With my own experiences about dealing with negative emotions, I found myself asking- How do I handle the dark side of life? How do I live with sadness, fear, frustration, and anger?
The questions led me to find Thomas Moore's Dark Nights of the Soul.
The book opened my eyes to the reality of negative emotions. They are always part of me. Instead of running away from them, I should get curious about what they are teaching me.
Another thing that I appreciate more about this book is the encouragement to express the dark nights of the soul into a painting, a poem, a song, or any creative outputs. Creativity is closely connected with the dark nights of the soul. I started writing poems about how I feel even though I am not a poet.
The Dark Nights of the Soul is the best paired with Bringing Your Shadow Out of the Dark by Robert Augustus Masters and Lissa Rankin.
I watched The Lord of the Rings movie series and I thought why not give The Children of Hurin a try. It's my first Tolkien book. The names, events, and places that are too many for me to process make the book challenging to read. Even though it felt like reading a history book, the interesting storyline and characters motivated me to keep on reading. I was captured by the tale of the children of Hurin but their tragic fate left me with a heavy heart. The Children of Hurin got me curious about what's going to happen to Morgoth and other characters.