2024 Holiday Gift Guide: Wellness & Self-Help
Give your loved ones (or yourself!) the gift of self-care this holiday season with these inspiring reads that will help you live your best life amidst the hectic holiday season, and maybe even get a head start on those 2024 resolutions.
As a Black woman, Jasmine Marie knows the impact that intergenerational trauma and systemic racism have had—and continue to have—on her community. Those experiences, along with her own journey through chronic stress, are why she created black girls breathing®, a movement dedicated to helping Black women understand the power of the mind‑body connection and its impact on their holistic health, one breath at a time.
Sharing breathwork exercises from her unique somatic philosophies, proven by data and utilized by tens of thousands of participants to date, Jasmine Marie will help you:
- Connect more fully to your body
- Give yourself permission to rest
- Heal the chronic stress you carry in your body and nervous system
- Address emotional pain
- Rebuild your sense of self and your community
Black Girls Breathing is a long-overdue resource for every Strong Black Woman—the woman ready to break cycles of trauma, heal the internalized beliefs of perfectionism and conditional self‑worth, and follow the wisdom of her inner voice.
A game-changing road map for ambitious people to transform chronic stress and anxiety into sustainable happiness and success.
Throughout her years as a licensed clinical psychologist, Mary E. Anderson, PhD—known affectionately as “Dr. A” by her clients—has noticed a pattern: Talented, productive, and often brilliant patients—from business executives to lawyers to grad students—constantly arrive on her couch, drop their flawless facades, and describe feelings of self-doubt, burnout, and worry.
The Happy High Achiever brings Dr. Anderson’s unparalleled expertise to the wider world. The book is a practical guide to her 8 Essentials, a set of powerful principles with actionable, science-based strategies to combat the unique pressures and pitfalls of high-performing individuals. These CBT-based tools help ambitious people like you live free of the perpetual anxiety and fear of failure that can hold you back, and instead enjoy both happiness and high achievement.
The Happy High Achiever will teach you:
- Why striving for perfection actually limits you
- How to navigate uncertainty with less worry and more ease
- How to find relief in moments of overwhelm
- How to overcome the three most problematic ways of thinking that plague high achievers
- Why gratitude is rocket fuel for your success
- How to get clear about what you really want for your life
- How to effectively manage stress to boost your calm and confidence and enhance your performance
Most importantly, you’ll learn anxiety is not the price of admission for your success. You have the power to optimize your life and be your best. You can be a happy high achiever.
Almost every Latina has heard the phrase calladita te ves más bonita—you look most beautiful when you are silent. It’s a message rooted in machismo passed from generation to generation, and one that poet and Latine therapist, Kim Guerra, grew up on.
In Badass Bonita, Guerra tells a story of coming into her own power, and guides readers through the process of finding their own. Rejecting what she was taught as a girl, she learned to use her voice—and the more she listened to that inner niña, the more she unearthed her inner guerrera. Vowing never to be calladita again, she now teaches Latine women to find their voices.
Tackling tough conversations around machismo, mental health, trauma, and intersectional identities, Badass Bonita is a guide that will help readers:
- Understand underlying sources of wounds and trauma.
- Shift from self‑silencing to revolutionary self‑love.
- Build confidence and bring positive change to relationships, family and community
“You can trust him.” –Tabitha Brown
IT AIN’T EASY GETTING YOUR SHIT TOGETHER
THIS BOOK IS THE SOLUTION
If any of this sounds like you, it’s best you start reading this book now!
- You seek more fulfilling relationships and dating experiences
- You’re ready to shake off shame about past mistakes and step into your power
- You want to say “see ya” to the toxic people and emotional gut-punchers
- Your “people pleaser” days are over and it’s time to learn how to effectively say no
He knows you need help—whether financial, spiritual, or in a relationship—because you never learned how to properly handle the hurt and anger you’ve experienced in the past, it has become the emotional trash in the way of being your best self. Don’t nobody want that!
Whether it’s fixing your family issues, situationships, money, or frenemies, MJ offers sage advice about how to stop blocking yourself from bigger and better things.
This isn’t your gentle guide on breathing or journaling. MJ serves up no holds barred advice on how to navigate your emotions that will help you disrupt cycles of trauma, create boundaries, and transform into a goddess of emotional wholeness. Get the F*ck Out Your Own Way will help you learn how to make better choices and decisions. It will set you on the right path for a happier emotional life once and for all.
More people than ever are receptive to the pleasures of anal, but compassionate, medically comprehensive information can be challenging to come by. No more!
Whether you’re a top or a bottom, gay or straight, experienced or just getting ready to stretch your, um, imagination—Butt Seriously gives you the medically accurate, scientifically-backed information you need to keep your peach ready to take you to the height of sexual bliss.
This first-of-a-kind guide will teach you how to keep your anus healthy, maximize your pleasure, and bust the myths holding us back around anal sex. Among other takeaways, Butt Seriously will:
- Offer comprehensive, medically-accurate sex-ed for anyone who engages, regardless of gender and sexual identity
- Reveal why a prostate orgasm is the best orgasm
- Show women how butt play allows access to their other erogenous spot (the A-zone)
- Recommend the best techniques, toys, lubes, and other products
- Teach readers how to poop, sit, eat, exercise to support their pelvic floor and heal common challenges such as hemorrhoids and fissures.
“The ideal companion for the solo traveler, both before and during her trip.” — Pauline Frommer
Achieve your solo female travel dreams with this empowering guide for women who want to see the world—perfect for anyone who has felt the tug of wanderlust after reading Wild, Eat Pray Love, or What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding.
If you’ve ever wanted to travel solo, founder of global women’s travel community Wanderful, Beth Santos, is here to tell you that you’re not alone.
Travel isn’t just about how many passport stamps you have—it’s about your mindset. In Wander Woman, Santos busts myths about who can travel, empowering women to uncover the confidence they need to see the world for themselves, by themselves, and giving them the lifelong tools to challenge your preconceptions, try something new, and get out of your comfort zone—whether that’s halfway around the world or just down the street.
Readers will also learn…
- A new rubric for personal safety that pushes back on traditional ideas of what’s “safe” for women.
- How to eat alone (and not have to make awkward small talk with the waiter).
- Why a “Day Zero” will revolutionize your itinerary.
- Where to find community and a new perspective on what “counts” as solo travel
- How to travel ethically, sustainably, and in budget.
As much a how-to guide as it is a source of inspiration and support, Wander Woman invites us to be mindful about why we travel, who it affects, and how we can make it better for everyone.
Whether you’re ready to chase your Under the Tuscan Sun fantasy, are preparing for study abroad, or just want to feel more comfortable on business trips, Wander Woman is your must-have guide to exploring the world without fear.
As a society, we keep looking for ways to lose weight—preferably ones that are simple, effective, and permanent. When properly chosen, certain foods cause weight loss, with no need for restriction and calorie counting.
In The Power Foods Diet, Dr. Neal Barnard reveals three breakthroughs that are supported by research, revealing that certain foods:
1. Reduce the appetite.
2. Trap calories so they are flushed away and cannot be absorbed.
3. Increase the body’s ability to burn calories for three hours after meals.
Dr. Barnard includes a simple to follow meal plan that includes delicious, and even indulgent recipes so that you can enjoy your meals while releasing weight.
Asian Americans are experiencing a racial reckoning regarding their identity, inspiring them to radically reconsider the cultural frameworks that enabled their assimilation into American culture. As Asian Americans investigate the personal and societal effects of longstanding cultural narratives suggesting they take up as little space as possible, their mental health becomes critically important. Yet despite the fact that over 18 million people of Asian descent live in the United States today—they are the racial group least likely to seek out mental health services.
Permission to Come Home takes Asian Americans on an empowering journey toward reclaiming their mental health. Weaving her personal narrative as a Taiwanese American together with her insights as a clinician and evidence-based tools, Dr. Jenny T. Wang explores a range of life areas that call for attention, offering readers the permission to question, feel, rage, say no, take up space, choose, play, fail, and grieve. Above all, she offers permission to return closer to home, a place of acceptance, belonging, healing, and freedom. For Asian Americans and Diaspora, this book is a necessary road map for the journey to wholeness.
“Dr. Jenny T. Wang has been an incredible resource for Asian mental health. I believe that her knowledge, presence, and activism for mental health in the Asian American/Immigrant community have been invaluable and groundbreaking. I am so very grateful that she exists.”—Steven Yeun, actor, The Walking Dead and Minari
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In America, we teach that strength means holding back tears and shaming your own feelings. In the Black community, these pressures are especially poignant. Poor mental health outcomes—including diagnoses of depression and anxiety, reliance on prescription drugs, and suicide—have skyrocketed in the past decade. In this book, actor Courtney B. Vance seeks to change this trajectory.
Along with professional expertise from famed psychologist Dr. Robin L. Smith (popularly known as “Dr. Robin”), Courtney B. Vance explores issues of grief, relationships, identity, and race through the telling of his own most formative experiences. Together, they provide a guide for Black men navigating life’s ups and downs, reclaiming mental well-being, and examining broken pieces to find whole, full-hearted living.
Self-care is an act of revolution. It’s time to revolutionize mental health in the Black community.
“A thoughtful, wise, empathetic book that has the capacity to save lives.” —Kirkus Reviews
“… an inspiring story of what [Black men] can achieve personally and professionally when they have the tools and support necessary to examine their pain and find their joy.” —New York Journal of Books