Here are 100 books that Strong like Water fans have personally recommended if you like
Strong like Water.
Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I have been to hell and back over the years. After experiencing childhood abuse, I lived through a succession of traumas with my family including fraud, painful experiences in church ministry, a death threat, and a catastrophic house fire accidentally started by my mother-in-law. While I was helped by counseling, prayer, and caring friends and mentors, something was still missing. I needed to process all that pain and loss but didn’t know how. I had to learn how to grieve. Over years of rebuilding, I’ve lived the lessons of lament and know the healing that is possible when pain is metabolized.
I discovered Cole Arthur Riley through her breath prayers and curated wisdom around liberation through her Black Liturgies account on Instagram. Her words in this book are poetry and good medicine for my soul.
Her story of learning to love her physical body as she lives with chronic pain is wise and freeing. I didn’t know how much I needed her wise reimagining of the story of the garden, the fall, and what it means to find home.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In her stunning debut, the creator of Black Liturgies weaves stories from three generations of her family alongside contemplative reflections to discover the “necessary rituals” that connect us with our belonging, dignity, and liberation.
“This is the kind of book that makes you different when you’re done.”—Ashley C. Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Somebody’s Daughter
“Reaches deep beneath the surface of words unspoken, wounds unhealed, and secrets untempered to break them open in order for fresh light to break through.”—Morgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing and…
I have been to hell and back over the years. After experiencing childhood abuse, I lived through a succession of traumas with my family including fraud, painful experiences in church ministry, a death threat, and a catastrophic house fire accidentally started by my mother-in-law. While I was helped by counseling, prayer, and caring friends and mentors, something was still missing. I needed to process all that pain and loss but didn’t know how. I had to learn how to grieve. Over years of rebuilding, I’ve lived the lessons of lament and know the healing that is possible when pain is metabolized.
I love that Rah calls lament prophetic because it shines a light on the hard realities of pain or injustice. I needed to hear lament described as a conversation that happens best in communities hoping to be heard and helped by the Divine.
Rah is a professor and pastor, allowing him to bring intellectual rigor and empathy to his work. The book was born of a teaching series whose goal was to make room for stories of struggle instead of focusing, as American evangelicals typically do, on success and positivity.
This book traces through the songs of lament that make up the Book of Lamentations and honors the fact that sometimes laments end in minor key since they refuse to bury, bypass, or force a happy ending.
Missio Alliance Essential Reading List
Hearts Minds Bookstore's Best Books
RELEVANT's Top 10 Books
Englewood Review of Books Best Books
When Soong-Chan Rah planted an urban church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his first full sermon series was a six-week exposition of the book of Lamentations. Preaching on an obscure, depressing Old Testament book was probably not the most seeker-sensitive way to launch a church. But it shaped their community with a radically countercultural perspective.
The American church avoids lament. But lament is a missing, essential component of Christian faith. Lament recognizes struggles and suffering, that the world is not as it…
I have been to hell and back over the years. After experiencing childhood abuse, I lived through a succession of traumas with my family including fraud, painful experiences in church ministry, a death threat, and a catastrophic house fire accidentally started by my mother-in-law. While I was helped by counseling, prayer, and caring friends and mentors, something was still missing. I needed to process all that pain and loss but didn’t know how. I had to learn how to grieve. Over years of rebuilding, I’ve lived the lessons of lament and know the healing that is possible when pain is metabolized.
Like Opelt, I believed I was well equipped to grieve well before suffering found me. Like her, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Her book was solace because it refused to shy away from the complexity and sometimes downright strangeness of grief. Her exploration of historical rituals for processing grief in community sparked my imagination for more ways of restoring lost practices and finding new ones for engaging loss, remembering well, and honoring life with those I love.
When Amanda Held Opelt suffered a season of loss-including three miscarriages and the unexpected death of her sister, New York Times bestselling writer Rachel Held Evans-she was confronted with sorrow she didn't know to how face. Opelt struggled to process her grief and accept the reality of the pain in the world. She also wrestled with some unexpectedly difficult questions: What does it mean to truly grieve and to grieve well? Why is it so hard to move on? Why didn't my faith prepare me for this kind of pain? And what am I supposed to do now?
I have been to hell and back over the years. After experiencing childhood abuse, I lived through a succession of traumas with my family including fraud, painful experiences in church ministry, a death threat, and a catastrophic house fire accidentally started by my mother-in-law. While I was helped by counseling, prayer, and caring friends and mentors, something was still missing. I needed to process all that pain and loss but didn’t know how. I had to learn how to grieve. Over years of rebuilding, I’ve lived the lessons of lament and know the healing that is possible when pain is metabolized.
KJ’s voice is so clear, compelling, and kind that I found myself fighting the urge to highlight every other sentence. She writes that “the only wounds that become weapons are the wounds that are not tended with care.” Which strikes me as very trustworthy and good news.
Her description of abuse is one of the clearest I’ve ever heard: “At its core, abuse is about using a person rather than encountering them as someone to love.” Bringing her insight as a therapist and her experience with chronic illness and spiritual abuse, Ramsey’s words are a good roadmap to me for how harm can happen and a guide to how healing becomes possible.
Walking through Psalm 23 phrase by phrase, therapist and author K.J. Ramsey explores the landscape of our fear, trauma, and faith. When she stepped through her own wilderness of spiritual abuse and religious trauma, K.J. discovered that courage is not the absence of anxiety but the practice of trusting we will be held and loved no matter what.
How can we cultivate courage when fear overshadows our lives? How do we hear the Voice of Love when hate and harm shout loud? This book offers an honest path to finding that there is still a Good Shepherd who is always…
My professional work has always been inspired by the personal journey I've gone on–which means that my interest in religious trauma stems from my own healing as well as client work and research. Previous research and therapeutic interventions have suggested atheism as a cure for religious trauma which is often unhelpful and can create just as much rigidity as someone experienced in a high control religion. I approach religious trauma as trauma–which means that resolving religious trauma can occur in the same ways that we use to resolve other trauma. Understanding religious trauma this way opens the door for a decrease in shame, more compassion towards self, and ultimately living a whole life.
This is one of my go-to books and I always have a copy of it near by!
Rebekah is trained in Somatic Experiencing and her book reflects that both in helping the reader understand what is happening in their body as well as giving many tools to help people create internal safety and stability, which I, personally, believe is the foundation for trauma resolution.
LaDyne’s softer approach often leads readers toward greater ease which makes the healing process not so scary.
Somatic or "body-based" skills are at the cutting edge of wellness and stress reduction. This book offers do-it-yourself techniques designed to help you "reset" your nervous system, beat stress, and cultivate calm. Stress-it's not just in your head. Whether you've experienced a racing heart, shortness of breath, a tense neck or shoulders, or a knot in your stomach, you know that stress is something that you can feel in your body. And that's why you need help relieving stress in the body before you can achieve a sense of calm and well-being in your mind. But where do you begin?…
I fell in love with reading in fourth grade but felt like real girls weren't reflected in young adult books. The characters had friend problems and boy problems, but books about really big problems like sexual assault were rare because most people thought subjects like addiction and abuse weren't appropriate for young readers. It's one of those weird dichotomies: we know kids deal with big problems, but we're afraid to broach the subject. I used books to help me understand stuff I didn't feel comfortable talking about so I appreciate books that show people how to claw themselves out of a bad place and be their own hero.
Just Listenhas one of my favorite male protagonists of all time, the guy I wish I would have met in high school. As a music-head, I also love the way Annabel and Owen bond over their favorite songs. Getting over an assault requires support. On one hand, you have to be incredibly strong to tell the truth about what happened. But once you tell your people, they hold you up as you walk through healing. Telling is so hard, but support is key.
I'm an author, leadership expert, and amateur triathlete whose passion is helping people flourish. When I wascoaching leaders andstudying for my doctorate at Oxford, I becameeven morekeenly interested in how the human mind works—why we crave meaning in our lives, what helps us achieve our goals most effectively, and so on. For the last several decades I've been exploring these questions with my clients (senior leaders from across the public and private sectors) around the world, which has been an enormously enriching experience. And it's shown me that sharing what I've learned is the greatest gift I can give to the world.
I’ve been a big fan of Nancy’s work for years, and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting her in person.
As it turns out, she really practices what she preaches—our conversation was one of the most generative and soul-nourishing exchanges I’ve ever had.
I would heartily recommend this book to anyone seeking deeper, more fulfilling relationship with others (and greater confidence, peace, and productivity for themselves).
'The lessons and practices here will shift a sense of chaos to one of clarity and a mindset of fear to one of hope' Margaret Heffernan, bestselling author of Wilful Blindness ___________________________________________________________________________________
How often do you interrupt? How often do people interrupt you? Can you remember the last time someone listened to you all the way through your thinking?
In a time when communication is more challenging than ever and relationships need to be nurtured, listening to one another could not be more important. In her new book, Nancy Kline, bestselling author of Time To Think, suggests that for us…
I embarked on my very first healing journey at the age of 4, after I lost my mother. Through the years, I wanted nothing more than to live a happy life. It wasn’t until the age of 21 that I understood the reason for my pain and discomfort –the lack of love that I had for myself. I started writing about my emotions and sharing these pieces on an online blog. Within a few months, my page grew tremendously. I realised then that we’re all on various healing journeys, and most of us struggle with self-love, even if we look like we’ve got it ‘figured out’ – we still struggle.
This is one of the first self-help books I read that didn’t feel like too much ‘hard work’ and was still incredibly helpful. What I mean by that is that often self-help books can get a little too theoretical, or hard to digest, and this makes it difficult to uncover the tools that we need without getting lost in all the words. Vex’s book wasn’t like that at all. Vex King breaks down self-love into positive vibes, emphasising that the way to become your greatest self is to welcome and experience these good vibes in various areas of your life. Vex’s approach to self-love is to unpack concepts such as lifestyle, mindset, acceptance, manifestation, and good habits and what they can do to promote your best life.
To love yourself, then, would be to ensure that you’ve adopted a healthy way of practising all, or most of the above. The…
The #1 Sunday Times bestselling non-fiction book of 2021 - over one million copies sold worldwide.
Join the self-love revolution with visionary writer Vex King and discover inspirational messages and universal wisdom to help you manifest positive vibes.
Vex overcame adversity to become a source of hope for thousands of young people, and now draws from his personal experience and his intuitive wisdom to inspire you to:
- practise self-care, overcome toxic energy and prioritize your wellbeing - cultivate positive lifestyle habits, including mindfulness and meditation - change your beliefs to invite great opportunities into your life - manifest your…
As both a professor of graphic design and creative director of Fast Company, I’m dedicated to helping others be more creative. At Fast Company, my job is to ensure the visuals for the world’s leading business media brand are consistently innovative. (Yea…no pressure.) Honestly, sometimes it’s tough to be innovative when I’m faced with a squeezed schedule, a towering to-do list, and a bargain basement budget. But, as a marathoner, I’ve learned that if you want to be successful, you need to push through sub-optimal circumstances. That’s where these five books come into play: they all provide relatable stories and insights into achieving success, despite tough odds. Let’s do this.
Paul Arden’s book teaches you how to be an optimist—an essential trait for meeting your milestones. He writes: “You must develop a complete disregard for where your abilities end.” Focus on who you want to be, not who you are.
This is a tool called positive visualization, one I’ve harnessed in my career path as a creative director, an author, and a professor. By envisioning who I want to be, I take the necessary steps to achieve success.
It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be is a handbook of how to succeed in the world: a pocket bible for the talented and timid alike to help make the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible possible.
The world's top advertising guru, Paul Arden, offers up his wisdom on issues as diverse as problem solving, responding to a brief, communicating, playing your cards right, making mistakes, and creativity - all endeavours that can be applied to aspects of modern life.
This uplifting and humorous little book provides a unique insight into the world of advertising…
The world is growing more turbulent, and every leader today has to be ready to be a crisis leader. I have been studying and teaching leadership and crisis leadership at Harvard for more than two decades. I have deployed to major incidents such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and trained crisis teams around the world. I have seen that effective crisis leaders make “worst days” better. They unite and inspire, they protect communities, and, most important, they save lives. That’s why I have a passion to help current and aspiring leaders ready themselves and their organizations for whatever the world throws at them.
I have seen how important it is for someone trying to lead to understand themselves as a person—to be comfortable in their own skin, even in trying circumstances. To be effective, you have to be authentic and have presence. It’s harder than it seems.
Dunston walks through a series of simple, yet profound questions that help you master the balance of “be and see.” That is, being the real you and as the leader others need to see. I refer to the “essential” questions regularly and find more meaning through them every time. The answers help build self-awareness, confidence, and the ability to show up ready for any challenge.
I regularly recommend this book to my leadership students.
Being Essential presents the seven questions that will help any leader discover an authentic path to the true self and master a virtuous cycle of self-awareness that fosters purpose, value, and joy at work and in life.
Leaders often know what they need to do, but don't have a clue who they need to be. Without a true essence of self, their leadership can feel void of purpose and confidence, affecting both teams and stakeholders. But when leaders discover their essential selves-who they are at their cores and why they show up-it enables them to reach a state of "radical…