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 StrayedThe narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are. They are the things we say back to ourselves to explain our complicated lives. Perhaps the reason you've not yet been able to forgive yourself is that you're still invested in your self-loathing. Perhaps not forgiving yourself is the flip side of your stealing-this-now cycle. Would you be a better or worse person if you forgave yourself for the bad things you did? If you perpetually condemn yourself for being a liar and a thief, does that make you good?
Cheryl StrayedDonโt do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to doI donโt think thereโs a single dumbass thing Iโve done in my adult life that I didnโt know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myselfโas I did every damn timeโthe truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, Iโm learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing, but every so often I get a harsh reminder that Iโve still got work to do.
Cheryl StrayedThat'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 StrayedI hope when people ask what you're going to do with your English degree and/or creative writing degree you'll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters. And then smile very serenely until they say, Oh.
Cheryl Strayed