Brave is the New Beautiful: Finding the Courage to Be the Real You by Lee Wolfe Blum

About the book: (from the publisher) In a culture that bombards women with “thinspiration” messages and pressure to “do it all” while wearing the mask of perfection, women are left feeling alone and overwhelmed. How can they stop comparing themselves to others? How can they live out who they really are?

Lee Wolfe Blum offers stories from everyday women who have answered these questions with their lives—and found true beauty in the process. In Brave Is the New Beautiful, Blum weaves reflections from her own journey with inspirational stories from everyday women who chose to take off their masks and live authentically. Through call-to-action questions and ideas, she encourages readers to be brave enough to be who they really are and the beloved that God knows they are.

About the author: Lee Wolfe Blum is an author, energetic passionate speaker, and mental health practitioner working in the field of eating disorders and addictions. She loves to help women find hope and healing from perfectionism and addictions. her first book was Table in the Darkness – A Healing Journey Through an Eating Disorder and her second book is Brave Is the New Beautiful – Courage To Be the Real You. Lee lives in Edina, Minnesota with her husband and three teenage boys in what she calls “The Frat House.” Connect with her online here.

Genre: Non-fiction/Christian Life/Women’s Issues

[bctt tweet=”God knows you’re beloved; do you? Find out in @BlumLee’s new book, Brave is the New Beautiful. http://bit.ly/2pU5bqw @David_C_Cook” username=”KatherineSJones”]

My take: I really, really liked this book. Somewhere between a vulnerable memoir and a thoughtful study for women, each of Lee’s well-told stories resonated deeply with me. I soaked up the heart-level honesty and gutsy authenticity found in these pages.

As it explores contemporary issues for the contemporary American woman, I would especially recommend Brave Is the New Beautiful for women who struggle to make sense of life’s pain and troubling circumstances, particularly those who draw encouragement and comfort from other women’s stories. (And who doesn’t?)

The power of this book is predicted in the foreword by Shannon Ethridge. “Vulnerability breeds vulnerability,” she writes. “Bravery breeds bravery. Beauty breeds beauty.” What Lee Wolfe Blum has done here is to gather together the raw stories of real women, and in her tender telling, has rendered them lovely. It teaches us to look at our circumstances through a different lens so that we might have a truer vision of what it there: a heart-vision.

Brave Is the New Beautiful is wholly wrapped in hope and poured over in grace. And it encourages me by example to do the same with my own stories. To seek the beauty amidst the brokenness. Lee promises that with God’s grace, it shall be found.

Thanks to Litfuse Publicity and David C Cook for providing me this book free of charge. All opinions are mine.

After words: In the last week, when have you seen a woman doing something brave?