This Year, I Hope You Remember How Brave You Are 💫

‘Vulnerability is scary but pure. In it you can find bravery.’

Welcome to the Collective World X Thought Catalog Newsletter. Collective World is a one-of-a-kind creative network powered by the minds and voices behind The Thought & Expression Company. We’re so glad you’re here.

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This year, I hope you remember how brave you are. It’s easy to forget that when faced with hardships and insecurities and setbacks. But bravery has never been about the absence of these things—in fact, it cannot exist without them. I hope you embrace your humanness and recognize that’s part of what makes you so strong.

raquelfranco.poet

A post shared by Raquel Franco Poet (@raquelfranco.poet)

When you think back to the past year, I hope you remember that even when times were hard, you still made it through. I hope you remember the strength you had when faced with uncertainty and the resilience you had to keep going, even when you didn’t always feel like it. And you will make it through this year, too. I hope you trust in yourself enough to believe that.

I hope you remember that courage is in the small things too. It’s getting out of bed when it feels impossible. It’s going to that meeting you’ve been dreading and answering that text you’ve been putting off for weeks. It’s being vulnerable enough to admit a difficult truth. It’s opening your heart again after you’ve been hurt. It’s choosing love, again and again and again.

raquelfranco.poet

A post shared by Raquel Franco Poet (@raquelfranco.poet)

So this year, I hope you do the things that scare you. I hope you take the risk. I hope you allow yourself to believe greater things are coming your way. I hope you choose to get up every time you fall. I hope you don’t give up, even when it feels like the easier thing to do—especially then. I hope you recognize the bravery and strength it takes to do all of these things—and I hope you realize that power has been inside you all along.

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What We’re Reading This Week 📖💛

• “Any term that risks stigmatising the act of opening up should be approached with caution.” — Daisy Schofield

• “No single act of generosity remains in isolation. The ripples are many.” — Sarah Winman

• “But I realise now that a few days have passed that the point of sending the message wasn’t to hear what he has to say anyway. I was sending it because I wanted to prove to myself, not to him, that I’m worth an answer.” — Annie Lord

• “It is indeed a tourist’s imagination that would glance out from its hotel window onto the squalor below and conclude that death is the opposite of paradise, as if the locals did not live their little lives on the expansive middle ground between the two.” — Andrea Long Chu

• “I don’t know where I get the courage to keep on living in the midst of these ruins. Let us love each other till the end.” — George Sand

• “I struggle as a philosopher to reconcile my image of my body with its task in the world of being the emissary of my mind.” — Kate Manne

• “you and me. always a fire hazard. too bright to be anything more than a distant star.” — Natalia Vela

• “Health is not just food. It’s everything. Your entire being, your entire state of mind.” — Ana Acevedo

For more reading recommendations follow Quote Catalog where we find and file the best things to read every single day.

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Let us leave you with this:

“It is a brave thing
to allow your heart to love
after someone has carved
out a piece and left
you jagged.” — Raquel Franco     

You are a daring and wondrous thing. I hope you never forget that 🤍

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