By Books Author Denise Turney

Books offer great entertainment. But they do more than that. Good books help you heal.

Have you ever had your guard up to the point where you didn’t notice that you were making mistakes with your life? When you’re this guarded, you may refuse to see your mistakes and open to change, to start to heal. As powerful as digging in your heels against change (including inner healing) may feel, it’s not the way to start living your best life.

Good Books Lower Resistance to Healing

You could talk with a friend, placing yourself in an environment where you feel safe enough to lower your guard and begin to heal. That certainly helps. But friends get busy. Despite their best intentions, there are instances when good-good friends face so many challenges of their own that it’s overwhelming for them to offer an open ear, especially if you’re resisting the very change that you most need to make right now to start the healing process.

This might surprise you. Yet, reading good books can lower your resistance to inner healing in unexpected ways. Highly crafted books are gentle in how they adjust perception and loosen erroneous beliefs. For example, powerful, complicated book characters grab your attention by spotlighting the character’s shortcomings and personal challenges.

Before you know it, you’re rooting for some book characters while wishing that other characters reap what they sow. Even if you’re usually alert, it may be weeks after you finish a novel before it dawns on you that one or more of a book’s major characters have strengths and areas for improvement that are similar yours.

Good Books Provide Clarity During Healing Process

Without realizing it, you can witness the effects of specific causes (e.g. anxiety, violence, poverty) on someone’s life while you read good books. But that’s not all. Another of the gentle ways that books help you to heal is how books gently let you see alternatives for choices that you’re facing.

This happened for me when I read comedian and actor, Bernie Mac’s book, Maybe You Never Cry Again. I can still visualize the scene where he wrote about the last odd job that he took to pay bills – the last job that he took before he went after what his heart called him to do — succeed at comedy. Thanks to what Bernie Mac shared in the book, I knew that I had to pull out the stopper and go after my novel writing full tilt boogie. Reading Maybe You Never Cry Again helped me to heal from the habit of putting off what I knew I must do.

The Ebony Tree by Maxine Thompson gently showed me the rewards of letting the past go, even old family history. Talk about moving into healing page-by-page. And, I still remember the first time that a woman who’d read Spiral told me that, after reading the book, she’d decided to forgive, a sure way to heal.

How Books Help You Heal

Although I didn’t write Spiral around the message of forgiveness, that reader’s feedback was beyond inspiring and encouraging. Think about all the good books you’ve read so far. How have those books changed your life? How have those books helped you to heal?

During my childhood, it was good books that helped me navigate challenging real life events. I got so much courage and positive energy and inspiration to heal from books like the Pippi Longstocking series, Ramona and Mildred Taylor’s Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

So, yes. Good books help you to drop your guard so that you can have more clarity around pivotal life decisions, the types of choices that are part of the healing process. Books do this by putting characters in situations that millions of people face. Because you’re not in the spotlight (the book’s major characters fill those roles), you can witness what’s going on without fear, without becoming defensive. And making the right choices is healing. It really is.

Enjoy What You Love About Good Books

I love the power of healing you can gain from reading good books.

Other gentle ways that good books help you to heal are by switching your focus off of perceived problems which, in turn, lowers stress. Also, good novels help you to heal by giving you something fun and engaging to do with your partner, family or friends.

After all, book clubs aren’t the only groups that can have fun reading and digging into good books together. You could even turn a good novel story into a play that you put on with family, friends or a local theater. Additionally, good books turn you away from work. They also give you a great option to replace being online for hours or surfing your phone all night.

So, here’s to good books! Hope you enjoy reading a good novel today as you continue the path of inner healing.