A review by novella42
Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed

challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

This book has been my favorite book for the last ten years. It's a steadfast and heart-wrenching masterpiece. It's a collection of advice column responses unlike anything I have ever seen, because she doesn't hide behind the anonymity of the column but instead bares her soul in the most unexpected and vitally human ways. 
 
Strayed cusses eloquently and covers a wide number of topics with wit, humor, and deep compassion. She speaks openly about her childhood sexual abuse and a number of the letters have to do with sexual violence. She also helps readers address alcoholism, drug abuse, adultery, domestic violence, grief, miscarriage, and existential crises.

A friend who is a survivor showed me her copy on the night she shared her story with me, and said how much the book had meant to her. Since then I have read it many times at many different places in my mental health journey, but it may be too raw or intense for someone in the early stages of healing from trauma or dealing with active flashbacks/nightmares. 

It cracks me open every time, but also holds my hand as we put the pieces back together. I need to read it again soon.

The author-read audiobook is powerful. She's also quotable AF in any medium:

"The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that."

"Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it's one thing and one thing only: it's doing what you have to do."

"We like to think we're right about what we believe about ourselves and what we often believe are only the best, most moral things. We like to pretend that our generous impulses come naturally. But the reality is we often become our kindest, most ethical selves only by seeing what it feels like to be selfish assholes first."

"There is no why. You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding."

"I'll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore."

"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." 
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