Brave Enough

A Mini Instruction Manual for the Soul

Cheryl Strayed

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2015
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781782398547
• Subtopic: Women Authors Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Bold, brave and beautiful, Brave Enough is a gem-like collection of thoughts and aphorisms from Cheryl Strayed, the inspirational author of the bestselling Wild. 'Everyone should have at least two copies of Brave Enough: one to keep near the bath, and one to give out, generously, to whoever needs the help.' -- The Pool Across the world, millions of people have found life and depth in the words of Cheryl Strayed. Whether it has been in her bestselling memoir Wild or in her collection of advice on love and life, Tiny Beautiful Things, she has been a companion to those who feel alone, a balm to those who hurt, a co-conspirator to those who laugh, and a steel-toecapped boot to those who need tough love. In this courageous and glittering collection of quotes and thoughts, Cheryl Strayed shows that no matter how much life might get you down, words can have the power to pick you back up.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter

Introduction

The first quote I loved is still among my favorites: Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe. It’s an oft-repeated American proverb of unknown origin that my maternal grandmother taught me when I was eight. All these years later it continues to strike a chord. I attached myself to it as a kid not only because it told me what I should do; it helped me believe that I could. At age twelve, when I came upon a sentence on page two hundred and something of Madeleine L’Engle’s novel A Ring of Endless Light, I was so taken by it I had to stop reading. “Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light,” I scrawled in semipermanent marker on the inside of my forearm, where it stayed for the better part of a week (and in my mind for the better part of my life).

I’ve been a quote collector ever since.

From the comic to the profound, the simple to the complex, the sorrowful to the ecstatic, the inspiring to the stern, whenever I need consolation or encouragement, a clear-eyed perspective or a swift kick in the pants – which is often – quotes are what I turn to. They’ve been tacked to the walls of every home I’ve made. I’ve written them down in my journals and kept them in files on my computer. I’ve scribbled them on the backs of ripped-open envelopes and drawn them across stretches of sand. They appear throughout all three of my previous books. They were a part of my weddings and my blessingways (the hippie/feminist version of baby showers). I read the words of others at my mother’s memorial service and had her own words – I’m always with you – etched on her gravestone. I’ve offered quotes as tokens of my affection to lovers and friends in good times and bad. It was a quote of my own making – I am not afraid – that carried me through my 1,100-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail when I was twenty-six and a quote from my mother – Put yourself in the way of beauty – that motivated me to take the journey in the first place. A few years later, as I began in earnest to write my first book, I was driven on by my daily reading of the quotes by Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty that I wrote on the chalkboard that sat near my desk. As I labored for more than forty hours while birthing my first child, Ram Dass’s advice to be here now was a life raft, and it has served me in a different way as I’ve watched my two children grow at what seems like lightning speed.

I think of quotes as mini–instruction manuals for the soul. It’s my appreciation of their very usefulness that compelled me to put together this book. Not because I believe in my own sagacity, but because I believe in the power of words to help us reset our intentions, clarify our thoughts, and create a counternarrative to the voice of doubt many of us have murmuring in our heads – the one that says, You can’t, you won’t, you shouldn’t have. Quotes, at their core, almost always shout, Yes!

This aims to be a book of yes.

When I made the selections included here – culled from the books and essays I’ve written and interviews and talks I’ve given – I remembered that when I first wrote or said them they were not “wisdoms” I wished to bestow upon others. In fact, I never imagined they’d be interpreted as wisdoms at all. Most of the quotes included here feel to me more like conversations I was having with myself that turned out to be conversations other people were apparently having with themselves, too. For every quote in this book imploring you to accept and forgive and be brave (enough), to be kind and grateful and honest, to be generous and bold, I’m imploring myself to do the same.

In other words, I’m not trying to be the boss of you. I’m attempting to be a better boss of me. These quotes are who I am, yes, but they’re also who I’m trying to be – a person I fall short of being on a rather regular basis. If you don’t believe me, ask my husband. He was once so struck by something I said to him in the course of an argument that he immediately wrote it on a scrap of paper and stuck it to our refrigerator, where it stayed for nearly a decade. The quote? I’m going to be mad at you for the rest of my life.

Except I’m pretty sure I said it in ALL CAPS. With an exclamation point!

So you see, I’m very much still a work in progress. Which is exactly what I’ve known all along – in spite of the tweets, posts, tattoos, quilts, coffee mugs and greeting cards, posters, and needlepoint pillows with my quotes that have cropped up over the past few years. Each time I see words of mine t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Copyright