I love books. Several books and the words they contained have been reliable companions through my biggest trials and tribulations. Shattering, comforting, inspiring. This place will be of interest to you especially if you’re into psychology and leadership, if you’re an aspiring writer or coach, an empath, a changemaker, and even more if grief is part of who you are. This place is a work in progress and will soon contain an artistic assembly of the most meaningful words I would carry with me.
This was powerful:
"Art has the power to render sorrow beautiful, make loneliness a shared experience, and transform despair into hope...the magic of all the art: the ability to both capture our pain and deliver us from it at the same time. It's the sharing of art that whispers: 'You're not alone.' "
- Brené Brown, in "Braving the Wilderness"
Book selection
➜ Writing & Creativity:
- Writing Down the Bones – Freeing the Writer Within (Natalie Goldberg)
- Bird by Bird : some instructions on writing and life (Anne Lamott)
- Everybody Writes – Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content (Ann Handley)
- The Creative Habit – Learn It and Use it for Life (Twyla Tharp)
- Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered (Austin Kleon)
➜ Being & leading:
- TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS – Advice from Dear Sugar (Cheryl Strayed)
- The Art of Asking (Amanda Palmer)
- For Small Creatures Such as We – Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World (Sasha Sagan)
- Braving the Wilderness (Brené Brown)
- Consolations – The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words (David Whyte)
- Dare to Lead (Brené Brown)
- Bittersweet – How Sorrow and Longing Make us Whole (Susan Cain)
➜ Coaching:
- The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever (Michael Bungay Stanier)
- Coaching and Trauma: From surviving to thriving (Julia Vaughan Smith)
- Coaching The Brain – Practical Applications of Neuroscience to Coaching (Joseph O’Connor & Andrea Lages)
- The Trauma-Informed Coach – Strategies to support clients when their past prevents progress (Joanna Harper)
- Co-Active Coaching – The Proven Framework for Tranformative Conversations at Work and in Life (Henry Kimsey-House, Karen Kimsey-House, Phillip Sandahl Laura Whitworth)
- Adventures In Coaching – Unlocking the power of personal and business coaching through a captivating story (Benjamin Dowman)
- The Life Coaching Handbook – Everything You Need To Be an Effective Life Coach (Curly Martin)
- Conversations Worth Having – Using Appreciative Inquiry to Fuel Productive and Meaningful Engagement (Jackie Stavros & Cheri Torres)
- The Pocket Guide to The Polyvagal Theory – The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe (Stephen W. Porges)
➜ Psychology & Trauma:
- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (Lori Gottlieb)
- How Emotions Are Made – The Secret Life of the Brain (Lisa Feldman Barrett)
- What Happened To You (Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey)
- The Body Keeps The Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma (Bessel Van der Kork)
➜ Grief & Meaning:
- Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy (Sheryl Sanberg and Adm Grant) – reread this one
- Finding Meaning : The Sixth Stage of Grief (David Kessler)
- There Is No Good Card For This: What To Say and Do When Life Gets Scary, Awful, and Unfair To People You Love (Emily McDowell and Kelsey Crowe)
- Losing Young (Rachel Wilson)
- The adult orphan club – How I Lerned to Grieve the Loss of My Parents (Flora Baker)
- The Grief Handbook (Bridget McNulty)
- Grief Works (Julia Samuel)
➜ [TW] Cancer:
- Between Two Kingdoms (Suleika Jaouad)
- When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi)
- Crying in H Mart (Michelle Zauner)
- Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You (About This Magnificent Life) (Kate Gross)
Powerful words that carry insight, love & power
Come back soon for more 😉 In the meantime, let me add my own words:
Youth (2021) – A poem
We, search beyond the frontiers of time,
in between centuries and beyond the straight lines.
We, search for what is life, our place in it and ourselves. That is where we belong, this is where we feel held.
And felt.
Searching __ for our pain, peace and power.
Our most daring dreams.
Our darkness and light.
Our kindness and screams.
Searching __ for our baggage and seeds.
Our belonging and needs.
Our joy and our compass to build something big.
We question, we reflect, and deflect what we can’t take.
We shape, we think up, and we de_monstrate
That we NEED to make changes,
And we demand we make them NOW.
We have everything to lose and a better world to win, we can do it and we’ll get there somehow.
We talk, we break the silence, though sometimes we’d rather weep,
We pause, dig up emotions that are buried deep. deep. deep.
We’re there, we listen on, and on and on and on. We learn__
To whisper in the nights, to shout it from the rooftops. We’re loud as we are intimate. We’re tough as we are vulnerable. We’re strong.
We have those conversations that nobody dared to have. The loving ones and passionate. The angry ones and defiant. The lost, confused, destroyed. Repairing and remembering and daring to transform.
We walk along in footsteps __ and then we step aside.
We learn to be ourselves, we learn to be WITH others, we keep an open heart.
We, take ourselves so seriously like no-one’s ever done. In between our bold demands and hard work we have begun.
We, question our securities and cope with the unknown. We just don’t look away, fight for our common home.
Radical __ In our frames and our names.
Our belonging and needs.
Our choices and deeds.
Radical __ our sense of justice, outspoken.
We, curiously clear. Clearly determined.
We, determinedly direct. Directly disobedient. Disobediently resilient.
Radical __ In our hope, love and depth.
Our joy and our compass to build something big.
Our joy and our compass to build something big.
Cause so much is still needed,
While so much is still possible,
Now we are planting seeds.
