A community reading children's books became an emotional anchor for my wife

A couple of years ago, my wife went through an intense journey of grief. She was still coping with the death of a parent, when the other got diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. We had just been married for a year and had moved to a new city. It was an emotionally — and financially — draining time. Both of us were constantly overwhelmed, and my wife was consumed by grief and the fear of becoming an orphan.

Through all this, she still had to care for her mother — taking her to medical consultations and chemotherapy sessions, ensuring she followed a proper diet, and simply being there for her throughout the ordeal. I helped where I could, but to be honest, I struggled with my own emotional capacity. I wasn’t always able to support my wife in the ways I would have liked. Fortunately, my wife — who is a psychotherapist — understood this. While I worked on building my own emotional resilience, she sought support in other ways.

That’s when children’s books found her.

Ruby’s Worry by Tom Percival and The Heart and the Bottle by Oliver Jeffers were among the first books she read, and they opened something up inside her. She began searching for more books that could connect her to her inner world—books that touched on deep emotions and helped her feel seen. Soon, our home was filled with children’s books of every kind. She even began carrying a bag full of them to her mother’s chemotherapy sessions.

At first, I resisted. But eventually, I got drawn into this world too—and it helped, more than I could have imagined.

Some of my wife’s friends began joining her for these reading sessions. Then their friends joined too. It gradually turned into a community—an intimate circle of sensitive, nurturing individuals reading children’s books together.

My wife has a gift for designing these sessions in a way that gently opens up space for meaningful conversations around complex and emotional themes. The group then collectively holds space for one another, allowing the emotions that surface to be witnessed and supported.

She eventually started hosting these readings online using a pay-what-you-want model. Since then, she has conducted over 100 sessions, engaging more than 200 people. The themes she’s explored include intergenerational trauma, building emotional toolkits, child sexual abuse, resistance to war, fatherhood, motherhood, neurodivergence, friendship, and many more.

I wanted to support her in documenting these powerful sessions—and also help others discover them. So, using my limited technical skills, I designed and built a website (childrensbookforall.org) for her. You can explore documentation of her recent sessions there, and also find information about upcoming readings. She usually hosts around three sessions (sometimes fewer) every month.

It’s now been over a year and a half since she began this journey with children’s books. Her mother has been in remission for over a year. My wife believes that it was children’s books—and the community that formed around them—that became her anchor through those dark times, and continue to be today.

She hopes that more people can discover the healing power of children’s books—and the deeper strength that comes from community.