Book picks similar to
You Were Never Broken: Poems to Save Your Life by Jeff Foster
poetry
netgalley
spirituality
self-help
No One Asked for This: Essays
Cazzie David - 2020
For Cazzie David, the world is one big trap door leading to death and despair and social phobia. From shame spirals caused by hookups to panic attacks about being alive and everyone else having to be alive too, David chronicles her life’s most chaotic moments with wit, bleak humor, and a mega-dose of self-awareness. In No One Asked for This, David provides readers with a singular but ultimately relatable tour through her mind, as she explores existential anxiety, family dynamics, and the utterly modern dilemma of having your breakup displayed on the Internet. With pitch-black humor resonant of her father, comedy legend Larry David, and topics that speak uniquely to generational malaise, No One Asked for This is the perfect companion for when you don’t really want a companion.Mean sister --Do not disturb --Ex dysmorphia --Almost pretty --Is everything gonna be fine? --Tweets I would tweet if I weren't morally opposed to Twitter: I --Why God is definitely real --Too full to fuck --So embarrassing --Love you to death --Insecurity when you're the new girlfriend --Environ-mental mom --Tweets I would tweet if I weren't morally opposed to Twitter: II --Shit-talking etiquette --My parasite --Privileged assistant --I got a cat for my anxiety --This essay doesn't pass the Bechdel test --Tweets I would tweet if I weren't morally opposed to Twitter: III --Moving out --Erase me --Thanksgiving
Do Better: Spiritual Activism for Fighting and Healing from White Supremacy
Rachel Ricketts - 2021
. . . This is a book we all need.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray LoveThought leader, racial justice educator, and sought-after spiritual activist Rachel Ricketts offers mindful and practical steps for all humans to dismantle white supremacy on a personal and collective level. Heart-centered and spirit-based practices are the missing but vital piece to achieving racial justice. Do Better is a revolutionary offering that addresses anti-racism from a comprehensive, intersectional, and spiritually-aligned perspective. This actionable guidebook illustrates how to engage in the heart-centered and mindfulness-based practices that racial justice educator and healer Rachel Ricketts has developed to fight white supremacy from the inside out, in our personal lives and communities alike. It is a loving and assertive call to do the deep—and often uncomfortable—inner work that precipitates much-needed external and global change. Radical racial justice includes daily, intentional, and informed action. It demands addressing the emotional violence we have perpetuated on ourselves and others (most notably toward Black and Indigenous women and femmes), both as individuals and as a society. Do Better provides the missing pieces to manifest practicable, sustainable solutions such as identifying where we most get stuck, mitigating the harm we inflict on others, and mending our hearts from our most painful race and gender-based experiences, plus much more. This inspirational and eye-opening handbook is filled with carefully curated soulcare activities for getting into our bodies and better withstanding the grief, rage, and conflicting emotions that naturally arise when we fight against injustice. Culturally informed, secular spiritual exercises, such as guided meditations, transformative breathwork, and journaling prompt unpack our privilege, and take up the ongoing fight against oppression, while transforming our own lives along the way.
The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: Guidance on the Path to Mindfulness from a Spiritual Leader
Haemin Sunim - 2012
In this best-selling mindfulness guide - it has sold more than three million copies in Korea, where it was a number-one best-seller for 41 weeks and received multiple best book of the year awards - Haemin Sunim (which means "spontaneous wisdom"), a renowned Buddhist meditation teacher born in Korea and educated in the United States, illuminates a path to inner peace and balance amid the overwhelming demands of everyday life.By offering guideposts to well-being and happiness in eight areas - including relationships, love, and spirituality - Haemin Sunim emphasizes the importance of forging a deeper connection with others and being compassionate and forgiving toward ourselves.
Random Acts of Kindness
Dete Meserve - 2019
In Oklahoma City, a woman who has just lost her job is amazed when a stranger swoops in and pays for her groceries. In snowy Boston, warm blankets mysteriously appear on park benches throughout the city with a note: “These blankets are not lost! If you are cold, without shelter, and looking for comfort, then they are for you. Enjoy, and know that you are loved.” The true, inspiring tales in Random Acts of Kindness spotlight ordinary people from age nine to one hundred who have found unique ways to show compassion and make a difference. Some of these stories will warm your heart and make you laugh; others will make you smile; and a few might make you cry—in a good way—with the joy of knowing there is so much goodness and generosity in the world. From the author of the bestselling novel Good Sam (soon to be a motion picture on Netflix worldwide) and award-winning journalist Rachel Greco, these uplifting stories will fill you with hope and gratitude, restore your spirit, and give you faith in the power of kindness to transform you and the world around you.
If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers
Hannah Brencher - 2015
Instead, she found a city full of people who knew where they were going and what they were doing and didn't have time for a girl still trying to figure it all out. Lonely and depressed, she noticed a woman who looked like she felt the same way on the subway. Hannah did something strange--she wrote the woman a letter. She folded it, scribbled If you find this letter, it's for you on the front and left it behind. When she realized that it made her feel better, she started writing and leaving love notes all over the city--in doctor's offices, in coat pockets, in library books, in bathroom stalls. Feeling crushed within a culture that only felt like connecting on a screen, she poured her heart out to complete strangers. She found solace in the idea that her words might brighten someone's day.Hannah's project took on a life of its own when she made an offer on her blog: She would handwrite a note and mail it to anyone who wanted one. Overnight, her inbox exploded with requests from people all over the world. Nearly 400 handwritten letters later, she started the website, The World Needs More Love Letters, which quickly grew. There is something about receiving a handwritten note that is so powerful in today's digital era. If You Find This Letter chronicles Hannah's attempts to bring more love into the world,and shows how she rediscovered her faith through the movement she started.
The Grief We’re Given
William Bortz - 2021
How are we to learn to grieve when it feels unrelenting? How are we to adore and memorialize small moments of appreciation? How are we to shape our grief into something worth celebrating, and begin to understand the grief we give?
DROPKICKromance
Parker Lee - 2018
The first half of DROPKICKromance focuses on a toxic, long-distance relationship the author was involved in for several years, while the second half focuses on Parker's current relationship with poet Amanda Lovelace, who penned a beautiful foreword for the book. This collection takes you by hand and brings you on a journey through first love, heartbreak, and learning to love again.
The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
Brianna Wiest - 2020
Why we do it, when we do it, and how to stop doing it—for good.Coexisting but conflicting needs create self-sabotaging behaviors. This is why we resist efforts to change, often until they feel completely futile. But by extracting crucial insight from our most damaging habits, building emotional intelligence by better understanding our brains and bodies, releasing past experiences at a cellular level, and learning to act as our highest potential future selves, we can step out of our own way and into our potential.For centuries, the mountain has been used as a metaphor for the big challenges we face, especially ones that seem impossible to overcome. To scale our mountains, we actually have to do the deep internal work of excavating trauma, building resilience, and adjusting how we show up for the climb.In the end, it is not the mountain we master, but ourselves.
Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life
Cleo Wade - 2018
Featuring over one hundred and twenty of Cleo’s original poems, mantras, and affirmations, including fan favorites and never before seen ones, this book is a daily pep talk to keep you feeling empowered and motivated. With relatable, practical, and digestible advice, including “Hearts break. That’s how the magic gets in,” and “Baby, you are the strongest flower that ever grew, remember that when the weather changes,” this is a portable, replenishing pause for your daily life. Keep Heart Talk by your bedside table or in your bag for an empowering boost of spiritual adrenaline that can help you discover and unlock what is blocking you from thriving emotionally and spiritually.
Goldenrod: Poems
Maggie Smith - 2021
Now, with Goldenrod, the award-winning poet returns with a powerful collection of poems that look at parenthood, solitude, love, and memory. Pulling objects from everyday life—a hallway mirror, a rock found in her son’s pocket, a field of goldenrods at the side of the road—she reveals the magic of the present moment. Only Maggie Smith could turn an autocorrect mistake into a line of poetry, musing that her phone “doesn’t observe / the high holidays, autocorrecting / shana tova to shaman tobacco, / Rosh Hashanah to rose has hands.”
Dear Girl
Aija Mayrock - 2020
From a poet and celebrated spoken-word performer comes a debut poetry collection that takes readers on an empowering, lyrical journey exploring truth, silence, wounds, healing, and the resilience we all share. Dear Girl is a journey from girlhood to womanhood through poetryIt is the search for truth in silenceThe freeing of the tongueIt is deep wounds and deep healingAnd the resilience that lies within usIt is a love letterTo the sisterhood
Nobody Cares
Anne T. Donahue - 2018
Donahue’s debut book offers all the honesty, laughs, and reassurance of a late-night phone call with your best friend. Whether she’s giving a signature pep talk, railing against summer, or describing her own mental health struggles, Anne reminds us that failure is normal, saying to no to things is liberating, and that we’re all a bunch of beautiful disasters — and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Welcome to the Grief Club: Because You Don't Have to Go Through It Alone
Janine Kwoh - 2022
We’re so sorry that you’re here. Based on her own experience with grief—the author’s partner died when both were in their late twenties—and those of other Grief Club members, Janine Kwoh uses brief writings, illustrations, and creative diagrams to explore the wide range of emotions and experiences that grief can encompass. For anyone who has lost a loved one or who is close to someone who is grieving,
Welcome to the Grief Club
is a book of solace, connection, hope, and reassurance. It addresses with empathy and honesty the aspects of grief that so many of us experience but that aren’t widely discussed: the variety and volatility of emotions—sadness, anger, guilt, joy; the physical symptoms of grief; and how grief isn’t linear, but it does change and soften over time. It affirms that there is truly no right or wrong way to grieve and assures us that the things we feel that surprise us or seem strange are often common and always valid. Humor helps us to survive, and the book uses a lighthearted approach to cover powerful topics, like supremely unhelpful things that people say to those who are grieving, grief trigger bingo, and everyday acts of resilience. This book is a companion that says, I see you and you are not alone, from one grieving person to another. It is a gentle reminder to give yourself permission to grieve for as long as—and in whichever ways—you need.
Instant Happy Journal: 365 Days of Inspiration, Gratitude, and Joy
Karen Salmansohn - 2015
Each page features a specific intention, inspiring quote, surprising scientific fact, or thought-provoking question to ponder. When you approach your day with Salmansohn's "happiness prompters" in mind, you amp up your ability to notice (and create!) many more joyous moments in your day. But that's just half of what it takes to live a supremely happy life. This journal teaches the top two habits of happy people: to naturally set their intention to enjoy a happy day, then end the day reflecting on what made them happy. When you end your day writing about what went right, you further strengthen your happiness mindset. With fill-in dates so that you can write and reflect at your own pace, this little journal features a graphic design and fresh attitude perfect for today's modern happiness-seeker.
Born to Love, Cursed to Feel
Samantha King - 2016
Sin comes a new voice, Samantha King’s raw, relatable poetry both celebrates love and mourns the human “curse to feel.” Her verse transports readers to the most private reaches of love and longing. Born to Love, Cursed to Feel is about love—the good, the bad, and the confusing. It touches on morals and how when emotions are involved it’s not as black and white. The poetry is frequently written in a narrative manner that evocatively pulls you in and makes you feel. This book is about falling in love, bad decisions, and ultimately growth. The essence of it all is to show that no matter how far one falls all the mistakes don’t have to be what defines them.