Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

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

18 reviews

sreddous's review

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

It's so satisfying when you find an author who writes in a way that really clicks in your head. I love advice blogs like Dear Sugar and Captain Awkward and so I was eager to just grab a book format of Dear Sugar's columns.

I LOVE the way Sugar writes. The balance of sweet and gentle but also firm makes so much sense to me. There are some gorgeous, highly-quotable moments here. There are some heartbreaking stories. I felt gut-punched by a lot of these stories and questions. I believe Sugar knows just when to use long, flowery sentences and short, hard-hitting ones.

I see some other reviews saying that the advice doesn't work for them because a ton of these answers/columns involve Sugar telling her own stories as comparison -- this is a fair critique, but for me personally, it really really works. My brain likes to see a "similar yet different" story that also "tells the same moral/arrives at the same conclusion", so if your brain also works similarly, I definitely recommend this. But, I can see why Sugar's "here's a story that happened to me that's kinda relevant" format might not work for everyone. Still, it worked like heck for me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault and Child abuse

Moderate: Emotional abuse and Drug use

Minor: Suicidal thoughts

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.

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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

jackierabbit's review against another edition

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Animal death, Pedophilia, Death of parent, Death, Grief, and Incest

Moderate: Child death, Drug abuse, Physical abuse, Self harm, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Miscarriage, Abandonment, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Fire/Fire injury, and Rape

I definitely missed some trigger warnings but there were so many I can’t remember them. If I had known about them, I wouldn’t have read the book. It’s so heavy. Despite that, I know that it helped me a little bit, deal with some of the things that have happened to me.

amberlfaris's review against another edition

challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

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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

renreads2much's review

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

God its such a beautiful book. This is the kind of book I believe everyone should read at least once. Everyone can get SOMETHING out of it, whether big or small. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Sexual content, Toxic friendship, Homophobia, Alcohol, Child abuse, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Miscarriage, Panic attacks/disorders, Religious bigotry, Grief, Mental illness, and Toxic relationship

These are all very brief depending on the submission. But It does not go into super deep detail, really just mentions these briefly or for the sake of context (if I'm remembering correctly.)

absolutely_court's review against another edition

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

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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

bootsmom3's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

3.0

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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

hubes's review against another edition

reflective fast-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault and Child death

Moderate: Death of parent and Emotional abuse

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." 

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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

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.

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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