Uncertain As I Was As I Pushed Forward, I Felt Right In My Pushing, As If The Effort Itself Meant Something.
Uncertain as I was as I pushed forward, I felt right in my pushing, as if the effort itself meant something. That perhaps being amidst the undesecrated beauty of the wilderness meant I too could be undesecrated, regardless of the regrettable things I'd done to others or myself or the regrettable things that had been done to me. Of all the things I'd been skeptical about, I didn't feel skeptical about this: the wilderness had a clarity that included me.
Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
More Posts from Gone-a-strayed and Others
Letting go of expectation when it comes to one's children is close to impossible. The entire premise of our love for them has to do with creating, fostering, and nurturing people who will outlive us. To us, they are not so much who they are as who they will become.
Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
I had problems a therapist couldn't solve; grief that no man in a room could ameliorate.
Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
At a certain point we get to decide who it is we allow to influence us.
Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Writing is part intuition and part trial and error, but mostly it's very hard work.
Cheryl Strayed
In your twenties you're becoming who you're going to be and so you might as well not be an asshole.
Cheryl Strayed
It's hard to go. It's scary and lonely... But it will be soul-smashingly beautiful... It will open up your life.
Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
The narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are. They are the things we say back to ourselves to explain our complicated lives. Perhaps the reason you've not yet been able to forgive yourself is that you're still invested in your self-loathing. Perhaps not forgiving yourself is the flip side of your stealing-this-now cycle. Would you be a better or worse person if you forgave yourself for the bad things you did? If you perpetually condemn yourself for being a liar and a thief, does that make you good?
Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
The healing power of even the most microscopic exchange with someone who knows in a flash precisely what you're talking about because she experienced that thing too cannot be overestimated.
Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course.
Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Put yourself in the way of beauty.
Cheryl Strayed, quoting her mother’s advice
Learning the Tumblr ropes. Practicing with the words of one very wise woman.
107 posts