A new podcast for word nerds! Ep #1: Meet The Bibliotherapists (Toni interviews Tanya)
Welcome to a new podcast all about the healing power of words...
Dear Friend
I’ve something really exciting to share with you today…
It’s the first episode of a brand new podcast, The Bibliotherapists, a new series hosted by myself and fellow Substacker Toni Jones founder of The Shelf Help Club, where we explore the healing power of words.
This podcast is a love letter to reading, writing and storytelling, and also Substack, the place where our eyes met across a crowded Zoom room (thanks to some matchmaking by Sparkler Claire Venus (she/her) ✨and our idea for a show featuring our favourite writers from the platform was born…
As a therapeutic journalling coach (Tanya) and self-help evangelist (Toni) we both spend our lives immersed in words, using them to support ourselves, and others, and we both consider ourselves Bibliotherapists.
Bibliotherapy: The use of books for therapeutic purposes, to improve psychological well-being. Through the incorporation of carefully selected literary works, therapists can guide people in treatment on a journey of self-discovery.
We believe that books are magic, and that journalling saves lives.
We want to inspire and support reading and writing as serious therapeutic tools that can support your mental, emotional, spiritual and even physical health (did you know that 30-minutes of reading lowers your stress levels and blood pressure as much as yoga?!).
And as two ex-media birds, we also love a good old gossip with interesting people.
So creating a podcast combining all of these things was really a no-brainer. And coming up with the name and the content ideas was easy.
Next, we made a wish list of writers we would LOVE to speak to. And - amazingly for a brand new podcast - they said yes!
So we’ve spent the last two months interviewing some incredible writers and creatives, including Beth Kempton, Claire Venus (she/her) ✨, Women Are Mad with Jen&Salima, Anne Boyd, Laura Pashby, Lucy Pearson, Tamu Thomas and Emma Gannon to close Series 1.
We’ve had SO much fun creating this podcast, speaking to these incredible women about the books that have shaped their lives and their relationships with themselves, the books they wish everyone would read, how they use reading and writing to support their mental health, and the books they are reading right now.
We’ve learned a lot.
We’ve also added more books than is reasonable to our TBR lists and imagine that you will be doing the same, for which we are very much ‘sorry not sorry’.
And so here it is… out in the world, as a weekly digital aural retreat for you.
Today we are releasing two ‘meet the hosts’ episodes as a way to introduce you to Toni and I (at 8am and then 12pm UK time) and then we’ll be dropping one new episode every Friday morning for the next 8 weeks.
We can’t wait for you to listen. Please share with the people you love, let us know what you think, and - of course - what you are reading right now…
Tanya & Toni xx
PS you’ll be able to listen to these podcast episodes on all the usual outlets but we’ll only be sharing the video recordings here on Substack…
Just double click on the below image to watch our first episode
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Here we go! She is live, I can't wait for people to listen and join our Bibliotherapy gang 💛
So exciting! What an awesome line up! 👏 🥳 ❤️