Category Archives: Parenting

Review: Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

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Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

Daring Greatly
Brené Brown
Avery
Published September 11, 2012

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Daring Greatly

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” —Theodore Roosevelt

Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable, or to dare greatly. Whether the arena is a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation, we must find the courage to walk into vulnerability and engage with our whole hearts.

In DARING GREATLY, Dr. Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability. Based on twelve years of research, she argues that vulnerability is not weakness, but rather our clearest path to courage, engagement, and meaningful connection. The book that Dr. Brown’s many fans have been waiting for, DARING GREATLY will spark a new spirit of truth—and trust—in our organizations, families, schools, and communities.

Researcher and thought leader Dr. Brené Brown offers a powerful new vision that encourages us to dare greatly: to embrace vulnerability and imperfection, to live wholeheartedly, and to courageously engage in our lives.

My Review

I have this book as an audiobook and I’ve listened to it multiple times. Every single time, I feel like I rediscover gems or somehow notice new information that I’d overlooked before. Or things make sense in a fresh way because of whatever’s happening in my life at the moment I read a particular topic or chapter.

It’s a challenging read, I won’t lie. Like, it really makes me think about the ways I handle my own emotional discomfort and gives an opportunity to make some changes. There are a lot of personal stories, which both soften the blow that comes from feeling so exposed emotionally. It makes you feel like Brown is right there in the vulnerability trenches with you.

One of the biggest changes that’s come from reading this book is in the way my husband and I relate to each other. I realized that when I feel vulnerable, I tend to counterattack. I will pick a fight with him or escalate a fight we’re already having. Now, instead, I try to create a little space in my head. I recognize that I’m feeling scared or hurt or whatever it is and try to process that rather than running from it into feeling angry.

I’m definitely a work in progress. Haha. But I feel like I’ve gotten a lot of really good stuff from this book. I wish there was a version specifically for teens addressing some issues specific to that time of life. I think teens can still read and benefit from the book, so I recommend it anyway.

If you haven’t seen Brené Brown’s TED Talk, that’s a great place to start in order to get more of a feel for what DARING GREATLY is about. Her talk is kind of a dip-your-toes-in look at what she covers in much greater depth in the book. If you watch that and are curious or intrigued, definitely pick up DARING GREATLY.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Relates stories and data based on a broad range of research.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Some brief mentions of sex from the perspective of the way that asking for sex or participating in it means experiencing vulnerability.

Spiritual Content
Mentions going to church.

Violent Content
Vague mentions of abuse situations.

Drug Content
Mentions of drinking alcohol and smoking as a poor coping strategy for vulnerability. She also discusses the connection between shame and addiction.

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Review: Life Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes and Autism by Ron Suskind

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A Life Animated: A story of heroes, sidekicks and autism
Ron Suskind
Kingswell

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

When the Suskind family moves to a new home, they begin to see startling changes in their youngest son, Owen. He loses the ability to communicate with them and seems to retreat inside himself. The family embarks on a journey to find ways to reconnect with Owen via one of his favorite things: Disney movies.

This is an amazing, truly inspiring story. I’m awed by the courage it must have taken for both Owen and his family to continue pressing forward without giving up, even in moments when field experts were at a loss as to how to help, when specialized programs proved disappointing. Throughout the book, Owen’s father describes his son with love and affection, clearly impressing on readers his value, not just to his family, but as a human being.

For people who don’t personally know someone with an autism diagnosis, I imagine it could be easy to overlook the autistic community. Suskind makes this impossible. Though the book focuses on the family’s experience with their son, there are a lot of references to larger issues faced by families with autistic children or injustices within our system that limit the ability of families to provide much-needed care and assistance. I thought that was a great value, too. Many of those things I simply wasn’t familiar with. For a short time after I graduated, I worked for a behavior analyst extremely well-respected in the field, but that was more than ten years ago now, and I’m grossly under-informed these days.

The Disney references were really fun, and you’ll definitely get a lot more out of the story if you’re familiar with those classic movies, but they’re not the point of the book. The point is that those tales became a vehicle by which a remarkable boy rebuilt a way of communicating with the world around him.

I recommend this book because it’s such a great, triumphant story, and we all need that message, and also because this reminds us that we are all human, all valuable, no matter how we process information.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used infrequently. There’s one chapter in which most of the profanity occurs as part of an exposure therapy to help Owen deal with aftermath of a bullying incident.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief references to kissing.

Spiritual Content
The family prepares for and celebrates Owen’s Bar Mitzvah.

Violent Content
None.

Drug Content
Owen’s older brother hosts a high school party which gets a bit out of hand. Lots of alcohol stored in the Suskind’s basement disappears during the party.

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Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers: Review and Thoughts on Book Banning

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Some Girls Are
Courtney Summers
St. Martin’s Griffin

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

Climbing to the top of the social ladder is hard—falling from it is even harder.  Regina Afton used to be a member of the Fearsome Fivesome, an all-girl clique both feared and revered by the students at Hallowell High… until vicious rumors about her—and her best friend’s boyfriend—start going around.  Now Regina’s been frozen out, and her ex-best friends are out for revenge. 

If Regina were guilty, it would be one thing, but the rumors are far from the terrifying truth, and the bullying is getting more intense by the day.  She takes solace in the company of Michael Hayden, a misfit with a tragic past whom she herself used to bully.  Friendship doesn’t come easily for these onetime enemies, and as Regina works hard to make amends for her past, she realizes Michael could be more than just a friend…if threats from the Fearsome Foursome don’t break them both first.

Tensions grow and the abuse worsens, as the final days of senior year march toward an explosive conclusion in this dark new tale from the author of CRACKED UP TO BE.

My Review

It’s hard for me not to compare this book to ALL THE RAGE, a more recently published novel by Courtney Summers which deals with some of the same issues (see content warning). I think I liked ALL THE RAGE better because it dealt more with the way the town as a whole responded to a rape allegation and some brutal high school bullying. I also connected more with Romy, the protagonist in ALL THE RAGE.

In SOME GIRLS ARE, Regina comes to regret her role in bullying other students, but in some ways, it still feels like that’s all she knows. She retaliates against her former friends in an effort to bring them down low enough that they’ll leave her alone. Instead, it continues the vicious cycle, only adding more fuel to the fires of revenge.

I think choosing to tell SOME GIRLS ARE from Regina’s perspective and bringing her passion for revenge to the forefront were really bold decisions and carried an important message. Regina isn’t the stereotypical novel victim, and I loved that. Unfortunately, I think I just didn’t really believe in her transformation at the end. I needed to see like three chapters more showing that she’d really changed and that she and Michael (whom I absolutely LOVED!!!) could work out together.

In YA, resolving an issue with any kind of adult involvement gets really tricky. Having a grown-up soar in and rescue the protagonist is a storytelling no-no. So I both appreciate and understand why that wasn’t the direction Summers took with the resolution of SOME GIRLS ARE. With a situation involving this kind of brutal bullying, it’s hard for me as a parent not to want adults involved. I believe we want kids to know they can and should bring adults into the equation when they reach a point where they can no longer attend school and feel safe.

I do want to acknowledge that sometimes kids are in situations where there isn’t a safe adult for them to go to, so I know that isn’t always a viable solution in real life, either.

SOME GIRLS ARE left me wishing for at least a nod to some adult figure who made at least some responsible call somewhere. Instead, I felt like the message was that if you can get good enough blackmail on a bully, you might just be able to stop the whole cycle.

Update: Since reading this book, I’ve discovered that I tend not to enjoy revenge stories. So probably at least part of my feelings for this one relate to that preference.

Content Notes

Content warning for mentions of rape, bullying, physical violence, mentions of suicide, death of a parent, drug use, drinking alcohol.

Language Content
Extreme and frequent use of profanity.

Sexual Content
At a party, a boy tries to rape a girl. He tears her skirt and leaves her arms bruised. Regina and her boyfriend Josh have had sex before. A boy taunts Regina about it, repeatedly asking if she only likes it in the dark. He also makes a crude comment about oral sex. Kissing between a boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
See sexual content. A group of girls surround Regina and repeatedly punch and kick her. A boy elbows another boy in the face, giving him a bloody nose. A dodgeball hits a boy in the face, giving him a bloody nose. A girl trips another girl, sending her tumbling down the stairs.

Girls use social media to bully Regina. They spread rumors about her and say cruel things to her and to one another. It’s not the first time this group has bullied someone. A previous target tried to commit suicide.

Brief reference to a woman killed when an overpass collapsed on her car. No real description of the accident.

Drug Content
One boy supplies students with pharmaceutical drugs. Teens gather at parties to drink alcohol. Mentions of smoking pot. Regina is the designated driver at both parties, but mentions that she drinks heavily at other times and winds up sick at the end of the night. She drinks alcohol in a couple of other scenes.

On Some Girls Are Being Removed from a Charleston Summer Reading List

I bought this book last summer (2015) when I heard about the decision by West Ashley High in Charleston to remove the book from their ninth grade summer reading list after receiving complaints from a parent about the content of the novel. The messages the books tackles are really important to us as a culture. I really admire this author’s unflinching look at some of the darker moments of high school. But, I see why it concerned this parent that a very limited required reading list included this option.

I have really mixed feelings about banning books. The short answer is I’m generally not a fan of book-banning. Largely because one vocal minority makes a decision that no one should have the option to read a particular book. I do not want to give the power to a select group to decide what we’re allowed to read.

I love that this particular parent made the choice to read the book with her daughter. Her ninth grade daughter had the choice between this book and another one and would be tested on comprehension once school started. As a parent, I’d certainly be uncomfortable with the amount of explicit content included in the book. I’d be uncomfortable that it’s on a reading list like this, where there are such limited options.

Banning a book, though, means one parent or a few make a decision for many kids beyond their own. I’m not sure that the book was banned in the school district as a whole, however. The article I read only mentions removing it from the reading list and adding another alternative selection for the class.

Courtney Summers received a ton of support from her fans and the YA community after the whole incident. Fans donated several hundred copies of the book, and public libraries in Charleston distributed them to the community. I think it’s really great that she received so much support. I do really believe in the importance of the kinds of issues she tackles in her writing.

Note: Post updated July 4, 2022. This post contains affiliate links which don’t cost anything to use but which help generate support for this blog.