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I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back. And, most surprising of all, that I could carry it.

Cheryl Strayed

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Cheryl Strayed
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: September 17
Blogger
Essayist
Feminist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Spangler
Pennsylvania
Back
Amazed
Surprising
Carried
Survive
Carry
Needed

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It's a long life, sweetheart, and time heals all wounds.
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How wild it was, to let it be.
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I walked all those miles, I learned all those lessons. It's as if my new life was the gift I got at the end of a long struggle.
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Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn't long before I actually wasn't afraid.
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Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.
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But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love that you've got.
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Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it's one thing and one thing only: it's doing what you have to do.
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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.
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Every time I read Erin Belieu work I'm pierced in that wonderful way poetry can.
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I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me? The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth that it was true, I said it anyway: No one.
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You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that's all.
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I'm reading George Saunders's story collection, Tenth of December. He was my mentor at the University of Syracuse. The stories are mind-blowing like everyone says.
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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.
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My mother's death put me in touch with my most savage self. As I've grown up and come to terms with her death and accepted it, the pieces of her that I keep don't exist materially.
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...the other half of rising—the very half that makes rising necessary—is having been nailed to the cross.
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I didn't feel sad or happy. I didn't feel proud or ashamed. I only felt that in spite of all the things I'd done wrong, in getting myself here, I'd done right.
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Write like a motherfucker.
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What’s important is that you make the leap. Jump high and hard with intention and heart. Pay no mind to the vision that the commission made up. It’s up to you to make your life. Take what you have and stack it up like a tower of teetering blocks. Build your dream around that.
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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.
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I receive a lot of letters like yours. Most go on in length, describing all sorts of maddening situations and communications in bewildered detail, but in each there is the same question at its core: Can I convince the person about whom I am crazy to be crazy about me? The short answer is no. The long answer is no.
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