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Tamara's Reviews > Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
by
by
Tamara's review
bookshelves: book-club, being-human, non-fiction, top-10, crowd-pleasers
Jan 20, 2013
bookshelves: book-club, being-human, non-fiction, top-10, crowd-pleasers
My Review
Well, shit. This book was just about perfect in every way. Except for the excessive use of the term of endearment "sweet pea", but I'll forgive it.
Recommended reading for fans of StoryCorps, or you know, all humans.
Favorite Quotes
The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love.
You're in a pickle. You did things you didn't hope to do. You have not always been your best self. This means that you're like the rest.
Because no matter how experimental he is, his life isn't an experiment.
When bad things happen, often the only way back to wholeness is to take it all apart.
Acceptance asks only that you embrace what's true.
Even if you get the dream, you don't know if it will stay true.
Jump high and hard with intention and heart.
That both things could be true at once--my disbelief as well as my certainty--was the unification of the ancient and the future parts of me. It was everything I intended and yet still I was surprised by what I got.
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. I have learned this over and over and over again.
Nobody's going to do your life for you.
What do you do when you don't know what to do about something? I talk to Mr. Sugar and my friends. I make lists. I attempt to analyze the situation from the perspective of my "best self"--the one that's generous, reasonable, forgiving, loving, bighearted, and grateful. I think really hard about what I'll wish I did a year from now. I map out the consequences of the various actions I could take. I ask what my motivations are, what my desires are, what my fears are, what I have to lose, and what I have to gain. I move toward the light, even if it's a hard direction in which to move. I trust myself. I keep the faith. I mess up sometimes.
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.
This is how you get unstuck...You reach. Not so you can walk away from the daughter you loved, but so you can live the life that is yours--the one that includes the sad loss of your daughter, but is not arrested by it. The one that eventually leads you to a place in which you not only grieve her, but also feel lucky to have had the privilege of loving her.
Well, shit. This book was just about perfect in every way. Except for the excessive use of the term of endearment "sweet pea", but I'll forgive it.
Recommended reading for fans of StoryCorps, or you know, all humans.
Favorite Quotes
The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love.
You're in a pickle. You did things you didn't hope to do. You have not always been your best self. This means that you're like the rest.
Because no matter how experimental he is, his life isn't an experiment.
When bad things happen, often the only way back to wholeness is to take it all apart.
Acceptance asks only that you embrace what's true.
Even if you get the dream, you don't know if it will stay true.
Jump high and hard with intention and heart.
That both things could be true at once--my disbelief as well as my certainty--was the unification of the ancient and the future parts of me. It was everything I intended and yet still I was surprised by what I got.
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. I have learned this over and over and over again.
Nobody's going to do your life for you.
What do you do when you don't know what to do about something? I talk to Mr. Sugar and my friends. I make lists. I attempt to analyze the situation from the perspective of my "best self"--the one that's generous, reasonable, forgiving, loving, bighearted, and grateful. I think really hard about what I'll wish I did a year from now. I map out the consequences of the various actions I could take. I ask what my motivations are, what my desires are, what my fears are, what I have to lose, and what I have to gain. I move toward the light, even if it's a hard direction in which to move. I trust myself. I keep the faith. I mess up sometimes.
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.
This is how you get unstuck...You reach. Not so you can walk away from the daughter you loved, but so you can live the life that is yours--the one that includes the sad loss of your daughter, but is not arrested by it. The one that eventually leads you to a place in which you not only grieve her, but also feel lucky to have had the privilege of loving her.
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Quotes Tamara Liked
“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.”
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
“You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.”
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
“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.”
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
“You give a lot of great advice about what to do. Do you have any advice of what not to do?
Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do. Don’t stay when you know you should go or go when you know you should stay. Don’t fight when you should hold steady or hold steady when you should fight. Don’t focus on the short-term fun instead of the long-term fall out. Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore. Don’t seek joy at all costs. I know it’s hard to know what to do when you have a conflicting set of emotions and desires, but it’s not as hard as we pretend it is. Saying it’s hard is ultimately a justification to do whatever seems like the easiest thing to do—have the affair, stay at that horrible job, end a friendship over a slight, keep loving someone who treats you terribly. I don’t think there’s a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself—as I did every damn time—the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, I’m learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing, but every so often I get a harsh reminder that I’ve still got work to do.”
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do. Don’t stay when you know you should go or go when you know you should stay. Don’t fight when you should hold steady or hold steady when you should fight. Don’t focus on the short-term fun instead of the long-term fall out. Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore. Don’t seek joy at all costs. I know it’s hard to know what to do when you have a conflicting set of emotions and desires, but it’s not as hard as we pretend it is. Saying it’s hard is ultimately a justification to do whatever seems like the easiest thing to do—have the affair, stay at that horrible job, end a friendship over a slight, keep loving someone who treats you terribly. I don’t think there’s a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself—as I did every damn time—the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, I’m learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing, but every so often I get a harsh reminder that I’ve still got work to do.”
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
“Forgiveness doesn't sit there like a pretty boy in a bar. Forgiveness is the old fat guy you have to haul up a hill.”
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
“You did things you didn't hope to do. You have not always been your best self. This means that you're like the rest of us.”
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
“Because no matter how experimental he is, his life isn't an experiment.”
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
“Even if you get the dream, you don't know if it will stay true.”
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
“Jump high and hard with intention and heart.”
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
“Nobody's going to do your life for you.”
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
― Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Reading Progress
January 20, 2013
– Shelved
January 20, 2013
– Shelved as:
book-club
November 23, 2015
– Shelved as:
being-human
November 23, 2015
– Shelved as:
non-fiction
November 23, 2015
– Shelved as:
top-10
November 23, 2015
– Shelved as:
crowd-pleasers
Started Reading
November 24, 2015
–
Finished Reading
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Angie
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rated it 4 stars
Nov 24, 2015 05:54PM
I really liked this one. Such unexpected insight and truth. Good stuff!
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I want to hug it, I loved it so much.
Oh, and I can't tell you how much I loved that you started your review with "well, shit".
