Rising Strong: Book Review

I have to thank my friend Amber, who suggested reading this book several months ago. I decided to include this book as part of my Mid Year 2016 Reading Challenge. I love to read and I especially love books that find a way to touch me in my life, experiences or heart. Rising Strong did all of this and more. I have shared my thoughts on this book as I read it with my husband and he is eager to read it, as I hope you will be too. Please be aware This post contains sponsored links from Amazon.

Rising Strong by Brené Brown is an amazing book that will make you question every significant event in your life. Her understanding of emotion is astounding and her ability to communicate her research to readers is direct and easy to comprehend. There is an exploration of shame, anger and fear that is prominent in our failings through life and her rising strong teaching and process can help you study and understand more thoroughly how to grow and recover from failing more quickly. Failing is something that every person can relate to and makes the topics discussed within this book more important to understand how to be better productive within our relationships and our daily lives.

I will warn you that the colorful Brené Brown does sometimes use strong language to get her point across. I did not find the language to be vulgar though, rather she used it as an exclamation point to highlight her important research. I also find that her presentation made her feel more relatable. I love that there is a direct conversation between Brené Brown and the reader. She does not hide her true ideals or intentions.

Another aspect that makes this book unique is that although Brené Brown is a researcher, she allows the discussion of faith and spirituality to be important in her research. She includes research and quotes from religious people. One of my favorite moments within the book is during a discussion where Brené Brown states, "I experienced a collection of holy and unholy moments that would eventually bring me face-to-face with one of my greatest fears and, in the process, teach me exactly what Saint Teresa of Avila meant when she said,"There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers."" If only we could all have revelations that bring us to a closer connection to God.

I have not had the pleasure to read her book Daring Greatly yet but I can promise it is now on my book list. There are several references to it within Rising Strong and I think that the best understanding of both books would come from reading both. Daring Greatly discusses concepts of vulnerability and scarcity and pairs well with the overall topic of overcoming adversity in Rising Strong.

I will end this with another one of the great topics that is discussed throughout the entire book; "The irony is that we attempt to disown our difficult stories to appear more whole or more acceptable, but our wholeness, even our wholeheartedness, actually depends on the integration of all of our experiences, including the falls." This particular quote is written on the back cover of the book. Rising Strong is truly an amazing book and I hope you take the opportunity to read it.

I know I have several friends reading this book right now and I would love your opinions as well! I am sharing this at The Book Nook At Create With Joy.