The Living Library Book Club — October 2026
In Conversation with The Bridge for Mental Health
Behind the Masks: Authenticity, Mental Health, and the Stories That Shape Us
What happens when we feel safe enough to stop pretending to be someone we’re not?
In this October installment of The Living Library Book Club, Michael Shoeman welcomes Gary Schoenberg, Lynne Vicari-Blecher, and Janet Berkowitz a conversation in collaboration with The Bridge for Mental Health.
The Bridge’s work emphasizes the importance of lived experience, peer support, and empowering people who have navigated mental health challenges to become active participants in shaping conversations about healing and recovery.
Our Living Library conversations are inspired by a simple idea: rather than judging a book by its cover, what if we took the time to get to know the person behind the story?
For this gathering, each participant brought a book that had influenced their life. Although the selections were remarkably different, a common theme emerged:
The importance of being able to live, speak, and relate to one another authentically.
Four Books, Four Doorways Into Conversation
Michael Shoeman — Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre
Mike reflects on this memoir and the difficult questions it raises about trauma, exploitation, institutional authority, and the ways abuse can remain hidden behind positions of power and respectability.
The conversation explores how grooming, conditioning, and fear can influence what people feel safe enough to say—and why compassionate listening matters when someone shares a painful experience.
Lynne Vicari-Blecher — 1984 by George Orwell
Lynne introduces Orwell’s concept of doublethink and explores how language, social expectations, and fear of consequences can influence our willingness to speak honestly.
How often do we find ourselves wearing a mask to meet the expectations of an employer, institution, community, or even our own family?
And what happens to our relationships when authenticity begins to feel unsafe?
Gary Schoenberg — Iron John by Robert Bly
Gary brings us into the world of mythology, archetypes, and the masculine journey toward maturity.
Through the king, warrior, magician, and lover archetypes, we explore grief, purpose, initiation, and the importance of recognizing our shadow selves rather than pretending they don’t exist.
The discussion also raises questions about how power can be expressed in healthy ways—or distorted into control and domination.
Janet B. — A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love
Janet shares how these spiritual teachings helped her navigate profound personal struggles and develop a deeper relationship with forgiveness, self-acceptance, and love.
Her story brings a deeply personal dimension to the conversation about mental health, reminding us that spiritual teachings can become meaningful resources in someone’s individual journey toward healing.
What Do These Stories Have in Common?
As our conversation unfolds, we begin exploring the relationship between language, power, fear, shame, anger, forgiveness, and love.
We also consider how trauma-informed communication can create more supportive environments for people to express themselves without fear of humiliation or rejection.
Sometimes that begins with something as simple as asking permission before offering our interpretations, recognizing the difference between facts and judgments, or allowing someone to finish their story before responding.
And perhaps one of the most important questions to emerge is:
Can we create spaces where people don’t have to hide parts of themselves in order to belong?
Building Bridges Through Lived Experience
The Bridge for Mental Health brings an important perspective to this work: people with lived experience are not merely recipients of services or subjects of professional discussion.
They are people with stories, wisdom, creativity, and contributions that deserve to be heard.
Through theatre, peer support, education, and meaningful conversation, we can explore new ways of relating to one another—particularly when our experiences, beliefs, or perspectives differ.
The Living Library Book Club offers one more opportunity to practice that kind of connection.
Your Time Has Value — The Living Library Time Bank
All time spent watching, listening to, or reviewing this conversation—as well as any other Living Library conversation—can be credited as bankable hours through the Living Library Time Bank.
We recognize that listening, learning, reflection, and developing meaningful relationships are valuable contributions to our communities.
This October conversation runs approximately 80 minutes, and your time spent engaging with it counts.
An Invitation
Our books may be very different.
Our experiences with mental health, spirituality, politics, and personal identity may be very different.
But perhaps those differences are precisely what make these conversations worth having.
Because the Living Library isn’t just about the books that have shaped our lives. It’s about discovering the human beings those books have helped us become.
And when we make room for the stories behind the masks, what new possibilities for connection might emerge?
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