The only way out of a hole is to climb out. Cheryl Strayed More Quotes by Cheryl Strayed More Quotes From Cheryl Strayed That's how we find our way outward and onward. By holding onto beauty hardest. By cradling it like the cure that it is. By making it realer than anything ever was. The rest is just monsters and ghosts. Cheryl Strayed ghost monsters way The only way I've been able to stay informed without letting fury rule my life is to channel my rage into something that ultimately feels like love to me. The place I do that the best is in my writing. That's where I feel like I can tap into the power of story and maybe bring something good into the world. Cheryl Strayed rage writing world You get to define the terms of your life. Cheryl Strayed term Don't worry. Don't apologize. Don't cower behind the defeated security of there is no 'room for someone like me'. There isn't room for any one of us. It's up to you to make a place for yourself in the world. So get to work. Cheryl Strayed up-to-you worry world It was my life — like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be. Cheryl Strayed irrevocable mysterious sacred Each night the black sky and the bright stars were my stunning companions; occasionally Id see their beauty and solemnity so plainly that I'd realize in a piercing way that my mother was right. That someday I WOULD be grateful and that in fact I was grateful now, that I felt something growing in me that was strong and real. Cheryl Strayed stars strong mother "The Dream of a Common Language" by Adrienne Rich. I carried it the entire hike. On my first night, when I felt like I was in too deep, I read the first poem out loud to myself over and over. Cheryl Strayed dream night firsts With fiction, it could be about anything. It just has to be good writing, like Maria Semple's "Where'd You Go, Bernadette," which I read recently. I want to forget I have a book in my hand. Cheryl Strayed writing book hands Every time I read Erin Belieu work I'm pierced in that wonderful way poetry can. Cheryl Strayed erin wonderful way Looking back at my younger self, that I'm not so different than I am now. I was always a seeker. I wanted very ambitiously to be a writer and what happened between now and then is that I continually threw myself in the way of those things that would help me become that, of doing and finding and learning from things that altered me along the way. Cheryl Strayed now-and-then different helping Aside from marrying my husband and having my children, hiking the PCT was the best thing I ever did. The hike very literally forced me to put one foot in front of the other at a time when emotionally I didn't think I could do that. Cheryl Strayed husband children thinking I grew up in northern Minnesota on 40 acres of wooded land 20 miles from the nearest town, and so the wilderness was home. It was not an unsafe place. I had that advantage. But there are so many representations of the wilderness being dangerous. You know, depictions of wild animals attacking people. It's like, "No, we kill those animals in far greater numbers than they kill us." Cheryl Strayed land home animal I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go. Cheryl Strayed On my hike my brain was left to wander. That was often maddening because it was tedious and monotonous sometimes, but then my the mind would take over, and that's when I'd start hearing the music in my head or thinking deeply about people I know or things that I didn't even know I remembered anymore. Those thoughts would be there. I wouldn't have had them otherwise. Cheryl Strayed brain people thinking You can't replicate walking 94 days through the wilderness by yourself with a really heavy pack until you do it. Cheryl Strayed wilderness packs heavy Believe in the integrity and value of the jagged path. We don't always do the right thing on our way to rightness. Cheryl Strayed integrity believe way Being so alone and so silent for so long gave me the opportunity to see how our brains actually work. I think of that so often in my regular life, as I'm always interacting with people or with my computer or phone. Cheryl Strayed phones opportunity thinking I love music and listen to music all the time, but I didn't realize how much my body needed music. I needed it more than sex. Cheryl Strayed realizing body sex Wounded?” was all I could manage. “Yes,” said Pat. “And you’re wounded in the same place. That’s what fathers do if they don’t heal their wounds. They wound their children in the same place. Cheryl Strayed said father children I am an advocate of honesty and openness, and I think deceit is a dangerous seed to plant and let grow in relationships. Cheryl Strayed deceit honesty thinking
