This is a reading/blogging challenge put on by Renay over at Bottle of Shine. Basically, people list ten books they love, and/or go pick out three books to read from other people’s lists, and then review the ones they read.

Like most blog challenges, the benefits are that we get to discover new blogs, meet new people, have our blogs discovered by new people, get some writing inspiration, and in this case, read some awesome new-to-us books.

So, after much thought I came up with ten books that I LOVE that are in some way connected to this blog’s theme: abuse, addiction, and recovery. I think this list reflects how that theme plays out in real life: they’re about learning how we work inside, how the abuse in the world and in most of our families affects us on a very practical and everyday level, and how to make our lives freaking AWESOME. That last part, pretty much, is the core, the essence, and the damn point. In fact, I guess if I thought there was a question about “why we are all here anyway,” that would be my answer: to understand and love ourselves and each other (but especially ourselves) in order to make our lives freaking AWESOME, heLLO.

I highly, highly recommend reading each of these anyway. Obviously, if you have I would love to hear about it, and if you have reviewed them somewhere (including in one disgruntled or excited sentence in your blog) I will be thrilled to link thereforunto.

1. Repressed Memories: A Journey To Recovery From Sexual Abuse, by Renee Fredrickson
I’ve written about this book before, and I will probably write about it again. The very nature of repressed memories means that we can’t just assume we don’t have any. Everyone should learn about what they are, how they work, why people repress things, what indicates that someone has repressed memories, how to distinguish between memories and fears, and (my favorite part, maybe) how dysfunctional families work and how people’s roles in them affect the rest of their lives. It’s just an incredibly well-informed and information-packed book for something that looks so tiny!

2. Sensual Living, by Claire Lloyd
Not about abuse, but a great help to me in my recovery. Sensual Living is about the tactile, beautiful, sensual delights of the objects around us, with a specific aim of showing readers how to make their surroundings more enjoyable to each of the five physical senses. It’s very calming and nurturing to read, and even more so to live. From a survivor standpoint, it’s a wonderful tool to use in overturning the deprivation we often bring to our living environments without realizing it.

3. Wishcraft: How To Get What You REALLY Want, by Barbara Sher and Annie Gottlieb
This book is fucking brilliant. It’s divided into two portions: the first part helps the reader explore what they always wanted to do, what their passions are, and especially what interests and talents they have smothered because of, basically, abuse, or for any reason at all. It explains very clearly that (and how) we are each born geniuses, and how that potential gets smooshed away inside many of us. The second and I think part is about getting what we want. She is incredibly creative in this. My favorite angle is that we often don’t have to wait to become rich or famous or work for years to become actors or pilots or whatever our dreams are; we can figure out what we actually want from that goal (to travel, to be admired, to perform, etc.) and see what ways there are of getting that sooner. And then she outlines how to do even that. She’s just merciless in breaking down exactly how to do it every step of the way, which is my favorite kind of writing.

4. Facing Codependency, by Pia Mellody, Andrea Wells Miller, and J. Keith Miller
I admit it: I haven’t read much of this. I’m familiar with it, though, and I love it from afar. I love, especially, the way that they explain very clearly how abuse causes codependency, and its relation to other addictions, and what it is. These are really important points that should be taught in the most basic psychology classes, which instead many therapists and other mental health professionals are absolutely clueless about. And I love books like this that break down a complicated subject into a series of often mind-blowing yet simple links.

5. At The Speed of Life: A New Approach to Personal Change Through Body-Centered Therapy, by Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks
This book changed my life. How often do I get to say that? Well, every time I mention this book, anyway, so I guess as often as I want! It’s written by a husband-and-wife team of somatic therapists, aimed at other therapists but with plenty of tools and stories for lay readers – and I have to admit that I love learning about how professionals in any profession think and what they know that we aren’t supposed to. The basic subject matter here is how to recognize when memories and emotions are trapped in our bodies, and how to (safely) “get them out.” To that end, they’ve filled the book with fantastic breathing techniques, ways to explore the feelings in our bodies, detailed explanations of verbal and physical “flags” that signal repressed feelings and memories… it’s just crammed with helpful stuff that everyone can use.

6. Double Vision: A Travelogue of Recovery from Ritual Abuse, by Anna Richardson
I sort of think this should go at the very top, “no particular order” or not. This book is gorgeously written, magnificently clear and full of hope and beauty and recovery rising from the chaotic wreckage of addiction and ritual abuse. Abuse writing is one of those genres where books sometimes seem to get published more because there’s a need for books about abuse than because there’s a need for that particular book; Double Vision, I think uniquely, could fit on any list of well-crafted, luminous writing in or outside of its genre. It’s about humanity and pain and joy and growth, in a way that transcends any concern of whether a particular reader will identify with the specific subject matter.

7. Workaholics Anonymous Book of Recovery
This might be my favorite book-to-do-with-twelve-step-stuff. It has lots of personal stories, different experiences with and tools for working the steps around work issues (and just in general) and a TON of other helpful tools. Every time I open it I learn something new about having fun, about balancing work and the rest of life, about how work issues can play out in any area of my life, or just about myself personally. Do I have to point out that work issues are basically perfectionism, codependence, and shame, that those three things are basically the same anyway, and that that all comes from abuse? So information like this is vital. And who can resist an approach to it that often boils down to “recovery is about joy and fun”?

8. When Society Becomes an Addict, by Anne Wilson Schaef
Even though, as I’ve said, I think Schaef missed the crucial question of WHY addiction is the way it is (that is, that the signs of addiction are also the effects of abuse), she wrote some intense and explosive stuff about it twenty-plus years ago. If you want a dead-on look at how addicts (abuse survivors) behave, how that looks when it isn’t about drugs or alcohol, and how it looks when it’s on the huge group or governmental level, check this out. If you want a dead-on look at how abuse affects people’s lives and why it doesn’t really help in the long term to get to “it doesn’t bother me anymore that I was abused” and then sell yourself short by taking off (as many therapists suggest their clients should do), likewise, check this out. (Or, more felicitously: if you want to get a good idea of what the effects are that we all get to deal with and see a little bit of how great and unimaginably different life is without them, read this book.)

9. To Be Healed By The Earth, by Warren Grossman
I really like books on alternative healing – really far-out (for us now anyway), wacky, hippie-sounding, energy-work alternative healing – written by people with serious medical degrees and decades of mainstream medical practice. Not only is it refreshing, but it often means the information is studied more carefully because they’re used to thinking analytically and applying hardcore principles of science and logic to what they do. At least, that’s the case with this book. It’s extremely practical, it doesn’t expect the reader to believe a word of it unless it works for them, and it is super-clear at every point about where it is coming from and what to do to see if it works for you. The basic premise is that spending time with nature helps us heal and feel more grounded and energized; I suppose that doesn’t sound very radical, but having a simple system of meditations and ways of lying or sitting or standing with trees and the ground, and talking about how this brought him back from death’s door, is both radical and wildly helpful to anyone recovering from anything, whether it’s physical or psychological – and of course, almost everything is both.

10. One Day My Soul Just Opened Up: 40 Days and 40 Nights Toward Spiritual Strength and Personal Growth, by Iyanla Vanzant
Spirituality is a huge component of recovery from abuse. Particularly when we are little, our abusers often seem like the mainstream image of “God”: they’re these huge creatures who seem to end up around where the sky is, from whence all food and shelter and safety and love come – and anger and judgment and abandonment and tragedy. Maybe the most important part of recovery is learning to separate our abusers from a loving source of guidance, whether we think of that as a God or Goddess or our intuition or the universe or love or some other wild thing. Because until then, our decisions are all informed at least partly by the burden of shame from the abuse, the crazy voices in our heads telling us that we don’t know what we are doing or that we need to be perfect or that we always fuck up or that something terrible will happen if we get another job/relationship/whatever.

To Be Healed By The Earth is one way to explore that spiritual area; twelve-step programs offer another space in which people often explore how all this plays out for them; One Day My Soul Just Opened Up is a third option. It is laid out as a series of daily readings, meditations, and writing exercises that explore issues just like this and many more. It’s basically a deep exploration of our relationships with spirituality and ourselves and others, done in about 20-30 minutes a day for a couple of months. (Plus, afterwards you have all this writing and highlighting and wild inspired or angry scribbling to look back at and see how far you have come!)