Stepping out of your parents’ home, through college, and into your first big career opportunity can be exciting, scary, exhausting, and exhilarating all at once. From managing a budget to understanding for 401K, planning your career and life is finally in your hands.
In addition to getting eyes on For She Who Leads and digging in, might I recommend these five books be included in your library?
Here is my why for each book:
1. Hinds’ Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard
This is an easy read, fiction, written in the style of an allegory. The main character, Much Afraid, battles her family, her past, and her brokenness to become her true self. Life certainly will deliver us to rocky terrains, and getting our footing just right, learning to lean appropriately, and ascend is part of the story that every woman needs to find. If you love it, there’s a sequal, but IMO this one is a perfect book to start with.
2. Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life by Dr. Henry Cloud
Continue the work on understanding how relationships, family, and community expectations and pressures can influence an individual and step over into Dr. Henry Cloud’s “Boundaries” books. Honestly, you can choose any one of his books (Boundaries in Dating is very good, if you are interested more in practical application…). The value in this book is psychological and practical knowledge and tactics to preserve your own well-being in the midst of negotiating new relationships, professionally and personally, as well as reconciling your past and any family of origin or early adolescent damage that may have been done. If hurt people hurt people, then we have a great opportunity to be part of a culture of healing.
3. It's Good to be Queen: Every Woman’s Pocket Guide to Financial Sovereignty Paperback by Roselyn Wilkinson
This book is excellent for simplifying the complex mechanics of finances--investments, budgets, spending and everything that needs to be in play in order to make free financial decisions. For too many women, relying upon the men in their lives to make financial decisions or to provide financial stability prevents them from being truly free to maintain boundaries, grow, and experience the power that comes from creating and maintaining a lifestyle and way of living. Roselyn teaches financial lessons in a playful and familiar storyline. Trust me, young or old, it’s worth the read.
Practical. Witty. Encouraging. Neysha’s Little Blue Book gives young women (or not so young women) every opportunity to set themselves up for success, take control of professional development, and go after what is most important to them and in alignment with who they really are. In following Neysha and learning her story, it’s easy to see why she was one of the “Brave Women” challenging me to do the brave thing every day.
5. Captivating Revised and Updated: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul by John Eldredge and Stasi Eldredge
Last, but absolutely not least, I recommend Captivating. It is so good that you might throw it against the wall, like I did, the first time I tried to read it. The whole thing about striving beauty and resting beauty destroyed me, because I subscribed to the school of Imposter Syndrome and ached to just rest and not feel guilty. This book opens up the heart of the woman, and helps her to come back together as something new, vulnerable, and beautiful.
These books--on my shelf, in my life. The books to turn back to and reread. The books that bring together an integrated person. What’s on your list?
If you’ve read any of these, post a comment with your thoughts. What’s your top 5?