BIPOLAR SOBER / PERSPECTIVES / BOOKS
BOOKS THAT MADE ME THINK.
BOOKS THAT MADE ME QUESTION SHIT.
BOOKS THAT ACTUALLY STAYED WITH ME.
01 / THE BOOKSHELF
This isn't a list of books I'm telling everybody they absolutely have to read.
It's a collection of books I've read, am reading, or keep coming back to because something in them made me stop and think.
Some are about spirituality. Some are about recovery. Some are philosophy. Some are memoirs. Some have absolutely nothing to do with sobriety on the surface and still managed to teach me something about it.
02 / ON MY SHELF
01
BUDDHISM / MINDFULNESS
A book I come back to for Buddhism without needing Buddhism to become another impossible standard I'm supposed to live up to.
Suffering, mindfulness, compassion, impermanence, craving, and learning how to actually be present for your own life.
Suffering is something to understand — not something I have to immediately escape.
02
BUDDHISM / WISDOM
Short teachings that somehow manage to give me plenty of shit to think about.
The mind. Anger. Craving. Discipline. Actions. Attention. How much suffering we create by grabbing onto everything that passes through our heads.
Just because my mind produces a thought doesn't mean I have to follow the fucking thing.
03
HINDUISM / PHILOSOPHY
A conversation about duty, action, identity, devotion, discipline, and what the hell you're supposed to do when you're overwhelmed by the situation in front of you.
I can be responsible for my actions without pretending I control every outcome.
04
PERSONAL GROWTH
Simple ideas that become significantly less simple when you actually try to live them.
How much unnecessary suffering comes from deciding I know what somebody else is thinking.
05
MEMOIR / ADDICTION / REINVENTION
Addiction, jail, consequences, identity, ambition, chaos, and rebuilding a life after you've spent a long time helping destroy it.
Not every useful recovery book has recovery stamped across the cover.
Your past can explain where you came from without getting permanent ownership of where you go next.
06
SHAME / VULNERABILITY / CONNECTION
Shame gets really fucking comfortable in secrecy.
Her work on vulnerability, shame, courage, belonging, and connection gives me another way to look at the stories I tell about myself.
Hiding the parts of myself I'm ashamed of doesn't automatically make the shame disappear.
07
DIARY / HISTORY / HUMANITY
A diary can preserve the inside of a person's life when the outside circumstances are trying to reduce that person to something else entirely.
That matters to me as somebody who writes things down when life gets fucking weird.
Writing down what happened isn't trivial. Sometimes it's how a person refuses to disappear inside what happened to them.
08
The shelf isn't fucking finished.
03 / HOW I READ
I don't need to agree with an entire book for one idea inside it to matter.
I can underline something and disagree with the next page. I can learn from a writer without turning that writer into an authority over my entire fucking life.
What made me stop reading and think?
What did I disagree with?
What connected to something I've lived through?
What idea followed me after I closed the book?
Did anything actually change how I behave?
What do I want to come back to later?
READ THE BOOK.
QUESTION THE BOOK.
WRITE IN THE FUCKING MARGINS.