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

“It is not so incomprehensible as you pretend, sweet pea. Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard. It can be light as the hug we give a friend or heavy as the sacrifices we make for our children. It can be romantic, platonic, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sex, sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generosity, nourished by humor and “loaded with promises and commitments” that we may or may not want or keep.

The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of it.” 

Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you; you lose a family member; you can’t pay the bills—and it can be great: you’ve had the hottest sex of your life; you get that plum job; you muster the courage to write your novel. Sugar—the once-anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus, now revealed as Cheryl Strayed, author of the bestselling memoir Wild—is the person thousands turn to for advice. 
Tiny Beautiful Things brings the best of Dear Sugar in one place and includes never-before-published columns and a new introduction by Steve Almond.  Rich with humor, insight, compassion—and absolute honesty—this book is a balm for everything life throws our way.

I have never highlighted so many paragraphs in one book before. 

The advice given by 'Sugar' is so raw and real, and even though the situation she is replying to might not apply to my life, there were so many things I want to remember because they touched a cord with me and I want to keep them for my future self, or so I can pass them on to someone I know at some stage. 

The words that I would use to describe this book are: Motivating, Passionate, and Heartwarming.

• Motivating: it made me feel like I should get off my butt and stop reading to sort my life out. Be a better friend, be a better Mum, stop feeling sorry for myself.
• Passionate: her advice is blunt and direct and she says it like it is. You can read the honesty in her words clearly, and you get the sense that the responses stems from the same talks she might give herself in the mirror every now and then - they are words she lives by herself.
• Heartwarming: you can tell there is a genuine care behind her responses. Even when she is telling someone to pull their head in, it is done in such a caring way that it makes you genuinely want to comply because she makes you feel like it is the right thing to do.

I wish I knew of an advice column like this one to read when I was a teenager! It would be interesting to see my 'sister life' and see if it would have helped me navigate my younger life with less angst and confusion.

After finishing this book it makes me want to read even more from Cheryl Strayed (I have already read Wild)