Not Afraid: On Fear, Heartbreak, Raising a Baby Girl, and Cage Fighting

In this memoir, the author and podcaster discusses his experiences in martial arts, the death of his wife, and raising his daughter as a single father. This book is a meditation on facing fear, heartbreak, and mortality. In his own irreverent and inimitable style, Daniele Bolelli tells the story of his courtship and marriage, which would have been a sweet story had all hell not broken loose. Or as he puts it, “Hell was a ninja who entered my house without being seen. It all began in such an unremarkable way that it barely registered as anything meaningful. Little did I know that the experiences of the next five months would rip me apart and kill me. They would re-forge me into a different man. On that day, I became an unwilling traveler on a journey through the heart of fear.” This is the story of a man who, in rapid succession, has his wife die in his arms, loses his house and his job, and is left to care for his nineteen-month-old daughter. Oddly enough, the best tools for coping with all of this were those he learned in more than two decades of martial arts practice. Not Afraid tackles this extremely heavy subject matter in a light-hearted style and with an attitude that acknowledges pain and suffering but denies them dominion over one’s life. Praise for Not Afraid “Not Afraid is an adventure story of the truest, deepest sort. You’ve never read a story like this or known a man like this.” —Chris Ryan, New York Times–bestselling author of Sex at Dawn “A true warrior poet, Daniele bleeds on these pages with fearless vulnerability and uncensored humor.” —Aubrey Marcus, writer and CEO of Onnit.com “Bolelli is a genius warrior philosopher. What he talks about here is the opposite of a victim’s mentality. By sharing the emotionally apocalyptic experience he has gone through, he gives a gift to anyone who is struggling with the dragon of fear and sadness.” —Duncan Trussell, comedian and host of the podcast The Duncan Trussell Family Hour