Healing is a Story Away: How Bibliotherapy Can Help You Reclaim Joy
Black Girl Burnout
Kelley Bonner
4.7 • 765 Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2025
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this powerful and tender episode of Black Girl Burnout, Kelley is joined by licensed clinical social worker and bibliotherapist Emely Rumble for a deeply affirming conversation about the healing power of stories. As part of our “Summer of Yes,” this episode explores what happens when we slow down, find ourselves in fiction, and use storytelling as a path to emotional integration and liberation.
Kelley and Emely talk about the role of literature in Black healing, how stories help us reclaim fragmented parts of ourselves, and why culturally rooted narratives matter in the therapeutic process. This episode is your invitation to reflect on the books that shaped you, the characters who gave you language, and the stories that helped you survive. If you’ve ever felt healed by a page, this one’s for you.
Key Takeaways
Stories are mirrors and medicine. Literature offers language, validation, and emotional integration when we’re navigating trauma or transformation.
Healing must be culturally grounded. For Black women, therapy and story must reflect our lived experiences—not just clinical frameworks.
You don’t need to be a therapist to use stories to heal. From poetry to journaling, storytelling is a tool we all have access to.
Reclaiming your narrative is radical healing. Naming your truth through story is a form of resistance and restoration.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 – Setting the Summer Tone
Kelley opens the episode with reflections on the Summer of Yes—and why Emely’s work in bibliotherapy is the perfect fit for a season rooted in ease, healing, and affirmation.
02:00 – What is Bibliotherapy?
Emely defines bibliotherapy and explains how literature can support emotional healing, identity exploration, and personal growth.
05:30 – Books as Emotional Companions
A heartfelt discussion about how fiction and poetry can give us language, belonging, and connection—especially when we’ve never had the words ourselves.
09:00 – Real-Life Impact: From Prison to Poetry
Kelley shares her early experience introducing poetry in the prison system and the unexpected healing that followed.
13:30 – Representation in Storytelling
Emely and Kelley reflect on why representation in literature matters and how seeing ourselves in books shifts our inner narratives.
17:15 – Fragmentation and Integration
Emely explains how trauma fragments the self and how storytelling helps us piece ourselves back together.
21:00 – Language as Liberation
They explore how reading and storytelling give Black women a powerful framework for naming emotions, setting boundaries, and reclaiming joy.
25:00 – Books That Healed Us
Kelley and Emely share the characters and books that shaped them—and how those stories continue to guide their healing journeys.
29:00 – Reflection + Closing
The episode ends with a loving invitation for listeners to reflect on the books that helped them heal and how storytelling might be the next step on their path to wholeness.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast. Kelly here. And today I'm so excited. Our guest is Emily |
| 0:06.0 | Rumble. Emily is a licensed clinical social worker. So already, she's after my own heart. Social |
| 0:13.6 | Workers Unite. She has a background in something called Biblioccotherapy or Bibliotherapy. |
| 0:22.9 | She has 15 years experience in this. |
| 0:25.3 | Let me tell you all about bibliotherapy. |
| 0:27.0 | I'm so excited about this. |
| 0:31.4 | If you are a reader, this episode is for you, send it to all your friends. |
| 0:35.6 | Because bibliotherapy cracked me open in the best way. |
| 0:41.4 | Bibliotherapy is basically a therapy technique for you utilize literature to heal. That means fiction, nonfiction, poems, plays, things that can help you |
| 0:49.7 | see yourself, heal yourself, unpack trauma, and culturally ground and connect. |
| 0:57.5 | The conversation with Emily was so powerful and so fun. |
| 1:03.1 | We get into a lot of things, including her recs for the summer, what we should be reading. |
| 1:09.1 | For bonus listeners, you'll get Myrex too. |
| 1:12.3 | And she is on a mission, really, to integrate the creative arts in psychotherapy, |
| 1:20.0 | mental well-being, and self-improvement. |
| 1:22.5 | This is our summer of yes. |
| 1:24.5 | This is the summer where we get to break free of the burdens we are carrying, |
| 1:29.8 | avoid burnout, move forward, and heal. And what if your summer read could have the |
| 1:36.1 | byproduct of healing you a bit in the process? Let's jump into the episode and see all of what |
| 1:41.6 | Emily has to say. Emily, I am so excited to have you on the podcast. |
| 1:48.0 | And we were just saying this off camera. I am genuinely excited. We have had a couple of missed |
| 1:53.5 | connections where you were sitting there waiting. And I was like, I need to connect with this |
... |
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