Twelve Books That Changed My Life – Part One
Medicine for the Cracked-Open Soul
*Crafted through thoughtful collaboration between Rosey and ChatGPT.
Some books arrive in your life like lightning. ⚡️
Others, like rain on dry earth. 🌧️
These first four came to me in moments when I was quietly—and not so quietly—cracking open. 💔
From reclaiming womanhood and reshaping my relationship with the Divine, to beginning the journey of emotional regulation, grounded spirituality, and personal sovereignty, these books didn’t just inform me. They transformed me.
This is part one of a three-part series exploring the most influential books I’ve ever read—the ones that helped shape the woman I’ve become.
Let’s begin where all change begins: inside. 🌿
1. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
(The story of Dinah—rewoven through the sacred, sensual lens of the feminine) 🩸👭
I read The Red Tent in the winter of 2018–2019, at the recommendation of a friend who also lent me her copy. It gripped me immediately. I had just spent the past six months traveling to festivals and camping with classic (family-friendly) hippie crews. ✨ At many of these gatherings, a “Red Tent” was set up—spaces for women’s circles, or simply for women (and sometimes their children) to rest, reconnect, and be together without men present.
I came to understand that we were participating in a modern version of an ancient tradition. Historically, Red Tents were spaces where women gathered while bleeding. Depending on who tells it, they were either places of banishment, sacred refuge, or celebratory pause from the pressures of daily life during the monthly hormonal detox. Reading The Red Tent placed this tradition in context for me—rooting it not in metaphor, but in legacy. 🌺
Diamant’s novel tells the biblical story of Jacob and his descendants from the point of view of his only daughter, Dinah. As someone raised Catholic, I was already familiar with Dinah’s story—though only from the brief and brutal account found in Genesis:
“Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land. When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of that area, saw her, he took her and raped her.” —Genesis 34:1–2
That’s essentially all we get.
But The Red Tent gives Dinah her voice back. And more than that—it reclaims the matriarchal story of this entire family. 💬👑 It breathed vivid, sensual, complex life into a history I had only known through patriarchal, dogmatic storytelling. It wasn’t just empowering. It was liberating.
At the time, I was working through the ways I had made myself small to please others—especially men. I was unpacking sexual shame, feelings of difference, guilt, and a longing to create a life of my own. This book held me through that. Though it is fiction, I find it no less sacred or “true” than the biblical account. In fact, in some ways, it felt—at least, potentially—more true.
We would benefit so deeply from more of these kinds of tellings—not to pit women against men, but to honor the often-unspoken differences in perspective. 🌀
We don’t need resentment or revisionist history—we need sincerity, reflection, and a willingness to witness.
2. The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Bernstein
(A spiritual scaffolding for nervous system regulation and radical self-trust) 🧘♀️
I read this book in the spring of 2019—during a season of my life that was full, intense, and often overwhelming. I was working and in school full-time, and most days I could only read a few pages at a time. Sometimes I’d pick it up during stolen moments—like when I locked myself out of my condo and had to wait for my roommate to get home. 😅
It wasn’t a fast read. But it didn’t need to be. It met me exactly where I was.
I had heard a few interviews with Gabrielle Bernstein and felt instantly connected to her voice and story. At the time, I was consciously reconstructing my relationship with ‘God’—not in the way I had been taught, but in a deeper, more personal, and far less religious way. 🙏💫
The Universe Has Your Back was a kind of scaffolding for that reconstruction. It was spiritual without being dogmatic, soft but direct, and full of practical, sensorially grounded tools.
Gabby included supplemental practices and meditations to support the work, and I did one of her visualization meditations nearly every day for over a year. 🧠 Until I lost the link, it was my daily anchor. I would happy-cry during those sessions, experiencing the future I so desired—visceral energy shifts moving through me as I upgraded my consciousness one layer at a time.
This was less than a year after coming off the last of my psychiatric medications. I was still learning how to function as a raw, deeply feeling human being with a wide-open filter. 💥 This book and the practices it introduced didn’t just inspire me—they helped me regulate my nervous system. They helped me realize I could regulate my nervous system.
It became one of my first true gateways to grounded self-trust—and to a spirituality that was fully mine.
Gabby’s vulnerability as an author was like a warm permission slip. 📝💛 She didn’t pretend to be perfect. She showed up messy and devoted. That example alone was life-changing.
3. The Big Leap by Dr. Gay Hendricks
(How to stop self-sabotaging and fully expand into joy, love, and purpose) 🪂
Here’s a measure of how impactful this book was for me: I’m currently listening to it for the fifth time.
I first read The Big Leap in the fall of 2019 as part of a group coaching program I’d been gifted by my first life coach. We read a lot of books in that course—but this one? It stood out. So much so that I listened to it twice during our allotted reading window, because it was just that good. 🔥🎧
Dr. Gay Hendricks introduces the concept of The Upper Limit Problem—the idea that we subconsciously sabotage ourselves when we start to experience more love, success, joy, or abundance than we’re used to. He outlines several underlying beliefs that trigger this sabotage: fear of outshining others, guilt about being more successful than those we love, the belief that we’re fundamentally flawed, and yes, sometimes a deep-rooted fear that we simply don’t deserve to feel that good. 😬💡
This book is a must-read for anyone who thinks “manifestation” or the Law of Attraction is all just wishful woo. Hendricks lays it out plainly: what the Upper Limit Problem is, what sustains it, and how to transcend it. And he does so with digestible, playful, down-to-earth language.
As I listened, I felt myself changing immediately. Like... mid-sentence kind of shifts. I dare say it’s impossible to read or listen to this book without noticing change—as long as you're actually absorbing the material. ⚡️
One of the most paradigm-shifting ideas from the book was the notion that I could create a life where I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to do. Not in a rebellious or selfish way—but in a deeply aligned way. 💖 In the introduction, Hendricks says:
“I haven’t had to do anything I didn’t want to do for so long, I can’t even remember what it feels like.”
Reading that? Whew. My soul cracked open a little. 😮💨
Over the years, my inauthentic ego has wrestled with that idea—but I’ve kept moving closer to it. And at this point, I genuinely believe it’s possible. Not as a fantasy. As a reality.
That’s why we’ll be reading The Big Leap in Rosey’s Reading Room starting this May. 😁
4. Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza
(The quantum path to rewiring who you are) 🧠
I read this book in the winter of 2019–2020, after several friends had mentioned Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work to me. He was one of my first introductions to the integration of quantum physics into mindset, healthcare, and personal development—and while I was far from understanding the full nuance of this integration, I knew there was something real there.
I felt the potential. (Get it? Potential energy 😉)
At the time, I was still struggling with my mind—hard. Trying to force change, to “fix” myself, to power through everything with sheer will. I was locked in a very masculine approach to personal development: intense, goal-oriented, pressure-heavy. 💪😵 Needless to say, the title Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself was wildly attractive to me. 😆
While the tone of the book did, in some ways, continue to feed that same forceful mindset, it also lit a fire in me. It gave me something I didn’t even realize I was starving for: validation.
This wasn’t just some pipe dream of a “mentally ill girl” trying to outrun her fate of lifelong medication and revolving hospital doors. No. This was the intuitive knowing of a deeply feeling, sharply aware young woman who knew there was more for her than anyone else could yet see.
Reading Dispenza gave me a kind of ground I hadn’t had before. His scientific language, research-backed frameworks, and the stunning results people were reporting from his retreats—it was nothing short of miraculous. ✨
And more than anything, it showed me that this power was available to me. Not through a miracle drug. Not through institutional validation. But through shifts in my own mind and biofield (energy body).
I began practicing his meditation: dropping into the state of being nowhere, no one, in no time. I remember feeling glimpses of that freedom. Tastes of the self beyond habit, beyond identity, beyond pain.
It would take years for me to fully embody and live this work at a somatic level. But this book was the ignition. 🔥 It gave me belief. It gave me language. And it gave me permission to keep going.
I wasn’t broken.
I was becoming. 🌱
And today? I still have so much to learn about the nuances of how quantum physics integrates into healthcare—both conceptually and experientially. So much, in fact, that I’m now in a graduate program to do exactly that.
And who’s on faculty?
Dr. Joe himself. 😏✨
🌻 Where This Chapter Leaves Off
What these books gave me—more than anything—was permission.
Permission to feel what I feel. To think differently. To believe that wholeness was possible.
They helped me turn inward, not with shame, but with curiosity. Not with guilt, but with reverence. 💗
They reminded me that transformation doesn’t start with a plan. It starts with a whisper:
Maybe there’s more. 🌀
And from that whisper, a path unfolds.
Stay tuned for Part Two—where we move from spiritual awakening into embodiment, power, and the sacred feminine. 🔥🌹
Until then, I’d love to hear:
What books cracked something open in you?
Drop a comment or send me a message—I always love trading titles.
With love,
🕯️ Rose