Atlas of the Heart

Title:Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

Author: Brene Brown

What is it? A book. But the physical copy of the book looks more like a coffee table book. And it doesn’t read like a self-help book per se, it’s beautifully illustrated and laid out. And if you choose to listen to the audio version, there are other little nuggets tucked in throughout.

Who should read it? As with many of our picks, we think this book will speak to anyone who seeks to give language to their emotions, who wants to better understand their inner life, and who wants to build stronger relationships with that understanding.

Two minute skinny: If you are not familiar with Brene Brown, we recommend you take one step back, and look her up. She is an amazing researcher, podcaster, author, and human, who has devoted her life and career helping people become more vulnerable, and to find strength in that vulnerability. This book, Atlas of the Heart, is somewhat of a culmination of the research she has done over the course of her career, broken down into a unique format to help each of us better understand ourselves.

If you are familiar with Brene, you will probably remember, she often uses the line, “I am a mapmaker and a traveler,” in reference to the fact that she is a traveler in life as we are, trying to make a map while also traveling the unknown roads of life. In calling her book an atlas, she is trying to emphasize the fact that this book is like a book of many maps that will help you understand the 87 core emotions, traits, and states you might experience as a human. She posits that by mapping out each emotion in detail, you can use these maps to be sure you never lose yourself, even when you don’t know exactly where you might be. Over the course of thirteen chapters, Brown takes you through “Places you Go” in categories of emotions. For example, one chapter is about, “The Places you Go When Life Is Good,” and she talks you through several emotions that might fall under that category: joy, happiness, calm contentment, gratitude, foreboding joy, relief, and tranquility. Taking readers through a detailed understanding of emotions many of us are familiar with, but can be challenging to name, is the true success of this book. We can’t know which of the chapters and emotions might speak to you personally, or which ones might hit closer to home than you want to admit. However, we did find the explorations around nostalgia and empathy to be particularly interesting, and we found all of Chapter 8 (Places We Go When We Fall Short) to be extremely touching, enlightening, and in some ways reinvigorating.  

Whether you decide to listen to Brene read the book to you (the audible download comes with an essential PDF that you can reference to see the illustrations) or you buy a beautiful physical copy for your coffee table, we do recommend you check out this book. You will thank yourself for taking the time to look at the map as you continue on your journey.

Rating? Worth the Investment? We give it 5 stars. Do yourself a favor and read it.

Listen, I don’t have time for a whole book… What's second best? Here is a quick snippet of Brene talking about the book and how it might be helpful to you. https://brenebrown.com/videos/brene-brown-atlas-of-the-heart/

And here is a link to the series of podcasts that Brown’s podcast Unlocking Us spent dedicated to talking about the book and its creation, if you’d rather hear some sound bites about it instead.

And in case you wanted to go deeper: Brene Brown filmed an entire HBO Max series talking about the content of Atlas of the Heart, and if you want to go deeper, you should definitely check it out. https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GYivWaAXEZMLDwwEAAACz

Blogpost by Hallie Moberg Brauer