It’s been super fun to see what’s resonating with folks who read our book, Reclaiming Body Trust. And because learning to live in contrast to mainstream ideas and culture is a continual unlearning process, we wanted to share a list of books to help you stay on the path. While your experience of Body Trust is your own, there may be a felt sense developing that is beginning to feel like Body Trust inside of you. These books embody a similar felt sense, a feeling that steers us back around to truth and knowing. Our bodies know what trust feels like. Our bodies know and love truth. And these writers will meet you there.
In no particular order:
The Journal of Radical Permission by adrienne maree brown & Sonya Renee Taylor is transformational journaling that points you home to truth and your liberation, reliably and with innate wisdom.
Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Just read it. It is a naturalist view of how we learn from the world around us to be free and get free. Dana and Hilary both loved this book so very much.
Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed is in the backbone of Body Trust. The radical, raw humanity in the questions and answers that are in this book bring us home to ourselves and a sense of belonging in a world that demands something more masked and rehearsed.
The Misfit’s Manifesto by Lidia Yuknavitch is lived experience and body story. It is about the inherent truth and beauty of being a “misfit” and explores the concept of belonging as well as anti-mainstream ideas of expression, love, work and togetherness. It is a beauty. There is also a TED talk.
Nejma by nayyirah waheed is love poems to you, yourself, and your emerging.
Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown is an exploration of pleasure as essential for your own healing and for social movements. It turns constructs and structures on their head.
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. This book is essential reading for all of humanity. There’s so much more to say, but this is enough.
Decolonizing Wellness: A QTBIPOC-Centered Guide to Escape the Diet Trap, Heal Your Self Image & Achieve Body Liberation by Dalia Kinsey. This is the body liberation and food freedom book for (and by) marginalized lived experience. Few mainstream body positivity resources address the intersectional challenges of anti-Blackness, colorism, homophobia, transphobia, and generational trauma that are at the root of struggles with wellness and self-care.
Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison is the book to read when diet culture wants to take over your brain with its fake logic and pseudoscience. Anti-Diet explains why all of that has been wrong.
Nothing is Okay by Rachel Wiley. Rachel is the real deal, the raw, honest, fat poet we need. Buy her work. Follow her. Thank her.
Shrill by Lindy West. This is the book that sparked one of the first television shows to take an honest look at a fat body story. Lindy is a hilarious writer.
How to Raise an Intuitive Eater by Amee Severson & Sumner Brooks is the book we wish all of our mothers had long ago. This is for the parents who want to disrupt the family lineage, do different, and be held in the process.
You deserve to be supported, in an ongoing way, over and over again, as you explore Body Trust for yourself. We hope that some of these find their way onto your shelves and into your being.
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