Brave Enough by Cheryl Strayed
Date read: 2/23/23. Recommendation: 8/10.

If you’ve read any of Strayed’s work or heard her speak, you know how compelling her advice, thoughts, and quotes are. The way she structures and communicates her ideas is both memorable and original. Brave Enough is a tiny book that’s a compilation of her most famous quotes about love, compassion, forgiveness, and endurance. It deserves a spot on your desk to act as a constant reminder and reference as you face challenges in your own work and life.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Do the work:
“We don’t reach the mountaintop from the mountaintop. We start at the bottom and climb up. Blood is involved.”

“Stop asking yourself what you want, what you desire, what interests you. Ask yourself instead: What has been given to me. Ask: What do I have to give back? Then give it.”

“You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.”

Live your truth:
“You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards…You have to be kind. You have to give it all you’ve got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that’s all.” 

“Eight of the ten things you have decided about yourself at the age of twenty will, over time, prove to be false. The other two things will prove to be so true that you’ll look back in twenty years and howl.” 

“Trust your gut. Forgive yourself. Be grateful.”

“Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.” 

“You can’t fake the core. The truth that lives there will eventually win out. It’s a god we must obey, a force that brings us all inevitably to our knees. It asks, eternally: Will you do it later or will you do it now?” 

“Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.” 

Allow yourself to evolve:
“Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore.”

“It’s good you’ve worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.” 

“Transformation doesn’t ask that you stop being you. It demands that you find a way back to the authenticity and strength that’s already inside of you. You only have to bloom.”

“If it is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have.” 

Kindness:
“We are all entitled to our opinions and religious beliefs, but we are not entitled to make shit up and then use the shit we made up to oppress other people.” 

Roots:
“It’s in the most basic, essential, beginning stories that so much of our lives are written. Who loved you best? What made you finally believe in yourself? From what garden or pot or crack in the pavement did you grow? How did you get your water?”

“Humility is about refusing to get all tangled up with yourself. It’s about surrender, receptivity, awareness, simplicity. Breathing in. Breathing out.” 

Success:
“Success is measured only by your ability to say yes to these two questions: Did I do the work I needed to do? Did I give it everything I had?”