readbyroska's review

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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.

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koplomps's review against another edition

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hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

3.5


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fanchera's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective sad fast-paced

4.0


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jackierabbit's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective fast-paced

5.0

I think I desperately needed to hear this:
”There is nothing more boring and fruitless than a woman lamenting the fact that her stomach is round.”

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amberlfaris's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0


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ada33's review

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challenging emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

I've read this book countless times now and it is genuinely my favourite book. I gain so much from it every time I read it and something different at each stage of my life. She's so wise and covers so much. If you've had a bit of a tough life you'll find comfort in here.

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absolutely_court's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0


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kpg1124's review against another edition

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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. 

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bootsmom3's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

3.0


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novella42's review

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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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