As a self-help author and mental health counselor I have one goal: to help people accomplish feats of great strength. These feats include: living simply, parenting peacefully, achieving personal goals, overcoming depression and anxiety, maintaining healthy relationships, increasing self-acceptance and, ultimately, achieving inner peace. But this wasn’t always what I lived for.

For a long time I wanted to write fiction. For many years, I tried to do so, but somehow, my books always ended up sounding more like self-help. Even my fictionalized characters had something to say about self-improvement (usually concerning their difficult-to-treat depression). I had a decision to make: what did I want to do with my life, really? What would be my purpose?

In one of the many pop psychology books that I eagerly consumed during this time, the author recommended that people find a one-sentence purpose statement to serve as a personal compass. So I thought and scribbled until I found the one that felt right: I wanted to help people overcome depression.

That was it.

With that realization, I mostly abandoned fiction and wrote one self-help book after another, self-publishing as I went. After finding a publisher, I realized something: my name needed letters behind it. Wasn’t that how self-help normally worked? So I researched graduate programs at a frenetic place, realizing in the process (much to my surprise) that I didn’t just want the letters–I actually wanted to become a therapist. I’d wanted to all along; I just hadn’t known it yet. A few weeks later, I started grad school.

Today, my goal of helping people manage difficult mental health challenges now has two outlets: counseling and writing. My book on treating chronic depression is in progress.

Self-help Books

Fights You’ll Have After Having a Baby: A Self-help Story

After Rachel and Matthew had their first child, they had a couple of fights. Well, okay, more than a couple—they fought for over three years. They fought about schedules. They fought about bad habits.

They even fought about the lawn mower.

And besides actually having their child, it was the best thing that could’ve happened.

Chronicling their greatest hits, from the Great Birth Control Debate to the Divorce Joke Showdown, Fights You’ll Have After Having a Baby is a post-partem story with hope. It offers true stories from the field, nitty-gritty advice and, most importantly, a nuanced understanding of what it takes to be married with children.

The Naked House: Five Principles for a Minimalist Home

The solution is almost always fewer things. That’s the Naked House philosophy in a nutshell, though the importance of top-notch organization (“a place for everything and everything in its place”), design unity, cleanliness and quality round out this book’s description of the most desirable, peaceful home in which to live.
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With a tongue-in-cheek, personal style, The Naked House is an inspiring but not-too-serious primer on cleaning, organizing and reducing clutter—and on changing the way you view the purpose and soul of your home.

The Power of Acceptance: One Year of Mindfulness and Meditation

For a day, a week, even a month at a time, she had the feeling continuously. She had it while she read, while she drove, while she ate, and while she played with her child. Which is why each time the feeling left, it was a great disappointment.
It was the feeling of connection with the Divine, and Mollie Player wanted to hold on to it forever. But how?

What was the key to continuous meditation?

In this year-long journal Player shares her attempt to do a sitting meditation each day, then remain in the state of meditation as much as possible after that. Featuring interviews on meditation from long-time practitioners, The Power of Acceptance isn’t a meditation prescription, but rather a personal story of one woman’s spiritual struggles . . . and breakthroughs.

Fiction

Coming Soon: Being Good

In the year 2081, Francie lived in a small village called Gallitia. It was simple. It was peaceful. It was beautiful. But there was one problem.

Francie couldn’t leave.

Oh, and then there were the people that wanted to bring electricity and change everything. And the boy with the very red hair, who Francie suspected was somehow part of this change. The question, then, became: Will Francie change, too?