5 Books I’m Reading
With a Focus on Healing & Revision
2020 needs no recap. It came, it saw, and it conquered. It changed our lives in impossible and unimaginable ways. At least, that is what happened to me.
It was in 2020 that I realized that it was truly time to Revise My Life. To examine it bit by bit, and make cuts and edits, to write and rewrite drafts until I got to a place where it was publishable. I had no idea the challenges I would endure that would truly push me to do the inside work to well, you know, Revise My Life.
That is how I came across these 5 books, and I have been reading them to help me process what makes me me.
home body rupi kaur
When I first came across Rupi Kaur’s home body, I really was a “homebody.” Heck, we all were. We were on lockdown, working from home and all hoping and praying for a sense of normalcy, hoping and praying for a way to escape the darkness and the all-consuming and never-ending process of overthinking every freaking thing, and I do mean everything. I later found out that home body isn’t about being a homebody at all; it’s about being at home with yourself. Being at home with who you are exactly where you are and accepting that, and I love it.
Rupi writes:
after feeling disconnected for so long my mind and body are finally coming back to each other
home body
Keep Moving Maggie Smith
I came across Keep Moving serendipitously. Maggie Smith just arrived in my life. At a time when I was surrounded by fog, filled with creativity, and afraid to face the changes all around me, I stumbled across a book about “Loss, Creativity, and Change”, and it just happened to have a whole section titled “Revision”. It was perfect for me, and still is, as I have made it my repository of my thoughts and ideas for how to navigate my life and even a guide for how to write my own book about acceptance and moving on. Smith says that we are the protagonists of our lives, and no matter what draft we’re on, the first or the tenth, we have to keep writing. And she is right. To live is to keep moving. It’s to feel the feelings, no matter how hurtful or unpleasant, and is is to keep going.
Maggie writes:
Focus on who you are and what you’ve built, not who you planned on being and what you’d expected to have. Trust that the present moment— however different from what you’d imagined has something to teach you.
Keep Moving.
The Well-Watered Woman Gretchen Saffles
I ordered the Well-Watered Woman last summer because it spoke to my parched soul and reminded me that I am the Garden that I need to cultivate. I came across it at the time that I had created Self-Care Summer: A six week wellness plan that outlined how to cultivate your garden. Another serendipitous find, but I had no idea just how much I needed to read this book. Saffles’ story is both relatable and relevant, as she reminds that she writes this woman for the woman who is looking to strengthen her faith and for fulfillment.
Gretchen writes
I wrote this for the woman who desires abundant life in Christ but also finds herself craving more of this world— more affirmation, more money, more accomplishments, more pleasure.
The Deepest Well Nadine Burke Harris, M.D.
The Deepest Well is a book that everyone needs to read, man and woman, and all nationalities. Yes, it really is that important of a read, especially after the pandemic that has affected all children all over the world. The book examines the long-term effects of childhood adversity, and the shocking part is that so many of us have experienced childhood traumas that are affecting us into adulthood. Harris seeks to investigate what is causing the suffering and trauma that her many patients are experiencing understanding that to assist them and help get them better, she has to care enough to uncover the root cause of the matter, and it pushes us to do the same: care enough to uncover the experiences that make us who we are.
Nadine writes of her process:
But I also took away a larger lesson: If one hundred people all drank from the same well and ninety-eight of them develop diarrhea, I can write prescription after prescription for antibiotics, or I can stop and ask, “What the hell is in this well?”
What Happened To You? Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph. D. and Oprah Winfrey
This book is one that I have yet to start reading, but it seems to be a continuation of Dr. Harris’s theory that our childhood experiences affect us well into our adult lives, and that as human beings interacting with those who have experienced trauma, it’s important for us to ask the right questions when met with those who have suffered trauma. Perry and Winfrey challenge us to shift from asking “What is wrong with you?”, or “Why are you behaving this way?” to asking as the title suggests, “What happened to you?”. Which is a question that I need to answer for myself.
Oprah writes
The long-term impact of being whupped— then forced to hush and even smile about it— turned me into a world-class people pleaser for most of my life. it would not have taken me half a lifetime to learn to set boundaries and say “no” with confidence had I been nurtured differently.
These five books are have a common theme of seeking help and improvement and understanding of who we are, where we have been and where we are going. However, I am reading them all after the fact. I am reading them after my hair started thinning. I am reading them after knowing that I have taken as much as I can take. I am reading them after knowing that I cannot go on in this way for much longer. And I am reading them after realizing that I don’t know anything, and that I need help to understand what happened to me. But the point is that I am reading them because living an unsatisfying unfulfilled life is no longer a choice I willingly make. Instead, I choose a life of Revision, one that allows me to become the Masterpiece I know I am, and that is the life I will STYLE.
I hope you will give them a read, and should you do so, let me know. I would love to know your thoughts on them!
Until next time, I hope that you will stay inspired and that you never grow tired of revision.
XOXO,
