Suggested books to read

Hello everyone
I have been requested to list some of the books I have read that have helped me along in my healing journey.  One thing I will be doing as this blog progresses is addressing specific books and specific emotional that I did from the books, to help you see how I personally progressed and healed and hopefully help you move forward in your healing path.  But in the meantime, here are a few books and how they helped me:

The courage to heal : a guide for women survivors of child sexual abuse : featuring "Honoring the truth, a response to the backlash" / Ellen Bass and Laura Davis.

To this day I cannot say if I was a victim of child sexual abuse; my mother accused my father of it, and I now that I slept in his bed until I was about 11 years old, so if it wasn't technical abuse it was still an unhealthy situation. I do know I was the victim of other abuse, so what I decided to do with this book is approach it from an abuse standpoint, and did the exercises in the book from that point of view.

This is an amazing book, but it is not an easy book.  Be gentle with yourself as you read this; allow yourself to put it down and work through whatever you can as you can, and give yourself permission to take breaks.

The biggest thing this book allowed me to do was forgive myself for being a child and being unable to defend myself.  I realized that I was looking at myself from an adult point of view and blaming myself for allowing myself to be abused.  This book opened my eyes and helped me re-look at myself as a vulnerable child, and allowed me to forgive myself.

Another great book for me was John Bradshaw's On the family: a revolutionary way of self discovery.
This book was recommended to me by my therapist at Kaiser, and it really helped me to see where I fit within the family dynamic, and why I did the things I did today as an adult in my relationships. 

Geneen Roth's When Food is Love is another good book; it gave me a good perspective on my love affair with food.  I think it's a great 'beginning' book for the healing process.

The artist's way : a spiritual path to higher creativity / Julia Cameron with Mark Bryan
Is a book about journalling and taking artist dates and becoming comfortable with yourself as a creative person.  I have read and done the exercises in this book at three different times, even took a group class in San Diego on the book; it has helped me a lot.  You don't have to think of yourself as a creative person or an artistic person to have this book help you.

I will reference other books as I go along; a friend is going to help me refine this blog so I can provide links to these books in the future on my blog.  Anyone know how to do that and wants to comment to help me I would be greatly appreciative! I have the gift of words but not the gift of technology.