THE HEALING OF READING by Adore Clark

I inherited my love of reading from my father. Our home was always over-stuffed with books, to the point that my father built bookcases into the house. He didn’t just add a bookshelf, he actually built a massive bookcase permanently into the wall of our basement. Understandably then, my adoration for books and stories was never really a matter of if, but of when, I too would begin to overwhelm my parents’ house with a paper hoard. 

My paper hoard began in the third grade, when I got glasses. Finally, I could see that the black lines on the page could give me wonderful stories of magic and adventure, as well as feed my ever-increasing need for animal facts. Once I could see clearly, I read pretty much anything I could get my hands on, from books about every species of animal on the planet to stories about dragons and fairies. 

It wasn’t long before my school’s librarian became my favorite person, and I would drag my parents to the public library as often as I could. When birthday gifts became birthday money, then I would also drag my parents to the local book store. My father indulged this quiet obsession while my poor mother tried to temper it. She was probably concerned that her house’s furniture would be replaced with mountains of books. Her fears were not totally misplaced and, in addition, we began to battle it out over reading past bedtime.

As I grew, so did my love for reading. By the time I entered middle school, I was already reading on a high school level. Also, by this time, my relationship with reading had begun to change. Reading was not just entertainment, it was a healing force.

By the time I entered middle school, I was beginning a nearly decade-long battle with depression. At the time I did not have the tools or knowledge to understand what was happening to me. I lost interest in everything I had obsessed over before. My grades dropped. I was either angry or sad most of the time. I never went to see a professional but, thankfully, I developed two coping habits that helped: I began writing and, despite my lack of interest in anything else, I continued reading. 

Writing helped me to soothe my emotions and workout some of what I was feeling in positive ways. Writing gave voice to my emotions. And in those times when I had nothing to say, I turned to books. I buried myself within the pages of anything I could get my hands on. I spent even more of the little money I had on any books that I couldn’t get at the library. 

To feed my voracious appetite for reading, I branched out and started reading genres I never considered before like sci-fi. I fell in love with the characters I found in books and many times felt a kindred spirit with these people of ink and paper. I learned hard truths with friends, laughed at their antics, and cried when their stories did not end as I had hoped. Their struggles gave me the strength and courage to face my own. I felt understood by the characters and their authors and reached out on fansites to find others who loved certain series as much as I did. 

I know now that I was not the only one to discover the healing power of stories. Many fans discuss how their favorite stories and authors helped them get through tough times. We talk of how we find strength and hope within the pages of a book. The characters, though often fictional, face the same struggles as we do. When we read their stories, we connect with those characters. When they defeat their foes, whether those foes are villains or inner demons, we are encouraged and emboldened: we feel that the monsters in our lives can also be vanquished. As G.K. Chesterton said, “Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten”.