tiny beautiful things

Words of wisdom from Cheryl Strayed in her book Tiny Beautiful Things. Just read it.

"She'd have to find a way within herself to not only escape the shit, but to transcend it, and if she wasn't able to do that, then her whole life would be shit, forever and ever and ever. I told her that escaping the shit would be hard, but that if she wanted to not make her mother's life her destiny, she had to be the one to make it happen. She had to do more than hold on. She had to reach. She had to want it more than she'd ever wanted anything. She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal."

"Each and every one of those people rose at a moment in their lives... and at that moment they chose to tell the truth about themselves instead of staying "safe" inside the lie. They realized that, in fact, the lie wasn't safe. That it threatened their existence more profoundly than the truth did."

"This is not your responsibility, but it is your problem."

"The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light."

"There aren't three options. There is only one. As Rilke says, 'You must change your life.'"

"Some things are so sad and wrong and unanswerable that the question must simply stand alone like a spear in the mud."

"But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love that you've got."

"Just close your eyes and remember everything you already know. Let whatever mysterious starlight that guided you this far guide you onward into whatever crazy beauty awaits."

"You don't have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success."

"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."

"You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, or forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love."

"My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger. So is yours... You're grieving it because you loved him truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of his death."

"We are here to build the house. It is our work, our job, the most important gig of all: to make a place that belongs to us, a structure composed of our own moral code. Not the code that only echoes imposed cultural values, but the one that tells us on a visceral level what to do. You know what is right for you and what is wrong for you."

"You're covering your wounds with a classic it's-okay-if-I'm-fucked-up-because-everyone-is-fucked-up canard. It's a lie you've told yourself that has flattened down whatever hurts. But what hurts remains... And until you heal it you are going to have to open and patch and cover and deny that wound over and over again... Its an invitation to do the real work. The kind that doesn't pay a dime, but leaves with a sturdy shelter by the end."

"Understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again."

"I never believed the boys were angry. I believed they were hurt and anger was the safest manifestation of their sorrow."

"I had that feeling you get - there is no word for this feeling - when you are simultaneously happy and sad and angry and grateful and accepting and appalled and every other possible emotion, all smashed together and amplified. Why is there no word for this feeling? Perhaps because the word is "healing" and we don't want to believe that. We want to believe healing is purer and more perfect, like a baby on its birthday."