The body keeps the score by Bessel Van Der Kolk:
My usual routine is to push myself super hard in life until my body forces me to slow down by feeling sick. Like, I get an actual sinus infection or a bad cold, and so I spend a few days laying low, and then start the cycle again. Anyway, this book is not about that. But it does talk a lot about how our bodies feel things physically when we are emotionally hurting. That's probably not groundbreaking for anyone who works in healthcare. If you are having chronic stomach pains or back pain for no obvious reason, it might be an emotional issue. This book talks about the science of that. I found it really interesting, but also intense and also dense. So I read it on the side for like a month, while I flew through a bunch of other books. I would highly highly recommend this book to anyone who works with people with PTSD, or if you survived trauma during childhood. One thing that really stood out to me is that people with severe recurring trauma during childhood have huge blank spots in their memories. Their brains physically change so they are protected from those memories. So amazing.
Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance:
This book was a little weird to be reading right in the middle of #Blacklivesmatter and #defundthepolice. It is about poor white people (hillbillies) in Kentucky and Ohio. The author manages to go to law school and make a success of himself, maybe at least partly due to white privilege? That's what it felt like to me as I was reading this and also watching videos on my social media of police beating up peaceful Black protestors. I enjoyed the book for sure, and I will probably watch the movie when it comes out.
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