Brave Enough

After watching writer Cheryl Strayed be interviewed on Oprah's SuperSoul Sunday, I immediately went to the library to pick up her book, Brave Enough.

I've sat here and breezed through the book in less than an hour.  It's a quick read because it's a compilation of quotes that Miss Strayed has written over the years.

Honestly, many of her quotes really resonate with me.

So, I'm gonna share some of my favorites with you:

"You have to find people who love you truly, and love them back with the same truth."

"You know who you are, so let yourself be him now."

"Nobody's going to do your life for you."

"Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It's up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out."

"I considered my options. There was only one, I knew. There was always only one. --- To keep walking."

"Stop asking yourself what you want, what you desire, what interests you. Ask yourself instead: What has been given to me? Ask: What do I have to give back? --- Then give it."

"Real love moves freely in both directions.  Don't waste your time on [any other kind]."

"Ask yourself: What is the best I can do? --- And then do that."

"Trust your gut. Forgive yourself. Be grateful."

"You get to make your life."

"You must love in order to be loved. You must be inclusive in order to feel yourself among the included. You must give in order to receive."

"Desperation is unsustainable."

"Boundaries teach people how to treat you and they teach you how to respect yourself."

"Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life."

"There are so many things to be tortured about. So many torturous things in this life. Don't let someone who doesn't love you be one of them."

"Travel by foot. There is so much you can't identify at top speed."

"After destiny has delivered what it delivers, we are responsible for our lives."

"If it is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have."

"Put yourself in the way of beauty."

"Bravery is acknowledging your fear and doing it anyway."

"To love and be loved. That is the meaning of life."

"Real change happens on the level of gesture. It's one person doing one thing differently than he has done it before."

"This is not where your story ends. It's simply where it takes a turn you didn't expect."

"Forward is the direction of real life."

"Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering."

"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."

And THIS quote hit me like a ton of bricks:

"It isn't too late.

Time is not running out.

Your life is here and now.

And the moment has arrived

at which you're finally ready to change."

Indeed, it has.

Indeed, I am.