You donโt have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones youโre holding and my dear one, you and I have been granted a mighty generous one.
Cheryl StrayedI 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.
Cheryl StrayedMy mother's last word to me clanks inside me like an iron bell that someone beats at dinnertime: love, love, love, love, love.
Cheryl StrayedWe are savages insides. We all want to be the chosen, the beloved, the esteemed. There isn't a person reading this who hasn't at one point or another had that why not me? voice pop into the interior mix when something good has happened to someone else.
Cheryl StrayedI 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