Brene Brown Quote

Real isn’t how you are made, said the Skin Horse. It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real. Does it hurt? asked the Rabbit. Sometimes, said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. When you are Real, you don’t mind being hurt. Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, he asked, or bit by bit? It doesn’t happen all at once, said the Skin Horse. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

Brene Brown

Real isn’t how you are made, said the Skin Horse. It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real. Does it hurt? asked the Rabbit. Sometimes, said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. When you are Real, you don’t mind being hurt. Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, he asked, or bit by bit? It doesn’t happen all at once, said the Skin Horse. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

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About Brene Brown

Casandra Brené Brown (born November 18, 1965) is an American professor, social worker, author, and podcast host. Brown is known for her work on shame, vulnerability, and leadership, and for her widely viewed 2010 TEDx talk. She has written six number-one New York Times bestselling books and hosted two podcasts on Spotify.
She appears in the 2019 documentary Brené Brown: The Call to Courage on Netflix. In 2022, HBO Max released a documentary series based on her book Atlas of the Heart.
Brown holds the Huffington Foundation's Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the University of Houston's Graduate College of Social Work and is a visiting professor in management at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.