Reviews tagging 'Domestic abuse'

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

18 reviews

readbyroska's review

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing fast-paced

5.0

Read it if any of the following applies to you, and you can’t find your peace:

you’re feeling lost, hopeless, not good enough, deserving but unlucky, regretful, guilty, ashamed, disempowered, confused, heartbroken, lonely, isolated, alone, misunderstood, underachieving. 

Read if you are a partner, wife, husband, mother, father, boyfriend, girlfriend, daughter, son, child, friend, fuck buddy, teacher, student.

Read it if you don’t have anyone in your life who can love you and know you but still tell it to your straight. 

You will find something here for you, so sift through and find it.

---

Content Warnings

Minor: Child abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual content, Miscarriage, Infidelity, Dysphoria, Alcoholism, Toxic friendship, Sexual violence, Abandonment, Death, Domestic abuse, Pregnancy, Pedophilia, Mental illness, Homophobia, Gaslighting, Alcohol, Suicide attempt, Panic attacks/disorders, Emotional abuse, Cursing, Toxic relationship, Self harm, Child death, Classism, Car accident, Religious bigotry, Bullying, Abortion, Incest, Addiction, Cancer, Transphobia, Rape, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Death of parent, Sexual assault, Physical abuse, Eating disorder, Drug use, and Drug abuse

koplomps's review against another edition

hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

3.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Infidelity, Incest, and Sexual content

Moderate: Alcoholism, Body shaming, Car accident, Child death, Rape, Suicidal thoughts, Homophobia, Miscarriage, Cancer, Child abuse, Pedophilia, Toxic friendship, Abortion, Bullying, Grief, Addiction, Abandonment, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, and Infertility

amberlfaris's review against another edition

challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Death of parent, Death, Physical abuse, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Drug abuse, Toxic relationship, Abandonment, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Panic attacks/disorders, Homophobia, Gaslighting, Emotional abuse, Car accident, and Child death

absolutely_court's review against another edition

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Minor: Death, Death of parent, Grief, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Addiction, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Mental illness, Pandemic/Epidemic, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual content, Ableism, Abortion, Child death, Cursing, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Toxic relationship, Incest, Infidelity, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Toxic friendship

kpg1124's review against another edition

emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

Every bit of brutal honesty a person needs in this lifetime delivered in a digestible way. Full of glimpses into lives so unique yet at the care contain the very issues we are facing in our own. This is advice and reminders to turn to for your lifetime and to help you feel just a little less alone. 

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual assault, Drug abuse, Child death, and Domestic abuse

bootsmom3's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

3.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Dysphoria, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Suicidal thoughts, Addiction, Child death, Homophobia, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Cancer, Sexual content, Death, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Grief, and Terminal illness

novella42's review

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." 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Child death, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, Grief, Mental illness, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Rape, Child abuse, Cursing, Alcoholism, and Death

indiarose8's review

dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

I always return to this book when I need to be reminded that I'm not alone and that humanity exists within everyone. I give it as gifts to all my friends. I love the simple, raw, beautiful way Cheryl Strayed writes. This is one of my favorites for life. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Violence, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Pedophilia, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Drug abuse, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, and Toxic friendship

iamnita's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing slow-paced

5.0

This book was suggested by a friend, and I couldn't thank her more for the recommendation. It is told in a series of letters to the people writing in, and they describe issues they're dealing with and Dear Sugar responds. The responses are sometimes long-winded before you understand why that story was told, and that made it more endearing. I absolutely plowed through this book given that it reads quite fast, and the individual letters don't take too long before you want to read another. Just a gem. A definite to have on the shelf and flip through from time to time.

---

Content Warnings

Minor: Addiction, Cancer, Cursing, Alcoholism, Grief, Infertility, Physical abuse, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Suicidal thoughts, Stalking, Sexual assault, Rape, Pregnancy, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Mental illness, Toxic friendship, Terminal illness, Murder, and Miscarriage

smoladeryn's review against another edition

dark emotional funny medium-paced

5.0

“Acceptance is a small, quiet room” p352

Content Warning: abuse

I don’t read “self help” I thought as I grabbed this from a shelf on the way out of my beautiful home that I didn’t want to leave. I was fleeing an abusive relationship of 16 years when this book jumped out at me—no doubt given by his mother that he never read—like so many books of this kind. 

I don’t know why I took it. I hadn’t been able to read much in 8 years-- the second half of our relationship. I also really didn’t read “self help” or even memoirs. I never read Sugar’s column, although I did read TheRumpus, I didn’t know that’s where it came from at the time. 

I  saw the ugly orange cover, read the title that seemed so overwrought (honestly), and picked it up in my already much too full hands with my cat and as many “important” possessions as I could take. 

I was terrified that day and I was terrified for weeks, months still. I was homeless for 2 months, but not the kind of homelessness I experienced in my early 20s. It was the kind where I had to stay in a horror story air bnb, a hotel, and then a dank and noisy basement I paid way too much for. 

In each place I unpacked this book and put it next to where I slept. I didn’t read it. When I got to my noisy and deeply lonely new rental apartment in the heart of downtown, I put it next to my pillow and didn’t read it. 

One day about 4 months into this “new life”, after the homeless period, I started reading it. 

I’ve wept at nearly every letter. Before I started reading this collection, that no doubt my ex-mother-in-law gave to her stubborn and abusive son that refuses to look inward, she picked a fight with me. The details aren’t important, but she said some of the most hurtful and painful things anyone has ever said, even more so than my own horribly abusive family. 

I don’t know if I finally read this out of stubbornness (spite?) myself but all I know is Tiny Beautiful Things is the thing that started my healing. I’m still healing.

There were times I didn’t read this book, and times I devoured 3 letters at once. There were times I had to process a letter for what seemed like an eternity before I could bare to pick up the weight of it again. Then, there were times where this book sat in a bag on my back, light as a feather, and as warm as a familiar friend. 

Tiny Beautiful Things is one of those Things itself. The phrase comes from the description of a sweet purple balloon. It might not be the sweet balloon Sugar describes, but there are times where it is. And she is right—it is something we all deserve.  

I kept a journal of endless quotes. I was going to post them as a review which is what I usually do, but those quotes are important mostly to me, probably. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Abandonment, Addiction, Terminal illness, Mental illness, Misogyny, Gaslighting, Child abuse, Classism, Death, Death of parent, Homophobia, Infidelity, Sexism, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, and Sexual content

Moderate: Addiction, Bullying, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Infertility, Dysphoria, Emotional abuse, Grief, Pregnancy, Cancer, Cursing, Dementia, Violence, Sexual assault, and Sexual harassment