Cooking as Therapy
Licensed clinical social worker Borden sees meal prep as a route to mental health. She teaches readers to exercise mindfulness, examine habits, and explore limiting patterns while kneading, chopping, and stirring, serving up her lessons in two courses. First, she introduces the science behind the experiential therapy and how it’s different from “just cooking.” Then she details guided practices via such recipes as the It’s Never All Smooth Smoothie.
Just Making
Drawing on Christian writings and practices, Perkins, a children’s book author, outlines strategies to help artists and other creatives keep up their practices in a chaotic world where, she writes, many are asking, “Why should I keep making art when suffering, injustice, and oppression are wreaking havoc on the planet?” PW’s review calls the book a “graceful guide” that “digs into reasons why creative people might refrain from making art, including a brutal commercial market” that favors the privileged. Perkins writes, “I believe we must keep creating art—not by ignoring a world in distress but for the sake of loving it.”
The Life-Affirming Magic of Birds
“Anyone can be a birder, if they want to,” conservationist Bingham writes, making the case for bird-watching as a way to deal with challenging times. She credits an oystercatcher with helping her to notice “the power that nature has to guide us through adversity,” while herring gulls offer a lesson in resilience and rooks demonstrate the “beauty in the everyday.”
Playful
Writing with science journalist Denworth, toy designer Holman advances the idea that adults need to rethink how they play. For many, she writes, recreation is rote and rule-bound; she advocates for unstructured free play without an obvious goal, which happens when people “embrace possibility, release judgment, and reframe success.” At its best, she explains, “play is life-affirming, soul-sustaining, and mind-expanding.”
Random Acts of Crochet Kindness
Dieterich began pairing crocheted flowers with encouraging messages, and leaving them in public for people to find, after she lost a friend to suicide in 2018. “It gave me a sense of purpose,” she writes in her book, which is named after the Facebook group (now 358,000 members strong) she founded soon after she started the practice. “It made me happy knowing I was potentially making someone else’s day a little bit better.” Instructions for 25 tiny crochet projects—rainbows, hearts, butterflies, and more—are meant to spark joy.
