my top books of 2023

2023 was a year of great growth for me. In many ways. My last year of my 30’s, my daughter’s 7-year-old-change, the decision to renovate and sell our family home where we married, raised a baby and a fur baby in and experienced Covid lockdowns in.
I felt that a chapter is closing (well…yes it is..Pluto is moving out of Capricorn, where it has been since 2007 and into Aquarius until 2048) and I finally feel like an adult. My inner Mother has nurtured me this year and I am comfortable with boundaries, changing directions and saying goodbye to people, places and things.

I feel I need more space, more privacy and a sanctuary for my 40’s and beyond and with that, more knowledge and perspective.

This was my guiding intention for 2023 and it played out beautifully.

Here are my top reads of 2023.

BOOK 1:
Anatomy of Spirit

This was a big theme of my year. It became a book study after I started reading it and mentioned it to a couple of friends and colleagues.

I found it on a table of things that a friend was giving away to downsize her life and it spoke to me right away.

Anatomy of Spirit is written by Caroline Myss, Ph. D. Some people may be very familiar with her work. She has a doctorate of Philosophy degree in the Energy Medicine from Greenwich University, HI.
 

Caroline developed the field of Energy Anatomy, a science that correlates specific emotional/psychological/physical/spiritual stress patterns with diseases.

She has linked Christian Sacraments, Ten Sefirot (Tree of Life of the Kabbalah) and the Hindu Chakras. She explores the similarities and connects the dots with each symbolic representation using the Chakra system and links it to cultural beliefs and how we can evolve our self-awareness and growth through each stage.

It took me a year to read the book because it was a slow process – we actively moved through each chapter, met and discussed it and have a chat group to speak into our experiences and examples we became aware of as we moved through each phase.

Someone said to me they read the book 4 times and concluded it was spiritual bypassing – I don’t understand their judgement on this because the definition of Spiritual Bypassing is this:

Psychologist John Welwood coined this great term and defines it as: “The use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with our painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs.”

TRENDING: a lot of people, reading similar books and listening to Ted Talks on self-healing are on a fast-track healing path,  to do the “right” spiritual thing.
We all want to be more flexible, to be more tolerant, socially responsible and have more compassion for others and ourselves - we all want to feel more empowered.

But, beneath this spiritual path, one can find hidden in dark corners of neglect and difficult to deal within our psyches where deep sorrow, shame, terror, hidden rage, grief – everything that we carry in our shadow and have been cultured to hide these parts of ourselves. Many of us are afraid of our own shadow.

Some of us avoid our ‘negative’ stages by numbing out and distracting ourselves- our culture is designed for distraction – social media scrolling, shopping, working, shallow interactions of gossip and complaining, drugs, food, alcohol, binge watching. Some of us (either consciously – or harder to pinpoint – unconsciously – avoid our pain by trying to be spiritually ‘good’.

And that’s spiritual bypassing.

Perhaps that is what this individual was referring to when they said this book was spiritual bypassing by rushing through reading it – 4 times!

I guess if you rush the book and think you are healed, it would be spiritual bypassing.

But this is not what we did.

Lets be clear – when I started out the book, I thought – this is it! I am healed after that. But once we read the first chapter and actually started moving through our beliefs and the shame/terror/rage/hurt that went along with those feelings, we quickly realized that it isn’t something we can breeze through. We are always evolving.

Wise people think they fools and fools think they are wise. Meaning, wise people know they are constantly learning as a student of life and those who think they know everything are likely spiritually bypassing.

So once I read this book, there are questions after each chapter – I am revisiting them months later and the insights and lessons continue. These questions could be revisited a few times per year for continual perspective and self-reflection. Moving through difficult emotions and beliefs.

To further analyze what spiritual bypassing is vs is not we can look at some examples from Defining “Spiritual bypassing.” Overused and misused but still… very useful. — Danielle LaPorte:

“Seeking holistic or “alternative” solutions to illnesses is not spiritual bypassing. That’s a varied approach to healing and it’s smart.

Taking planetary alignments (astrology) into consideration, bringing love into politics, and nature consciousness into commerce is not spiritual bypassing. That’s spiritual practice.

Seeing global upheaval as a spiritual passage is not spiritual bypassing. That’s a wisdom tradition.

Spiritual bypassing is when we use spiritual practices to avoid things that we deem to be unpleasantly unspiritual.

Using positive thinking to gloss over our sorrow. “Oh, there’s a gift in everything.” Yes, there is a gift in everything, but first, attend to your devastation, then you’ll find the true gift. 

“Everything happens for a reason.” Also metaphysically accurate. But what good does that theory do for your wounded self? Tend to the wound, and you’ll get clear on the reason it occurred. 

“I’ve done the work, I’m much more evolved than…”
Maybe you have ‘done the work’. Perhaps you are more evolved and aware than the average Joe, still, this could be a bypass over deep-seated ‘worthiness issues’.
 

 Instead of medicating with Marlboros and martinis, self-helpers might be doing it with metaphysics and macrobiotics. And unlike boozing it up to drown our pain, the side effects of neurotic psychoanalyzing or faux flexibility are difficult to spot. We don’t end up in rehab from too much meditation or therapy—we just end up in more workshops.”

So, If you choose to read this book, it isn’t a page-turner to add to your self-healing conquests. I mean, it could be if that’s your vibe. But if you choose to read it and start your own book study club to be real with each other, have integrity in your authentic feelings while you move through stages and authentic discourse – I would recommend setting aside a year to do this with a trusted group of friends. One of us in our group hasn’t gotten past chapter 2 yet because Chapter 1 is so massive in unravelling belief systems and what you have to move through.

I kept a journal with this book and I read it like a textbook. Marking pages, highlighting text and extrapolating quotes and questions into my journal for further self-reflection.

Perhaps my experience will birth a few workshops from this space; Such as a Chapter 1 Tribal Chakra experience for community beliefs, and another one on Chapter 5, exploring the power of will.

How will do this with Holistic Group Counselling, Creative Experiences and Nature Immersion? I am still not sure, but it is definitely on my mind to create an intention for 2024. Bringing back the workshops, but not in a framework I have done before – I am newly evolved  - but still the fool!

Book 2:
Raising a Daughter

I found this book at our school’s little shop, they have a small curated library with some great resources.

“The Nature of This Flower Is to Bloom”. – Alice Walker

This book is a beautiful read. It covers a lot of territory and speaks into the history of cultural suppression of girl in favour of man, and how culture achieves these ends throught the parents. We parents are the carriers of our culture’s beliefs about who women and girls must be, and we pass these beliefs on to our daughters.

I am constantly self-reflecting myself and my husbands parenting, we come from a generation where culture was steeped with suppression of girlhood.

I was shamed for being a ‘tomboy’. Art wasn’t a real job. I cried too much. Felt too much. All of the ways I was trying to communicate were suppressed and not honored or understood.

This book gives a new start, a love letter to myself as a child so I can rewrite my parenting beliefs and conditioning. To give my daughter a chance to fully bloom into her authentic self as each moment passes.

Of course I am making mistakes, but I know my parenting style is very different from my parents and my daughters parenting style will be different from mine.

I am not raising just my daughter. I am raising myself. I am raising her daughter, her granddaughter and her great-granddaughter. Changes we make now are for generations ahead.

A sub-chapter from the book:

Circles
From the beginning of time, female biology has moved women and girls in circles. The hearth – center of the community, home, and feminine dominion – was round. Women and girls of the tribe worked together in circles, grinding grain in circular motions, making round baskets, nursing the children encircled in their arms. They built their huts in circles. They danced in circles; they honoured the circles of the sun, the moon, and the seasons; they were in tune with the cycling of their own bodies.

Today we sometimes say that modern women are always “running around in circles.” Putting aside the criticism in this comment, we see it is literally true. The essence of feminine life is circular. Although our daughters will develop their own unique expressions, estrogen and progesterone influence females to create, to be aware of the whole, to communicate, and to be in relationship.

The book also speaks into household dynamics – single parents, divorced, widowed, co-parenting, it is modern (mid 2000’s) so it has some useful context to explore.

There is a great chapter about setting boundaries and using these in context of walls.

Rubber walls, Picket Fences, Brick Walls and Iron Bars – with examples for each. This was helpful, not only for analysing the boundaries for parenting, but boundaries I set in all areas of my life.

Another incredible chapter is about suppressed feelings and what happens, what it looks like as an inner guidance system.

Many readers will love the role of a Father by age group, it was insightful and gave an opportunity for a rough guide for modern father’s (not enough resources for this!)

The last half of the book is dedicated to deep diving into the phases from “Cradle to Career” and some helpful insights on navigating the developmental stages (the big themes).

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will purchase it to have on hand for those times when I really stuff up or need some guidance around tricky situations of parenthood. I’d love to start a book club with this for our classroom parents (the same authors have the same version of this for “Raising a Son” which will also be worth a read even though I don’t have a Son).

Book 3:
Mating in Captivity

Unlocking Erotic Intelligence – by Esther Perel

Some of you may be familiar with Esther Perel – she is arguably the world’s leading relationship advisor and counsellor who lives multi-national at locations all over the world so it isn’t just limited to one culture – her podcasts are fantastic and this book really speaks into the main themes of the challenges we face in modern relationships. I love that is also dives into the history and the evolutions of relationships – and wow! – have we changed things very quickly!

I chose this book to read instead of the #trending Pussy. Even though Pussy is highly recommended from some friends in my circle, I wanted to give this one a try first and upon listening to Esther speak on a podcast, I knew I would start here.

In the book she explores Adventure to Captivity (captivity meaning marriage or long-term exclusive relationships) and asks the question, can we have intimacy and sex or are they one or the other? She explores the history of cultural beliefs around sex and how religion has influenced status quo and of course when Three Threatens Two, the chapter on Parenthood.

If you are in a relationship and want to reclaim intimacy, great sex and a closer perspective of understanding the other, then this is a great book to read together. Note; My husband is not reading it, he may do one day, but I do read bits of chapters to him and we discuss.

Book 4:
The Ethical Investor

In 2023 I really wanted to learn more about creating wealth. The last few years were all about learning how to budget – I was bored of budget! I wanted to learn about wealth.

How does the everyday person create wealth.

With my ‘spiritual practice’ of abundance practice, mindset and gratitude, of course I have rivers of wealth around me if I look at my home, my garden, my family and nature all around me. But we live in a world where schools cost money, if I want to travel, I need a paycheque, if I want to drive anywhere I have to buy a car and then afford fuel. All of that can be done with budget but there is more to life than sacrifice and penny counting.

I am aware of the big corporations and the greed and capitalism at all costs. It feels yucky to me if I invest in something that will generate wealth at the cost of something or someone. There is not perfect investment, I know, but there are better ones.

So I thought getting started with The Ethical Investor might shed some light on where to start when I do start looking at what my Super is investing in, what shares or ETF’s I could consider and bring more understanding of ethical living in general.

This book is unfinished, it isn’t something that is a page turner (in fact, all of the books on this list are not page turners, you have to sit with them, do the work, feel through some blocks and self-reflect).

This book has given me a great jump start into wealth accumulation and steps to take. I started with finding a good podcast on simple, actionable steps to take, using the ethical mindset.

Podcast is: Australian Finance Podcast (Nicole Haddow has been a guest speaker which was kinda cool to hear her speak into some of the things she writes about).

From the podcast, I looked into my Super. I found that they had a sneaky investment portfolio called “other investments” or something of that name. If that isn’t shadowlands I don’t know what is!

If you don’t look into your super investments, they will invest it wherever they like; this usually means guns, coal, military and alcohol.

Some people don’t care, they want that. That’s ok….I guess. But it isn’t ok with me so the cool thing is, you can choose where you money goes. Simply log into your Super and redirect the investment to something that aligns with you better. There are resources how to do this but if you just log in and have a look at investments, most people can figure it out – the websites are pretty user friendly these days.

From there, I started looking into an online investment platform. The Australian Finance Podcast speaks about Pearler Investments. So I joined and gave it a go. Knowing nothing about how shares or ETF’s work, let alone what they are, they have some great training guides, resources and videos plus a community forum where you can ask a question to gain insights and learn from others who are more experienced.

I have successfully set a goal for the next 20 years and started investing in micro investments with Ethical portfolios and I have bookmarked a couple larger ones but you need $500 to start with the larger ones. Micro investments are great because you can start with $10-$20. I do $55 per week and will look to increase. I have learned that weekly is not always better (not a compound interest sorta thing anyway) because you pay a small fee each time you put money into investment. So if you do weekly, you will end up paying more. So I am going to change to monthly. We all make mistakes when starting out investing, but that shouldn’t stop you from starting.

I love the idea of passive income. Where you get paid dividend’s while sleeping. I’m not there yet but in a few years time I will be!

I’m not doing this for just myself and family, this is for future generations. So I can educate my daughter and not only how to budget, but how to create wealth. Imagine if she starts investing at 16. I started at 39. Another mistake, but meh, we all learn as we go and I’m not stressing about it. I want to set her up for wealth and knowledge, and she can pass on that wealth and knowledge to her daughter.

All while being a bit more ethically conscious of the footprint we are leaving while creating wealth.

This book speaks into Banking, Micro-investing, Investing in Shares and how to become a  Speculative Ethical Investor – there is healthy risks involved and this is where my spiritual practice comes in – you have to do some work over fears and risk taking – if you are uncomfortable with it and prefer to keep all your savings in a piggy bank, you got some inner work and reflection to do before you are ready for investing.

I listened to another podcast about combining Spiritual Practice (mindful, abundance, manifestation) with Wealth accumulation (investment portfolios, investment properties, shares, ETF’s, trusts, etc).
A Spiritual guide was mentoring a billionaire and the billionaire is mentoring the spiritual guide. I want that mentor! Any billionaires reading this, I will support you with spiritual guidance for your wisdom on wealth accumulation! 😊

The one thing that the billionaire had said is that he isn’t just creating wealth for the next generation (his kids), it is for 10 generations. WHAAT. I haven’t ever thought about it that way, until now.

Indigenous communities around the world understand that what we do now, affects 7 generations. How we treat our earth, our bodies, each other.  In the modern day we can include home and hearth, lifestyle and financial abundance – within an ethical framework.

That’s it for 2023.
Aside from these books, I have some great Astrology books and courses, but these are ongoing study guides that will be a theme for many years ahead. Merging energetics of Astrology with Psychology for the trajectory of my career path is a game changer and that will be something I am actively studying each week little by little.

I’d love to hear from you if you have read any of the books above and your experience with them.

With love, 

Ashley