Yesterday I met up with my best friend for dinner. It had been a while since she and I had seen each other, and it was a much needed couple of hours. One thing that stood out to me afterwards was the ways in which we are always evolving into, out of, and around vulnerability. Whether it’s vulnerability with friends and family, colleagues, potential readers, social media followers, we are swirling around vulnerability.

I’m doing a thing I haven’t done in a while: I’m reading self-help books. I’m actually rereading Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly. It’s a book I first read in 2020 after leaving my ex-husband in 2019 and going through some really rough moments in the 6-12 months afterwards. Romantic connections, friendships, my writing process all impacted me in different ways that exposed uncomfortable truths about myself, and I wanted to improve. So I started reading books on boundaries and self-improvement, and Brene Brown’s work resonated with me.

Sometimes we need the voice of a stranger to validate that we’re allowed to want more than we have. Sometimes we need to allow ourselves to feel our deepest, truest desires so that we can build our lives towards accomplishing those things.

Daring Greatly helped me understand not only the big dreams and goals I had for myself but also revealed the blockages keeping me from getting there. By September 2020, I was almost a completely different person than when I left my ex-husband. I wasn’t a doormat, just allowing people to use me; I put up boundaries; I didn’t fight to hold onto friendships that were toxic and dysfunctional; I recognized when I was being mistreated and abused and taken for granted and I stopped putting up with it.

This growth came to a screeching halt when I got together with my ex-boyfriend. He was not a fan of Brene Brown and, even though he said he didn’t care if I still read her work, he couldn’t see me with one of her books without making a snide comment. Eventually, I stopped reading her books. After a year, I wasn’t reading any self-help books because, turns out, it wasn’t just Brene Brown he didn’t like, but the entire self-help industry.

Now, to be clear, there are major issues within the self-help industry. Certain authors like Jordan Petersen and Andrew Tate are absolute fucking monsters with nothing but hate for women on their minds. Some of the most popular self-help books (especially those related to success in business) have deeply racist undertones, are pro-capitalist propaganda, and uphold the absolute myth of the “American Dream.” Criticism of the self-help industry is valid.

But not every book is toxic. And at their most basic level, books written to try and help people find peace in their lives and heal their trauma and learn coping techniques for anxiety and depression, etc. are good for us. Not everyone can afford therapy, and there have been several self-help books that have taught me some incredibly valuable lessons about myself, my habits, my approach in relationships, and the ways in which I sabotage myself.

I think with my ex, it wasn’t so much the self-help industry he objected to but the fact that by focusing on my own self-improvement and healing, his lack of self-improvement was magnified. He was a person who used a lot of therapy speak to sound like he had gone through his own healing when really, he hadn’t. Four years in, I had to leave because I was turning back into the desperate, codependent woman I was in my marriage, and I couldn’t stand that regression.

Last year, I read two self-help books: The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest and The Self-Love Workbook for Women. Both books helped me grow in challenging ways, but the results weren’t as profound as the results from my growth in 2020. In 2020 I read many self-help books and they all contributed to not only a lot more clarity regarding my passions and my goals but also helped instill in me a confidence that I haven’t nurtured as much as I wish I had. Therefore, I’m returning to those books as well as introducing new ones so that I can continue this process and, hopefully, return to a place where I am voraciously reading and writing and building my day-to-day life into what I need it to be.

What are your goals for the year?

Let me know in the comments!