Books That Changed My Life
We “unschool” our three sons, meaning they are afforded educational opportunities that we support them in but do not mandate. This has been challenging at times—like when your kids go through a phase of video game obsession—but mostly incredibly liberating. Reading, and more importantly learning to read, is sometimes a point of contention in the unschool community: if you don’t force your kid to read, then what do you do when they are six and can’t read? Seven? Eight? Nine? (Short answer: they always learn to read eventually and they don’t lag behind traditionally schooled kids so you just let them keep learning whatever other stuff they are passionate about.)
Myself the child of two teachers, reading has always been something I’ve thought of as not just important but even… spiritual? It’s like reading is not just transformative, it’s transcendent. This love for books has passed to my eldest of three sons. He reads upwards of five to six hundred pages per week, often more. When he reads, he is… gone.
My youngest is 13 months old. He likes to take books and drop them from the bed so they make a nice loud sound.
And then there is my middle child. He could not care less about reading. Yet somehow, with the reading comprehension typical of a child much younger than he is, he is able to understand ecological and other concepts that most adults wouldn’t be able to grasp, let alone care about. He can work with plants and animals like a whisperer. It’s a sight to behold.
Read, don’t read. Doesn’t matter. The magic of life will find you in myriad ways no matter what, so long as you are open.
I have wordily prefaced the following list with some anecdotal information about my own family so that you may rest assured in knowing there is no pressure to read anything I suggest. All that being said, following are some books that really changed my life. So if you are into reading or are maybe book-curious, then this list is for you. I’m going to add to this list as I remember books that used to sit on my book shelf but were eventually given away or are on extended loan and I’ve forgotten.
Drumroll…
Be Here Now by Ram Dass
Healing Lost Souls by William Baldwin
Classical Chinese Medicine by Liu Lihong
The Lost Language Of Plants by Stephen Harrod Buhner
The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein
Original Wisdom by Robert Wolff
Plant Spirit Medicine by Eliot Cowan
Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss
Star Sister by Stella Osorojos
The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida
Whole Beauty by Shiva Rose
The Wayfinders by Wade Davis
Fourth Uncle in the Mountain by Quang Van Nguyen
All the absurdist novels by Murakami, Robbins, and Vonnegut
The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell
Human Heart, Cosmic Heart by Thomas Cowan
Song of Increase by Jacqueline Freeman
You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay
Sowing Seeds in the Desert by Masanobu Fukuoka
Five Spirits by Lorie Eve Dechar
Healing Ourselves by Shamini Jain
Never Finished by David Goggins
Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness by Itzhak Bentov
Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon
See you at your next appointment.
—Jaime