A new podcast from Substackers and community builders Tanya Lynch (EASE Retreats) and Toni Jones (The Shelf Help Club) exploring the healing power of words.
This weekly digital retreat features conversations with some of our favourite Substack writers and authors, sharing about the books that have shaped their lives, and also their relationships with themselves.
Book nerds will love the long lists of recommendations - both fiction and non-fiction - as our guests also share what they're reading now, as well as ideas on how to get intentional about reading and writing as a path to health, happiness and personal growth.
The Bibliotherapists S2 Ep #6: Stacey Heale on writing - and reading - through grief
Friday, August 15, 2025 • Duration 53:03
Welcome to the second series of The Bibliotherapists, and our sixth episode, featuring Stacey Heale,a writer, speaker, curator, fashion academic, and campaigner known for her honest discussions on womanhood, grief, and rebuilding after loss.
This is a (surprisingly?) uplifting conversation about life, love and rebuilding.
🎧 5 takeaways from our conversation with Stacey
1. Grief is a Portal, Not a Problem to Solve
Stacey shares how the death of her husband Greg reshaped her entire identity and how grief became a teacher, not just a wound.
“If we can feel deeply, we can connect deeply.”
2. Words Save Lives
Through journalling, reading and speaking, Stacey learned to give voice to pain and help others feel less alone in theirs.
3. There’s Healing Power in Telling the Truth
Stacey’s writing is raw and real. She speaks to the unspeakable in a way that creates space for healing and community.
4. You Don’t Need to ‘Get Over’ Grief
Stacey rejects the notion of closure, instead advocating for grief literacy, compassion and continuing bonds with the people we’ve lost.
“Love never ends. It just changes shape.”
5. You Can Be Broken and Beautiful
Amidst profound loss, Stacey found strength, creativity and a deeper connection to herself and her daughters.
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The Bibliotherapists is a podcast celebrating the healing power of words, hosted on - and featuring writers and creatives from - the Substack platform.
Video recordings of The Bibliotherapists interviews are available exclusively to our Substack subscribers.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shelfhelpclub.substack.com/subscribe
The Bibliotherapists S2 Ep #5: Helen Marie on books to soothe your nervous system
Friday, August 8, 2025 • Duration 45:34
Welcome to the second series of The Bibliotherapists, and our fifth episode featuring Helen Marie, a professional therapist sharing thoughts from the therapy room.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone feeling overwhelmed, depleted and/or disconnected and looking for tools to soothe.
🎧 5 takeaways from our conversation with Helen
1. Regulation is the Foundation of Everything
Helen explains how nervous system dysregulation lies at the heart of burnout, anxiety, people-pleasing and shame, and why addressing this from a place of safety needs to come first.
2. Boundaries are Acts of Self-Love
Helen reminds us that saying no, prioritising ourselves, and protecting our peace isn’t selfish, and that these things are essential for healing and wholeness.
“Boundaries are the gateway to self-worth.”
3. Rest is a Right, Not a Reward
The therapist challenges the hustle paradigm, inviting us to embrace stillness and softness as powerful antidotes to survival mode.
4. Self-Abandonment is Learned (and that means it is UNlearnable)
Many women are conditioned to disconnect from themselves. In this conversation Helen offers gentle tools to rebuild that trust and return to the body,
“Healing doesn’t mean you never get triggered—it means you know how to return to yourself.”
5. Healing is a Remembering
Through tools like therapy, embodiment and inner reparenting, Helen invites clients/readers/listeners to come back to who they are.
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The Bibliotherapists is a podcast celebrating the healing power of words, hosted on - and featuring writers and creatives from - the Substack platform.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
The Bibliotherapists S2 Ep #4: Donna Lancaster on how healing begins with feeling
Friday, August 1, 2025 • Duration 49:24
Welcome to the second series of The Bibliotherapists, and our fourth episode featuring Donna Lancaster, an author, life transitions coach, group facilitator and spiritual mentor with 36 years experience.
This episode is a balm for anyone navigating loss, longing or big life transitions.
🎧 5 takeaways from our conversation with Donna
1. Grief is Not a Problem—It’s a Process
Donna reframes grief not as something to ‘get over’ but as a sacred and essential emotional passage that connects us to our deepest selves.
“Grief is sacred. It’s the price we pay for loving.”
2. Emotional Literacy is Radical Self-Care
Donna invites us to reconnect with our feelings through practices like breathwork, ritual, journaling and crying.
3. The Power of Community in Healing
Her work on The Bridge is rooted in the belief that healing happens when we’re witnessed, supported and held by others who’ve walked similar paths.
4. Women and Shame
She explores how generations of women have inherited shame around voice, expression, desire and softness, and shares ideas on how we can reclaim our wholeness.
“We don’t need fixing—we need feeling.”
5. You Don’t Need to Be Fixed
The most powerful message of all: healing isn’t about changing who you are, it’s about remembering who you were before the world told you to shrink
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The Bibliotherapists is a podcast celebrating the healing power of words, hosted on - and featuring writers and creatives from - the Substack platform.
Find Donna on Substack >
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
The Bibliotherapists S2 Ep #3: Daisy Buchanan on reading as self-care and books as medicine
Friday, July 25, 2025 • Duration 54:11
It's a new series of The Bibliotherapists, and for our third episode we're joined by Daisy Buchanan, award-winning author, journalist, podcaster and writing coach.
In this uplifting conversation, Daisy talks about the healing power of fiction, the joy of reading as ritual, and how she uses books to support her mental health.
🎧 5 takeaways from our conversation with Daisy
1. Books Can (should!) Be a Daily Act of Self-Care
Daisy shares how fiction helps soothe her anxiety and why she reads first thing each morning to calm her ‘flashing and beeping brain.’
2. Fiction is Powerful—and also Practical
Stories help us process emotion, build empathy, and activate creativity. Daisy champions binge-able novels as a way to feel better fast.
“Your attention span will grow with reading—but only if you let it.”
3. Bibliotherapy Can Come in All Forms
During lockdown, Daisy rediscovered the joy of reading fiction via the bestselling family saga, The Cazalet Chronicles, proving the right book at the right time can be transformative.
4. Addiction, Anxiety, and Attention
Daisy draws parallels between sobriety, phone addiction, and our fractured attention spans, suggesting that books are the ‘fibre’ our brains need.
“The iPhone is the great unquittable. Books are my antidote.”
5. You Don't Need to Be Perfect, Just Start
Whether it’s running, writing, or reading, Daisy reminds us to drop perfectionism and shares the ‘rule of three’ (one good session in three is enough to build a life-changing habit).
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The Bibliotherapists is a podcast celebrating the healing power of words, hosted on - and featuring writers and creatives from - the Substack platform.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
The Bibliotherapists S2 Ep #2: Sam Baker on menopause as a mental health issue
Friday, July 18, 2025 • Duration 53:38
It's a new series of The Bibliotherapists, and for our second episode we are joined by Sam Baker; journalist, author, broadcaster, professional bookworm and creator of The Shift.
Having spent decades in magazine land, today Sam, 59, is known for ‘endlessly banging the drum for women in midlife and beyond’.
🎧 5 takeaways from our conversation with Sam
1. Midlife Can Be a Catalyst
Sam challenges the narrative of decline and instead urges us to embrace midlife as an opportunity to reset, redefine and reclaim personal power.
2. Menopause is a Mental Health Issue
From brain fog to burnout, Sam shares how hormonal shifts in her late 40s impacted her identity, confidence and career.
“I thought I’d be running the world by 50. Instead, I was on the floor.”
3. Rest is Revolutionary
After a 20-year career in magazines, Sam hit a wall, forcing her to reevaluate rest, and understand that stepping back to breathe wasn’t weakness, but the beginning of a new way forward.
4. There’s No One Way to Be a Woman Over 40
Through her podcast and book, The Shift, Sam amplifies the voices of all kinds of women navigating midlife with authenticity.
“Midlife is not a crisis. It’s a chance to ask: who am I now?"
5. Books as Tools for Change
From memoirs to novels and feminist essays, Sam believes the right book at the right time can change your entire mindset — especially when navigating big transitions.
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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
The Bibliotherapists S2 Ep #1: Clover Stroud on the beauty and brutality of life
Friday, July 11, 2025 • Duration 56:58
It's a new series of The Bibliotherapists, and for our first episode we are joined by Clover Stroud, a bestselling author who writes on the way life feels.
Clover writes about the big stuff - creativity, grief, joy, motherhood, sex, death - as well as life’s small but meaningful moments.
🎧 5 takeaways from our conversation with Clover
1. Grief as Catalyst for Creativity
Clover’s writing often emerges from personal loss (people, places, identity). She believes grief isn’t something to avoid, but something that can transform and expand us.
2. The Power of Saying Yes
Her work is also very much a celebration of life in all its mess and majesty. Even in pain, the writer finds ways to say yes to love, art, motherhood and being fully human.
“I want to say yes to life. That’s the message in everything I write.”
3. Writing as Spiritual Practice
For Clover, writing is not just craft—it’s communion.
4. Motherhood and Sisterhood in Full Colour
Clover speaks candidly about the beauty, exhaustion, wildness and transformation that comes with losing her mother, raising five children and grieving her sister.
“I write about the things I don’t understand in order to try and understand them.”
5. There’s No Map, Only The Work
Clover urges aspiring writers to stop waiting for permission. The only way forward, she says, is to show up for The Work and let the words take shape.
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The Bibliotherapists is a podcast celebrating the healing power of words, hosted on - and featuring writers and creatives from - the Substack platform.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
The Bibliotherapists Ep #10: Emma Gannon on the pressures of success, the power of self-help and that tricky 2nd novel
Friday, January 24, 2025 • Duration 43:18
Welcome to our 10th and final episode of season one of The Bibliotherapists, a podcast hosted on and celebrating the people of Substack.
And we are closing out in style 🥳🥳🥳 with a conversation with one of the platform’s big success stories and biggest evangelists, Emma Gannon.
Joining us hot from hosting a creative retreat with our very own Tanya Lynch, in this conversation Emma provides a candid glimpse into the vulnerabilities, challenges and wins of a life as a professional writer.
Her reflections on creativity, storytelling, and the power of books will inspire aspiring writers, Substackers and readers out there.
Emma also shares insights into her creative process, particularly the challenges of her second novel, Table for One, a heartfelt exploration of independence and self-discovery that she’s super proud of, but took her to some dark places in the writing.
IN THIS EPISODE:
* Why Emma loves the fresh page vibe of a new year.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
The Bibliotherapists Ep #9: Women Are Mad - Jen & Salima on reading for feeling & healing
Friday, January 17, 2025 • Duration 44:19
This week’s podcast episode is a brilliant double date, with Tanya and Toni joined by Salima Saxton and Jennifer Cox aka the founders of the feminist mental health platform, Women Are Mad.
Salima and Jen have been best friends since they met at Cambridge University, bonding over both being state school kids who didn’t quite fit. Today, Salima is a relationship dynamics coach and Jen is a Kleinian psychotherapist, and through Women Are Mad (WAM) they are on a mission to make feelings fashionable.
They say: “WAM is on a mission to help women recognise, articulate and communicate the best toolkit they have: their emotions.” (womenaremad.org)
This is a feisty and fabulous conversation featuring two friends with very different book shelves and reading histories, but a mutual love of stories and words as healing tools.
Psychotherapist Jen is also the author of ‘the best self-help book of 2024’ (The Times/The Sunday Times), Women are Angry👏👏👏 (are we sensing a theme here?!), and it was great to talk bibliotherapy with a real life therapist.
Interestingly, for a bookish podcast, there is quite a lot of chat about not reading, and swapping around our reading habits for other things as our mental and emotional health requires it.
Both women are dealing with pretty raw nervous systems right now, Jen after birthing her book baby, and Salima currently grieving the death of a father with whom she had a sad and complicated relationship.
And the big takeaway from this conversation for us is that life IS complicated.
And sometimes hard. And heartbreaking. But also gorgeous. And hilarious.
And that the right books at the right time can absolutely help with all of it, but that we also need to know how to read .
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
The Bibliotherapists Ep #8: Tamu Thomas - OUT with toxic productivity and IN with gentle unfolding for 2025
Friday, January 3, 2025 • Duration 45:06
Tamu Thomas, is a transformational and embodiment coach, workshop facilitator, podcaster and somatic movement practitioner. Tamu helps over-functioning, over-working, high-achieving women to establish boundaries, find their purpose AND make good money.
Toni interviewed Tamu about her first book, Women Who Work Too Much: Break Free from Toxic Productivity and Find Your Joy, in April last year, and we think Tamu’s book - and this conversation - is the perfect antidote for ‘new year new you’ overwhelm.
Tamu’s specialist subject is toxic productivity. She’s also an advocate for eschewing toxic positivity and in this conversation we discuss how to create a brilliant and joyous life without either.
“I want people to know it’s okay to pause, to rest, to live with ease and joy,” says Tamu.
Hell yeah to that as a manifesto for 2025!
IN THIS EPISODE:
* Prioritising joy and ease: Shifting the focus from hustle culture to living well.
* Books as tools for transformation: The significance of specific books in Tamu’s personal and professional growth and self-love.
* The joy of sharing words: And using Substack as a platform to authentically connect with others.
* Making peace with what is: Tamu opens up about the process of accepting - and embodying - her late diagnosis ADHD, and adapting to perimenopausal energy levels.
* Supporting women in midlife: Shifting the narrative around aging and productivity and wellbeing for women.
* Writing as therapy and connection: The process of writing a book as an emotional and self-expressive journey.
* Emphasising the beauty of midlife as a time of reflection and self-discovery.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
The Bibliotherapists Ep #7: Anne Boyd - What happens when you quit your life aged 50?
Friday, December 27, 2024 • Duration 48:22
Our seventh episode of the podcast is actually the first one we recorded. And I (TJ) secretly think that scoring an interview with this guest was my co-host Tanya’s main motivation for embarking on this whole podcast journey.
Listen to the interview and you’ll hear her girlcrushing hard on the author, professor, and Substack’s poster girl for midlife adventures, Anne Boyd.
SHOW NOTES:
In this episode Anne references and recommends lots of books by inspiring female writers, including:
The Bibliotherapists is a podcast celebrating the healing power of words, hosted on - and featuring writers and creatives from - the Substack platform.
* Navigating the pressures of success, and the internal struggle of fulfilling a two-book deal ("The first book was for me. The second one came with the pressure of owing someone something, which I hated.").
* The power (and complexity) of solitude.
* The power of intergenerational friendship and learning from our elders.
* Books as sanctuary and emotional anchors (and reading to reduce our stress levels).
* How self-help got her through burnout.
* The importance of aunties.
* he story of her new novel, Table for One (Emma describes it as an exploration of intergenerational friendship and the beauty of learning to be solo as a woman).
* Why she’ll never loan you a book.
SHOW NOTES:
In this episode Emma references a brilliant mix of fiction and non, including several books she used to support her recovery from burnout (and several featuring dogs)…
The Bibliotherapists, a podcast by Toni Jones & Tanya Lynch - Stats, Episodes and Rankings - My Podcast Data
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