Books That Healed Me

Books That Healed Me

By Hasnain Shah

There are moments in life when words are the only medicine that works. Not the words spoken by friends who mean well, not even the words I whisper to myself in the mirror—but the quiet, printed words that wait patiently between two covers, ready to catch you when you fall.

Looking back, I can trace the different versions of myself through the spines that once lined my shelves. Some were borrowed, some water-stained, some dog-eared from rereading—but each one found me when I needed it most.

1. When I Was Lost: “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I first read The Little Prince when I was nineteen, the age when you think you’re supposed to have your whole life figured out and realize—painfully—that you don’t. I’d just moved away from home for college, and the world suddenly felt much too big, filled with people who spoke in polished confidence while I was still fumbling through introductions.

The book was an accident. I found it in a thrift store, wedged between a cookbook and a physics manual, its spine barely holding together. I bought it for a dollar because I liked the small illustration of a boy with a scarf standing on a planet.

When I opened it that night, I wasn’t expecting philosophy. But that’s what I got—gentle, glittering wisdom wrapped in a children’s story. The fox’s lesson stayed with me: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Back then, I was obsessed with being seen—by professors, friends, strangers on social media. The book reminded me that the invisible things—kindness, curiosity, the courage to love without expectation—were the ones that actually mattered.

I underlined passages, wrote notes in the margins, and for the first time, I didn’t feel quite so lost. The Little Prince didn’t give me answers; he simply made the uncertainty feel beautiful.

2. When I Was Broken: “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed

Years later, heartbreak found me the way storms find the sea—sudden but inevitable. My five-year relationship ended with a single conversation that left me hollow. Everything I’d built my future on crumbled in an afternoon.

A friend dropped off Wild the next day. “You’ll cry,” she said. “But the good kind.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant until I reached the part where Cheryl Strayed stands at the beginning of the Pacific Crest Trail, utterly unprepared, both emotionally and physically. Her mother had died, her marriage had collapsed, and she decided to walk 1,100 miles to find herself.

Reading her journey felt like walking beside her, blister for blister. I could almost feel the dust of the trail and the ache in her shoulders. What moved me most wasn’t her strength—it was her vulnerability, her willingness to fall apart and still keep walking.

That book taught me that healing isn’t graceful. It’s sweat, tears, and the stubborn decision to put one foot in front of the other even when you don’t believe in where you’re going.

I began taking small hikes on weekends, sometimes alone, sometimes with music for company. I didn’t walk 1,100 miles, but I did start walking toward myself again.

When I finished Wild, I left my own copy, dog-eared and tear-stained, at a bus stop with a note inside:

“If you’ve lost something, take this. It helps.”

3. When I Was Healing: “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig

The third book came to me in a quieter chapter of life. I had just turned thirty, had a job that paid the bills, and a sense of calm I hadn’t known before. But there was also a faint hum of “what if?” in the background—what if I’d made different choices, taken different paths?

Enter The Midnight Library.

In the story, Nora Seed finds herself between life and death, inside a library where every book represents a life she could have lived. Some are filled with fame, others with love or adventure—but none of them are perfect. And that’s the point.

As I read, I realized how often I’d been living in imaginary versions of my own life—always measuring myself against the choices I didn’t make. The book gently dismantled that illusion. It told me that regret is only a symptom of forgetting that the life you’re living right now is also a choice, and a worthy one.

By the time I turned the last page, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years: peace. Not the loud, cinematic kind of happiness, but the quiet acceptance that maybe I was already enough.

Epilogue

Books don’t solve our problems, but they sit beside us while we untangle them. They offer companionship without demand, guidance without judgment.

The Little Prince reminded me to see with my heart.

Wild taught me how to survive the wilderness of loss.

The Midnight Library helped me forgive the past and stay in the present.

Each one was a mirror, reflecting the parts of me I thought I’d lost.

And maybe that’s what healing really is—not erasing the scars, but learning to read them like chapters in a story that’s still being written.