Lighter: Let Go of the Past, Connect with the Present, and Expand the Future

Instagrammer Pueblo (Clarity & Connection), the pen name of Diego Perez, delivers inspiring if rose-colored musings on spiritual healing. He offers personal anecdotes and meditations on how to achieve transformation by looking inward and explores the “healing of the individual as you cross deeper thresholds and move from human habit to human nature.” The author recounts how a medical crisis sparked by drug abuse in his early 20s led him to realize he had been using drugs to “cover up a void in myself that I did not have the courage to face.” Describing how self-love helped him improve, he recommends practicing “compassion, honesty, and openness” with oneself and letting go of emotional baggage to enable personal growth. Pueblo attempts to scale up these principles to mixed effect, advocating for such thoughtful policies as participatory budgeting and town halls to foster community alongside naive pleas to combat war, racism, and patriarchy with compassion. Readers will appreciate Pueblo’s candor about his struggle to love himself, though his irrepressible optimism proves a double-edged sword: it’s uplifting when focused on the self, but inadequate when applied to systemic injustice. Still, Pueblo’s fans will be grateful for the guidance. (Oct.)