Brave Is the New Beautiful

Have you ever wished you were beautiful?

Our culture is so absorbed, even fixated, on the concept of personal perfection- beautiful skin, beautiful face, beautiful body, beautiful appearance and style and poise.
Advertisements and many businesses promote this striving for physical beauty. Fitness trainers, diet and weight-loss programs, skin clinics and plastic surgeons all provide help for those who seek another image than the one that stares back at them each morning from the bathroom mirror.

This book is not about that. It’s not about the idea that beauty is defined by a fit body or gap-spaced thighs. It’s about recognising a new kind of beauty that has nothing to do with sunshine and rainbows, butterflies and flowers. It’s about recognising that everyone experiences pain and suffering. ‘None of us walks through this life without a story to tell or wounds to be healed. The truth is, life is really tough, and it is full of challenges.’
Many of us are scarred both inside and out. And none of us is perfect. Life isn’t that simple.

“Beauty is the woman who sees her brokenness and acknowledges the scars of life but doesn’t try to cover them up or hide behind them.’
Instead, this book overflows with stories of beautiful women, women who bravely the pain and ask the hard questions. And sometimes the questions have no concrete answers.
Lee addresses these questions and more with inspirational stories of women who have bravely stepped beyond their suffering to true beauty.

‘The kind of bravery we’re talking about isn’t the kind that conquers; it’s the kind that submits and relinquishes control to God’ and asks, ‘Am I being true to who God made me to be?’
This is true bravery. This is true beauty.
The recount of each amazing, beautiful woman concludes with reflection questions, questions that challenge and inspire.
It’s a reminder that, more than anything, we need each other. We need to encourage. We need to share. We need to draw close and listen to each other- not because we can fix the problems, but because, in turn, we can be vulnerable. We can be brave and help others see hope. We can look for and see beauty in others. We can cheer others on. And, we need to remember that we can never run out of God’s grace.
Are you fighting a battle? Have you been wounded, scarred?
This book whispers, like a Christopher Robin telling Winnie the Pooh: “There’s something you must remember… you’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

Brave is the new Beautiful is a powerful reminder that ‘when we put a period in our life story and think it’s the end, God puts a semi-colon’.

Lee Wolfe Blum is a health educator, speaker, coach and author also of Table in the Darkness- a healing journey through an eating disorder.
Publisher: David C Cook

Copy provided for honest review