When I think about what makes me afraid I immediately go to the monster under my bed. There was one when I was a kid. It lived in the house on the hill with us. My bed was high up for some reason and not only did it provide a large space for said monster but it was the reason I broke my collar bone (the first time).
“I am not afraid” is the quote that carried Cheryl Strayed through a 1,100 mile (1,770 km) hike on the Pacific Crest Trail when she was twenty-six years old. She’s always thought of quotes as mini-instruction manuals for the soul. I love that! It’s quality rather than quantity right? She says, “Quotes, at their core, almost always shout YES!”
I took a copy of WILD with me on my annual “Wild Women in the Woods” trip to Killarney in 2012. I remember reading the first pages inside our tent after a long day of canoeing & hiking through incredible wilderness. I couldn’t believe what I was reading … my trip with five women was luxury compared to Strayed’s journey alone on the PCT.
Her story is written with suspense, style, humour and honesty. I don’t have that copy anymore because I had to give it away so my girlfriends could start reading it - I wanted to talk about it!
I personally enjoy getting lost when I travel as I usually find so much more than I was looking for.
TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS offers advice on love and life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed is a girlfriend in book form. Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you; you lose a family member; you’re in debt. Life can also be fantastic: you get a plum job; you write a novel; you win Powerball!
Sugar is the once anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus and now revealed as Cheryl Strayed. This sweet book is filled with humour, insight, compassion and absolute raw honesty - a friend when you need one.
In 2015 Dear Sugar Radio was started and it’s so amazing to hear Cheryl’s voice discuss what readers have written to them … make some time to listen here.
“Nobody will protect you from suffering.”
“Every one last one of us can do better than give up.”
“Be brave enough to break your own heart.”
BE BRAVE ENOUGH is a book you must give to EVERY ONE of your friends! It is a collection of more than one hundred of Strayed’s indelible quotes and thoughts that urges you to toward the incredible capacity for love, compassion, forgiveness, and endurance that is within us all. It’s also a beautiful book that doesn’t need gift wrapping.
“Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.”
I trust myself not to embarass myself too much but back in January 2016 on “Blue Monday” I dressed myself ready to hike and promoted Strayed’s trio of books on Global TV’s The Morning Show. Watch my attempt to get you try something new here.
Stray from the course and try something new!
Why not? What do you have to be afraid of?
