Learning to Stand Alone
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Learning to Stand Alone
Where the Journey Begins
📖Ink & Insight: My Reading Log
📚 Books I Want to Read — Books I Read — Books I Have Read
📚 My Living Reading List
A journey through books that shaped, stirred, and inspired me.
Over the years, I’ve gathered authors and books that left a mark on my thinking — from philosophy and psychology to fantasy, science, and revolutionary thought. Some of these I’ve read, others I’m exploring, and many are still waiting for me on the shelf.
I’ve now turned this personal collection into a living archive — a growing document filled with powerful voices, timeless questions, and stories worth returning to. It’s also where I track what I’ve read, what I loved, and what I still long to discover.
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If you’re curious, feel free to browse it, borrow from it, or download it and make it your own:
👉 Click here to explore or download the full list
Let me know what’s on your list too — I’d love to hear what shaped you.
With Elli
Soft Words That Stayed
The Room Inside: Meeting My Younger Self with Compassion
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash 🕊 The Room, the Wall, and the Dance of Co-Regulation Inside my mind, there's a room. It started as an image in therapy, a space where my younger self existed — isolated, frightened. A place with no doors, no windows. Just grey walls and silence. But over time, that room began to change. A door appeared. Then windows. Light entered. And for the first time, I could speak to the child inside — the younger version of me. I could sit with her. I could listen. I began imagining knocking down the wall that separates her world from the open, warm feeling of a living room — a safe, shared space. I wished I could free her. I still do. This process — of visualizing the inner child and slowly transforming their environment — is a therapeutic technique used in inner child work , guided imagery , and Internal Family Systems (IFS) . But it's also deeply tied to a concept called co-regulation . 💞 What Is Co-Regulation? Co-regulation is when two people help...
✨ The Magic of Winter: Solstice, Christmas & Greek Traditions ✨
Photo by Theo Crazzolara on Unsplash As December deepens, the world feels wrapped in a quiet glow. Candles flicker in windows, lights shimmer across darkened streets, and the cold breath of winter invites us to pause and look inward. Christmas, with its rich layering of traditions, is not only a celebration of birth and renewal but also a weaving of ancient rituals into our present lives. 🌌 The Solstice Connection Just days before Christmas, the Winter Solstice marks the longest night of the year. Ancient cultures saw this as a threshold: the moment when darkness reaches its depth, and light is reborn. Fires, candles, and evergreen boughs were more than decorations—they were symbols of resilience, carrying the promise of return, of life beyond the cold. Today, when we light our Advent candles or gather around a Christmas tree, we echo these same gestures of hope. What was once ritual beneath starlit skies continues as a quiet thread in our own celebrations. 👉 This beautiful vi...
Masking in Autism: The Hidden Exhaustion of Everyday Communication
For many autistic people, social interaction feels like a performance — not because they’re dishonest, but because they’ve had to learn to "mask" their natural ways of being in order to be accepted, understood, or safe. This is called masking , and it can happen all day, every day. What Is Masking? Masking involves things like: Photo by Jens Riesenberg on Unsplash Imitating facial expressions and tone of voice Forcing eye contact Hiding stimming (like fidgeting or self-soothing movements) Suppressing emotions or overwhelm Studying and rehearsing what to say before saying it Pretending to be “okay” — even when they’re not Many autistic people start masking from a young age, often unconsciously. Over time, it becomes second nature — but it’s not natural. It’s learned. And it’s exhausting . It’s Not Just Strangers — It’s Everyone Masking doesn’t only happen in formal situations or with strangers. It often shows up in daily conversations with: Pho...
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