Emely Rumble, LCSW Literapy NYC

05/29/2026

“All I’d ever have of him is what we already had. It wasn’t enough, but it was so much.”

That line from Waiting on a Friend by Natalie Adler stopped me in my tracks because it captures something so true about grief: sometimes the deepest heartbreak is realizing there will never be more time, more conversations, more memories added to what already exists. And yet, what did exist still changed your life forever.

This novel holds the grief of losing a once-in-a-lifetime friendship with such tenderness and honesty. Renata and Mark’s bond feels sacred in the way the most meaningful friendships often do: the people who become home to us, witnesses to our becoming, the ones we assume will always be there beside us.

Set against the AIDS crisis and a disappearing q***r New York, this story also becomes an act of remembrance. A refusal to let people, communities, and histories be erased. As a bibliotherapist, I kept thinking about how grief is not only about mourning a person, but mourning a version of the world that existed when they were alive in it.

Heartbreaking, magical, angry, loving, and deeply human. This is a book about ghosts in every sense of the word and about what it means to keep loving people after they’re gone.


***rreads
***rbooks

05/27/2026

If you’re someone who reads for mental health, relational healing, and self-understanding, I really think this is a book worth picking up this summer.

Attuned and Attached by Yolanda Renteria feels like the kind of book you underline heavily because it keeps putting language to things you’ve felt but maybe never fully knew how to explain.

I always tell my clients relationships are one of the biggest challenges for personal growth in life. Why? Because they require self-honesty, self-reflection, courage and growth. Our relationships with others are born from our relationship with ourselves.

And our relationship with ourselves is formed by early childhood attachments and experiences. This book is one of the best out there for reflecting on your own journey and how your childhood has shaped how you show up in relationships.

“The problem isn’t feeling sad; the problem is not experiencing enough happiness.”

As a therapist, I really appreciated that reminder and others in the text like it. So many people think healing means never feeling difficult emotions again when really the goal is learning how to create more internal balance. More joy. More connection. More safety. More room for yourself to exist fully.

I also appreciated how approachable this book feels. You do not have to be a therapist to follow it. Renteria talks about attachment wounds, hyper-independence, perfectionism, people-pleasing, emotional distance all in a way that feels compassionate instead of shaming.

She keeps reminding the reader that these patterns are often survival strategies, not personal failures.

And I deeply appreciated her inclusion of neurodiversity and the ways different nervous systems experience connection and relationships.

If you’re someone craving more internal balance and craving having enough safety, joy, connection, rest, accountability, and self-understanding to hold the full complexity of being human, this one is for you!

Congratulations - happy book birthday comadre! 🎉

•
•
•

05/26/2026

Happy book birthday to America, U.S.A. by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. This one is a powerful, unflinching look at the stories America tells about itself and the truths we’re taught to avoid.

As a therapist, I kept thinking about reality orientation and how healing begins when we honestly name what is instead of what we hope things will be. Glaude reminds us that the very thing we’re trying to protect can also be the thing making us sick.

It was an honor to sit down with Eddie and talk about this work, storytelling, and what becomes possible when we tell the truth. See a clip of our interview on the feed. For the full 10 minute interview - join our BiblioTherapy community Healing Througj Books at https://literapynyc.podia.com/literapy-nyc-community

Healing starts with a story.
Even when it’s one we’ve been taught not to tell.

05/25/2026

Peak wedding season is here and I need everyone entering the bridesmaid group chat to pick up I Hope You Elope: A Bridesmaid Survival Guide by Ruhama Wolle 😭💐

I truly wish I had this book before planning my own wedding. Wolle keeps it all the way real about the highs, lows, and friendship landmines that can come with weddings.

From the financial pressure and endless Venmo requests to mismatched expectations, shifting friendship dynamics, and the emotional labor bridesmaids are often expected to carry, this book manages to be both hilarious and honest at the same time.

I loved that it’s not just advice for bridesmaids. It’s also a loving corrective for brides to remember that while this may feel like the most important day of your life, it may not hold the same emotional weight, financial priority, or capacity for everyone around you.

Funny, practical, and surprisingly thoughtful. This is the must-read guide for anyone being asked to be a bridesmaid or anyone asking their friends to be one.

I love practical books like this that teach us how to be better humans while keeping it real about the challenges faced along the way!

Save & share with a friend who would love this one!

•
•
•

05/23/2026

Finished listening to This Must Be the Place by Kelly Quindlen and wow… this story was an emotional ride!

Thank you to .audio for the gifted advanced listener’s copy ahead of its May 26 release.

At the center of the novel is 18-year-old Louisa, who is grieving the loss of her Uncle George, her father’s best friend and brother. This story is about how grief reshapes family stories and how we sometimes come to know people more honestly after they are gone. Louisa ends up inheriting the gay bar her uncle co-owned. As a result a lot comes to the surface revealing hidden truths about his life as a q***r man. This story opens into something much deeper than grief to address silence, identity, love, and the legacy we leave behind.

Kelly Quindlen definitely shows the messy nature of grief. The way memory, secrecy, and family loyalty collide here felt painfully real. There’s also moments when I felt annoyed with Louisa’s naivety and had to keep reminding myself she isnonlyn18. This is such a thoughtful YA novel about mourning not just who someone was but reckoning with who they never fully got to be in the eyes of the people they loved.

Save & share this book rec with someone who would love it!

•
•
•

05/17/2026

One thing I’ve been learning while taking the Brand as Craft course with Yahdon Israel is that people don’t just want inspiration, they want insight into your process too.

I talk a lot about bibliotherapy, healing, and the power of books but Yahdon challenged me to share more of how I actually practice this work. So I decided to start there.

Today I’m sharing the R.E.A.D. Framework: a guided introduction to bibliotherapy for readers, writers, educators, therapists, caregivers, and anyone curious about using literature, reflection, and expressive writing as tools for self-understanding and emotional growth.

This framework is rooted in a simple belief:
sometimes a book gives us language for what we’ve been carrying all along.

Huge gratitude to Yahdon for the mentorship and encouragement to be more transparent about my craft and technique.

You can download the READ Framework using the link under my profile picture.

Healing starts with a story, afterall 🫶🏽 📚

•
•
•

05/16/2026

Boston! Come hang with us in July as we celebrate the release of Conversion Therapy Drop-Out by Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez. Hope to see you there!

Read on for important details for this Brookline Booksmith event.

05/12/2026

Happy Book Birthday 🎉
Thank you for the ALC.

Coyoteland by Vanessa Hua is the kind of fiction I gravitate toward. It’s sharp, observant, and deeply attuned to the social dynamics shaping identity and belonging.

When a Chinese family moves into an affluent community, the story quickly reveals how wealth, race, and proximity don’t necessarily translate into acceptance.

Hua does a phenomenal job showing how assumptions about immigrants operate in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

The plot takes a turn when the family’s daughter rescues a Black girl from a coyote attack and from there, everything gets a bit chaotic. This novel explores the tension of insular communities well and exposes the comfort they offer and the harm they can uphold within its borders. It’s a thoughtful look at intersectional identity, social hierarchy, and what it means to navigate spaces that were never built with you in mind.

•
•
•

05/10/2026

Happy Mother’s Day and shout out to the Mom friend who keep my TBR thriving! 🌷📚

Today I treated myself to a little Mother’s Day book haul from Olive Tree Books N Voices — one of my favorite Black-owned bookstores here in Springfield.

Huge shoutout to Sterling for opening up the shop today so the women in his life could rest and enjoy their special day. That kind of care and intention means so much.

I picked up 3 books that have been sitting on my wishlist for awhile plus the most gorgeous travel mug that will definitely be joining me on summer park trips with the kids ☀️🧋

There’s something healing about giving yourself stories you’ve been waiting for. Slowing down. Browsing shelves. Letting joy be enough.

Happy Mother’s Day to the mothers, the nurturers, the caregivers, the aunties, the grandmothers, and everyone carrying love in this world today 💛

05/10/2026

Happy Mother’s Day to all who celebrate today 💐

As I reread The Catch with a client this Mother’s Day weekend, I kept thinking about how books sometimes help us see our relationships more clearly. Not because they give us answers but because they create enough distance for honesty to rise.

Bibliotherapy often works this way.

A story lets us approach complicated feelings sideways. Through characters, we can recognize grief, resentment, tenderness, confusion, or unmet longing that may feel harder to name directly in our own lives.

Sometimes fiction becomes the mirror that finally helps us understand the shape of a relationship we’ve been carrying for years.

The Catch felt like waking up from a dream that is beautiful, disorienting, and emotional all at once. The novel follows twin sisters, Clara and Dempsey, whose lives have unfolded very differently. When Clara claims to have found their birth mother, a woman they believed was dead, the story begins tackling questions of memory, identity, trust, and the lingering impact of the mother wound.

Told through multiple perspectives and layered with poetic, surreal writing, the novel asks us to consider how differently people can experience the same love, the same loss, the same family story.

This is a book about daughters trying to make meaning of the past while deciding who they want to become beyond it.

A dreamy, emotionally layered read for anyone reflecting on family, identity, and the complicated ways we learn to love.

Shout out to new publishing house!

•
•
•