I’m grateful for.. ( 📚 the reading to recover edition)

Some thoughts & recommendations to start your weekend

How broken bones heal (Image source)

I’m grateful to have had the time to sit and read this week, when I started to fray, when a loose thread somewhere dragged me away from myself. I’m grateful for the tiny reminder of what my life used to be: a fractured chest, a scrambled mind, a gush of tears whenever I allowed myself to think. 

I’m grateful for the way broken bones heal, how the gap caused by a break fills with fresh tissue, layer by layer until a hardened callus forms. I’m grateful for how you can always see the bulge of repair where the original fracture was, and how it is stronger because it broke. I’m grateful for the metaphor, but more so the reality. Bodies heal. Not always, but often.¹

I’m grateful for a black dress I wore to work when my ribcage felt flimsy and unpredictable. I’m grateful for the way that dress hugged me tight as I tried to function as best I could. I’m very grateful to have outgrown that dress, to have regained some of the roundness trauma stole. I’m grateful to have a body that knows, viscerally, what it is to heal. I’m grateful to know both the brutality and grace of this body, which has survived so much and sometimes just needs to sit in the chair and read. 

I’m grateful for the concept of bibliotherapy, which uses books as healing tools. I’m grateful for how reading resets me, how giving my brain a single thread to follow allows the rest of my brain and body to relax, to loosen its grip. I’m grateful to be able to finish work on an essay I’m writing about how reading helped helps me heal. I’m grateful to have had an excellent reading year; 17/40 of the books I’ve read so far this year have been five star reads². I’m grateful for the company of excellent writers, and how their minds accompany mine as I unwind the things that hurt me. 

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Recommendations

📚 Have been loving

Pandora Sykes

book recommendations recently, especially her suggestions for short books. 

My favourite non-fiction mini books

🎧 I’ll be sad to say goodbye to Literary Friction which has been in my ears for close to a decade. This recent episode on friendship is a great example of their literary (but not stuffy) conversations.  

🧘Prompted by this post, I did actually spend some time with a poetry book this week. Mary Olvier’s Devotions currently lives by my bed and is bringing so much more calm to my life. 

📺 I watched all of Season 3 of The Morning Show which was deeply silly, but this is the scene I keep thinking about. 

📚I read this evocative (& very short) story as part of a class I’m taking and truly believe everyone should read it. 

1. I’m also grateful to know that while I might get some of the medical details wrong, it’s right enough.

2. Full list coming soon!