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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
Survive
Carry
Needed
Back
Amazed
Surprising
Carried

More quotes by Cheryl Strayed

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One of the scandalous things I did was as I read them afterward I would burn them. I loved them, but for practical reasons I had to lighten the load. I burned favorites, like William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. There's a whole list in the back of my book. It's me,[Adolf] Hitler, [Benito] Mussolini, and Pol Pot. We're the book burners.
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He hadn't loved me well in the end, but he'd loved me well when it mattered.
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Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.
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Every time I set foot on that trail, I feel grateful for the PCTA for doing the work it does to protect and preserve it
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You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.
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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.
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I’m a free spirit who never had the balls to be free.
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I taught workshops at universities. I wrote for magazines. This took time and insane amounts of juggling, but it's how I earned a living.
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I'd walk and think about my entire life. I'd find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous.
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So release yourself from that. Don't be strategic or coy. Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word 'love' to the people you love so when it matters the most to say it, you will.
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The people who don’t give up are the people who find a way to believe in abundance rather than scarcity.
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I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.
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People do support themselves as artists and writers, so there's no need to be all doom and gloom about it. You just have to push forward. You have to follow your vision and hope for the best. You have to write for love.
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The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that.
Cheryl Strayed
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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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What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?
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I'll never know, and neither will you of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore.
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Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.
Cheryl Strayed
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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.
Cheryl Strayed
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I had to go on without my mother, even though I was suffering terribly, grieving her.
Cheryl Strayed