A Year in Books: 52 Books to Help You Grow, Redefine, and Pursue Your Biggest Dreams
There’s a freshly brewed pot of my favorite coffee in the kitchen, a fire in the wood stove warming my little writing couch, and a gentle flickering from a eucalyptus candle perched by my laptop. A blank journal page is open, a freshly sharpened pencil, and a present awareness that a new year will be upon us very soon. It’s time—time to dream, to look ahead, to get our plans down on paper.
I feel it coming at the end of every year—a tug in my heart and mind calling me to rethink, reassess, redefine, and reconsider what I do and why I do it. So this year when I found my heart recalling the past 3 and a half years of running the TogethernessRedefined.com corner of the interwebs, I wasn’t surprised to hear my soul ask the question,
Should I keep writing? And if I do, should I keep sharing what I write?
Because a lot has changed since 2019—I don’t travel full-time now and my kids have grown up and started college and high school away from home, so family togetherness looks a lot different these days. I look a lot different these days, too (at least on the inside). This means what I’ve been writing about has changed a lot, too.
I considered shutting down the site and starting something new instead, something that’s a better fit for how much I’ve changed since I started writing publicly at TogethernessRedefined.com back in early 2019. But then, I remembered something really important —
I never promised myself that I’d always write about redefining family togetherness, only that I’d always write honestly and stay true to my calling to encourage other family-loving humans.
And I started to wonder if Togetherness Redefined might be able to change with me instead. I started to think about what “redefining” really means. I also thought about whether or not family togetherness is still important to me, and which parts of those two ideas—redefining and togetherness— still resonate with the beautiful people I get to call my readers.
And something started bubbling up inside—a question about which articles, blogs, and features I’ve enjoyed the most over the years, what makes me the most excited to write about, and what seems to light up my readers more than anything else.
Without a moment’s hesitation, one thing emerged — good books.
I love reading good books.
I love writing about them.
I love talking to other people who love good books.
I love being a bookish kind of person for one reason —Good books have indisputably changed my life.
If you ask about any of the critical crossroads periods in my life (there have been many), I can tell you what I was reading at the time and how that book helped me redefine my life.
And every single time I’ve written about good books over the past three and a half years, I’ve had the most lively, heartwarming, light-you-up discussions with readers.
So this year, I’ll be writing about books.
Good books.
Books I love.
Books written by people I love.
Books that have helped me grow, redefine, and pursue the biggest dreams of my life — 52 of them, to be exact—one each week.
(Although, if you know me at all, you know there’s likely to be more than one book featured each week, so the total will most likely be well over 100, but I like to underpromise if I can.)
And, I’ll be writing a few books of my own, too.
Good books.
Books that have been living on my Macbook for way too long.
Books that were previously packaged and delivered as courses and programs but are ready for deep edits, new wisdom, and their own place in our homes, on couches and desks, gifted to our friends and lining our shelves.
With my decision made, I got started right away in the email group and on the blog.
It felt good to say it out loud. And pretty soon after making the decision, all sorts of confirmations started coming my way.
Like this one from Sara Ban Breathnach’s Simple Abundance—
“We read for pleasure
or we read to quiet the pain
from a deafening roar to a dull throb.
We read to forget who we are or to discover it;
we read to understand or be understood.”
What does this mean for TogethernessRedefined.com?
#1 — Name change. . . TogethernessRedefined.com and all of her links will now show up in your browser as CelesteOrr.com. Both sites are now one and the same, and the links are interchangeable so all of the blog archives are staying put and you should still be able to find what you need.
#2 — Email and blog content. . . Friday morning emails this year will be all about good books, and there’s a new “books i love” section on the blog replacing the old "More Adventure, Bigger Dreams, Deeper Relationships" headings.
#3 — Social media handles. . . If you sometimes dip into Instagram, you may not have seen me lately. That’s because the algorithm changed drastically this year and now hides posts from businesses like mine that don’t pay for or post ads. So if you go searching for my profile (amazing, thank you!!), you’ll need to know this — I’ve changed my account name from @togetherness_redefined to @celeste_redefined and I'm sharing more good books there, too.
#4 — Something that will never change. . . These changes do NOT mean I’m no longer a fan of family togetherness — I definitely am (and that value will never disappear here). It’s just that I’ve had a few wake-up moments in recent months. As I said before, I've been feeling a zing every time I write about good books and hear back from you about them. And that's a zing I want to follow. I also feel myself and my family needing more privacy, more protection as we're all evolving into who we’re each meant to be (especially my kiddos). That's a need I want to honor.
What does this mean for you?
I hope these changes make you feel a zing of excitement too, and I hope that zing leads you to sign up for my Friday morning emails, get all the good book recommendations there (and hit Reply often), and read a book or two this year that will help you grow, redefine whatever you need to, and pursue your biggest dreams.
I can’t wait to see you there!
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