Book review: Rising Strong by Brene Brown

Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution. by Brené Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Bad things happen to good people, and all too often, the good turn into screaming banshees...because they don't know what else to do. Rising Strong, by Social Work research professor and best-selling author Brene Brown (2015), is a road map to overcoming adversity and putting the banshee inside to rest. From the little life adversities that annoy us to the big ones that change the direction of our lives, Brown offers a three-point direction guide to get us to our preferred destination of integrated emotions...without the screaming hysterics. The rising strong process is: Reckoning, Rumbling, and Revolution.

Reckoning: Brown uses a nautical term here for calculating the current position by charting where the vessel has come from compared to where it wants to go. Nowadays, the drivers of boats and cars use a GPS but it is still called Dead Reckoning. Using emotional reactions as a GPS point, the definition of reckoning in Rising Strong is: "Recognize the emotion and get curious about our feelings and how they connect with the way we think and behave" (Brown 2015 p. 37). It is in connecting the points that we can navigate forward. This part of the process is also described as Act I.

Rumbling: Brown defines this somewhat popular American term as: "Owning our story. Get honest about the stories we're making up bout our struggle, then challenge these confabulations and assumptions to determine what's truth, what's self protection, and what needs to change if we want to lead more wholehearted lives." This part of the process is also described as Act II and "Day 2" (the messy middle). Such alternative language suits this Aussie who just cannot imagine saying "rumbling."

Revolution: I confess here that this is the term that interested me the most. To me, the word revolution aligns beautifully with the screaming Banshee, but alas, Brown's revolution is a quieter, internal one, that changes the game plan of life. She defines this final part of the rising strong process as: "Write a new ending to our story based on the key learnings from our rumble and use this new, braver story to change how we engage with the world and to ultimately transform the way we live, love, parent and lead." This part of the process is also described as Act III.

Given the book is a road map, Rising Strong frustrated me at times as I searched for the direction of the process of rising strong. Just as a GPS works best if you put in a destination, I was eager and impatient to know the steps to reach the destination. In the physical book, my desperate search for the process is evident in that I have frequently underlined the words rising strong process and written notes in the margins, "What is the process??" In the audio version, my clip notes are similar - "find the process."

Like a good scholar, I went searching for the process, and it is clearly written on p. 37, and in Chapter Three, Owning Our Stories. It was not hidden or embedded in therapeutic speak: I just missed it even though it is made obvious (a bit like the adversaries of life leading to a crash, really). I provide no spoilers here as I encourage you to read the book as part of the very process of rising strong and reckoning and rumbling with finding it yourself...even when you cannot see the signpost clearly at your crossroad!

The "can't find it" story I am telling myself in my "shitty first draft" (Lamott 1995. A technical term that I particularly love from Rising Strong - it is part of the rumble) is that I can only imagine that I was blindsided to the process by the alluring juxtapositions of the rising strong process to Campbell's Hero's Journey (2020) and to the Three Acts used by movie producers of Pixar. This weakened Brown's actual rising strong process for me as my mind was more attuned to the familiarity of the often quoted other two processes rather than the newly named process of rising strong. However, the stories we tell of our own lives follow the same process as Campbell's Hero's Story and Pixar's three acts, so that is what stuck in my mind. My belligerent backtracking and re-search quickly allayed my frustration and enabled me to embrace my reckoning and finding of Brown's process: Reckoning, Rumbling, Revolution.

Of all the life gems in the book, the use of the word revolution spoke volumes to me. I immediately conjured up a mind picture of completely changing my life by revolting against the old. The old me is so boring and I was up for a renovation....but do I really need to do the rumbling and reckoning? YES. Rising strong is a process that follows a map with clear check-in points before you can proceed to the finish line.

Almost like a review essay, Brown references her previous books to show the evolution of her research process. To the non scholarly this may not be important, but to a critical academic reader, it may provide evidence of a clear method and methodology. The book opens with a note on her research clearly locating storying as her methodology. As part of an integrated literature review, her reference list is presented as notes immediately before the index section of the book. This is important to know when looking at derisory book reviews of Rising Strong that negate the scholarly worth of the book.

Some criticisms, via book reviews and online comments, of Brene Brown's library of titles are around her sharing of personal stories. The tenant of the reviews are that personal stories are not robust and make the book more about the author than the process. But, my reading is that the personal stories are indeed part of the rising strong process, and for those making comments against the use of personal stories, it is their "shitty first draft" - part of their process of rising strong. Therefore, the criticisms are to be celebrated as partial evidence that the process works.

In Daring Greatly (2012) Brown clearly explains why she shares personal stories and her process of choosing which ones to share. She has a methodology around it that has sprung from her research and that now forms the basis of the rising strong process: without telling the story we are making up in our heads, we cannot move through the process. In Rising Strong, Brown also cleverly uses personal and research stories, to illustrate the three parts of the rising strong process. This was helpful to me as an Australian, given our language and terminology are vastly different from Americanisms, and I could easily see the process at work.

Although people may be uncomfortable with the personal illustrations, the book is part of a best-selling author who is using her organic intellectualism to connect with an audience who has their own intellectualism but whose intellectualism may require a little tugging at to help their process of change. That some readers disagree with her use of storying IS the process of thinking through what they believe and why. It is this very reflection that allows them to embrace their emotional intellectualism and create their own personal revolution

Storying is a methodology. You don't have to agree with the story: it is the process that is the important part. The discipline of Lived Experience situates power and social change in the story of those with, or caring for mental illness. Reading dangerously (Nafisi 2022) encourages us to read what our opponents are saying. Brown herself says in Rising Strong that "storytelling is a powerful integration tool" (p84). She also states that:

There are many helpful books about the nature of grief and the grieving process. Many of these resources are based on research, but some of the most profoundly healing books are memoirs by people who have courageously shared their own stories. Brown 2015 p145

Rising Strong cleverly takes grounded theory and presents academic research to a non-academic cohort. Bibliotherapy as a tool of passive Psychoeducation is accepted by a medical model tasked with the recovery of people harmed by life, so why can't personal stories by Brene Brown not be used to help integrate the three acts of the rising strong model: Reckoning, Rumbling and Revolution?

This is a book for anyone who needs to understand how to get up again after a kick in the guts. It teaches resisting the status quo that tells us to whimper in a corner after a blow, and that the infectious revolution of change starts with us. It is grounded in ethical and robust research and has a curriculum taught at universities and to leaders in business and community. Although it is found in the self-help section of bookstores, it is more than self-help, and Brown makes no claims that this book alone will change your life. It is a process and until you start the process, nothing will change.

This is not a book I would buy as a gift, but it is a book I would recommend to anyone who asks how to recover after life has knocked them down again (asking is part of the reckoning process and a person is not ready until they are ready). If there were a Rising Strong journal with pages containing quotes from Rising Strong, I would certainly buy that as a gift for my nearest and dearest. "Shitty first drafts" written down tend to springboard into brave, new, and authentic places. Bring on the adventure; bring on your "shitty first drafts."

Disclaimer: This book review is written to fulfil partial requirements of my industry partner internship with Typeface Books. Brene Brown is one of my PhD theorists, specifically, her Shame Resilience Theory is used to explain resistance to the status quo.

References

Brown, B (2015). Rising Strong. Vermillion

Campbell, J. (2020). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Joseph Campbell Foundation. https://www.jcf-shop.org/product-page...

Harvey, T (2020, September 15) Brené Brown, the Messy Middle & Intercultural Learning. True North Intercultural. https://www.truenorthintercultural.co...

Lamott, A. (1995). Bird by bird : some instructions on writing and life (1st Anchor Books ed.). Anchor Books.

OWN  (2015, October 4). Brene Brown: The 3 Most Dangerous Stories We Tell Ourselves  [Video]   https://www.oprah.com/own-super-soul-sunday/brene-brown-the-3-most-dangerous-stories-we-tell-ourselves-video   

Whitaker, B. (n.d.). Brene Brown Has A PhD In Social Work And Is A Professor At The University Of Houston, CBS. 60 Minutes (CBS News).

👵🏼 Megan Bayliss, Social Worker

👩🏼‍🎓 PhD candidate: social and cultural resistance to the status quo

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