Recommended Reading

Many of these relate to improving our relationships with others and ourselves, through mindfulness, compassion, self-care, and exploring our emotions, beliefs & behaviors

Trauma

• Bessel van der Kolk - The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Emotional Intelligence

• Brene Brown - Daring Greatly; Braving the Wilderness

• Marc Brackett - Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive

Mindfulness & Meditation

• Tara Brach - Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddah*

• Dalai Lama & Desmond Tutu - The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

Health & Wellness

• Matthew Walker - Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

• Emily Nagoski & Amelia Nagoski - Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

Oppression and Social Justice - Unlearning Privilege 

• Isabel Wilkerson - Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

• Imbram X. Kindi - How to Be an Antiracist

• Michelle Alexander - The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Unlearning Internalized Racism, Ableism, Classism, Fatphobia and Transphobia

• Tarana Burke & Brene Brown (Editors) - You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

• Sonya Renee Taylor - The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

*Buddhist beliefs are in no way necessary to benefit from this book

**some of these include triggering content

I also love fiction. It can be a meaningful way to take a break from being "serious" or "productive," and let ourselves connect with the imaginative parts of our mind

Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Water Dancer

Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed

Celeste Ng - Little Fires Everywhere

Brit Bennett - The Vanishing Half

Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials series