Lily Mindwell writes self-help workbooks. One is about the wounds that come from childhood, one about attachment styles, one for couples who have stopped understanding each other. She studied psychology and worked in counseling. She came to both because of what she carried herself. What she writes reads like advice from a friend who has done the reading and lived the problem.
Where it began
She was born in 1989 in New York City, in a home where books were everywhere and curiosity was expected. It was a good place to grow up, and it did not spare her. Through her school years she struggled with anxiety and low self-esteem. So she learned early how much of that kind of pain stays hidden from the people around you.
Those years left her with a question she has never put down. How do people deal with emotional pain? And why do some ways of coping work while others quietly make things worse? The question took her to psychology. College was also where she started to journal. At first it was a way to give her feelings a name; later it became a method she has kept ever since.
How she works
After college she went to work in counseling. There, what she had studied met real people with real histories. She also learned that a pattern in a textbook looks very different when it is sitting across the table from you. In time she wanted to reach more people than one room could hold, so she began to write.
She is not a therapist, and she does not write as one. If you are in therapy, what your therapist says comes first. She writes as someone who has studied how the mind copes and has watched it up close. She has also been on the receiving end of the patterns she describes. Her subjects are self-acceptance, resilience and the small, ordinary joys that a hard past makes easy to miss. Her own story is in every book.
Today she is an author, a speaker and a coach. The blog is where she works out what the books cannot fit.
The books
Workbooks, each written for a wound that has a name and a way out. She built them to be used, not just read: every chapter ends in something to do.
- Healing Your Childhood Wounds Workbook — for the adult who still carries what happened at home. The inner child has been waiting to be heard.
- Love and Relationship Workbook for Couples — for two people who love each other. They have lost the thread of how to talk about it.
- Anxious, Avoidant, and Fearful Attachment Recovery Workbook — for anyone who recognizes their own pattern in a relationship and wants to change it. One insecure style at a time.
What you’ll find on this blog
The articles fall into sections, one for each of the doors people come in through:
- Inner Child Healing — the wounds that come from childhood, how they show up in an adult life, and the work of tending to them
- Family of Origin — the home you grew up in, the roles it handed you, and what to keep and what to put down
- Self-Worth — the inner critic, shame, and the slow work of believing you are enough
- Managing Emotions — anxiety, anger and overwhelm: how to feel them without being run by them
- Attachment Patterns — anxious, avoidant and fearful: how each one behaves in love, and how it can be unlearned
- Couples Communication — what happens when two people talk: conflict, repair, and the words that bring you back
- Intimacy and Connection — closeness, distance and the everyday habits that keep a couple close
- Trust and Betrayal — what breaks trust, what it takes to rebuild it, and when to stop trying
- Mindful Living — the small daily practices that make the rest of the work possible
The newest articles are on the blog page.