18 Inspiring Books for Women

We all need a pick-me-up from time to time: something to encourage us toward our greatest potential, to motivate us to live out our purposes or to simply accept ourselves as we are. The best motivational books for women inspire by relating to the struggles, complexities, and joys women experience throughout their lives. These books plant a seed that encourages women to create, grow and change their own lives and the lives of those around them.

The Best Inspirational Books for Women

Inspirational books for women offer a starting point for those looking for a mind, body, or soul reset when they’re feeling down, looking for self-help tips, or needing a boost of motivation. Through the stories and lessons in the books below, women can see their desires and life experiences reflected in them and take away

1. The Self-Love Experiment: Fifteen Principles for Becoming More Kind, Compassionate, and Accepting of Yourself

The foundation of inspiration is built on self-love. No matter where you are in your journey, this book offers something to help you build that important base as you find purpose and step away from burnout, depression, addiction, or whatever your personal affliction may be.

Starting with small shifts in one’s life, Shannon Kaiser helps women confront self-sabotage and discover ways to use self-love to achieve whatever a woman desires in her life. It invites you to let go of fear-based thinking to fall in love with your life.

2. More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say)

Reading about how a successful woman managed obstacles and challenges on her journey is motivating. As an accomplished editor who brought social consciousness to Teen Vogue, award-winning journalist, author, and judge on Project Runway, Elaine Welteroth shares the self-love lessons she learned being a woman, a young boss, and the only one who looked like her in the room. She shares how she took on challenges and used them as growth opportunities to discover she, and all women, are more than enough.

3. Strong Female Character

Quite often, neurodivergent women don’t present in the stereotypical ways the world has to come to understand disorders like autism spectrum disorder. Fern Brady, a Scottish comedian who was told she couldn’t be autistic because she was good with eye contact and had boyfriends, challenges the notion. With wit and straightforwardness, she shares the story of sexism and ableism and the internal and external struggles she experienced for many years before her official diagnosis. It’s an inspiring story for any woman struggling to get a diagnosis or living with ASD.

Best Motivational Books for Women During a Big Life Change

Big life changes can completely uproot the foundation you have built your life on. A grounding theme present in books for women during big life changes is that it’s first important to love yourself. The books below showcase how foundational self-love is to deal with divorce, becoming a mother, and living single after a breakup or stepping into a new relationship. Without it, these challenging times can feel insurmountable, but with it, change becomes so much more manageable and possible.

4. You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir

The ending of a marriage can feel like a devastating big life change, but it doesn’t have to break you forever. In this eloquent memoir, Maggie Smith shares her heartbreak when her marriage disintegrates and the lessons she learned about modern womanhood, gender roles, and power dynamics. She dives into anger, self-inquiry, and forgiveness and ultimately lands on a renewed commitment to self.

5. And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready

In this brutally honest, funny, and frank book, Meaghan O’Connell has an emotional and existential reckoning with motherhood and taking it on before she was ready. When she had an unplanned pregnancy in her 20s, Meaghan O’Connell decided to keep the baby. With the goal of having no agenda and touching on all the taboo topics many books shy away from, this book offers encouragement to speak honestly about motherhood, the joys, the pitfalls, and to remain yourself through it all.

6. Choosing ME Before WE: Every Woman’s Guide to Life and Love

Getting married, moving into a new relationship, or deciding to walk away from a relationship that isn’t right for you are all life changes that can completely shift one’s world. Christine Arylo uses her wit and knowledge to teach women how loving themselves is the rock to stand on in these times. She guides women to understand that it is the only way to find the love they want with others. It’s an inspiring book that all women should add to their list.

Inspirational Books for Women to Improve Your Mindset

As cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has supported, a mindset shift can help you move forward from behaviors or experiences that keep you stuck or learn to cope with tough situations. Sometimes these shifts in thinking and acting are so subtle, yet they profoundly impact outcomes and life experiences. The inspirational books for women below ask readers to tap into what they want and shift their mindset to achieve it.

7. Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

Enchantment offers another way to relate to, live in, and awaken our sense of wonder in the world in a world that often tames much of our natural ambitions and hijacks our brain space with social media, entertainment, and news. This book does this through humor, sharing the author’s struggles with family, work, and life. It invites readers to seek restoration in natural earth processes, rituals, and quiet connection with the environment.

8. The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

A collection of reflections from the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner that calls for deep reflection on female empowerment, human rights, being an artist in society, and so much more. Toni Morrison consistently delivers gems, and this book offers many of them. Readers leave inspired by her genius and moral queries and a renewed and wiser perspective of the world.

9. The Gifts of Imperfection

Brené Brown continues to serve up books that inspire women to live their best lives, and The Gifts of Imperfection is no exception. The call to action in this book is not only for women to embrace imperfection but also to learn who they are from it.

Inspiring Books to Increase Creativity

The wildly insightful and ingenious books below offer new perspectives to inspire creativity. They ask women to see the world with wonder, celebrate their bodies through illustration, and tap into an innate genius that lives inside. There is something every kind of creative can take away from these pages.

10. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Several years after sparking a spiritual journey for many women through sharing her own in  Eat, Pray, Love, author Elizabeth Gilbert gives women new inspiration in Big Magic. Embracing curiosity, love, and new habits, Gilbert empowers women to face their fears, let go of suffering and unlock their natural “strange jewels” to live the creative life they were meant to live.

11. The Illustrated Woman

This awe-inspiring collection of poems showcases women’s bodies at different stages in life, in nature, and consumed by digital media, youth, and motherhood. It serves up an uplifting and beautiful ode to women’s beauty and resilience and invites readers to celebrate whatever stage they are currently living. The sheer creativity of this tender collection is enough to inspire the same in any woman who reads it.

12. Feminine Genius: The Provocative Path to Waking Up and Turning On the Wisdom of Being a Woman

If you hide who you want to be to please the world, this book is for you. It’s a warrior call for women to stop hiding who they are and to discover their internal creative, bright, beautiful genius. It is a feminist manifesto calling women to awaken their desires, emotions, and sexuality for a fulfilling life.

Inspiring Books for Women to Live the Life You Want

An inspiring book can motivate women who feel inadequate or stuck to face their fears and pursue their dreams. These books can help women get out of their comfort zone and build their desired life. Whether it’s menopause, introversion, or self-doubt that makes you feel unworthy or incapable, these books offer a renewed perspective on making these traits and experiences your allies.

13. Amazing Grace Adams

Most women can relate to feeling stuck in life and forgetting who they are or how to go for what they want. This funny fictional tale is about a woman who used to be amazing to her husband, daughter, and herself but somehow became…ordinary. Grace Adams is a 45-year-old premenopausal woman stuck in traffic on her way to win back the affection of her 16-year-old daughter. She is fed up with being a typical Jane Doe, and she will remind everyone just how amazing she is.

14. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

Introverted women can often feel misunderstood and forgotten in an extroverted world. Susan Cain’s Quiet is a manifesto, calling extroverts to take a second look at the power their introverted counterparts bring to their collaboration and call introverts to harness their introspective, witty, and passionate skillsets to live their desired life. It’s a well-researched book with stories from successful introverts to back it.

15. You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life

If you want a no-nonsense mindset shift, this book is a must-have on your inspiring books for women list. It offers an entertaining and transformative approach to stepping into your greatness. In these pages, Jen Sincero guides women to identify self-sabotaging habits, what’s been keeping them from making money, and how to stop it. She teaches how to harness your energy in ways that attract what you want.

Inspiring Books for Women Who Have Experienced Trauma

Understanding past trauma and working through it can improve your mental health. Still, when you’re experiencing trauma, it can feel nearly impossible to begin healing. Whether through the story of someone who has experienced similar trauma or a scientific view of how trauma impacts a person, these books offer insight, empathy, hope, and steps for healing.

16. What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

Unlike the PTSD that we know war veterans are susceptible to, Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD or complex trauma) often occurs after a person experiences persistent trauma over long periods of time. Interpersonal violence and child abuse are examples of experiences that can result in CPTSD.

Journalist Stephanie Foo explores the science and struggles behind CPTSD in her story of living with it. She talks with psychologists and scientists and interweaves the intergenerational story of immigration trauma to paint a complete picture of the experience of living with and persevering through the disorder.

17. Mom & Me & Mom

For some women, the relationship between mother and daughter can be complicated. It can be helpful to read the story of how another person has navigated a similar experience. In Mom & Me & Mom, Maya Angelou reveals her relationship with a mother who, after divorcing her husband, sent Angelou’s older brother and three-year-old Maya away.

One can only imagine any child’s anger, grief, and longing over this. Maya Angelou conceptualizes this experience, their reconciliation, and the ultimate healing of their relationship in a way that many women can understand.

18. Daughter Detox: Recovering from An Unloving Mother and Reclaiming Your Life

While no mother is perfect, some actions can leave daughters emotionally or physically abandoned, with devastating consequences to self-esteem and future relationships. These can include narcissistic, dismissive, unemotional, enmeshed, and combative mothers.

With over a decade of research, Peg Streep offers science-backed steps for daughters of unloving mothers to reclaim their life. She discusses the many patterns in which women can feel seen in their experiences with these kinds of mothers and offers seven steps to begin healing.

19. What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

With a scientific look at how our early experiences shape who we are today, What Happened To You? offers answers to our deepest ingrained behavioral patterns and ways of thinking. Written by well-known brain and trauma experts Dr. Bruce D. Perry and Oprah, this book offers both science and deep reflection that asks us to stop blaming others and take control over understanding our own story.

Beyond Motivational Books: Getting Support Through Therapy

The books on this list give a great overview of working through trauma, experiencing big life changes, and finding motivation to love yourself or follow your dreams. However, they are not a replacement for working with a licensed mental health professional who can cater care to your individual needs. The best online therapy options and a useful online therapist directory allow you to find a therapist who understands you as an individual if you or a loved one is struggling to get through a life transition, find self-love, or look for purpose and meaning in life.