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Here is a list of 5 books every woman should read. These books tell us, that we can let go what is not working for us and create an empowered life.
Books tell us that we are not alone. Therefore, we go back to them again and again. Every woman should have her own set of books; she can go back to over and over again. Everyone will have their own set of books that fills them. Here are 5 that I think, every woman should read, atleast once. I believe that the best books are those, which creates a new you each time, you read them.
This book has the power to change anyone’s life. In India, we are taught from childhood, how we should put ourselves last, how loving yourself is not a good thing. Specially women have a bitter love-hate relationship with their own bodies and themselves too. This book tells us, how, what we are told when we were children still governs our lives. It gives us hope that everything that is not working in our lives is a story and that story can be changed. Louise Hay comes up with affirmations that can help us change what we do not desire to live. Even if your life is going all perfect, still have a read, you will still be empowered. This book teaches us, how loving and valuing ourselves can change our lives.
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What does one do when a 37-year-old relationship ends in a brutal divorce, adultery being one of the reasons? What does a mother do when she loses her daughter bit by bit to cancer? What does one do when your house is in mortgage and you do not have enough money to find a roof? Iyanla Vanzant learnt about life lessons, of repetition of patterns, of family pathology that runs in our DNA and of God’s master plan to put us where our life work is. This is a book, everyone should read, to find one’s own piece in the puzzle of life and finally end in the path of peace from the broken pieces. It definitely needs courage to see God’s purpose when everything is breaking in one’s life. But she saw it, with courage and might and left inspiration for millions who might go through darks days in life.
Standing in grace she begins the first chapter, “It is often difficult to identify the exact moment that your life falls apart. In most cases, it is not a one-shot deal. If you ask people who have had the experience of losing everything they love or believe in, they will probably say it was not one telephone call or one letter, one revelation or realization that caused the collapse of life as they knew it. I now understand that my life fell apart one piece at a time. Piece by piece; one experience, one situation, and one circumstance at a time, until I found myself standing in the midst of a heap of broken promises, splintered relationships, and shattered dreams. It is not a place I imagined I would find myself again, after I had gotten through it the first and the second times.”
This book shows how patterns repeat, how our choices matter and finally how to make new ones.
This is a must read for every woman.
This book talks to us about our darker side. Ah! How much we all love to be the angels. But have you ever wondered why certain things irritate us? Why the same old things do get into our nerves? Our “same old things,” as Debbie Ford explains, are clues to our dark sides. This dark side is what we run away most from or where our deepest fears are hidden. However, if faced and accepted that’s where our greatest gifts lie. For life is meant to be whole and not perfect. To every human being there are many sides, real freedom lies in accepting all the sides.
In the words of Debbie, “Your life will be transformed when you make peace with your shadow. The caterpillar will become a breathtakingly beautiful butterfly. You will no longer have to pretend to be someone you’re not. You will no longer have to prove you’re good enough. When you embrace your shadow you will no longer have to life in fear. Find the gifts of your shadow and you will finally revel in all the glory of your true self. Then you will have the freedom to create the life you have always desired.”
Don’t we all know, atleast one woman who find normal nice guys boring, who falls in compulsive relationships that are often destructive. Now, do you know why it happens? This book gives an indepth analysis of the relationship patterns women have with men. This book is for women for whom love is pain. This book is for women who think if they love the man enough or be useful enough things will change and the relationship will be what they think should be. This book is for women who gets in relationships with troubled men and get drained in the process.
“Like drugs, these women use relationships to alter their emotional states,” Norwood says. “They’re hurting and they want this man to appear, to say the right thing so that they can feel differently. When he goes away or doesn`t do those things, the woman keeps turning to him like someone turns to a drug, wanting it to work. Like with drugs, the relationship keeps her out of touch with reality, out of touch with how sick she is getting. And it gets worse, not better. She grows more dependent on him and begins to ignore all the other sources of good things in the world.”
“Letting go of loving too much,” she says, “does not mean we never love, never nurture, never help, never soothe or stimulate or seduce our partner. It means we relate to him as an expression of our own essence rather than because we are trying to elicit a response or create an effect or produce a change in him.”
This book is all about letting go of unhealthy patterns we hold on to, that finally manifests into toxic relationships.
Over past 14 years, Oprah Winfrey has been writing her monthly column in her magazine, which is called “What I know for sure.” This book is a compilation of those columns.
“But just when I’m ready to raise the white flag and yell, ‘That’s it! I’m tapped out! I’ve got nothing!’ ” Oprah confesses in the book’s intro, “I’ll find myself walking the dogs or brewing a cup of chai or soaking in the tub, when, out of nowhere, a little moment of crystal clarity will bring me back to something . . . I absolutely know beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
All the columns are laden with pearls of wisdom to help us live a better-fulfilled life. In one of her columns she writes, “I’m working on not letting people with dark energy consume any of my minutes on this earth. . . . What I know for sure is that how you spend your time defines who you are.”
She writes about her everyday struggle, failure, success and learning from it. This book deserves atleast one read. I have never known, anyone reading this book and not relating to something or other.
True, each one of us has our own lists of books we go back to. But I write with the hope that, you will give these books a chance and may be, it changes your life, the way it did mine. I hope that it empowers you to know yourself better and make better choices in life. Nothing is more important in life, than making informed choices. May we all make empowered choices!
Do write your list of books in our comment section.
Cover image via Shutterstock
Proud Indian. Senior Writer at Women's Web. Columnist. Book Reviewer. Street Theatre - Aatish. Dreamer. Workaholic. read more...
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Being a writer, Nivedita Louis recognises the struggles of a first-time woman writer and helps many articulate their voice with development, content edits as a publisher.
“I usually write during night”, says author Nivedita Louis during our conversation. Chuckling she continues,” It’s easier then to focus solely on writing. Nivedita Louis is a writer, with varied interests and one of the founders of Her Stories, a feminist publishing house, based in Chennai.
In a candid conversation she shared her journey from small-town Tamil Nadu to becoming a history buff, an award-winning author and now a publisher.
Nivedita was born and raised in a small town in Tamil Nadu. It was for schooling that she first arrived in Chennai. Then known as Madras, she recalls being awed by the city. Her love-story with the city, its people and thus began which continues till date. She credits her perseverance and passion to make a difference to her days as a vocational student among the elite sections of Madras.
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