and its jam packed with amazing information and the trauma-mind-body connection. Recommend for anyone else who is a trauma nerd!