The Book Therapist, 249 UCB, Boulder (2025)

12/12/2025

I pressed play on the Audible version of Katherine May’s Enchantment during a Tuesday commute because I loved Wintering and trusted her way of seeing the world. A few chapters in, I noticed something unsettling: I couldn’t remember the last time I’d truly paid attention to anything. I was moving through my days; competent, efficient, always in motion, but life had quietly turned into a checklist.

May describes a kind of modern inattentiveness: how we live through layered screens, how even reading or taking a walk becomes another moment where the mind slips away. Listening to her, I realized I’d been treating my attention like a resource to manage instead of the lens I actually live through.
What I appreciated is that she doesn’t shame this. She names it as her own struggle. And in doing so, she reminds you that this constant distraction isn’t inevitable—it’s learned. Which means it can be unlearned.

Here are some revealing and empowering insights from this beautiful book:

1. The Productivity Trap We Don't Name
There's a moment where May describes feeling guilty for taking a walk without a clear purpose—not for exercise, not for errands, just to walk. I nearly laughed out loud in the car. Every activity in my life had to justify itself: better health, useful knowledge, career advancement. Doing something for its own sake felt almost transgressive.

May argues that we've let productivity colonize not just our work but our entire existence. We've forgotten that humans need spaciousness, need time that's not optimized for output. Enchantment can't survive in the margins. It needs room to breathe. This isn't laziness—it's how we stay connected to being alive.

2. Befriending the Dark Seasons
May refuses to pathologize difficulty. She writes about how our culture demands constant positivity, constant growth, constant light. But life includes winters—periods when nothing blooms, when we feel dormant. These aren't aberrations to fix but necessary rhythms.

Reading this made me recognize how exhausting it's been trying to maintain the same energy year-round, the same productivity, the same enthusiasm. May writes about watching the natural world move through seasons without apology and asks why we think we're exempt. There's something profoundly relieving about being given permission to have seasons.

3. Making Without Monetizing
May champions doing things badly, slowly, without any goal beyond the doing itself. Creating things no one will see, learning skills that won't appear on your resume. In a world where every hobby is supposed to become a side hustle, this feels quietly radical.

She describes her own forays into various crafts—not for an audience, not for social media, just done. It made me realize how long it had been since I'd done anything that didn't have an ulterior motive. Everything had become instrumental. May suggests this instrumentalization is part of what's draining enchantment from life.

4. Practicing Enchantment Deliberately
What surprised me most was May's insistence that enchantment isn't just something that happens to you—it's something you practice. A skill that atrophies without use. She writes about relearning how to notice: taking the long way home, learning bird names, paying attention to how light changes, creating small rituals that anchor you in the present.

This isn't Instagram-aesthetic self-care. It's building a different relationship with daily life, one that leaves space for wonder. She's honest that it feels awkward at first. You're standing there looking at a tree, feeling self-conscious. But gradually, with practice, the world starts speaking again in a language you'd forgotten.

I'm three months past finishing the audiobook, and I keep thinking about something May says: that we're not broken, the capacity for wonder hasn't disappeared, we've just built lives that make it nearly impossible to access. This reframing shifted something. I'd been blaming myself for feeling disconnected. May helped me see it as structural, a consequence of how we've organized modern life.

I haven't reclaimed enchantment completely. I still spend too much time on my phone, still feel the compulsive pull of productivity. But now I recognize what's missing. I notice when I'm on autopilot. And sometimes—not always—I remember to stop. To actually look. To let moments exist for their own sake.

May offers us a sustainable way of paying attention, reminds us to slow down, and that we're allowed to want more than efficiency from our lives. May's Enchantment might just help you see what you've been missing—and that you're allowed to want it back.

BOOK: https://amzn.to/4pqpTsg
Enjoy the audiobook with a membership trial using the same link.

12/12/2025

A mother stands over a suitcase in 1944 Latvia. The Russians are coming from one direction, the Germans from another. She has minutes; maybe hours, to decide what pieces of her life she'll carry into exile. Her daughter watches those trembling hands hover over photographs, linens, a child's drawing. What do you save when you're losing everything?

This is where Agate Nesaule's A Woman in Amber begins, and I wasn't ready for how it would gut me. That image; those shaking hands, that impossible choice, stayed with me for days. I found myself thinking about my own mother's hands, about what we all carry without even knowing we're carrying it.

The story follows young Agate and her family through the chaos of World War II—fleeing Latvia, enduring refugee camps, surviving a brutal Russian assault that leaves scars no one will speak of. When Nesaule describes hiding in a basement while soldiers rampage above, the silence between her words screamed louder than any description of violence could. I had to put the book down. Not because it was gratuitous, but because it was true in a way that made my chest tight.

What pierced me wasn't the war itself, it was what came after. Her family makes it to America, to safety, to the promised land of new beginnings. Yet trauma follows like a shadow they can't outrun. They sit at dinner tables in Milwaukee, speaking English with careful accents, and yet they're still trapped in those Latvian forests, still running. Her mother polishes furniture obsessively, as if cleanliness could erase memory. Her father retreats into silence. Young Agate learns to be the "good immigrant," burying her pain under perfect grades and a bright smile.

I recognized something there that I'd never had words for—the way pain doesn't always announce itself with screams. Sometimes it just seeps into the ordinary, making strangers of the people we love most. The way families can share a home but live in separate worlds, each member orbiting their private grief, never quite touching.

Years later, when Nesaule becomes a college professor—successful, assimilated, "healed"—she finds herself unraveling. Depression. Nightmares. A marriage falling apart. The past she'd tried to bury was decomposing beneath the surface of her life. And this is where the book becomes something extraordinary.
Because A Woman in Amber isn't about suffering. It's about what happens when we finally refuse to be silent. When Nesaule begins to speak her truth—to name the violence, the losses, the fear that was supposed to stay buried, the shame that made her mother slap her for crying—something miraculous happens. Not just on the page, but in me.

I felt permission settling into my bones. Permission to acknowledge that inherited pain is still pain. That the trauma our parents survived doesn't skip a generation—it reshapes us in ways we don't always recognize. That "making it" doesn't mean the past releases its grip.

She writes about therapy, about the slow, unglamorous work of healing. About learning to be angry—righteously, powerfully angry—at what was done to her. About forgiving herself for survival. About reclaiming her Latvian language, her memories, her right to grieve openly. These aren't dramatic revelations but quiet acts of rebellion, and they moved me more than any triumphant ending could.

Nesaule taught me that healing isn't about forgetting or "getting over it." It's about integration. It's about refusing to let trauma have the last word. It's about how we reclaim ourselves, one truthful sentence at a time, even when—especially when—the truth is uncomfortable.

This book reminded me that we all carry amber—those preserved moments of pain, suspended in time but never quite gone. Our grandparents' wars, our parents' losses, the silences that shaped our childhoods. And that perhaps the most human thing we can do is hold them up to the light together, speak their names, and finally allow ourselves to be fully seen.

BOOK: https://amzn.to/44h5ihK

12/11/2025

Oh, how often do we overthink, worry, or talk ourselves out of the life we want? The way we think shapes everything we experience. This is your gentle reminder: notice your thoughts, choose the ones that lift you, and let your life follow.

12/11/2025

This book had me laughing in a way that should honestly be classified as a full-body incident. Not cute, not dainty, just pure, chaotic joy. And that’s exactly the point. It delights in the awkward, the messy, the “did-that-really-just-happen?” moments that every parent quietly collects like unpaid parking tickets. The jokes high-five your inner disaster and say, “Same.” Every chapter feels like that rare, glorious moment when someone finally speaks the unfiltered thought you’ve been politely hiding behind a tight smile.

The authors don’t just embrace imperfection, but throw it a party with snacks. Their stories make you feel understood in the most unexpected, hilarious ways. It’s proof that parenting isn’t a curated performance; it’s a beautiful circus where everyone is winging it.

And somewhere between the giggles and gasp-laughs, this book sneaks in real wisdom. The kind that shifts something small but important inside you.

Here Are Four Lessons That Landed Way Deeper Than I Expected

1. Perfection Makes You Miss the Good Stuff
Forget the Pinterest pageantry and organic-everything pressure. The book makes a surprisingly profound case that when we chase flawless parenting, we end up too exhausted to actually enjoy our kids. They don’t need a performer—they need a person. A messy, joyful, fully alive person who shows up for them instead of constantly chasing some imaginary gold star. It’s a quiet rebellion against the idea that motherhood is a public audition.

2. Keeping Yourself Alive (Emotionally) Is Part of the Job
One of the book’s biggest mic drops? You are not required to erase yourself to prove you love your kids. In fact, doing so teaches them the wrong lesson. Kids benefit more from a parent who knows how to rest, set boundaries, and pursue their own interests than one who quietly burns out trying to be everything. Taking time for yourself isn’t a betrayal—it’s maintenance.

3. Guilt Is Optional, Believe It or Not
Parenting guilt often feels like a mandatory accessory, like you get handed a baby and a lifetime supply of “I’m probably messing this up.” But the book calls out how much of that guilt comes from trends, opinions, and strangers on the internet—not parental instinct. Real care is different from performative panic. And letting go of guilt isn’t laziness; it’s choosing clarity over chaos.

4. Your Imperfections Are Training Wheels for Your Kids
This is the big twist: your mistakes don’t ruin your children—they help grow them. Kids who see adults apologize, adapt, and move forward learn how to do the same. Perfection doesn’t build resilience; real life does. A parent who fumbles, tries again, and loves through it all is quietly preparing their kids for the wildness of the world.

In a time when moms are expected to be superheroes with spotless kitchens and spotless emotions, this book is a deep breath and a wink. It reminds us that parenting was never meant to be flawless—it was meant to be human. Not about raising perfect kids or being perfect parents, but raising people who know they’re loved and learning how to love themselves, mess and all.

BOOK: https://amzn.to/44o3FPg
Enjoy the audiobook with a membership trial using the same link.

12/11/2025

I used to think I was doing everything right in relationships. I'd show up consistently, communicate openly, plan thoughtful dates, remember the small details. I was the definition of a hopeless romantic—writing love notes, staying up late talking, giving everything I had. When things inevitably fell apart after a few months, I'd chalk it up to bad timing, wrong person, anything but the obvious pattern staring back at me from every failed relationship.

I read Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, and suddenly every breakup conversation I'd ever had started making a different kind of sense. The times I'd been told "you're too intense" or "I need more space." The gut-wrenching anxiety when someone took three hours to text back. None of it was about compatibility or communication. It was attachment; the operating system running beneath everything I thought I knew about love.

Why does silence soothe some people but feel like abandonment to others? Why does the same quiet evening mean peace for one person and panic for another? The answer lives in your nervous system—early wiring that decides whether closeness feels safe or overwhelming, whether distance brings relief or fear.
Levine and Heller use attachment theory to answer these questions, and to empower us to finally understand our patterns, rewrite them, and choose connection with clarity instead of fear.

Here's an Overview Of The Three Nervous Systems Walk Into a Relationship

1. The Anxious System: When Love Feels Like Starvation
If you're anxious, you experience love the way someone who's been fasting experiences food. A delayed response becomes a five-alarm fire. Your partner goes quiet and your brain starts writing the breakup speech they haven't given yet. You check your phone compulsively, interpret neutral statements as rejection, replay conversations for hidden meanings.

But this isn't weakness—your attachment alarm is just set to maximum sensitivity. You learned early that closeness was inconsistent, so now your system treats every sign of distance like an emergency. The path out isn't to become less needy—it's to reality-test your fears and find partners whose nervous systems can offer consistent responsiveness. With the right person and enough repetition, your system learns that closeness doesn't vanish when you stop white-knuckling it.

2. The Avoidant System: When Intimacy Feels Like Drowning
If you're avoidant, perfect weekends trigger withdrawal. After the kind of connection that would make an anxious person feel high for days, you need to disappear. You'll suddenly fixate on your partner's minor flaws, fantasize about exes, keep emergency exits mapped. Your system learned that intimacy means losing yourself, so it turns the volume way down on need.

The breakthrough: you can have both intimacy and independence if you structure it intentionally. Practice naming your needs without ghosting. Build scheduled connection so closeness feels chosen rather than imposed. "I need Sunday afternoons alone" works infinitely better than slowly withdrawing until your partner feels crazy for wanting to see you.

3. The Secure System: The Eye of the Storm
Secure people don't play games because they're not fighting invisible battles in their heads. They clarify instead of hint. They repair instead of stonewall. Around secure people, anxious partners stop spiraling and avoidant partners soften. It's not magic—it's nervous system regulation.
And here's the revolutionary part: security isn't just something you're born with—it's a learnable pattern.

We’re raised to idolize independence—don’t be needy, don’t rely on anyone. But Levine and Heller reveal something counterintuitive: when your needs are consistently met, you don’t become clingier. You become freer. Secure connection stops you from burning energy on worry, monitoring, or guessing. It gives your nervous system enough safety to actually live. Just like securely attached children explore more, securely connected adults thrive—not despite dependence, but because of it.

The book shows you how to change your patterns. It teaches you to look for secure behavior early instead of mistaking intensity for chemistry, to build small rituals that create predictability, and to express your needs without apologizing for them.

It asks you to examine your interpretations—whether anxiety is convincing you someone is pulling away, or avoidance is making normal closeness feel like pressure. And it reminds you that compatibility matters: some dynamics drain you no matter how hard you work, while secure partners naturally bring out steadiness.

What makes Attached powerful is its clarity: love isn’t effortless, but it becomes sustainable when you understand your wiring. With steady responsiveness and honest communication, your nervous system can learn new rhythms. The alarms quiet. Calm feels possible. And what you once thought was your personality often turns out to be old survival patterns—patterns that can change once you finally see them.

BOOK: https://amzn.to/48HYcnK
Enjoy the audiobook with a membership trial using the same link.

12/11/2025

Last year, my coworker James showed up to our team lunch wearing a watch that didn’t even work. Someone pointed it out, and he laughed awkwardly. “Yeah, I know. Battery died months ago. My girlfriend—well, ex-girlfriend—gave it to me for my birthday.” And still, he wore it every single day. Not because he needed to tell the time—we all have phones. But because taking it off felt like admitting it was really over.

Three months later, I noticed he’d switched to a fitness tracker. I was genuinely happy for him. I eventually learned he’d read Heidi Priebe, and after a refreshing conversation with him, I was honestly amazed by his awareness and strength. I had to check the book out myself.

This Is Me Letting You Go is written for everyone still wearing that broken watch. For anyone learning that the hardest part isn’t the breakup itself—it’s figuring out how to rebuild a life you once designed around someone else. Here’s what the book teaches about surviving when love ends.

Here are five powerful lessons this book teaches about healing from heartbreak.
1. Pain is not proof of compatibility
We convince ourselves that devastation equals destiny. The logic goes: if losing them hurts this badly, surely we were meant to be together. But Priebe challenges this. Intense feelings don't validate a relationship's rightness—they just prove you felt intensely. You can love someone with your whole heart and still be wrong for each other. The depth of your pain measures your capacity to love, not whether that specific love was supposed to last forever. Some of the most painful endings are also the most necessary.

2. Stop waiting for closure from them
You're waiting for something—the conversation where they finally apologize, the moment they realize what they lost, the explanation that makes it all make sense. Priebe's hardest truth: that moment isn't coming. They're not going to hand you closure wrapped in clarity. Closure is what happens when you stop refreshing their social media, stop replaying arguments in your head searching for what you could have said differently, stop asking questions only they can answer. It's the morning you wake up and realize you've stopped waiting for permission to move forward. Closure is a door you close yourself, from the inside.

3. Their leaving says nothing about your worth
Heartbreak whispers a vicious lie: you weren't enough. If you'd been funnier, more patient, less needy, more independent—they would have stayed. Priebe dismantles this completely. You are not a draft they rejected because you needed editing. Some people leave because the timing is wrong, because they're running from themselves, because their path leads elsewhere. Their inability to love you properly says nothing about your lovability. You are not diminished by someone else's departure. You were whole before them, you're whole after them.

4. Grief measures your capacity to love
We're taught to treat sadness like a malfunction—something to fix quickly, medicate away, overcome as proof of strength. But Priebe reframes devastation as evidence of something extraordinary: you loved someone without holding back. You risked rejection, invested hope, made yourself vulnerable. That raw ache in your chest isn't pathology—it's proof you're capable of profound connection. The same heart that breaks this badly is the same heart that loved that deeply. Instead of rushing past the pain, Priebe asks you to recognize it for what it is: a testament to your courage.

5. Healing means choosing yourself over their ghost
You've been building your life around someone who isn't there anymore. You avoid their favorite restaurant. You can't watch that show you started together. You keep your phone volume up just in case they text. Priebe's final lesson: you have to stop treating their absence like a presence. Healing isn't about forgetting them—it's about reclaiming the space they used to occupy. It means watching that show alone and discovering you still enjoy it. It means making plans for next summer without wondering if they'll be there. It means recognizing that carrying their ghost is keeping you from carrying yourself forward.

One Tuesday afternoon, you'll be laughing with friends and realize you haven't thought about them all day. You'll hear the song that used to wreck you and just keep scrolling. You'll run into their name somewhere and feel only a distant echo of what used to be earthquake. That's not callousness. That's healing.

This Is Me Letting You Go won't make heartbreak hurt less, but it will teach you something more valuable: how to survive it without losing yourself in the process. The point isn't to pretend they didn't matter. The point is to remember that you matter more—and you always did.

BOOK: https://amzn.to/4rWzeKf
Enjoy the audiobook with a membership trial using the same link.

12/11/2025

Amanda Ripley does something amazing: she follows American teenagers abroad and lets their confusion become our teacher. These students land in foreign classrooms expecting the familiar rhythms of American school—only to end up questioning everything they thought they knew about learning.

The Smartest Kids in the World is the collection of her findings, showing us just how different education can look.

The book tackles a straightforward puzzle: some countries reliably turn out stronger students. But Ripley doesn’t take the policy-wonk route. Instead, she shows us what it feels like to sit in a Korean classroom where the teacher walks in like royalty, or a Finnish school where nobody seems stressed about anything at all.

Here's What Different Countries Get Right

South Korea: Respect the Teacher, Transform the Classroom
Teaching in South Korea isn't a backup career—it's a prestigious profession that attracts top talent. The intensity is palpable. Education isn't seen as daycare or babysitting; it's understood as the mechanism for social mobility.
The downside? Students are exhausted. The pressure can be crushing. But there's something here worth extracting: when teachers are respected as professionals who do critical work, the entire educational dynamic shifts. The question is whether we can capture that respect without importing the burnout.

Finland: What Happens When You Actually Trust People
Finland tosses out most of what Americans assume education requires. Minimal standardized testing. Reasonable homework loads. No anxiety-driven competition to separate "good" students from "bad" ones.
The replacement? Trust. Teachers have autonomy. Students aren't constantly ranked. The system assumes every kid—regardless of background—deserves excellent instruction.
The results speak for themselves, but what stands out is the absence of panic. Students learn without dread. Teachers teach without being micromanaged. Turns out you can achieve excellence without making everyone miserable.
Poland: What Belief Actually Accomplishes

Poland's transformation is striking. For years, the system tracked students early, essentially deciding at young ages who was worth investing in. Then they changed course: delay tracking, raise expectations universally, stop writing kids off prematurely.
Students responded. Performance jumped dramatically.
The lesson hits hard: how many students are capable of more than we're asking of them? How much talent withers because we decided too early it wasn't there?

Canada: Making Fairness Actually Work
Canada refuses to accept that where you live determines what education you receive. Whether you're wealthy or struggling, born in Canada or arrived last month, the commitment to quality education stays consistent.
This isn't about feel-good egalitarianism. It's strategic. Canada recognizes that letting some students fall through the cracks while others thrive isn't just morally questionable—it's economically foolish.

Japan: The Forgotten Purpose of School
Japanese students clean their schools, help classmates who are struggling, and take responsibility for collective success. The star student isn't necessarily the fastest individual performer—it's someone who ensures the group succeeds together.
In cultures obsessed with individual achievement, Japan offers a reminder: schools aren't just factories for producing high test scores. They're places where young people learn how to exist in community, how to contribute, how to care about something beyond themselves.

The Netherlands: Sanity as Educational Strategy
The Dutch approach feels almost radical to Americans: shorter school days, manageable homework, actual time for childhood. And their academic results compete with countries where students work twice the hours.
The implication is uncomfortable: maybe childhood isn't just something to endure before real life begins. Maybe kids who have space to be kids actually learn more effectively.

Ripley understands you can't just copy-paste another country's system. Culture matters. Context matters. But these examples do something valuable: they make our own choices visible.
Why do we structure schools the way we do? What assumptions are we making about children, about learning, about what matters? Are we accepting certain outcomes as inevitable when they're actually just choices we keep making?

This book works for anyone who senses something is off—parents who watch their kids grind through busywork, teachers who know they could do better with different constraints, students who feel like they're being processed rather than educated.

Ripley's gift is showing us that alternatives exist. Other countries have made different choices and gotten better results. Which means our current approach isn't destiny—it's just what we've chosen so far. The real question is whether we care enough to choose differently.

BOOK: https://amzn.to/4rMdD6W
Enjoy the audiobook with a membership trial using the same link.

12/10/2025

Your journey doesn’t have to be a performance. Let your growth be something you experience deeply, not merely a struggle to prove yourself.

12/10/2025

We're living in divided times. Pick any topic; politics, religion, workplace dynamics, and you'll find people dug into opposing trenches. When faced with opposition, most of us do one of three things: avoid the conflict, fight to win, or try to steamroll the other side. Adam Kahane's Collaborating with the Enemy suggests there's another way, even if it sounds counterintuitive: actually working with the people who drive you crazy.

Kahane doesn't sugarcoat what collaboration means. He's not talking about working with people you already like or who share your values. Real collaboration, as he defines it, means working with people who make you uncomfortable—people whose views you find wrong, frustrating, or even dangerous.
The book isn't about feeling good. It's about getting things done when the usual approaches have failed. Here's what makes it valuable:

Here Are Five Powerful Insights From The Book

1. Let go of control
We usually enter collaborations wanting to win, prove we're right, or at least protect our interests. But effective collaboration requires something different: showing up ready to be changed by the experience. The best solutions don't come from one side defeating the other—they emerge when no one is fully in charge and new possibilities can surface.

2. Discomfort isn't a bug, it's a feature
Tension, awkward silences, heated arguments—these aren't signs something's going wrong. They're signs something's actually happening. Kahane argues we should stop running from friction and start recognizing it as evidence of real engagement. Growth rarely feels comfortable while it's happening.

3. Start before you're ready
Most people want trust established before they'll collaborate. They want shared goals, common ground, mutual respect. Kahane flips this: collaboration doesn't require trust—it builds trust. Waiting until everything feels safe means never starting. Trust develops through the messy process of actually doing things together.

4. Choose the right tool for the job
Collaboration isn't always the answer. Kahane identifies four approaches: giving orders, applying pressure, going with the flow, or collaborating. Sometimes you need top-down direction. Sometimes you need to adapt. But when power is fragmented and problems are complex, collaboration becomes necessary—not because it's nice, but because nothing else will work.

5. Progress beats perfection
Collaboration won't make conflicts disappear. People will still disagree, tensions will remain, and doubts will persist. The goal isn't to achieve perfect harmony—it's to make forward movement possible. The real value is creating outcomes that no single group could achieve alone.

Through examples from boardrooms to war zones, Kahane shows how the people who frustrate us most might hold pieces of the puzzle we're missing. Collaboration isn't about liking each other or even agreeing. It's about being willing to stand side by side and push forward anyway.

In our polarized world, the people who'll make a difference are those willing to work with their supposed enemies. That's where real change happens. Collaborating with the Enemy isn't just theory—it's a practical manual for building something new when the old ways have stopped working.

BOOK: https://amzn.to/4pw5jHa
Enjoy the audiobook with a membership trial using the same link.

The Book Therapist

12/12/2025

12/12/2025

12/11/2025

12/11/2025

12/11/2025

12/11/2025

12/11/2025

12/10/2025

12/10/2025

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Category