Tasha's bookshelf

The books that
walked me home.

51 books I return to, each with a note on what it gave me: through family scapegoating, disordered eating, addiction, anxiety and depression.

Browse by what you're carrying

The whole shelf · 51 books

No. 01
Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed
Help and Hope for Adults in the Family Scapegoat Role
Rebecca C. Mandeville 2020
- Family Scapegoating
What it's about
A therapist names Family Scapegoat Abuse for what it is: a pattern in which one child is made to carry a family's pain, and grows up believing the problem is them.
Why it can change your life
I was the one my family's pain landed on, and for years I thought that meant something was wrong with me. This book gave the pattern a name, and a name is where the untangling starts.
No. 02
Growing Up as the Scapegoat to Narcissistic Parents
A Guide to Healing
Jay Reid 2023
- Family Scapegoating
What it's about
Why a self-absorbed parent singles out one child to blame, and how that child, grown, can loosen the beliefs they absorbed about their own worth.
Why it can change your life
Choosing myself meant stepping back from my family for a season. This book helped me understand that the step was not a betrayal. It was the first honest thing I had done for the child I used to be.
No. 03
Bradshaw On: The Family
A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem
John Bradshaw 1996
- Family Scapegoating
What it's about
Bradshaw's classic look at the family as a system, and at how its unspoken rules, secrets and roles shape who we become long after we leave home.
Why it can change your life
From the outside, my family looked close. Bradshaw showed me how a family can look close and still run on denial, and why the one who notices often becomes the problem.
No. 04
Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
Lindsay C. Gibson 2021
- Family Scapegoating
What it's about
Short, practical chapters on caring for yourself when your parents could not meet you emotionally: boundaries, self-trust, and quieting the guilt that comes with both.
Why it can change your life
I spent years trying to repair something that was never mine to fix. This is the book I return to on the days I need permission to stop.
No. 05
No Bad Parts
Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model
Richard C. Schwartz 2021
- Family Scapegoating
What it's about
The founder of Internal Family Systems explains that the mind is made of parts, each trying to protect us, and that beneath them all is a calm, whole Self.
Why it can change your life
I carried a lot of labels about myself. This book helped me see that every harsh part of me was once a protector, doing its best for a girl with nowhere safe to go.
No. 06
Codependent No More
How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself
Melody Beattie 1986
- Family Scapegoating
What it's about
The book that brought codependency into everyday language: how caretaking and control can become a way of life, and how to come back to your own needs.
Why it can change your life
Growing up as the family's fixer, I kept choosing people who needed managing. Melody Beattie helped me notice that pattern gently, without shaming myself for it.
No. 07 · Audiobook
Your Brain on Love
The Neurobiology of Healthy Relationships
Stan Tatkin 2013
- Relationships
What it's about
Stan Tatkin explains what the nervous system is doing when couples connect and when they clash, and how partners can become each other's safe place.
Why it can change your life
Nobody taught me what safe attachment felt like. My marriage has, slowly, and Stan's work gave me the language for what my husband and I were learning together.
No. 08
How to Be an Adult in Relationships
The Five Keys to Mindful Loving
David Richo 2021
- Relationships
What it's about
Richo's five A's (attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection and allowing) as the heart of mature love, and how to give them to others and to ourselves.
Why it can change your life
The five A's were everything I went without as a child. Learning to offer them to myself first changed how I show up for the people I love.
No. 09
Attached
The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find — and Keep — Love
Amir Levine & Rachel Heller 2012
- Relationships
- Mental Health
What it's about
A clear guide to the three attachment styles (anxious, avoidant and secure), and how knowing yours can change the way you choose and keep a partner.
Why it can change your life
I used to choose people I had to manage and call it love. This book helped me understand why, and why the steady, secure love I have now felt so unfamiliar at first.
No. 10
Liberated Love
Release Codependent Patterns and Create the Love You Desire
Mark Groves & Kylie McBeath 2024
- Relationships
What it's about
A warm, practical guide to spotting the codependent patterns we learned early, and to building relationships where both people get to be whole.
Why it can change your life
Leaving the fixer role took more than insight. It took practice, and this book is full of small, doable practices for loving without losing myself.
No. 11
Boundary Boss
The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free
Terri Cole 2023
- Relationships
What it's about
Terri Cole's step-by-step approach to knowing your limits, saying them out loud, and letting go of the habit of pleasing everyone but yourself.
Why it can change your life
When you grow up carrying everyone else's feelings, a boundary can feel like a crime. Terri Cole helped me feel that saying no is a kindness, to them and to me.
No. 12
Nonviolent Communication
A Language of Life
Marshall B. Rosenberg 2015
- Relationships
What it's about
Rosenberg's four-step way of speaking and listening (observations, feelings, needs and requests) so that honesty and compassion can live in the same conversation.
Why it can change your life
In my family, telling the truth started fires. NVC gave me a way to say what is true for me without attacking anyone, and to hear hard things without collapsing.
No. 13
The Art of Communicating
Thich Nhat Hanh 2014
- Relationships
What it's about
Thich Nhat Hanh on deep listening and loving speech, and on how communicating mindfully can heal the relationships closest to us.
Why it can change your life
I grew up in a house where no one was really heard. This small book taught me to listen the way I always wished someone had listened to me.
No. 14
Eight Dates
Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love
John Gottman & Julie Schwartz Gottman 2019
- Relationships
What it's about
Eight guided conversations, each built around a date, on the topics that make or break a partnership: trust, conflict, money, family, play, growth and dreams.
Why it can change your life
Safe love is built on purpose. These conversations helped my husband and me talk about things my family never knew how to talk about.
No. 15
Women Who Run with the Wolves
Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Clarissa Pinkola Estés 1995
- Female Empowerment
- Spirituality
What it's about
Through myths and folk tales, a Jungian analyst and storyteller calls women back to their instinctive, wild nature: the knowing self that cannot be tamed out of us.
Why it can change your life
The wildflower that grows where no one planted it is my symbol for a reason. This book reminded me that the part of me my family tried to quiet was the wisest part.
No. 16
You Are the Medicine
13 Moons of Indigenous Wisdom, Ancestral Connection, and Animal Spirit Guidance
Asha Frost 2022
- Female Empowerment
What it's about
An Ojibwe medicine woman offers a year of teachings, one for each moon, with rituals and animal guidance to help readers reclaim their own healing power.
Why it can change your life
For a long time I looked to everyone else to fix me. Asha Frost's words were a turning point: the medicine I was searching for was already inside me.
No. 17
Healing the Shame That Binds You
John Bradshaw 2005
- Disordered Eating
What it's about
Bradshaw separates healthy shame from toxic shame, the sense that we are flawed at the core, and shows how it drives the compulsions we use to escape it.
Why it can change your life
My eating disorder was never about food. It was about shame, and this was the first book that let me look at the shame itself instead of only the behaviors.
No. 18
Women Food and God
An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
Geneen Roth 2011
- Disordered Eating
What it's about
Geneen Roth's case that our relationship with food mirrors our beliefs about love, fear and meaning, and that curiosity, not another diet, is the way through.
Why it can change your life
Food was where I took everything I could not say. Geneen showed me that listening to that struggle with curiosity, instead of fighting it, is where freedom begins.
No. 19
When Food Is Love
Exploring the Relationship Between Eating and Intimacy
Geneen Roth 1992
- Disordered Eating
What it's about
How compulsive eating and restriction can stand in for the love and safety we missed as children, and what it takes to let real intimacy in.
Why it can change your life
For years, food felt like the only relationship I could control. This book helped me see what I was really hungry for.
No. 20
Radical Acceptance
Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha
Tara Brach 2004
- Disordered Eating
- Spirituality
What it's about
Tara Brach names the "trance of unworthiness" so many of us live in, and offers mindfulness and self-compassion (including her practice, RAIN) as the way out.
Why it can change your life
The critical voice that ran my eating disorder told me I was never enough. Tara's practice gave me something to answer it with, gently, every single day.
No. 21
Self-Compassion
The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself
Kristin Neff 2011
- Disordered Eating
What it's about
The researcher who pioneered the study of self-compassion explains its three parts (kindness, common humanity and mindfulness) and why it works better than self-criticism.
Why it can change your life
I believed being hard on myself was the only thing keeping me going. Kristin Neff's research helped me trust that kindness would carry me further, and it has.
No. 22
Refuge Recovery
A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction
Noah Levine 2014
- Addiction & Recovery
What it's about
A Buddhist-inspired approach to recovery that treats addiction as suffering, and uses the Four Noble Truths, meditation and community as the path out.
Why it can change your life
I was looking for the spirit in the bottle. This book showed me a recovery path that fed that spiritual hunger instead of asking me to ignore it.
No. 23
Recovery Dharma
How to Use Buddhist Practices and Principles to Heal the Suffering of Addiction
Recovery Dharma Collective 2019
- Addiction & Recovery
What it's about
The peer-led program's own book: meditation, inquiry and the support of a sangha, offered as a path out of addiction of every kind.
Why it can change your life
Sangha is the room I keep walking back into. This book is a reminder that no one recovers alone, and that community is medicine.
No. 24
Alcoholics Anonymous
The Big Book
Alcoholics Anonymous 2001
- Addiction & Recovery
What it's about
The founding text of AA: the Twelve Steps, and the stories of the people who first found a way out of drinking by leaning on one another and a higher power.
Why it can change your life
Recovery for me took years, and more than one fresh start. The Big Book taught me to meet life on life's terms, one day at a time, and to forgive myself for the falls.
No. 25
The Power of Now
A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Eckhart Tolle 2004
- Spirituality
What it's about
Tolle's invitation to stop living inside the thinking mind, with its endless replay of past and future, and to find peace in the present moment.
Why it can change your life
My mind used to live in old pain and future fear. This book pointed me toward the moments I now treasure most: a walk on a trail, simply here.
No. 26
Stop Fixing Yourself
Wake Up, All Is Well
Anthony de Mello 2021
- Spirituality
- Mental Health
What it's about
Talks from the Jesuit priest and spiritual teacher on awareness: seeing clearly, dropping the endless project of self-improvement, and waking up to life as it is.
Why it can change your life
I spent years treating myself like something broken. De Mello's gentle humor helped me put down the toolbox and simply look at my life with awareness.
No. 27
A Gradual Awakening
Stephen Levine 1989
- Spirituality
What it's about
A tender guide to meditation that treats awakening as a slow, patient opening, with guidance for meeting pain, fear and the busy mind with softness.
Why it can change your life
Some mornings I cannot practice at all. Stephen Levine taught me that healing is gradual, and that coming back again and again is the practice.
No. 28
The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching
Thich Nhat Hanh 1999
- Spirituality
What it's about
Thich Nhat Hanh's clear, warm introduction to the core of Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path and the other teachings that hold them up.
Why it can change your life
Thich Nhat Hanh is one of my great teachers. This book gave my recovery a spiritual home, and the language of suffering, compassion and interbeing I still use every day.
No. 29
Peace Is Every Step
The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
Thich Nhat Hanh 1992
- Spirituality
What it's about
Short, simple meditations for bringing mindfulness into ordinary life: breathing, walking, washing the dishes, answering the phone.
Why it can change your life
Healing did not happen in one big moment. It happened in ordinary days, and this book taught me how to be present for them.
No. 30
Anger
Wisdom for Cooling the Flames
Thich Nhat Hanh 2002
- Spirituality
What it's about
Thich Nhat Hanh on caring for anger the way you would care for a crying baby: holding it with mindfulness until it can be understood and transformed.
Why it can change your life
When I finally let myself feel anger at what happened, I was afraid of it. This book taught me that my anger deserved care, not suppression.
No. 31
A Path with Heart
A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life
Jack Kornfield 1993
- Spirituality
What it's about
A meditation teacher's honest guide to the spiritual life, from first practice to the old wounds and difficulties that practice brings to the surface.
Why it can change your life
Jack Kornfield doesn't pretend meditation makes pain disappear. He showed me how to bring my whole history onto the cushion, not just the parts that were easy to sit with.
No. 32
The Wise Heart
A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology
Jack Kornfield 2008
- Spirituality
What it's about
Kornfield brings together Buddhist psychology and Western therapy into one picture of the mind, and of our capacity for compassion and freedom.
Why it can change your life
Therapy gave me a great deal, and it also missed things. This book filled in what was missing: that underneath the wounds, my essential goodness was never damaged.
No. 33
When Things Fall Apart
Heart Advice for Difficult Times
Pema Chödrön 2016
- Spirituality
What it's about
Pema Chödrön on leaning into groundlessness instead of running from it, and on tonglen, the practice of breathing in pain and breathing out compassion.
Why it can change your life
Tonglen is part of my practice, and Pema is the teacher I hear when I do it. When my world came apart, she taught me to stay, and to let my own pain open my heart to others.
No. 34
How We Live Is How We Die
Pema Chödrön 2023
- Spirituality
What it's about
Pema Chödrön on impermanence: how the endings and letting-go of each ordinary day prepare us to meet the biggest transitions with an open heart.
Why it can change your life
My father died before we had any chance to repair things. This book helped me hold that grief without needing it resolved.
No. 35
The Untethered Soul
The Journey Beyond Yourself
Michael A. Singer 2007
- Spirituality
What it's about
Singer invites you to notice the voice in your head, and to realize you are the one who hears it, not the voice itself.
Why it can change your life
For years I believed every cruel thing my inner critic said. This book helped me step back and witness that voice instead of obeying it.
No. 36
Tao Teh Ching
Lao Tzu, translated by John C. H. Wu 1990
- Spirituality
What it's about
Eighty-one short verses on the Tao, the way of nature, where softness overcomes hardness and water wears away stone.
Why it can change your life
"Bend, don't break" could have come straight from these pages. This little pocket edition is one I come back to again and again.
No. 37
Mindful of Race
Transforming Racism from the Inside Out
Ruth King 2018
- Spirituality
What it's about
A meditation teacher shows how mindfulness can help us see our own racial conditioning honestly, and meet it with compassion rather than defensiveness.
Why it can change your life
My healing began when I stopped looking away from what my family would not name. Ruth King asks for that same courage about race, and it is a practice I want to keep.
No. 38
Awakening to the Spirit World
The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation
Sandra Ingerman & Hank Wesselman 2010
- Spirituality
What it's about
Two teachers of shamanism introduce the practice of journeying and the ways it can reconnect us with nature, spirit and our own inner guidance.
Why it can change your life
Nature has always been where I feel most held. This book opened a way of listening to the living world that deepened my sense of belonging.
No. 39 · Oracle deck
Messages from Your Animal Spirit Guides
Steven D. Farmer 2008
- Spirituality
What it's about
A deck of 44 cards with a guidebook, each card an animal carrying a message about what it may be asking you to notice in your life.
Why it can change your life
Nature has been one of my truest teachers. These cards are a gentle way to pause and ask what a day, and the living world, might be trying to tell me.
No. 40
How to Awaken Your True Potential
Paramahansa Yogananda 2016
- Spirituality
What it's about
Talks and writings from the author of Autobiography of a Yogi on tapping the inner power of the soul through concentration, will and meditation.
Why it can change your life
When I had lost all faith in myself, Yogananda's certainty that the soul is whole and untouchable gave me something to lean on.
No. 41
You Can Heal Your Life
Louise Hay 1984
- Spirituality
What it's about
Louise Hay's classic on how our thoughts and beliefs shape our experience, and on using affirmations and self-love to change them.
Why it can change your life
I learned to speak cruelly to myself very young. Louise Hay's affirmations gave me a way to practice speaking to myself with love instead.
No. 42
Creative Abundance
Keys to Spiritual and Material Prosperity
Elizabeth Clare Prophet & Mark L. Prophet 1998
- Spirituality
What it's about
Spiritual principles and practices for opening to abundance, framed as a flow we can learn to receive rather than something we must chase.
Why it can change your life
I grew up feeling like the expensive one, the child who cost too much. This book helped me trust that there is enough, and that I am allowed to receive.
No. 43 · Audiobook
Becoming Nobody
The Essential Ram Dass Collection
Ram Dass 2019
- Spirituality
What it's about
Ram Dass on letting go of the roles we spend our lives building (our "somebody training") and resting in the loving awareness underneath.
Why it can change your life
I was handed a role in my family before I could speak. Ram Dass helped me see that none of the roles are who I really am. We are all just walking each other home.
No. 44
Cleanse to Heal
Anthony William 2020
- Alternative Health
What it's about
Anthony William's cleanses, recipes and guidance for people living with chronic symptoms, with a particular focus on supporting the liver.
Why it can change your life
I lived with chronic illness for years without being believed. This book gave me practical steps I could take for my own body, one small change at a time.
No. 45
Brain Saver
Anthony William 2022
- Alternative Health
What it's about
Anthony William's account of what he believes lies behind brain fog, anxiety, depression and other neurological symptoms, with the protocols he recommends.
Why it can change your life
Brain fog and anxiety were part of my chronic illness for a long time. This book helped me look at my mental health as part of my whole body's story.
No. 46
What If This Is Heaven?
How Our Cultural Myths Prevent Us from Experiencing Heaven on Earth
Anita Moorjani 2017
- Alternative Health
- Spirituality
What it's about
After a near-death experience, Anita Moorjani takes apart the cultural beliefs that keep us from feeling at home here, about health, love, worth and spirituality.
Why it can change your life
So many of the rules I lived by were never mine. Anita's story helped me question them, and to believe I was worthy of love simply by existing.
No. 47
The Body Keeps the Score
Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Bessel van der Kolk 2015
- Mental Health
What it's about
A psychiatrist's landmark account of how trauma lives on in the body, and of the approaches (yoga, EMDR, movement and more) that help people heal.
Why it can change your life
My body said what my mouth could not, for most of my life. This book explained why, and helped me listen to my body as a communicator, not an enemy.
No. 48
The Myth of Normal
Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture
Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté 2022
- Mental Health
What it's about
Gabor Maté on how trauma and the stresses of modern life shape our health, and why so much of what we call illness is a natural response to abnormal conditions.
Why it can change your life
For years my illnesses were dismissed or treated as all in my head. This book connected my body's story to my life's story, the way I had always sensed it was.
No. 49
Needing to Know for Sure
A CBT-Based Guide to Overcoming Compulsive Checking and Reassurance Seeking
Martin N. Seif & Sally M. Winston 2019
- Mental Health
What it's about
Two anxiety specialists explain why reassurance never quite satisfies an anxious mind, and offer practical tools for learning to live with uncertainty.
Why it can change your life
Anxiety and OCD have been part of my story too. This book helped me stop chasing certainty and start trusting that I can handle not knowing.
No. 50
Daring Greatly
How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Brené Brown 2015
- Mental Health
What it's about
Brené Brown's research on shame and vulnerability, and her case that showing up and being seen is the source of courage, connection and belonging.
Why it can change your life
Writing to my family about what happened was the most vulnerable thing I have ever done. Brené reminded me that it was courage, however they received it.
No. 51
Atomic Habits
An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
James Clear 2018
- Mental Health
What it's about
James Clear's practical system for changing behaviour through tiny, consistent habits, and for building an identity around the person you want to become.
Why it can change your life
My recovery didn't come from one big breakthrough. It came from small daily choices, the low-hanging fruit, and this book shows exactly how small steps add up.