16 Essential Reads for Restorative Changemakers
What is a Restorative Changemaker?
A restorative changemaker is someone who centers principles of regeneration within themselves, their lives, and their work, choosing joy, peace, abundance and compassion as they make the world a better place from the inside out.
Change work can be harrowing, overwhelming, and burn people out, but it’s beautiful and important work! So how do we make it sustainable? By nurturing ourselves, our community, and in that way strengthening our support and capacity to make change.
These are some titles I’ve read in 2023 that have were catalysts in my growth as a human and as a restorative changemaker:
Spiritual/Mental Health
1. Integrative Hypnosis - Melissa Tiers
Tiers explains the methods and concepts behind the incredible art of changing minds. Her work has been so helpful in my journey of reworking my neural wiring and I wish everyone knew that they have this superpower to decide how they want to think and feel about things through the art of hypnotherapy. This book is a great way to dive in to the subject.
2. The Power of Intention - Wayne Dyer
Dyer communicates how we are co-creating reality with our intentions, and how we can become more aware and purposeful with our intentions so we can co-create a world and a life that we love.
3. Don’t Do Your Best - Simone Seol
Seol challenges us in the most easy and fun ways to love ourselves more deeply and dare to show up imperfect and own it in a world that burns us out by always expecting perfection from us. If you need a motivating pep-talk type read, this is the best one you’ll read.
4. A Ceremony Called Life - Tehya Sky
Sky illuminates how every part of life is an opportunity for deep richness, presence, and expansion by sharing her endless spiritual and intellectual wisdom. An excellent read for sparking back your love for life.
5. How Do You Live - Genzaburo Yoshino
If you’re more a fan of sweet, thoughtful, heartwarming fiction about a kid, his friends, and his uncle trying their best to be good people and make sense of life and this big world, this is the book for you. It’ll make you laugh, make you cry, and inspire you along the way to live well.
6. The Quantum and the Lotus - Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan
This is a deep read co-written by a monk who used to be a quantum physicist and a quantum physicist who used to be monk. They discuss how the Buddha already knew 2500 years ago what we are discovering in Quantum Physics today and how spirituality and science in both the realms of Buddhism and Quantum Physics can help inform the way we live our lives and structure our systems for greater collective well-being.
Relational/Cultural/Environmental Health
7. The Invention of Women - Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí
Oyěwùmí introduces a non-western perspective of gender dynamics in a very refreshing way, allowing us westerners to look at the way our social constructs of gender impact our culture, relationships, and individual experiences of life.
8. Nonviolent Communication - Marshall Rosenberg
Rosenberg explains beautifully and simply in this short read how we can communicate with ourselves and others in a more healthy, loving, and respectful way. This is a book especially potent for those who have experienced verbal or emotional violence and would like to end the cycle of pain through more intentional communication.
9. Daring Greatly - Brené Brown
Brown is an endless wellspring of insight, and this book is no exception to her poignant wisdom. In this book she inspires us to let go of the shame, fear, and scarcity within us and step into the vulnerability that allows for meaningful connection with others as well as enables us to become our most authentic, actualized, embodied selves.
10. Interdependent Minds - Sandra Murray, John Holmes, Harry Reis
These researchers go in depth on many close relationships, elucidating what makes a relationship really work in a functional, healthy and effective way. A great read for those who have inherited or experienced relational trauma and would like to have more fulfilling intimate relationships.
Environmental/Systemic Health
11. Emergent Strategy - Adrienne Maree Brown
Brown is poetic and engaging in her prose, and incisive and inspiring in her ideas. She guides the reader on how to navigate the often dizzying patterns and systems of the world, how to sustainably embody change from the inside out without getting overwhelmed. It’s essential reading for any human being, really.
12. Regenerative Business - Samantha Garcia
Garcia uses the principles of regenerative agriculture, or permaculture, to reimagine the way people do business to nurture and restore both themselves and the people and world around them. If you want a business that supports and nourishes you while doing good in the world with ease, this is a great reference point to start with.
13. Regenerative Leadership - Laura Storm and Giles Hutchins
Storm and Hutchins have created a comprehensive framework of how exactly organizations can structure themselves to be supportive of individuals, communities and the planet. It is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand how exactly things went wrong in the world and what to do to make it better.
14. Rest Is Resistance - Tricia Hersey
In a world where we are expected to hustle day in and day out in competition with the rest of the world in an unfair, brutal, messed up system, Hersey beautifully tells stories that speak to the burnout activists often feel and how resting and nourishing themselves is actually a revolutionary act of reclaiming what an unjust system takes from them.
15. The Interdependent Organization - Rexford Draman
This book helps organizations shift from the outdated, linear structure of business to a systems-focused framework, increasing the business’s sustainability inside and out.
16. Interdependence, Biology and Beyond - Kriti Sharma
Sharma explains how everything on the planet is interconnected and interdependent in systems. If you want to understand how the world works so you are better able to engage with it effectively, this is a great read.
