Blog — transformative reading

Reading as an intimate experience. When I was asked to contribute to a Portuguese bibliotherapy journal, I wanted to share something raw and from the heart. I did not want to write only in the capacity of a bibliotherapist, which is the role I usually occupy when thinking about books, healing, and transformation. Instead, I wanted to write as a ‘bibliotherapee’ if I can call it that: as someone who has been captivated by a book, held by a book, and unexpectedly changed by a book. This piece is personal. It is about my own intimate experience with reading, and about the first time I felt a book truly shift something in front of me. Not simply in an intellectual way, and not because I was analysing it through a therapeutic lens, but because something in the text met something in me. It changed the way I was seeing, and perhaps more importantly, it changed the way I understood what it meant to be seen by a book.

When we speak about transformation through reading, what exactly do we mean? The use of the word suggests a dramatic turning point, a before-and-after moment in which a life is visibly redirected. It could be a quiet, subtle internal shift, a new way of naming an experience, a change in how one understands the self or relates to others.

It may not always present as a visible change. It could simply be an alteration of the inner structures through which a person makes meaning.

My work explores reading as both a personal and structured practice, where reading serves as a tool for reflection and safe exploration of our emotions, particularly in moments of uncertainty, grief, transition, or self-doubt. I aim to create a space in which books become prompts for dialogue, self-inquiry, and emotional recognition.

When we speak about transformation through reading, what exactly do we mean? The use of the word suggests a dramatic turning point, a before-and-after moment in which a life is visibly redirected. It could be a quiet, subtle internal shift, a new way of naming an experience, a change in how one understands the self or relates to others. It may not always present as a visible change. It could simply be an alteration of the inner structures through which a person makes meaning. My work explores reading as both a personal and structured practice, where reading serves as a...