It Was A Deal I'd Made With Myself Months Before And The Only Thing That Allowed Me To Hike Alone. I
It was a deal I'd made with myself months before and the only thing that allowed me to hike alone. 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. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked. Every time I heard a sound of unknown origin or felt something horrible cohering in my imagination, I pushed it away. I simply did not let myself become afraid. Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn't long before I actually wasn't afraid.
Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
More Posts from Gone-a-strayed and Others
It was really over, I thought. There was no way to go back, to make it stay. There was never that.
Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Be fearless enough to let love transform you.
Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue.
Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.
Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
It is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have.
Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Each night the black sky and the bright stars were my stunning companions; occasionally I’d 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, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.
Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
There is no cure except to live the hell out of our lives, to take it apart, to put it back together, to dig it all up, and then fill the hole. To help ourselves and one another to the best of our abilities. To believe everything entirely, while also calling bullshit for what it is.
Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.
Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
God is not a granter of wishes. God is a ruthless bitch.
Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Learning the Tumblr ropes. Practicing with the words of one very wise woman.
107 posts