Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson. This book is short and straight forward and packs a punch in helping uncover the issues that you may have experienced in your family as well as find language for them. If you have emotionally unavailable parents there was a section on that topic that was very insightful.

How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self by Nicole LePera. I love this book because Nicole, the “Holistic Psychologist” as she’s known on social, goes beyond “talk therapy”. She helps us integrate mentally, physically and spiritually so we can embody the learning and change our patterns. There are lots of useful tools here to test drive for yourself.

What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo. Stephanie is my self healing journey hero! She bravely investigates every avenue of healing for herself after a brutal childhood (don’t worry, she doesn’t spend a lot of time on it and you can skip that part if it’s triggering).

Soulbriety: A Plan to Heal Your Trauma, Overcome Addiction, and Reconnect with Your Soul by Elisa Hallerman PhD. Elisa walks us through her own inspiring addiction story as well as those of her clients and says that the real work of overcoming addiction is not just getting sober but walking the self healing journey.

Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find - and Keep - Love by Amir Levine. How we learn attachment in our family of origin and continue those patterns as we’re adults is key. It defines how and whether we’re able to get the connection, sense of belonging and love that we all desire. This book helps you figure out where you’re at and what you can do about it.

It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn. This book helped me understand intergenerational trauma better. It walks through what we say to ourselves when we get triggered, those long stated beliefs we hold. Then he also works through the healing sentences we can put in place to deal with them, it’s a really powerful tool.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. If you have creative wounds and want to work through them this book is for you. Pressfield wrote for 10 years before getting published and has inside knowledge on the inner resistance that exists within all of us, how far it will go to block us and how to tackle it.

Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain. This book was written by Cain to answer the question for herself of why she liked sad Leonard Cohen music so much. It’s a strong counterpoint to the “put on your happy face” thinking in our culture and it’s about honouring who we really are and where we’re at. She also tells the amazing story of her history with her Mom.

Mindful Eating: Mindful Life: How to Change the Habits That Sabotage Your Health by Mary Ann Wallace. I can relate to this topic after dealing with an eating disorder for a long time. I took a class from Mary Ann and it was our textbook. She has great insight into how to dig into underlying causes of eating issues and uses both her eastern and western medical training to help us create positive change.

Walking Home: A Pilgrimage from Humbled to Healed by Sonia Choquette. Sonia takes us along on a gruelling 6 week walk on the Camino de Santiago while she reflects on her life and her self healing journey dealing with relatable issues and challenges. It’s so honest and well written, I loved it.