Brave Enough

At this point I think we all know of my great love for book shaped encouragements.

You could probably describe this one as handbag size, but that doesn’t sit right with me because I always buy my bags with their book capacity as my first consideration.

I’m all about the book-size bag.

Anyway.

Cheryl Strayed’s Brave Enough: A Mini Instruction Manual for the Soul, is a collection of quotes from her work.

As readers, we all understand the power of words. We’ve all experienced the intensity of feeling in the moment when you read a phrase that just captures it perfectly. It can be pretty much anything. Heartbreak. Boredom. Loss. Hope.

It is a lot of why we read. When we find it, for a wonderful moment we are no longer alone in the world. Someone else felt this way once. The moment is bigger than yourself. And at the same time it sort of helps you to come into being.

There is endless comfort to be found in that.

Cheryl Strayed gets this. She has always been the sort who collects quotes. Whether in a notebook, on a chalkboard or scrawled across her own skin in biro, her whole life, Strayed has carried with her the quotes that have aided her existence.

It kind of figures that one day she would bring out a book of her own.

The book is a compilation of quotes from all her previous works.

I’ve only had this book for a couple of months, but even as I have flicked through it, different quotes have suddenly leapt off the page at me. Almost every time I read it, I discover some gem of information I flicked past without a thought previously.  I like to think that there are even now quotes in there waiting until I need them.

It’s the sort of book that’s nice to have around.