"Do you want to be friends?"

The moment I hit send, I felt super ridiculous.

Not because there was anything wrong with the question but because we rarely ask it out loud.

It felt like being back in middle school, passing a note to a crush.

Do you like me?

Circle one:

Yes.
No.
Maybe.

The truth is that most of us don't know how to make friends as adults.

We know how to network.

We know how to collaborate.

We know how to follow each other on social media.

But friendship?

Real friendship?

No one ever taught us how to do that.

Thankfully, my discomfort didn't last long. She texted back almost immediately.

"Absolutely."

I could feel myself exhale.

I hadn't even realized I was holding my breath.

And that's when I started thinking about Remy and Simone.

In Love by the Book by Jessica George, Remy finds herself navigating a season that many women know intimately. Her friendships are changing. One friend is preparing for motherhood. Another is moving into a new phase of life. The group she has always relied upon is shifting beneath her feet.

No one has done anything wrong.

Life is simply life-ing.

And yet there is grief in that.

There is grief in realizing that the people who once occupied the center of your world may not always be available in the same ways.

There is grief in realizing that belonging requires adaptation.

Many women know this feeling.

Maybe you're the friend who moved away.

Maybe you're the friend who had the baby.

Maybe you're the friend whose career suddenly consumes all your time.

Or maybe you're the friend quietly wondering:

Who are my people now?

Rather than retreating, Remy does something brave.

She decides to build.

She decides to make a new friend.

Enter Simone.

Where Remy is willing to risk connection, Simone is guarded.

She's carrying family pain. Estrangement. Disappointment. The kind of heartbreak that teaches people to keep parts of themselves hidden.

And then something beautiful happens between them.

Not all at once. Not because they instantly become best friends. But because one person chooses vulnerability first.

One of my favorite lines in the novel expresses this perfectly:

"Once again, Simone was in awe of Remy's honesty..."

What follows is a realization that I think sits at the heart of friendship itself: when someone trusts us with something real, it often awakens our desire to trust them back.

That's what happens between Remy and Simone.

Remy shares first.

Simone wonders what it would be like to do the same.

And slowly, a friendship begins to form.

Not through grand gestures.

But through honesty.

Consistency.

Curiosity.

Repair.

Reciprocity.

The things no one ever explicitly teaches us.

Which is exactly why Wale and I created Prose in Process.

Because so many adults are carrying questions about friendship that rarely get discussed out loud.

How do I know when I've found a true friend?

How do I build new friendships when my life has changed?

What's the difference between history and friendship?

Why do some relationships leave me feeling nourished while others leave me feeling lonely?

Over six weeks, we'll use Love by the Book as a mirror to explore these questions together through guided bibliotherapy, reflection, journaling, and community discussion.

Sign Up for Prose in Process

This isn't just a virtual book club. This is an opportunity to understand friendship differently with the support of two licensed therapists specializing in Bibliotherapy.

And perhaps this is a powerful chance to understand yourself differently too.

📖 Prose in Process

June 6–July 18

✨ Guided bibliotherapy workbook

✨ Weekly discussion prompts

✨ Private discussion community

✨ One live virtual bibliotherapy session with Emely & Wale

Only 5 seats remain.

If you've ever found yourself wondering where friendship fits into this chapter of your life, we'd love to have you join us.

Because making friends shouldn't feel harder than dating.

And because sometimes the bravest thing we can say is:

"Do you want to be friends?"

Join us for Prose in Process- we can’t wait to read and learn together!

In Gratitude,

Emely

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx

A year ago today, Bibliotherapy in the Bronx entered the world.

I remember holding it and thinking: this is everything I believe about stories and how they carry us, how they meet us, how they say the thing we don’t yet have language for.

What I didn’t fully understand then is how much this work would continue to teach me.

Over this past year, I’ve watched the book travel into therapy rooms, classrooms, libraries, book clubs, bedrooms, even busy kitchens. I’ve met readers who saw themselves reflected in ways that felt relieving, confronting, and sometimes life-changing.

And through all of that, I’ve kept returning to a truth I’ve known long before I ever wrote a book:

Sometimes, we need a little distance to tell the truth.

As an elementary school counselor, I use puppets all the time.

Not because children can’t speak for themselves but because sometimes the feeling is too close to the heart.

A puppet creates just enough space.

A child who can’t say “I’m scared” might say,

“He is scared.”

A child who feels ashamed might let the puppet confess,

“I messed up.”

And suddenly, we’re in it together not interrogating, not correcting, but wondering. Reflecting. Understanding. I love being a school social worker for this reason. Especially in elementary school.

Books do the same thing.

When we read, we step into someone else’s story but we’re also stepping slightly outside of our own.

We get to feel without being overwhelmed.
We get to recognize ourselves without being exposed.
We get to say: that’s me, and let a feeling response happen naturally without having to say it out loud.

A character makes a decision we’ve made.
Holds a secret we’ve held.
Loves in a way we understand.
Hurts in a way that feels familiar.

And through that recognition, something opens.

This is the heart of bibliotherapy.

Not prescribing the “right” book.
Not forcing insight.
Not rushing healing.

But offering a story as a kind of companion.

A puppet for the soul. 🙌🏾

Something that can hold what feels too heavy to carry directly.

Over the past year, I’ve seen this work ripple outward.

Clinicians integrating stories into their practice.
Teachers creating space for reflection through literature.
Readers returning to books not just for escape but most importantly for meaning, for language, and for connection.

And I’ve seen something else too:

People trusting themselves more.

Trusting what they feel when they read.
Trusting what resonates.
Trusting that the stories they’re drawn to are trying to tell them something.

If puppets help children say what’s hard to say,
books help all of us feel what’s hard to feel.

They offer us that sacred, necessary distance. And the kind that doesn’t disconnect us from ourselves, but leads us back.

One year later, I don’t feel like I “finished” something.

I feel like I’m still in conversation.

With readers.
With stories.
With every person who has ever needed a little space to tell the truth.

Thank you for reading with me and for trusting stories. For letting them hold you.

And for reminding me, again and again,
that healing doesn’t always happen head-on.

Sometimes, it begins
through a character,
through a page,
through a puppet’s voice
saying exactly what we needed to hear.

In gratitude,

Emely Rumble

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx

Join our community of bibliotherapists

This morning I found myself sitting at the kitchen table with my kids, a stack of books, and the weight of one question:

How do you honor someone who changed the way the world tells stories to children?

Next month, I’ll be delivering the 2026 Augusta Baker Lecture and today I began the slow, intentional work of putting finishing touches on my talk.

Preparing for a lecture like this feels less like writing and more like sitting in conversation with someone whose work has shaped the landscape of children’s literature. Becoming a student of Baker’s impact has me reflecting on the importance of defending and nourishing children- especially now.

This morning that internal conversation happened through reading Augusta Baker’s book Storytelling: Art and Technique.

What stuck with me while reading was how deeply she respected the minds of children.

There’s a passage where Baker talks about ending storytime (see the excerpt above). She cautions against the temptation many adults have to overperform the ending of a story.

She advises: No dramatic flourish. No exaggerated lesson. No corny attempt to squeeze meaning out of the moment. I love that she used the word corny! 🥰👌🏾

Instead, she encourages something much quieter.

Let the story end.

Let the children go home.

Let them sit with it.

Baker believed the storyteller’s job was not to overexplain the story, but to trust children to process it in their own way. If a child wanted to talk about the story afterward, the librarian should simply make themselves available. The adult’s role was not to impose interpretation but to respect the inner lives of children.

That idea resonates deeply with the work I do every day as a school social worker and bibliotherapist.

In therapy, adults often feel pressure to translate everything for children: to name the lesson, to summarize the moral, to guide the meaning of the experience.

But what I have learned, again and again, is that children are already thinking deeply.

Sometimes they just need space.

Sometimes they need a story.

And sometimes they need an adult who trusts them enough not to rush the moment.

Augusta Baker understood this instinctively.

She understood that stories are not simply tools we use to teach children. Stories are experiences children move through at their own pace. They are emotional landscapes that children explore quietly long after the book has closed.

As I work on this lecture, I keep thinking about the care she showed for the children who came through the doors of the 135th Street Library in Harlem, the readers, the dreamers, the future writers and thinkers who sat cross-legged at storytime.

Including one young patron she later remembered fondly:

James Baldwin. 👑

“I remember,” she once said, “he was one odd duck.”

It’s a line that makes me smile every time I read it because every brilliant adult we celebrate was once a child sitting somewhere trying to figure out where they belonged.

Libraries gave those children space.

Stories gave them language.

And Augusta Baker made sure those stories were there waiting.

I am deeply honored to celebrate her legacy in this year’s lecture, and incredibly grateful to Dr. Nicole A. Cooke, Team Baker, and Richland Library for the invitation.

If you are nearby, I hope you’ll join us.

2026 Augusta Baker Lecture

📅 Friday, April 17

🕡 6:30–9:00 PM

📍 Richland Library

The event is open to the public, and I would love to see familiar faces and new ones in the room.

In the meantime, I’ll be here — finishing my slides, revisiting Augusta Baker’s words, and thinking about the quiet power of a story well told.

Because sometimes the most respectful thing we can do for a child is simply this:

Tell the story.

And trust them to meet it where they are.

See you soon,

Emely Rumble

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx

Founder LITERAPY

That’s why I keep returning to Amari and the Metalwork Menace by B. B. Alston, the fourth book in the Amari series. On the surface, these books are magical adventures about a girl training as a Junior Agent in a secret supernatural bureau. But beneath the spells, curses, and hidden worlds is a story about something very human and real: learning who you are when the path forward is complicated.

At the beginning of this book, Amari is facing a choice that feels deceptively simple. She could walk away from the Bureau and live a “normal” life as a kid. But doing so would erase every memory of the supernatural world she fought so hard to belong to. The choice asks a question that many middle schoolers, and honestly, many adults have to wrestle with:

Do I choose safety, or do I choose purpose?

Middle grade literature is powerful because it names these moments truthfully. Young readers are constantly negotiating the pull between comfort and becoming- what is therapists like to call “distress tolerance”. Amari’s narrative arc captures that tension beautifully.

As the story unfolds, a terrifying curse begins turning people into machines. The stakes rise quickly, but what guides Amari through the chaos is not fear or ambition. It’s grief.

She is mourning Magnus (her former teacher). Instead of trying to outrun that grief, she lets it guide her. She asks herself a simple but straightforward question: What choice would make him proud?

There’s something deeply therapeutic about that moment.

In my work with young people, grief often becomes a compass. When someone we love is gone, their memory can shape how we move through the world. Amari models this in a way that feels accessible for readers who are still learning how to hold big emotions.

Another lesson I appreciate in this story is that courage is not portrayed as certainty. Amari doesn’t always know the right answer. She hesitates. She doubts herself. She makes decisions in real time with imperfect information.

That’s the kind of courage most of us actually practice.

Not the cinematic kind where everything is clear and heroic but the messier version where we keep showing up even when the outcome isn’t guaranteed.

This is one of the reasons I often encourage adults to read children’s literature and middle grade novels. Writers in this space are skilled at distilling complex emotional truths into stories that feel clear, hopeful, and honest. They remind us of lessons we sometimes forget as we grow older.

Stories about belonging.

Stories about friendship.

Stories about grief and integrity.

Stories about choosing who we want to become.

The Amari series is doing all of that while also giving young readers a Black girl hero who is thoughtful, brave, and morally grounded. That representation matters which is what my campaign ‘Healing Starts with a Story’ is all about.

Get Your Healing Starts w/a Story Merch

But the emotional wisdom in these books isn’t just for kids.

Adults need stories that remind us that courage can grow out of grief. That belonging is something we sometimes have to fight for. That the path toward becoming who we are meant to be rarely looks simple or neat.

Sometimes the right book finds us exactly when we need it.

And sometimes, that book is sitting in the middle grade section.

What middle grade books have stayed with you long after childhood?

In Community,

Emely Rumble

Author of ‘Bibliotherapy in the Bronx’

Get Your Merch Here

Eight days.

That’s what we have left in this Healing Starts with a Story merch campaign and I am sitting here feeling so full.

Full of gratitude for those of you who have already ordered a sweatshirt, a tee, a hoodie. Full of awe that something that began as a quiet conviction in my therapy office has become something you’ll soon be wearing in classrooms, libraries, grocery stores, and living rooms (orders ship March 3rd!).

Last week, I had the honor of serving as the opening keynote speaker for the American Library Association virtual conference, Recharging in Challenging Times. I spoke to library workers across the country about the stories we internalize when the world feels heavy.

Because here is the question I keep returning to:

When hard things happen, what story do we tell ourselves?

Is it a story of power?

Or a story of powerlessness?

Is it a story where we remember we have agency?

Or one where we quietly decide we don’t?

As a therapist.

As a school social worker.

As a caretaker of children and families.

I see every day how much our internal narratives matter.

Children are listening to the stories adults tell about the world.

Families are absorbing the messages about who belongs.

Librarians and educators are holding the line for imagination, for truth, for access.

And this month, Black History Month, feels especially sacred.

Because Black history is, at its core, a story of narrative resistance.

A story that says:

We are not what oppression called us.

We are what we have survived.

We are what we have created.

We are what we continue to imagine.

Healing Starts with a Story is not just a slogan.

It’s a directive.

It’s also a reminder that healing doesn’t begin with denial or perfection.

It begins with language.

With witnessing.

With choosing a different narrative.

When you wear this merch, you are wearing a message that says:

Stories matter.

Reading is resistance.

Mental health is communal.

Healing is possible.

You are aligning yourself with a mission that sits at the heart of my life’s work from Bibliotherapy in the Bronx to my therapy office, from my children’s bedtime stories to the library workers who keep showing up in hard times.

And because this is a limited campaign, it truly does end in eight days.

Once it closes, it closes.

If you’ve been meaning to grab something, this is your nudge.

If you believe in reading as medicine.

If you believe in protecting imagination.

If you believe our children deserve empowering stories.

If you believe healing is both personal and political.

This is for you.

Get Your Merch Here!

Thank you for supporting this work. Thank you for wearing the message. Thank you for believing that even in challenging times, we can choose a story rooted in agency, dignity, and hope.

Eight days left. Thank you for your support in this work <3

In Gratitude,

Emely

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx

As an exhausted, overextended mom, I’m often meeting those moments already tired. Emotionally spent. Carrying the invisible labor of the day. And as a therapist, I know how easy it is to turn even these moments into another task to optimize: Should we be reading more? Practicing skills? Doing something productive? There’s always more we could do.

What I’m learning—again and again—is that attunement doesn’t require energy we don’t have. It asks for presence more than performance.

Recently, I watched my five year old sit with a make-your-own storybook kit. No instructions, no agenda. Just prompts, stickers, a blank book, and time. She led. She paused. She narrated out loud. She changed her mind. She lingered. To be honest, it drove me crazy but my baby is a Taurus and head strong. I had to let her be LOL.

My role wasn’t to teach her storytelling. It was to notice HER storytelling.

To sit nearby.

To listen when she wanted an audience.

To resist the urge to redirect or improve.

That, I’m realizing, is emotional attunement in its simplest form.

We often think attunement requires us to be well-rested, regulated, and fully resourced. But in real family life, attunement usually happens inside exhaustion. It’s the decision to stay emotionally available even when our bodies want to check out. It’s choosing connection over correction when we don’t have much left to give.

Self-directed play (and especially storytelling) creates a natural opening for this kind of connection. When children lead, we don’t have to manufacture engagement or force it. We simply follow their cues. Their play becomes a language. Their stories become a way of telling us how they’re making sense of the world.

From a bibliotherapy lens, this is narrative development. But from a parenting lens, it’s something quieter: I see you. I’m here. I’m listening. I love you just as you are and I’m glad you’re sharing yourself with me.

Attunement doesn’t mean hovering. It doesn’t mean doing more. Often, it means doing less and doing it with quiet intention. Letting a blank page be enough. Letting silence be part of the story. Letting our children take the lead while we bear witness.

In a culture that tells parents we’re never doing enough, I want to name this as enough.

My two children are very different. They need me to show up different and that’s okay. It’s enough for me to simply be present in these moments.

Sitting with your child while they play.

Listening while they narrate a world only they can see.

Offering your attention, even when you’re tired.

These moments don’t look like much. But they accumulate. They teach children that their inner world matters and they remind us that connection doesn’t require perfection, just presence.

Sometimes, free time isn’t about rest or productivity.

Sometimes, it’s about choosing to stay emotionally nearby.

And that, too, is a form of care—for them, and for us.

I hope this reaches a parent who needs it today 🫶🏽

In Community,

Emely

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx

Lately, I’ve been sitting with something that keeps coming up.

I receive a steady stream of messages from people asking to pick my brain about bibliotherapy, book curation, creative arts therapies, building programs, or how to integrate literature into healing work. I’m always honored by the curiosity. It tells me that people are paying attention, that the work is landing, that it’s resonating.

And also (if I’m keeping it real) it’s a lot.

This isn’t unique to me. Black creatives, especially Black women working in the creative arts therapies, experience this constantly. Our labor is seen as generous, intuitive, communal… and therefore endlessly accessible. Our insight is treated like a public resource rather than skilled, cultivated, time-bound work.

There’s a long history here. Black women have always been expected to teach, nurture, translate, and heal often without compensation, credit, or protection. When that pattern shows up in creative and therapeutic spaces, it doesn’t always look malicious. Sometimes it looks like admiration. Sometimes it looks like curiosity. Sometimes it looks like, “Can I just ask you a quick question?”

But those “quick questions” add up.

Expertise is not just knowledge, friends, it’s time, lived experience, education, emotional labor, trial and error, and years of refinement. In creative arts therapies spaces, that expertise is especially layered. It lives at the intersection of clinical training, cultural context, artistry, and care. Asking for it for free (especially from Black women) keeps the same extractive cycles intact.

This is part of why I created Libros y la Curación: Healing Through Books.

I didn’t want my work to exist only in DMs, voice notes, or unpaid consultations that disappear into the ether. I wanted a space that honors sustainability. A space where the knowledge people keep asking for is held, archived, and accessible in a way that doesn’t require me to overextend myself to be generous. I have two babies to care for after all!

Libros y la Curación is a living archive I’ve been building since 2022. Inside, you’ll find curated book lists by theme, deep bibliotherapy features, reflections on creative arts therapies in practice, academic articles with context, and tools you can actually use—whether you’re a therapist, educator, librarian, or intentional reader.

It’s not about gatekeeping. It’s about care.

Supporting Black creatives means more than sharing our posts or praising our brilliance. It means respecting boundaries. It means understanding that sustainability is part of liberation. It means choosing to invest, financially and ethically, in the work you benefit from. Check out my Instagram to see how much love I pour into this platform just for the love of it.

If you’ve ever wanted to pick my brain, this is the way I’m inviting you to do that now. Not in a way that drains, but in a way that nourishes something long-term.

Libros y la Curación is $5.99/month. It’s a small exchange that helps keep this work alive, resourced, and rooted.

subscribe to our BiblioTherapy community

Thank you to everyone who understands that supporting Black women in the creative arts therapies isn’t just appreciation- it’s practice.

With care,

Emely

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx

Eight months ago on April 29, 2025 Bibliotherapy in the Bronx entered the world and I’m still settling my nervous system.

I often catch myself saying that sentence slowly, like my body needs time to catch up to the truth of it.

This book was born in therapy rooms where feelings didn’t have neat endings (at all!). In school hallways where kids needed someone to bear witness while the school day churned on. In libraries where stories were never “just books,” but survival tools, mirrors, and lifelines. It began as a practice, then a calling, and somehow became a book that now lives beyond me.

Eight months later, I’m still processing what it means to have written something that found its way into other people’s hands, book talks and hearts.

What I didn’t anticipate was how much the book would keep opening doors I never thought to knock on.

This year, I had the honor of facilitating professional learning with the Brooklyn Public Library—a system that represents so much of what I believe about access, care, and community-centered reading. And soon, I’ll be keynoting for the American Library Association. Even typing that still feels surreal. Libraries raised me. Librarians shaped me. To now be invited into those spaces as a speaker, a teacher, a bibliotherapist—it’s humbling in a way that doesn’t feel loud, but deeply grounding.

I want to be honest about something, though.

NONE of this erased my self-doubt.

None of it made me suddenly feel “finished” or immune to fear.

What it did give me was confirmation that the quiet work matters.

The slow conversations.

The moments when a reader tells me, “I didn’t know there was language for this.”

The emails from therapists, educators, and librarians saying they finally feel permission to trust literature as care.

That’s the real celebration.

As part of this eight-month milestone, I’m extending the sale of my Annual Bibliotherapy Book List for one more day. This list is pulled directly from my clinical and community practice—books I’ve actually used with clients, groups, and classrooms. It’s not aspirational. It’s practical, intentional, and rooted in the belief that what we read shapes how we survive.

If you’ve been meaning to grab it, this is your gentle nudge. Not urgency for urgency’s sake but an invitation to read with more care in the year ahead.

Mostly, I just want to say thank you.

Thank you for reading with me.

Thank you for believing that stories can be medicine.

Thank you for reminding me again and again that this work doesn’t happen in isolation.

Eight months in, I’m still letting it be real.

Still learning.

Still reading.

Still listening. I hope you are, too! 🥰

With gratitude and tenderness,

Emely 🖤

In 2025, I noticed clear patterns in what people were bringing into the room. Certain themes kept resurfacing, and certain books kept proving themselves useful in my therapy room. This is not necessarily because they offered clear answers but because they offered language, mirrors, and permission. I began organizing my recommendations into five broad categories that reflect the emotional and relational work so many of us are navigating right now.

Today I’m sharing a glimpse into a few of those categories, along with select book recommendations and journaling prompts you can use in your own reading life or practice.

Identity, Self-Worth & Authenticity

The books in this category are stories I reach for when someone is wrestling with questions like: Who am I beneath expectation? What parts of myself did I learn to hide to survive? What would it mean to belong to myself more fully?

Books in this category are especially supportive for clients unpacking shame, internalized oppression, masking, or major identity shifts. They invite readers to tell the truth about their lives while honoring the systems they’ve had to navigate.

Try this journaling prompt:

Where did I learn who I was “supposed” to be and who benefits from that version of me?

Sentence starter (for journaling):

• “The version of myself I’m ready to reclaim is…”

Family Systems, Attachment & Relational Wounds

So much of our reading this year centered on family in particular. I found myself supporting clients in processing what we inherit, what we survive, and what we’re still grieving. Books in this category are helpful when clients are processing parent wounds, sibling dynamics, estrangement, or the quiet grief of realizing something essential was missing.

In practice, I often use these stories as a third presence in the room. They allow clients to examine family roles and attachment patterns with less self-blame and more clarity.

Try this journaling prompt:

What role did I learn to play in my family, and how does it still show up in my relationships today?

Sentence starter:

•“I learned to take care of others by…, but it cost me…”

A Note on my annual book prescription offering

What I’ve shared here is just a small window into Healing Through Books, my annual digital book list drawn directly from my bibliotherapy practice. The full guide includes complete book recommendations across all five categories, clinical context, aligned therapeutic modalities, practitioner pro tips, and additional reflection prompts and sentence starters designed for real-world use.

If you’re a therapist, educator, librarian, or someone who reads for healing and meaning, this guide will support your reading journey. It’s meant to support intentional reading at your own pace. Not necessarily more reading, but truer reading.

You can purchase Healing Through Books 2025 Edition on sale for a limited time and bring these books into your practice or personal reading life with care and clarity.

Reading is not a cure-all especially for this world we live in but in the right moment, the right book can be a powerful form of care. The right book can inspire us to act and make positive changes.

If any of these reflections stirred something in you, consider that an invitation rather than a requirement. The full guide exists for those who want to read with more intention whether for their clients, their communities, or themselves. Healing Through Books gathers the books that shaped my practice in 2025 and offers a framework for engaging them with care. You can find it linked right here whenever you’re ready.

In the meantime take note of these 2026 releases I’ve gotten heart set on!

Be sure to follow me on socials at handle @literapy_nyc and subscribe to my professional BiblioTherapy community for the latest updates on the most diverse, therapeutic reads!

Cheers to another great year of reading in community!

Big Gratitude,

Emely

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx

It made me laugh at first because, yes, exhaustion is real, but it also felt like a quiet manifesto. A permission slip. A reminder that rest, care, and mothering are not distractions from the work. They are the work.

The sweater was made by Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, and wearing it feels like wearing lineage.

Bilqis is a trailblazer in every sense of the word. She is the first Muslim woman to play NCAA Division I basketball while wearing a hijab, an accomplishment that cracked open doors many people didn’t even realize were sealed shut. Her story has carried her to national and global stages: from The White House to the United Nations and her voice continues to shape conversations about faith, gender, access, and dignity.

But beyond the accolades, Bilqis is also a business owner. A mother. A woman creating on her own terms. Supporting her work isn’t just about buying a sweater for me but it’s about circulating care, values, and belief back into our communities.

As a working mother, I’m thinking a lot about what it means to prioritize mothering without abandoning ambition.

This fall, I returned to working in person as a school social worker, my first professional love, here in Western MA. Walking back into a school building after years of building my private practice, LiterapyNYC, felt tender and brave all at once. Over the last seven years, I poured myself into creating a practice rooted in bibliotherapy, care, creativity, and access. In that same stretch of time, I also wrote my debut book, Bibliotherapy in the Bronx.

And it’s led to amazing opportunities like teaching professional development workshops to librarians! Shout out to Brooklyn Public Library!

There were moments when the grind culture voice got loud. Moments when I wondered if stepping back into school-based work meant I was “doing less” or “going backward.”

But that sweater tells the truth I already know:

Mothering first doesn’t mean dreaming smaller. It means dreaming truer.

Working mothers are often expected to be endlessly flexible for institutions while our own needs including rest, presence, and healing are treated as luxuries. When we choose to support one another’s businesses, books, art, and labor, we are actively resisting that narrative. We are saying: your work matters because you matter.

Supporting Bilqis’s business feels aligned with the life I’m building. A life where success is not measured only by productivity, but by integrity, care, and community. One where our children see us honor our values out loud. One where rest and ambition coexist.

So yes, I will proudly wear Nap Me 24:7 while writing, counseling, mothering, teaching, and dreaming. I will support women who build while caring, who lead while mothering, who rest while creating.

Because when working mothers are supported by each other, by our communities, by conscious consumers, we don’t just survive, ya’ll - We change the culture.

If you’re looking to support a small business rooted in purpose, faith, and care, I warmly encourage you to explore Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir’s work. Her pieces feel like reminders you can wear of rest, resistance, and choosing yourself.I’ll link her shop for who wants to meet the maker behind Nap Me 24:7:

And if this reflection resonates and if you’re navigating work, motherhood, identity, or returning to a version of yourself you once loved—my book, Bibliotherapy in the Bronx, lives in this same conversation. It’s a love letter to libraries, healing through stories, and the ways we piece ourselves together while caring for others. I’ll include that link as well, in case it finds you at the right moment.

I’m learning that there is nothing small about choosing to mother first, rest honestly, and still show up for work that matters. There is nothing indulgent about supporting women who build businesses with their whole selves and values centered faith, beliefs, fatigue, brilliance, and all.

So I’ll keep wearing the sweater. I’ll keep telling the truth about this season. I’ll keep choosing community over grind, care over urgency, and stories that make room for us to breathe.

This, too, is success.

Happy Holidays, friends.

Emely

Before the sales, the codes, and the rush of the long weekend, I wanted to pause and say thank you. Thank you for being here, for reading with me, for showing up in the comments and the DMs, for sharing books with your loved ones, and for reminding me every single day why I believe so deeply in the healing power of story.

Running LiterapyNYC while raising two little ones, working in community, and building a life rooted in books hasn’t been easy but it has been beautiful. And that beauty comes from you. From this community. From the conversations we’ve had about healing, identity, joy, grief, and the stories that saved us just in time.

Every time you pick up a book I recommend…

Every time you join a discussion in Readers Who Run with the Wolves…

Every time you trust me enough to bring literature into your own healing journey,

I feel honored. Truly.

What We’re Reading Next

Our December pick for Readers Who Run with the Wolves is This Is the Only Kingdom by Jaquira Díaz and I can’t think of a more powerful way to close the year. Díaz writes with the kind of voice that refuses to be contained: honest, lyrical, fierce, and deeply human. I’m excited to read it alongside you, to unpack its layers, and to let this book carry us into a more grounded, more self-knowing 2026.

A Little Thank You (Black Friday Style)

To celebrate this community—and as a way of saying thank you—I’m offering 40% off two of my most requested workshops:

• Intro to Bibliotherapy

• Bibliotherapy for Librarians & Educators

Use code LIT at checkout. The sale ends Sunday, November 30th.

Whether you’re a therapist looking to diversify your tools, a librarian curating healing-centered collections, or a reader wanting to understand how stories support our mental health, these workshops were built with our unique community of readers, educators, library workers, and healers in mind.

In Gratitude, Always

Thank you for making this space a home for readers, storytellers, teachers, caregivers, social workers, and book lovers of every kind. Thank you for trusting my work. Thank you for reading with me. And thank you for giving me the privilege of watching books transform people—over and over again.

Here’s to community.

Here’s to healing.

Here’s to the stories that carry us.

And here’s to This Is the Only Kingdom guiding us into December on Storygraph and Fable: all are welcome to join!

With love and deep gratitude,

Emely

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how often we prepare for everyone but ourselves.

We prep meals. We prep our kids for school. We prep our homes for company, our lessons for work, our hearts for another day of showing up.

But when was the last time we prepared us?

When is the last time you prepared for YOU?

When I bought a new suit for RiseUp Springfield, I hesitated. I’m known to go straight to the sales rack or to reach for something vintage in my closet.

At first, buying a new suit felt indulgent and like another thing to spend money on when there are groceries, field trips, and birthday gifts to think about. Also, Halloween is next week! Time flies.

But the moment I put this suit on, something shifted. I didn’t just look ready for my presentation, I genuinely felt ready.

I felt like the woman I’ve worked so hard to become. Someone confident, grounded, and proud of the life I’ve built.

This post isn’t just about a suit, though.

It’s about giving ourselves permission.

Permission to invest in what makes us feel powerful and beautiful in our skin.

Because you deserve to look and feel as good as the work you do every single day.

So this week, buy the suit.

Book the photo session for some new headshots (or dress up and take them yourself!).

Light yourself a candle before you open your laptop. Buy yourself the flowers.

Whatever your “suit” looks like, let it remind you that you are worthy of care, confidence, and celebration. Life isn’t just about survival.

In Gratitude,

Emely

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx

It’s been looping in my head as I juggle therapy sessions, emails, permission slips, and grocery lists.

There’s something about it that makes me laugh (and wince) - that’s my jam tho- because it captures the strange, tender duality of being a mompreneur, a therapist, and a human being trying to hold it all.

The Myth of Having It Together

People often assume that therapists have some secret formula for balance.

The truth? I’m constantly renegotiating my boundaries. I’m reminding myself that my capacity is not limitless even when my passion convinces me otherwise. I truly love what I do- integrating healing practices and literature.

My mornings start before sunrise: packing lunches, checking messages from clients, setting up my youngest’s sensory supports, and then — if the universe is kind — stealing five minutes to sip my coffee while it’s still warm.

By mid-morning, I’m deep in sessions, listening to stories that stretch my heart in every direction. By evening, I’m back to story time, this time with my kids, hoping they fall asleep before I do. So far so good! Grateful for that structure, IYKYK!

Why I Teach What I Need to Remember

This Thursday, October 9th, I’ll be facilitating “Books as Balm” Bibliotherapy for Caregivers and Educators” at Rise Up Springfield.

It’s not just a workshop it’s a conversation I need as much as anyone in the room.

We’ll talk about how stories can refill us when the world drains us dry.

How reading is both rebellion and rest.

How care work, whether in the classroom or at home, requires deep wells of imagination and self-compassion.

Bibliotherapy, at its core, is about returning to the self through story.

And that’s the work I keep coming back to: reminding myself (and others) that healing doesn’t require perfection, it just requires presence.

What It Really Means to Rise

Being a mompreneur isn’t about doing it all.

It’s about acknowledging the chaos and still daring to dream.

It’s about saying, “I’m tired, but I’m here.” And being grateful that for the most part that’s enough.

It’s about reading your way back to balance: one page, one breath, one boundary at a time.

If you’re a caregiver, educator, or anyone trying to pour into others while remembering yourself, this is your invitation:

Keep rising. Keep resting. Keep reading.

Because that lady? She’s the man.

She’s the mirror.

She’s the movement. She’s you.

She’s US.

Join Me at Rise Up Springfield

📍 Thursday, October 9th

🕐 Bibliotherapy for Caregivers and Educators

Let’s talk about how literature can heal, guide, and sustain us both in the work we do and in the lives we’re building.

Grab your tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/riseup-a-pathway-to-resilience-tickets-1388195162099

Can’t wait to see you!

In Gratitude,

Emely Rumble

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx

Mahdi Woodard wrote, “Be patient with yourself. You are becoming someone you’ve never met before.”

When I read those words this morning, they stung with truth. At 40, I feel the weight and wonder of becoming and of healing from attachment trauma, of loosening my grip on old people-pleasing habits, of choosing myself in ways I once thought impossible. Let’s be real, being a Black and Puerto Rican woman I am socialized deeply to prioritize others over myself- marianismo is real!

I turned 40 yesterday, and while I am deeply grateful for my life, I am also aware of the weathering my heart, mind, body, and spirit have endured particularly as a therapist | care worker on this unique timeline. A recent hospitalization for cardiac issues was a stark reminder of the cost of accumulating stress. I carry that reality with me now, not as a burden - ok, that too, but also as a compass pointing me back toward rest, care, and the kind of gentleness I want to offer myself.

This week also brought messages from people sharing their disappointment that I’ve grown distant, or failed to meet their expectations for connection. Those words hurt. The truth is, I don’t even feel as connected to myself as I want to be. Between launching a book, raising children, mothering in all the ways my spirit calls me to, and building a therapy practice in a new state, solitude often slips through my fingers.

I’m Relearning How to Hold Myself

What is saving me right now is help:

• I’ve returned to therapy.

• I’ve started antidepressants, and they are helping a lot. It was beautiful to talk with Austin Channing Brown about it on our IG live for her recent release ‘Full of Myself’.

• I’m leaning on support instead of trying to be everyone’s glue.

  I can’t keep holding the world together for others while unraveling myself. At 40, the lesson is this: I will prioritize myself. Not as an act of selfishness but as a radical act of love that is for me and that feels so good, wonderful, and new.

Becoming is a Practice: SURRENDER

So I’m practicing patience with the version of me I’ve never met before, the one who knows rest is a right, not a reward. The one who doesn’t apologize for boundaries. The one who allows joy and grief to sit at the same table.

If you are also in a season of becoming, I hope you’ll give yourself that same patience.

Because the person you’re becoming deserves to be welcomed with open arms.

I want more joy for Black women. I imagine it would make us more powerful in ways that serve us… and I don’t really care what it does and doesn’t do for the world. We deserve the world for once. - Austin Channing Brown ‘Full of Myself: Black Womanhood and the Journey to Self-Possession’

Thank you for being in community and opening your arms. I am holding you in love and light, too! May we all find the joy we are so worthy of.

In Community,

Emely

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx

ps. Shop My Bibliotherapy Bookshelf and take advantage of 40% off this week!

Sometimes it isn’t until we feel the need to protect someone else that we finally learn how to protect ourselves.

That’s what struck me so deeply about Renee Swindle’s recent novel.

This story had me laughing out loud and quietly tearing up- sometimes on the same page. Francine’s voice is messy, heartfelt, and hilarious. She navigates the grief of unexpectedly losing her mother on her own terms and she faces hard truths head-on.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing. Like, with anything. I don’t know who I am without my mom.”

This story had me reflecting on the ways we choose to live while carrying grief. Francine chooses to hide from life before she addresses complicated relationships. She uncovers painful layers of her relationship to herself with humor as a constant companion.

When Francine reconnects with an old high school friend who is the foster parent to a charming, Black, autistic boy named Davie, she wasn’t expecting he would teach her to honor her own pain. But that’s just the beautiful thing about relationships, isn’t it?

The connections we forge with others illuminate the truth of who we are. We attract the teachers we need in the right season.

Davie is in pain as well but his response to it is:HA! He is also a master of deflection.

Similarly to Francine, he copes through humor and relentless acceptance of his circumstances. Except, Francine wants more for Davie than surrender. She doesn’t want him to simply accept painful circumstances. She wants to empower him to design a more fulfilling life with full autonomy.

She supports his special interests and she asks about him. She also respects his way of being in the world and tends to him with curiousity and respect.

The representation of both autism and Black mental health are treated with such care:

Francine teaches Davie to choose the kind of love (from a caregiver) that sustains rather than destroys.

“Sure, love made you feel secure, but it also opened up levels of vulnerability you didn’t know existed.”

Francine’s emotional journey in this story reminds us that self-protection isn’t always born from self-awareness. Sometimes, it emerges in the messy act of loving someone else. Sometimes the messy act of loving others helps us realize we value showing up for someone else and because of that we are required to show up for ourselves. In order for Francine to protect Davie, she has to stop abandoning herself. She has to face life down.

Vulnerability is a powerful teacher.

By the end of this novel, I found myself feeling deeply grateful for the way healing often finds us in unexpected places, through unexpected people.

Sometimes protecting another is the very thing that teaches us how to stand guard over our own hearts.

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How will you lead in love and protection today?

I’m going to take the kids outside to play and we will eat our snacks before lunch and not after :)

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In Gratitude,

Emely

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx

Recently, I had the joy of receiving a #gifted advance copy of Story Work: Field Notes on Self-Discovery and Reclaiming Your Narrative by GG Renee Hill, courtesy of broadleafbooks. It’s out November 4th (available for preorder now), and I could not put it down.

Story Work is part memoir, part guide and is written with reflective prompts and courageous insights that invite us to reconstruct our life narratives with both compassion and precision. Because if you don’t know who you are, someone will definitely try and make assumptions for and about you. That’s the power of naming ourselves for ourselves and shedding the weight of inherited stories.

Hill’s personal story growing up with a mother undiagnosed with schizophrenia spoke to me in ways that were both tender and activating.

If you’ve read Bibliotherapy in the Bronx then you know I’ve also navigated the disorientation of being cared for by a loved one with schizophrenia. My aunt’s story has been one of the most resonate aspects of the book readers have reached out about. That means so much to me- and was very hard to write on the page!

Storytelling became one of my earliest coping strategies as an anxious child in my aunt’s care to anchor myself when reality became distorted and downright unpredictable.

Seeing Hill write openly about this terrain validated something I’ve witnessed countless times in my own work: the stories we tell ourselves about our past are not fixed. They are living, breathing frameworks we can revise, expand, and reinhabit.

In fact, reauthoring is the most important survival technology we have at our disposal as Storythinking beings. Owning our truth and working with it.

One of my favorite lines (and there are many):

We need to give ourselves space to reconstruct meaning in our lives… with our losses lovingly included and honored in our identities.

This is the heart of narrative therapy as founded by Michael White and David Epston. We don’t edit out the hard chapters. We integrate them in, allowing even our most difficult experiences to take their rightful place in shaping who we are today.

If you are a clinician, educator, creative, or simply a human being seeking deeper alignment with your own story and truth, Story Work offers a creative, emotionally honest and empowering invitation to become the most reliable narrator of your own life. But first comes the heart (hard) work of shedding narratives that you never agreed to inherit in the first place.

Narrative Therapy Reflection Prompts Inspired by Story Work I am Sharing with Clients:

1. Rewriting a Moment: Choose a memory that feels unresolved. Without erasing what happened, write a version where you as the narrator hold more agency. What truths would you name, what choices would you make?

2. Honoring the Loss: List three losses that have shaped you. For each one, write a sentence about how it has also given you a value, insight, or strength you carry today.

3. Naming the Theme: If your life were a book, what would the current chapter’s title be? What title would you like the next chapter to have?

Before you close this tab, take a moment to ask yourself:

• Which writers have helped you see yourself more clearly?

• What stories have given you courage to rewrite your own?

Let Story Work be your next companion on that journey. Preorder your copy of STORYWORK today and keep building the library of voices that help you reclaim—and reinforce—your narrative power. You are the main character, after all. 💪🏽

Always Rooting for You,

Emely Rumble

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx

Join Readers Who Run with the Wolves Bookclub

This morning, I opened my inbox and found an email from a friend I’ve known since I was 15. We didn’t have a big falling out. No explosive argument, no dramatic goodbye. We just… drifted. Quietly. Painfully. Slowly. I imagine it hurt for both of us in different ways.

She reached out recently as an attempt at reconnection. Honestly, I felt grateful reading her words. They were a soft knock on a door that was never fully closed, just left ajar and forgotten over time.

And yet, I haven’t responded. Not because I don’t care. Not because I’m angry. But because, if I’m honest, I’m tired.

Like so many people right now, I’m over-capacity. I’m doing the best I can to stay present for my family, raise my children, meet deadlines, keep my head above water. The bills still have to be paid. The laundry doesn’t fold itself. The grind doesn’t pause just because you’re in pain.

As a therapist, I know what’s happening here. I understand the psychology of avoidance, the weight of emotional labor, and the ways grief can silence even the most well-intentioned parts of us. But theory never makes the practice easier.

Rest is so much more than lying down. For you, the grief-stricken, it is a sanctuary to fall apart and be held.

Octavia F. Raheem, Rest Is Sacred

Grief has been coming in waves lately—though wave might be too gentle a word. It’s less like rain, more like a tsunami. It knocks the wind out of me. And still, I get up. I pour cereal. I send emails. I show up for clients. I show up for my children.

But showing up for myself? That’s harder.

There’s something about old friends that mirrors the selves we used to be. Sometimes that’s comforting. Sometimes, it aches. Reconnecting means reopening chapters that were never neatly closed and I think I’m scared of what I’ll feel when I do.

So for now, I’m sitting with it. With the guilt, the tenderness, the avoidance, and the hope. I haven’t written her back yet. But maybe this is the first step. Maybe this is my way of finding my words again.

To anyone else holding the weight of old grief in the middle of everyday life, I see you. You’re not alone.

Let it come. Let it knock. Let it sit with you, even if just for a minute.

You don’t have to respond right away.

But you’re allowed to feel it.

With care,

Emely

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx

That’s the question Patricia Parker’s powerful book No Longer Just Parenting invites us to sit with and then lovingly guides us through.

I had the privilege of meeting Ms. Pat when I connected with the Ohio-based organization Mother 2 Mother after my first born was diagnosed with autism at the height of the pandemic in 2020. Connecting with Ms. Pat, Salina Miller, and Charisse Montgomery was a lifeline for me. Their joint book ‘We Dare Be Brave: African American moms and the emotional journey of raising children with disabilities’ was a game changer for me during a time when early intervention services were hard to secure and the isolation of being at home while navigating my son’s new diagnosis was truly overwhelming.

No Longer Just Parenting is not a step-by-step how-to manual. It’s a balm for heavy burdens. A witness to a caregiving journey that is often invisible- especially when we are managing things alone. This book is a flashlight in the dark for those of us who are parenting, caregiving, and fighting to remain whole in the process.

This book is written for:

• The caregiver who’s been thrust into the role with little to no support, still trying to stay mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically well.

• The parent advocating fiercely for a child others refuse to see clearly especially in the early days, before the diagnosis, when your intuition is the only proof you have.

• The one who is holding it all together while quietly falling apart.

After finishing No Longer Just Parenting, I feel humbled. I also feel fortified by the reminder that we don’t do this work alone. We can’t. And when we build intentional community around our caregiving journeys, we access a power deeper than any system that’s failed us.

My biggest takeaway is this one: Community care is the only way to caregive without losing yourself. Find your people. Build your village. Raise your voice. And honor the joy along the way.

In this spirit of community, I had the incredible honor of interviewing Patricia Parker—aka Ms. Pat—on Instagram Live. In our 45-minute conversation, we talked about her book, her lived experience as a mother to an adult autistic, Black son with epilepsy and scoliosis, and her work as the founder of REACH: Resource Education and Community Helps.

📺 Catch the Replay This conversation is for anyone walking the caregiving path whether for a child, a parent, or another loved one. I invite you to watch and share with someone who needs this:

👉 Watch the IG Live Replay

📚 And if you haven’t already, you can order No Longer Just Parenting on Amazon and begin your own journey of reflection, healing, and reimagining the caregiver role.

💐 Ms. Pat, thank you for your wisdom, your warmth, and your fierce love. You are a light.

With community and care,

Emely

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx & Proud Autism Momma ♾️

This week, I found myself sitting with something heavy.

As a bibliotherapist, author, and teacher, I take attribution seriously. I believe in naming the people whose work has shaped mine. I cite my sources—in my book, in my courses, in my community programming. It matters to me. Legacy matters. Lineage matters.

But when you’re interviewed by a mainstream publication, the truth is: you don’t control what stays in and what gets left out. Editors cut for space, clarity, or clickability. Names can be omitted. References can disappear. Intent can be flattened.

And still—despite not writing an recent article—I found myself on the receiving end of sharp criticism. Not a question. Not a clarifying email. But a message that came with assumption and accusation.

I felt angry. Disheartened. Tired.

There’s something deeply painful about being misjudged in a field you care for with your whole heart. Especially when the judgment comes not from strangers, but from those who helped shape the path you walk.

As a woman of color in a profession that still gatekeeps access and credit, I’ve had to learn this: Your integrity will not always be seen by those who expect to be centered. But that doesn’t make it any less real.

I will continue to name the names. I will continue to uplift the legacy of poetry therapy and bibliotherapy. I will continue to teach, write, and grow the work in ways that are culturally grounded and community-centered.

If you’re out here doing the same, especially if you’re building something new and in honor of your ancestry, please know: even when others try to shrink your light, your truth is intact.

Stay grounded. Keep writing. Keep citing. Keep growing what they said couldn’t be grown.

In deep gratitude and fierce clarity,

Emely

Today is Juneteenth and I’ve been deep in reflection about how emotionally nourished my book tour has left me feeling. There’s just something special about meeting people face to face, heart to heart.

There are moments on a book tour that don’t feel like an event—they feel like a return. That’s what my experience on the Bibliotherapy in the Bronx book tour felt like: a homecoming.

These gatherings weren’t just readings or a Q&A, they were gathering of hearts. Teachers I admire, elders I grew up respecting, young readers who radiated hope, and neighbors who understand the pulse of healing through books all gathered under one roof to hold space for storytelling, conversation, and community.

To say I’ve been overwhelmed with gratitude is an understatement.

Honoring a Community Archivist: Ed Cohen

One of the most moving parts my stop at Olive Tree Books-n-Voices in Springfield, MA was having it documented by Ed Cohen, a legendary photographer who has been capturing life (specifically Black life) in Western Massachusetts since 1975.

Ed doesn’t just take pictures he preserves memory. His work spans weddings, protests, performances, and everyday moments that, without someone like Ed behind the lens, might otherwise be forgotten.

Ed is more than a photographer in this community where my husband grew up- he’s a community archivist, someone who ensures our collective moments of joy, resistance, and reflection are not just remembered, but felt. I’m beyond honored that he chose to lend his eye and heart to this moment in my journey.

The Role of Community Leaders

We often think of leadership as something formal, something tied to titles or institutions. But leaders like Ed and Zee Johnson (and so many others in our communities) remind us that leadership is also about presence. It’s about showing up, bearing witness, preserving what matters, and affirming the sacredness of everyday life.

In every city, there are people quietly tending the soul of their communities. They’re photographing, archiving, planting, organizing, mentoring, and keeping watch over our stories. They are the stewards of our collective memory. We honor them by remembering them, too. May today be a day of collective remembering and celebration. May every moment we gather together be a nourishing one, just as these moments have been for me.

A Gentle Ask

If you’ve ever been moved, seen, or healed inside a Black bookstore consider showing your support. Buy a book. Visit in person. Tell your friends. These spaces matter deeply.

And if you haven’t yet picked up Prose to the People, add it to your reading list. It’s not just a book it’s a love letter to the communities that keep our stories alive.

With love and deep gratitude,

Emely Rumble, LCSW

Author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx

Founder of Literapy NYC | Healing Through Books

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