BOOKS
Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore
I read this in my 20s and it changed the way I look at life. In particular, the chapter "Gifts of Depression" helped me view and work with my own depression in a way that finally felt right. Moore offers a fresh way to look at your everyday life — the routines, the challenges, the small moments of inspiration — gently encouraging you to sit with your emotional struggles instead of rushing past them, and to discover the quiet magic hiding in ordinary things.
The Kin Of Ata Are Waiting For You, Dorothy Bryant
I read this a few years ago, and it shook my view of culture, relationship, and what's important in life. A man on the run from his own worst mistake crashes into a place that shouldn't exist — an island where people live simply by day and treat their dreams as sacred work by night. As he's slowly pulled into their strange, gentle way of life, he starts to unravel everything he thought he knew about himself. Equal parts fable, love story, and spiritual journey, it's a quiet, haunting little book that's stuck with readers since 1971.
A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd
This book — and the film — offer a rare, honest look at dying and the challenges of grief in Western culture. Thirteen-year-old Conor has the same nightmare every night, and it's the least of his problems — his mom is very sick, and he's doing his best to hold everything together alone. Then one night, just past midnight, a monster shows up at his window. Not the one from his dream — something older, wilder, and strangely patient, who's come to tell him three stories and demand one truth in return. Equal parts fierce and tender, this is a story about grief, anger, and the things we can't quite say out loud.
Coming Together -- Coming Apart, John Desteian
Forget the how-to guide with five easy steps to a perfect partnership — this book takes a more honest look at love: how relationships form, grow, wobble, break down, and sometimes find their way back together. Drawing on Jungian psychology, Desteian isn't interested in fixing you — he's interested in what it actually means to be in relationship with another person, opposites and all, and why that tension is where real growth happens. A thoughtful read for anyone who's ever wondered why love is so hard, and so worth it anyway.
Buffalo For The Broken Hearted, Dan O'Brien
A great book about the importance and resilience of buffalo in America. After twenty rough years trying to make cattle ranching work on the South Dakota plains, Dan O'Brien decided to try something different: buffalo. What starts with thirteen scrappy calves turns into a whole new way of living with the land — one that's better for the grass, the wildlife, and, it turns out, for O'Brien himself. Part memoir, part nature writing, this is a warm, funny, clear-eyed story about starting over, paying attention to the world around you, and finding your way back to something that feels right.
The Schopenhauer Cure, Irv Yalom
A wonderful work of fiction that lays out group therapy in a rich and illuminating way. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, therapist Julius Hertzfeld reaches back into his past and invites a former patient — now a cold, Schopenhauer-obsessed philosophy junkie — into his therapy group. What unfolds is a sharp, moving clash between detachment and connection, playing out through a group of people all quietly working through their own pain. Yalom writes with real warmth here: a book about facing death that leaves you thinking harder about how to live.
The Prophet, Khalil Gibran
After twelve years in the city of Orphalese, the prophet Almustafa is finally ready to sail home — but before he goes, the people ask him to share what he's learned. What follows is a series of short, luminous reflections on the things that make up a life: love, marriage, work, joy and sorrow, freedom, death. Written in 1923, this slim little book has become one of the most beloved works of spiritual writing ever published, the kind of book people return to again and again — at weddings and funerals, and everywhere in between.
Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
In the early 1900s, a young cadet named Franz Kappus wrote to the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, unsure whether he should trust his own writing — or himself. Rilke's replies, sent over several years, became something far bigger than writing advice: gentle, searching meditations on solitude, doubt, love, and what it really means to live a creative life. Short enough to read in an afternoon but rich enough to return to for years, it's less a how-to guide than a quiet, steady companion for anyone trying to figure out who they are.
Suicide and the Soul, James Hillman
First published in 1964, this is Jungian analyst James Hillman's landmark exploration of what suicide means from the perspective of the soul, rather than medicine, law, or mental health. Instead of asking how to prevent it, Hillman asks what the desire for death might be telling us — treating it as a psychological, even spiritual, experience rather than simply a symptom to be managed. Dense but rewarding, it's considered a foundational text in depth psychology and remains widely read by therapists and anyone grappling with these questions directly.
Healing Developmental Trauma, Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre
Not all trauma comes from a single terrible event — sometimes it comes from what didn't happen: not being fully seen, soothed, or connected to as a child. Heller and LaPierre argue that these early gaps in connection, attunement, trust, autonomy, and love shape so much of adult struggle, from chronic shame to trouble in relationships. Their approach, NARM, blends body-based and psychological work, focusing less on digging through the past and more on building capacity and resilience in the present. It's written for clinicians, so it's a bit technical, but it's become an influential resource for understanding how early experience shapes who we become.
The Myth of Normal, Gabor Mate
We live in a society that treats rising rates of chronic illness, addiction, and mental health struggles as separate, individual problems — but what if they're actually predictable results of a culture that's fundamentally out of step with human needs? After four decades treating patients, Gabor Maté makes the case that our idea of "normal" is itself part of the problem, and that trauma and disconnection show up in the body as much as the mind. Written with his son Daniel, this is a big, ambitious book — part medicine, part social critique, part gentle guide toward healing — that asks us to rethink what health really means.
MOVIES
This is a stunning journey through grief, told without spoken dialogue — the story unfolds entirely through image and Cloud Cult's music and lyrics. An award-winning feature film written by Cloud Cult and directed by Jeff D. Johnson, it stars Alex McKenna and Josh Radnor. The story follows Grace, a daughter whose idyllic life is turned upside-down by immense tragedy. As she grows older, her cynicism and apathy toward her new reality are challenged by a reminder from the past — one that sets her on a pilgrimage that will define her.
Twelve-year-old Conor is trying to hold his world together while his mother battles a serious illness — but the nightmares won't leave him alone. Then, one night, a massive tree-like monster appears outside his window, insisting on telling him three stories in exchange for one truth of his own. Visually stunning and quietly heartbreaking, this adaptation of Patrick Ness's novel is a film about grief, anger, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive — the kind that sneaks up on you and doesn't let go.
