Truth seeker | Strong Softie | Animal Lover | Giggler |
Keila Shaheen
KEILA SHAHEEN is a Brazilian–Puerto Rican American scholar, poet, international bestselling author, and musician. She is the creator of the Zenfulnote app and the author of The Shadow Work Journal, which has sold over a million copies and helped introduce shadow work to a new generation. Now pioneering the practice of Light Work, Keila’s mission is to guide others toward inner transformation and creative awakening.
Keila integrates depth psychology and the arts to help people reconnect with their inner world. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Good Morning America, The Today Show, CBS News, and The Atlantic.
https://www.keilashaheen.com
My 10 Best
(In no particular order)
The Power of Now
This book was an entry point into presence for me. It softened the grip of overthinking and helped me recognize how much of suffering lives in mental projection. I’d recommend it to anyone who feels caught in cycles of anxiety or rumination; it offers a direct experience of stillness.
To Be a Woman
This book felt like a reclamation of my femininity, and an entryway into womanhood. Written early in Dr. Zweig’s career, it brings together interviews with influential voices in depth psychology, such as Marion Woodman, Robert A. Johnson, Jean Shinoda Bolen, and others. Each perspective and essay adds dimension to what it means to live in relationship with the feminine psyche. It invites a deeper listening to the conscious feminine. As Dr. Zweig’s first book, it feels especially meaningful in the context of her later work, including Meeting the Shadow and her continued contributions to depth psychology. Learn more about her work here: https://conniezweig.com
Psychology and Alchemy
Jung’s exploration of alchemy as a symbolic language for inner transformation has entirely changed how I see the psyche. It introduced me to the idea that personal growth is symbolic, nonlinear, and hidden beneath images, dreams, and myth. It’s dense, but if you stay with it, one page at a time, it unlocks new doorways to how you understand your inner world.
The Alchemist
I’d recommend this to anyone at a crossroads, at any age. This book reminded me that meaning is often found in following what feels alive, even when it doesn’t make logical sense. Themes of trust, timing, and intuition are very active. It’s also a reminder that the external things you seek are really pointing towards something accessible deep inside of yourself. It can take a long journey to realize this.
Love & Misadventure
This collection captures emotional nuance and love in a way that feels human, raw, and honest. It reflects the tenderness and contradictions of love without overcomplicating it. While lighter and more poetic than some of the other works on this list, it holds value in its ability to articulate feelings that are often hard to name. I appreciate Lang Leav as reading her writing as a pre-teen/young adult inspired me to pursue writing and poetry later in my life.
Meeting the Shadow
This best-selling collection of essays by experts explores the shadow in families, relationships, sex, work, spirituality, politics, creativity, and more. It offers the tools for achieving a more genuine self-acceptance, defusing negative emotions, recognizing projections, and healing relationships. If you are interested in understanding the psychological practice of shadow work, I recommend this as an entry way.
Women Who Run with the Wolves
This was my entryway into mythology and fairytales before I began studying it deeper at Pacifica Graduate University. This book explores the archetypes and dynamics of the feminine psyche through myth and storytelling. It reconnects women to instinct, intuition, and the “wild” self that often gets suppressed. I’d recommend it to anyone wanting to reconnect with a deeper, more authentic part of themselves.
Light in the Dark
This work sits within a golden pocket of personal transformation and collective consciousness. It explores identity, spirituality, and the process of navigating in-between spaces. Gloria E. Anzaldúa is incredibly inspiring, her words are bound to move you. She explains the complex and mysterious in a grounded and accessible way. Learn more about her work here: https://gloriaeanzaldua.com
The Archetypal Artist
This book gave language to something I had brewing inside for so long, but hadn’t bridged the gap into my external world yet. The idea that creativity is not just expression, but a dialogue with deeper archetypal forces. It expanded my view of art as a psychological and even spiritual practice, rather than just a creative one. I highly recommend this to anyone that is inspired by the arts and curious to learn more about it as a way to dialogue with the unconscious.
Religious but Not Religious
This book resonated with my interest in living symbolically rather than dogmatically. It offers a way to engage with spirituality outside of rigid structures, emphasizing meaning-making through symbols, ritual, and personal experience. It aligns closely with depth psychology and the idea that the psyche communicates through image and metaphor.