Book Review: Braving the Wilderness
Psychology
Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone
By Brené Brown
194 pp. Random House $18.00
In Braving the Wilderness, Brené talks about how we struggle with wanting to belong with the in-crowd, but we find true belonging when we are true to ourselves.
She’s a social scientist, and in parts of the book, it feels like a text book. These are the parts where she backs up her theories with her research. However, don’t let this fool you into believing that the book isn’t engaging. In fact, it’s a quick read that’s insightful and heartening.
Braving the Wilderness is sort of a follow up to her previous work. This is the first book I’ve read by her. I started another book on my library audio app, but I got sidetracked and didn’t get far into it. However, I didn’t need to have read any of the others to make sense of this, but she does reference other books several times and I feel like it would have been beneficial to have read at least one for a background. I purchased Daring Greatly and plan to read that next.
I hardly ever mark in my books, but I had to get out my highlighter for this one. Here’s three, but I could add a lot more.
“Because we’re not that simple.” – Talking about generalizing people into short soundbites.
“…make assumptions about the people around us, which in turn fuels disconnection.”
“It’s easier to be pissed off than hurt or scared.”
Hear more from her personally. Watch the video below.