"You're So Brave."
Sometimes "you're so brave" really means "I could never."
“Brave” isn’t always a compliment.
“You’re so brave.”
Sit with that.
Let it roll over in your mind.
How does that land in your body?
Sometimes it might make you feel strong. Hell yes I’m brave. Hell yes I can take on anything.
But sometimes it feels an awful lot like being out on a limb. Alone.
When people say “brave,” what they often mean is “I could never.” They are shouting up “you’re so brave” while you are the one on the top of the tree, trying to rescue the kitten.
I write. I don’t rescue cats from burning buildings (unless forced). I’m not a firefighter. I don’t save lives. Typing out a couple thousand words on my keyboard will never be the equivalent of saving a life.
And yet, I often sit on the receiving end of that comment.
“You’re so brave.”
Sometimes it lands well. When I know the person means it. But sometimes, even most of the time, it doesn’t. Because “you did a taboo thing I’d never do” hits on some of my deepest trigger points. All the places I’ve felt “other” my whole life.
It’s definitely a “me problem.”
But still: Ouch.
A person who tells their truth, naming the elephant in the room, isn’t always brave. Sometimes it’s the only option they have.
Sometimes I don’t want someone to say “you’re so brave.”
I want them to say: Me too.
I’m a writer. Words matter to me. On its surface, “brave” is fine. Per Merriam-Webster the word is defined as “having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty.”
Does writing something and publishing it really clear that bar? Wouldn’t “fierce” or “fearless” or “bold” clear that bar more effectively?
We often say “brave” when what we mean is something else.
When what we are saying is more akin to “I could never,” which is more akin to shame.
“You’re so brave” for wearing the bikini after 40. For keeping your hair long into your 50s. For getting the face lift. For not getting the face lift. For dyeing the hair. For not dyeing the hair.
“You’re so brave,” the skinny friend says, eyeing the brownie you ordered in the coffee shop. The one she didn’t order. Think of the calories, she says with her eyes. Instead she says, so brave.
She could never.
Is that a compliment? No.
That’s shame in a Veronica Beard blazer.
Last week I wrote an essay in the New York Times, and I’ve been fascinated by the comments, because the reaction has been split. I admitted two things in that piece.
One, that I am aware that I am attractive.
Two, that aging involves some level of grief for that version of myself, and I’m struggling to let it go.
Women are asked to never know they are pretty. Whole songs have been written about this (looking at you, One Direction).
The message: to not know you are pretty is the only way to be pretty.
The other message: Admitting you aren’t a sea hag is “brave.”
No wonder women struggle. They are meant to age “gracefully.” Embrace their crone years. Learn to dance with their invisibility. Then we are all meant to sit on the mountaintop and tell others how lovely it is to be ignored while beaming silent judgment on those who don’t embrace every fine line and gray hair.
But we should all still look like J-Lo.
And somehow we must do all of these things at the same time.
I have mad respect for every woman willing to leave her face and hair untouched. But I also have mad respect for any woman willing to name the impossible standards. To look at the elephant in the room and go:
Does anyone else see the fucking Dumbo full of Dysport in here, or is it just me?
Naming the thing isn’t “brave.” It’s my neurodivergent mind screaming for honesty at the top of its lungs.
I want truth, not a medal.
I want people to stand beside me and say: Yes, this true thing is what I also feel. Not “wow, I could never.”
Women are being asked to do a million contradictory things at once, and I want to talk about it. I want to talk about why people choose differently. I want to talk about what’s under the rock we don’t like to look at. I want us to go a little easier on each other.
I want to understand the woman who got the deep plane facelift, and I want her to be able to talk to the woman who didn’t.
I want them both to be brave. Because going under the knife is scary AF. But so is choosing to allow your hair to go gray.
There’s a lot of common ground in either choice. There’s a lot of bon courage in facing the world as a woman at all.
Let’s get messy. Let’s talk truth. Let’s unpack more than we judge. And let’s also please, for the love of God, also admit: None of this is running into a burning building.
Here’s what I think is actually brave:
Walking in front of a room full of strangers to do stand-up comedy. That’s brave.
A group of people forming a chain over the ice to rescue a puppy who feel through the frozen lake. That’s brave. And heroic.
The father who dove off a cruise ship to rescue his young child from the sea. SO FUCKING BRAVE.
Writing an essay from the comfort of my office chair while stuffing my face with corn chips left over from last night’s Mexican dinner isn’t even playing the same game as those things.
Let alone in the ballpark.
Bravery is standing up for someone who has no one else standing up for them. It’s going against the crowd. It’s fighting for what you believe even when it costs you. It’s walking into a burning building. It’s risking your life for someone else’s.
Sharing your truth can be bold. It can be risky. It can maybe be fearless.
It’s definitely honest.
Those words more accurately capture what it feels like to name an unpopular truth. To step outside the box of acceptable speech and name the thing so many think but don’t say.
Stand-up comedy can do the same thing. It’s a risk. You may be the only one who finds something funny. And that’s terrifying. I will probably never do that. Because it scares the shit out of me.
Stand up comedy is optional. But telling the truth? For me? That has never felt optional.
It’s the only way I’ve ever known how to survive.
I think I know why.
I was raised in a house where there was one version of the truth, and it wasn’t set by me. That leaves a mark. It makes you especially sensitive, for the rest of your life, to anyone who tries to hand you a version of events and call it settled. Through years of therapy, through EMDR, I’ve come to recognize the way Truth, capital T, got obfuscated by people who were more invested in having their truth win than in getting anywhere close to what actually happened.
Truth is subjective. It’s always open to discussion. That discussion is worth having out in the open, and I think that’s the real root of why I’m so committed to having it, over and over, in public, on the page.
When I look back at my childhood, that’s the thing that sticks. I was never asked what the truth was. I was never allowed to name the elephant in the room. I was handed a version and told that was the version. As an adult, I don’t want to be doing that to anyone, including myself.
I don’t want to live that way. Not in my home, and not out in the wild.
It isn’t brave when I turn over the rock and hold up whatever’s living underneath.
So yes, this is a “me problem.”
It is about me.
But it’s also not.
It’s about all of us. The people writing and the people reading and the people looking for connection on social media and on the Internet in general. We will find connection so much faster by not setting ourselves apart. By telling the truth more. By not being afraid to admit the real thing. By naming the giant circus animal right in the center of your living room.
Because I’d guess that most people writing something true aren’t looking for “You’re so brave.” They are looking for “me too.” They are looking for “This helped me tell my truth, too.”
“Brave” is a disconnect. It’s the “I could never” of compliments. Instead, try connecting. Instead, try saying your truth, too. Even if it’s different. Even if it’s the opposite. Especially if it’s the opposite.
The only way out of these times is to speak our truths widely.
It isn’t brave.
It’s fucking real.
If you want more of this — the writing, the behind the scenes, the essays that don’t make it into the Times — you’re already in the right place.
There’s a new one every Sunday.
A few from the archives:
I Was the Villain In Someone Elses’s Memoir
Burning It Down Isn’t the Only Way
The First Time You Feel It, Believe Yourself
If you want to support my work, my first book, Namaste the Hard Way, is available.
The summer of 2026 is also the summer of Adult Book It. Stickers. Prizes. Six books. No pizza, sorry.
More soon.
Sasha
One of my other favorite writers James Altucher's writing rule is not to hit publish unless you feel vulnerable or scared about how people will react.
I totally get where you're coming from but wonder if you're not giving yourself enough credit for saying the hard things out loud? (I say this while also struggling to give myself credit for much of anything -- ha!) I mean, sharing the deeper and more complicated and vulnerable parts of ourselves and tackling taboo topics, especially as women, can put us at risk for all sorts of things (criticism, loss, actual physical danger), and also literally save people's lives and sanity by helping them realize they're not alone. Brave, courageous, badass, fearless ... I think they can all apply (but yeah, as you note, you've also gotta consider the source).