2022 in Books

I completed this year’s POPSUGAR Reading Challenge! I had started previous years, yet I’d end up meandering away from the prompts, partially due to a lack of time & dedication in planning & organizing my prompt selections. I’m getting ahead of myself…

If you want to know more details about this reading challenge click the link above. Basically, it is a list that offers a certain number of unique prompts to inspire your book selection throughout the year. As with many challenges, one purpose is to step outside of your comfort zone & try reading different books from what you’d usually gravitate toward. For example, I’ve read more romance genre books in the past 12 months than I have in my 30+ years prior! Still not a fan.

With an enormous online community of fellow readers participating, you can reach out to their wisdom when you find yourself stumped by a challenging prompt. For example, this year one prompt was for a book with a palindrome title… and I had already read the top suggestion, Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam.*

*I think I pre-ordered this book, as it’s the final in the trilogy & I was totally willing to buy it in hardcover…

There is no explicit rule stating that you have to read a book that you haven’t read before, but that is an additional layer of difficulty that I like to uphold for myself. Furthermore, I wanted the most literal interpretation of palindrome (e.g., the title is a single word rather than a phrase that can be read the same backward & forward). After consulting the wisdom of a Goodreads** forum for this challenge, I settled on Phoebe Wynne’s Madam.

**I’ve pivoted away from Goodreads (owned by Amazon) & I use StoryGraph – which has much cooler features for tracking your reading habits! #notsponsored

I completed the final book of the 2022 challenge sometime late August / early September. A delightfully generous & creative community member*** made this Canva poster template for tracking & displaying your completed books. I made some very minor edits to mine to suit my aesthetic, but this image below is the final product.

*** I want to credit this person but I can’t remember where I found this offering. It’s possible it was shared on a Facebook group. I’ll look & update if/when I find them. Thank you, talented stranger!

I’ve included a written list of each of the books featured above:

1. Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan
2. Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
3. Lumberjanes, Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy by N.D. Stevenson
4. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
5. Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
6. The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova
7. Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
8. Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots ❤
9. Hunting by Stars by Cherie Dimaline
10. Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Tretheway
11. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
12. Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death, and Surviving by Julia Samuel
13. The Round House by Louise Erdrich
14. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner ❤
15. The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig
16. Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor
17. Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
18. Love in Color: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold by Bolu Babalola
19. The Broken Girls by Simone St. James
20. Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock
21. A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker
22. All Systems Red by Martha Wells
23. The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi
24. A Pslam for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
25. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Holly Jackson
26. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Balli Kaur Jaswal
27. Network Effect by Martha Wells
28. The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury
29. No Bad Parts: How the Internal Family Systems Model Changes Everything by Richard Schwartz
30. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake
31. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
32. Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
33. Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
34. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
35. Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur
36. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
37. Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki ❤
38. Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
39. A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin
    
40. They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
41. Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
42. Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley ❤
43. Madam by Phoebe Wynne
44. The Initial Insult by Mindy McGinnis
45. The Last Laugh by Mindy McGinnis
46. Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
47. Gallant by V. E. Schwab
48. Velvet was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
49. A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark
50. The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

BONUS: Some excellent books that I read this year which were not part of this reading challenge:

Non-Fiction

• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson
• Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb
• Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell
• It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand by Megan Devine
• Homecoming: Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole, Authentic Self by Thema Bryant ❤
• Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain ❤
• Say My Name by Chanel Miller ❤

Fiction

• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin ❤
• Tainna: The Unseen Ones, Short Stories by Norma Dunning
• Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Bring on 2023!

Click here if you’d like to follow me on StoryGraph. Maybe we’re book twins?

Why I Love To Read (a few short reasons):

• Reading is the ultimate escape: you can travel to places/times that you may never see.
• Women reading has long been frowned upon by the menfolk, so being a woman reading is a radical act of resistance against the patriarchy.
• Studies have linked reading fiction to increases in empathy.
• Reading can help you feel connected to others and less alone in the world.

I Don’t Like Mondays

Mondays suck. Not in that water-cooler banter / cliché coffee mug kind of way either. Consistently, I feel at my absolute worst on Mondays – so, I wonder why? When I was over-working I figured it was my body rebelling. However, it has been a few years since that hectic Monday to Friday job, and six months of working on my own schedule… and Mondays still suck. I am curious about how deeply ingrained my anti-Monday sentiment goes. Does it go all the way back to grade school? Past the years of underemployment and overwork that characterized my twenties, I try to picture those earlier Mondays. High school, each morning was a struggle; middle school, mental health got real rough; and in grade school – well, I am pretty sure they were still using shame as pedagogy in the 90s…

Maybe this theory that my body remembers the trauma of 30+ years of Mondays isn’t so far-fetched after all…

Admittedly, I prefer Tori Amos’ cover to the original: https://youtu.be/-ZuwvfmHAWA

Re-Constructing my Home Office

I woke up Sunday morning and dismantled my entire desk area. I did this prior to finishing my first cup of coffee (not a good call). You see, I have a small home project on the horizon, which naturally means that my brain is jumping five steps ahead to wonder… What will my work area look like after this project is complete? Given my poor spatial awareness, I conclude that I must rearrange said work area before I start drilling into walls (probably a good call). Next thing I know, I’m shuffling in dust for an hour just to end up with a wobbly desk, a chair that’s too big for the space, and several piles of papers, books, bags, boxes, and computer parts littered across the floor…

If I look over right now (12+ hours later) I see lying akimbo: a pink rabbit plushie, two colouring books, a bag of sparkle glue pens, and an emerald green wig. How old am I again? Rhetorical question.

_{Nikki circa 2014. Evidence that my desk has always resembled working inside of an I Spy page.}

Breathe; deal with it tomorrow. 

Laughter is Medicine

Laughter transcends differences & cultivates connection.

I believe laughter acts as our body’s natural stress relief (think about nervous giggles in awkward moments). Sometimes life feels so tough that all one can do is laugh or cry. Both laughter & tears can bring healing. Both are welcome here.

What makes you laugh on dark days?

Snapshot of a Mildly Distracted Day

For your consideration… 

Here is a list of all the things I did instead of what I’m supposed to be doing:

• Merged my Spotify account with my partner’s (saving us ~$10 CAD / month!)
• Watched YouTube videos on private practice skills
• Watched YouTube videos on ADHD 
• Watched YouTube videos on bullet journaling ideas
• Followed up on social plans with a friend (a process that spans multiple days)
• Started several lists of bullet journal ideas for the new year
• Revived/updated my old blog account (hello reader)
• Posted some blurbs from my ‘Thought Dump’ Google doc
• Wrote & published a random blog post about adult ADHD
• Listened to an episode of Dr. Thema’s Homecoming podcast (check her out here)
• Spaced out for a couple hours in there

Here’s the list of things I’m supposed to do that I actually did: 

• Followed up with a client via email
• Held space in therapy session with client
• Monitored my work email (albeit anxiously)
• Drank water
• Took my medications
• Ate lunch (this only happened because my lovely partner made it for me…)
• Brushed my teeth – twice! 
• I forget the rest

Count your small wins, I guess?

Late-Stage ADHD

Learning that you have ADHD as a 33-going-on-34 year old woman* is such a bittersweet pill – that discovering this coincided with the end of my graduate training to become a psychotherapist, made it even more confusing. (Or maybe this timing served to amp up my sense of urgency to figure out what this ADHD means for me). 

Never-mind the additional hurdle of trying to parse out whether what sounds like ADHD could instead possibly be part of my lifelong dance with depression (MDD) and complex trauma… (which at times has been labelled BPD). It turns out if your mood is good** and you are still struggling to focus on work that you love but just can’t bring yourself to do… that could be an ADHD thing. Also, every report card from grade school and on stating that you need to stop talking/distracting others in class. Oh, and you happen to have a twin who actually was diagnosed with ADHD in the third grade, while you got a vague ‘gifted’ label instead. What’s that about hindsight being 20/20?

After arriving to this insight – the thinking that maybe ADHD could be something that explains why I’ve always felt like such a failure of a human being, how I can’t keep up no matter how hard I try, why I can be pretty annoying when I talk because I get so excited and then interrupt people even though I know it’s not polite, or add a story of my own in an attempt to relate even though that actually takes the focus off their story and now I’m being rude… Somehow I’ve been exceptionally capable of focusing on random niche obsessions, yet unable to keep up with my dishes, or remember to brush my teeth daily, or hold on to a new hobby for more than 6 months… oh shit, the vegetables in the fridge have spoiled. Again. 

The insidious, judgemental, painful belief that these parts represent a deep character flaw or a moral failing still shows up regularly (maybe I’m just lazy, maybe I’m just looking for excuses, maybe I just need to get my shit together…) – despite the numerous self-compassion practices, despite honing skills in accurate empathy, despite the education, despite the resonance with others’ lived experiences, despite the fact that I’m a therapist now so I feel like I should know better. Waking up each day to a counterwill so strong that it’s often the first thought that shows up in my conscious mind (a surge of, “I don’t want to do anything ever” washing through me). The swell of exhaustion after completing a seemingly menial task, I can hear the racing traces of my never-ending “to-do” list revving its engines to run at full speed until midnight and beyond because the goddess only knows whether I can get to bed before 2am…

Some days are better than others. Some days learning about my ADHD makes me feel hopeful. Other days it bubbles up a pit of self-loathing and despair. And other days I wonder how much it really matters… or if this difference in the way my brain works is a problem or a puzzle to be solved. Perhaps it just is what it is.

Maybe some days I can let myself believe that it is okay to simply be.

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*(Cis-)woman is only one of my identities / social locations, which is to say that I can only speak from my experience, an experience informed by being: a white settler-colonizer, queer, cis-gender woman, from a working class background, recently turned ‘professional’ who is also cash-poor & property-less, yet plentiful in post-secondary education & student loan debt; a partnered person, a pet-parent, a relatively able-bodied person with lived experience in mental health, addiction, housing insecurity, poverty, & an inter-generational survivor of gender-based violence (to name just a few). Not sure how to quantify the myriad of chronic health issues I also manage – which includes dozens of food & environmental allergies, mild asthma, acid reflux, eczema, migraines, GI issues, & alopecia (which currently manifests as circular bald patches scattered throughout my scalp that seem to vary in number & size).

**At the time I consulted my family doctor about my ADHD suspicions, my mood was pretty stable – I had been in individual therapy for over a year, on Wellbutrin to manage extremes in my moods for over two years, in graduate school for counselling psychology for the better part of two years (thus turning myself inside out repeatedly & regularly experiencing therapy from peers)… After completing a 12-week DBT-skills group at the end of 2019, just three months before the world shut down in response to COVID-19 pandemic (where I would continue to work on the frontlines in homelessness until September 2021). Add a decade of various psychoeducation & coping skills groups for depression, workplace burnout, vicarious trauma, self-esteem & surviving gender-based violence. Periodic participation in meditation & mindfulness practices, some attempts at trauma-informed yoga… An honourable mention goes to a decade of activism & advocacy, which has been more healing than most of the other things I’ve mentioned combined. Special shout-out to the value of prioritising play in my adult life – which has been a soothing balm coating the pulsating pain that comes of living in this world.

Remembering Ourselves

Often we remember moments in our childhood and wonder, how could we have let that happen? How could we have seen/not seen something, how could we have done/not done something, how could we have felt/not felt something… because this something was so painful, and so important; because this something feels so obvious to us now. We forget in our remembering that we are time-travelling back to this child. This child who does not know what you – adult you – knows now; this child who had no way of knowing what you know now as an adult. You were a child – that’s how.

Bodies Are Weird

I am surprised by how often my teeth are clenched as I go through my day. It surprises me how tuned out of my body I am until those moments when I tune back in and find that this tension has taken hold. Who invited you, tension? Sometimes bodies are uncomfortable, that’s true. So, what can I do to make my body a little more comfortable right now? I start by loosening the tension in my face. I stick my tongue out and downwards; almost like I’m trying to lick my chin (oh yes, it looks silly). I hold it for a couple seconds and release it (a.k.a., put my tongue back into my mouth). How does that feel? Now with muscles loosened, there’s slightly less tension held in my cheeks and jaw. A yawn often follows. Maybe I will notice how thirsty I am, and sip some cool water. Now I am ready to carry on with my day, only with a little more comfort than before.

The Cost of Paradise

A year has passed and memories of paradise enter my mind on a daily basis. Once you have a taste of how beautiful the world can be, how is it possible to go back? This is where an addiction takes root. Or maybe it is more accurately described as a thirst, because the drive is so organic, so innate.

Last February my partner and I boarded a plane in Toronto, Canada to San Jose, Costa Rica. I planned the trip for the better part of two years before we finally started our adventure. Two years planning for thirteen days. I suppose you could say I have a meticulous personality.

Having never funded my own travel beyond the invisible lines of Canada before, the idea of being abroad provoked a swarm of financially-based anxieties. For the most part, I am working-poor. Not including a couple of contracts with the university, most of my life I have made minimum wage, give or take a dollar.

Literally selling hours of my life for currency has given me a lot of time to think about how I want to spend my time. The time I am not sacrificing for a wage is precious. I want to use this time to learn, to grow, to become a more connected and complete human being. The world we inhabit does not make growth and personal development an easy path.

There is a very strange imbalance in what our society values. Collecting and hoarding symbols of worth, possessions, and constructing appearances take precedence over the well being of people, communities and the living world. We are conditioned to acquire this synthetic life – a life which inevitably leads to dysfunctional, unnatural cycles of consumption that destroy the earth and leave us hollow.

Descending dozens of stones steps, there are thousands of plant species thriving all around us. Light mist sprinkles the surface of our skin, as sheets of sunlight become visible through thick vines and boughs of trees. Some people have stopped ahead of us to watch movement in a nearby branch. We are lucky enough to spot two monkeys crunching away on their morning meal. Howler monkeys are a lot smaller than expected, given the massive amount of noise they can produce. For now these two are happy to snack on some fruit, and thrill simple tourists like myself.

When we reach the bottom clearing there are tarps set up overhead to provide some coverage from mists and rains, several wooden benches underneath. With such a lengthy climb down, it feels so good to sit and breathe in the moist air. Surrounding us are the soggy moss and lichen covered rocks. The nearby river moves quickly around the clearing, where about halfway it meets an outcropping of stones that slow the water’s movement. To the left of these stones, a small pool forms off the side of the main river. Some locals are wading around the edge of the calm, still bubbling waters. The tourists, however, are distracted by the view to our right.

Gazing up over 200 feet, we see the gushing cascade of white against vivid green and solid grey rock. Breathtaking, speechless, we are drawn closer onto the rocks at the river edge. The closer we move, the more moisture gathers in the space around us. The rocks are slick and we have to watch our steps. Fallen trees along the edge of the rock face make for damp but sufficient seating. Simply breathing in this environment is pure joy. The air tastes of earth. The vines growing across the surrounding cliff drip steadily. If I try, I can match this steady drip with the beat of my heart. Water is my element. In this place, I am content.