The Reading Warehouse

Are the usual anxiety books helping you find a path to healing? No? Try this collection of poetry specially crafted for those dealing with mental health and the people closest to them.

Poetry meets mental health. Paloma is faking it. On the outside, she's A-Okay. She's electrified at work, there is a cadence in her step as she walks her dog, she posts memes on Facebook, and she keeps up with most relationships. Looks can be deceiving, however. Inside, Paloma is just going through the motions, and she feels like things are spiraling out of control. But when things are at their darkest, dawn arrives with clarity and focus, and with it, healing. Paloma learns to value small glimmering moments of joy rather than searching for constant happiness, thus building hope for her future.

A manifesto for life. An electric roadmap to healing and a manifesto for wholeness, Happy, Okay?: Poems about Anxiety, Depression, Hope, and Survival, is written in a contemporary style reminiscent of Rupi Kaur and Pierre Alex Jeanty. But this poetry book is not simply a narrative spun in verse. It is an invitation to readers to shake off the stigma and silence of mental health and find strength in the only voice that matters: your own. Whether exploring self-care, social anxiety, or anxiety in relationship, in this inspiring and heartwarming book, you will:

• Understand how to make happiness a decision, even when you don't feel it in your bones
• Find out how to exercise patience and self-acceptance
• Attract hope and purpose back into your life

If you enjoy poem books or books like Her, Black Girl Magic, Pillow Thoughts, Milk and Honey, or The Sun and Her Flowers, then you will love Happy, Okay? by M.J. Fievre.

Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, M.J. Fievre moved to the United States in 2002. She currently writes from Miami. M.J.'s publishing career began as a teenager in Haiti. At nineteen years-old, she signed her first book contract with Hachette-Deschamps, in Haiti, for the publication of a Young Adult book titled La Statuette Maléfique. Since then, M.J. has authored nine books in French that are widely read in Europe and the French Antilles. In 2013, One Moore Book released M.J.'s first children's book, I Am Riding, written in three languages: English, French, and Haitian Creole. In 2015, Beating Windward Press published M.J.'s memoir, A Sky the Color of Chaos, about her childhood in Haiti during the brutal regime of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Her latest book, Happy, Okay?: Poems about Anxiety, Depression, Hope, and Survival is scheduled for publication in December of 2019 by Books & Books Press, an imprint of Mango Publishing. Another book, Badass Black Girl is scheduled for publication in 2020.

A long-time educator and frequent keynote speaker (Tufts University, Massachusetts; Howard University, Washington, D.C.; the University of Miami, Florida; and Michael College, Vermont; and a panelist at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference, AWP), M.J. is available for book club meetings, podcast presentations, interviews and other author events. You can learn more about her and her work at her website: mjfievre.com