Cheryl Strayed: “I Had to Lose EVERYTHING to Find Myself”

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1:52Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives.

2:38Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I think about today's guest pretty regularly, actually. I think about her especially when I am putting a book out, because I read a line in one of her books that actually my friend Jenna from high school, who I'm going to see in a couple of weeks at our high school reunion, gave to me. If you haven't read Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed, you are missing out. It's one of the great self-help books of advice that I've ever read. And in this, Cheryl Strayed is talking to a young writer who's talking about all this stuff. And Cheryl points out that this person has confused writing with publishing, with being a writer.

3:21and this is classic stoicism, right? Writing is in your control. You can be a writer in prison. You can be a writer on a blacklist. You can be a writer anywhere for any reason. Being an author, being published, that's something that the market decides a little bit, that publishers decide, that bookstores decide, that culture decides, right? Like whether people read your stuff is not up to you. Whether you pour yourself into it and do the work is up to you. I've had books that have surprised me with how well they've done. I've had disappointments. I've had arguments with my publisher. There have been moments where I thought my stuff wouldn't get out in the world.

3:59But I come back to this lovely little distinction, which was so helpful to me all the time. And then the other thing I come back to from that book, which is one of my all-time favorites, is she has this line about how in our 20s, we're becoming who we're going to become, so we might as well not become an asshole. Again, classic stoicism, right? Virtue is not something you are. It's something you do. You're becoming who you're going to be. So you might as well be the person that you want to be. And you definitely shouldn't be the kind of person that you don't want to be. Cheryl Strayed is a mega best-selling author for a reason.

4:40At 22, she thought she'd lost everything. She'd lost her mother. Her marriage was falling apart. Actually, I believe she was in the middle of destroying said marriage. And with basically nothing to lose, she made this impulsive decision. She had no experience, no training, driven only by determination, some sense of purpose that she would hike the thousand or so miles of the Pacific Coast Trail, Mojave Desert, all the way to the top of California, to Oregon, Washington. And she'd do it alone. And this became that massive bestselling book, Wild from Lost to Find on the Pacific Crest Trail. It became a huge movie.

5:16As I said, her collection of columns, Dear Sugar, was put into a book called Tiny Beautiful Things, which I love. We sell it in the bookstore. It's one of my all-time favorites. She has other novels like Torch. She has a best-selling collection called Brave Enough. And her books have sold millions of copies all over the world, have been translated into 40 languages. She's a great author, a great thinker. And as I said, her stuff has influenced me in a really big way. Obviously, I remember more from the books, but sometimes it's just a singular line. This line stays with you. This idea stays with you and it changes you.

5:51And that's, I think, the power of writing and why I've wanted to have her on the podcast for a very long time. And it was a great conversation. I wish it could have been in person. It was remote, but I still think it went really well. And you are going to love this interview. I promise you You can follow her on Instagram at Cheryl Strayed. Check out her work on her website, CherylStrayed.com. Let's get into it. My wife's doing story time downstairs at the bookstore. I'm going to hear my children yelling and being crazy. So I might go rescue her. So this interview is going to be a little shorter than normal.

6:23And we'll just get into it, which I think is fine because it's an awesome interview. And as I said, you're going to love it. Thanks to Cheryl for coming on. And seriously, if you haven't read Tiny Beautiful Things slash Dear Sugar, you're missing out. Wild is good. It's famous for a reason. but Tiny Beautiful Things is one of my all-time favorites. I'll link to that in today's show notes. Talk to y 'all soon.

6:45I'm excited. I'm a huge fan. Thank you so much. You're so sweet. I saw on Instagram one time that you recommended Tiny Beautiful Things, and I'm your fan too, Ryan. I love your podcast. Oh, well, thank you. And just, you know, I'm thrilled to be on. Well, you know what? I think my favorite line in that book, and I was going to ask you about it, my favorite line in your book is, in your 20s, you're becoming who you're going to be. So you might as well not be an asshole. That is true. That is true. I mean, I think about that, that decade. And of course, the fact is, we're constantly evolving. And it's always our job to grow.

7:24But I think anyone who's, you know, made it to 30, can look back at their 20s and realize just what a powerfully intense intense emotional journey our 20s are for most of us because you are becoming. Most of us are not secure enough in our sense of self and identity that we know exactly who we are and we need to kind of experiment with some things and try this out and try that out. And we have to reckon with our past and our childhood. There's just a lot of emotional work in our 20s. And yeah, you might as well pretty early on, I think make a decision to have character be a really important thing, virtue, a very important thing, your ethical code.

8:06And as I write a lot about in my books and Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things both, is that doesn't mean that you always do the right thing. That very often the way we learn what our ethical code is, is that we violate it or we disappoint ourselves or we do make a decision for which we have to apologize or make amends or change our behavior. Maybe the specific age number in that quote is almost a red herring, right? Because we're always becoming who we're going to be or who we are. And so the choices that we make day to day or the choices that we make right now, they really matter because that's who we are.

8:48So yeah, you can make mistakes. You'll screw up. You're not always going to be perfect. But there is, I think, sometimes this mistaken assumption that we just are who we are or we are who we've been as opposed to, no, it's who we're going to choose to be in this moment, who we're going to choose to be going forward. And that our character is really something we do as opposed to something we inherently have or were born with. Absolutely. And this is something I talk about a lot. But again, in both my work is to sugar, but also as the author of Wild, a book that is about deciding as a young woman to walk alone in the wilderness.

9:29And one of the most common responses I've gotten over, you know, these years that it's, I've had so many conversations with people about it is they say, I couldn't do that because I'm not brave enough. And I always say, you're wrong. You're absolutely wrong. You know, courage is not some just sort of inherent characteristic that, you know, here are the brave people in this corner and here are all the rest of us. It's actually something that you cultivate. I always say, you know, one of my things I talk about a lot when I teach workshops is cultivating courage. And that word cultivate is probably more important than the word courage because it is something we practice and we get better at.

10:09It's literally like the way you lift weights and you get stronger day by day. Courage works like that, too. Well, the idea that it's it's a verb, not a noun, right, that it's an action that you take in and the time. I mean, Aristotle talks about this, that virtue is a is a is an action. It's a thing you build as opposed to, again, this thing that you you simply are or aren't. And the bad news is if you've made a lot of bad decisions, you've done a lot of bad things. you can't just tell yourself, oh, but I'm a good person. You know, I didn't mean it. Right. Right. But it means that you can decide to be something new and better now.

10:49That's always. I mean, and that's what's so powerful to me when, I mean, that's why I think so many of the stories of redemption are so powerful for us because I think, especially when we're younger, there is this sense that you can think like, okay, I ruined my life. You know, I, I set off down the path that now I'm ashamed of or I regret. And now it's the end. And of course, I'm 56 now. And one of the great wisdoms of age is that we can always begin again. We can always start again. That doesn't mean you could always like do terrible things and then be like, okay, you know, clean slate. Sure.

11:25That was who I used to be. Sorry. No, but it is to say like, okay, I can do better and I will. And then you have to really genuinely apply some real thought and agency and consideration to that. And you said something about doing. I think that that's such a powerful thing to remember too, that putting into the body and into action, those values or beliefs that you espouse is such a powerful thing. And sometimes, like when I was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, I had a mantra, I am not afraid. I only said it when I was absolutely terrified. But those words, I am not afraid, you know, we're telling my body, be not afraid body, go forward.

12:13And I think that when I have been the happiest, and again, and my work is to sugar, when I talk to people who are suffering to the greatest degree, it is when their actions are contrary to their words, or their exterior is contrary to what they're feeling inside when, you know, they have that true voice inside and they're living the untrue voice. And that's, that's, that's the path to suffering really. Yeah. If you weren't afraid, then there wouldn't be the opportunity for courage, right? The whole point is that it's scary. And then you transcend or you push through that fear into doing the thing that, you know, on some level you want and on another level you don't want.

12:57But if it wasn't scary, then, then there's no opportunity for bravery. Right. And I think there's something in the way we've all been, I think we've internalized these lessons in this culture that are about opposition and dichotomy that I think is a little bit false. You know, to me, courage and fear are not over here on opposite sides. They sit next to each other. And it's for the reason you just so beautifully said that, you know, we can't be brave unless we have fear. And fear is such a wonderful opportunity to allow us to show us to ourselves what we're capable of. You know, it's kind of like the obstacle is the way, you know, the path to those most beautiful, powerful, meaningful things are very often via fear, suffering, doubt, anxiety, all of those things that we think of as the opposite of those emotions.

13:49Yeah. I mean, hearing you say that, it's like all of the virtues have to be paired with their opposite or with their temptation, or there's not much virtue in it, right? Right. So so, you know, wisdom isn't impressive is maybe not the right word, but wisdom isn't virtuous without the opportunity to be the fool instead. Right. If ignorance is not also an option, why is it impressive or why is it meaningful to pursue wisdom? You know, without without something scary or without the option to do the wrong thing, you choose justice or you choose courage. The whole point is that there's a choice. Hercules comes to the crossroads and he has to choose between one path or the other.

14:32It's that choice that makes the right choice meaningful and purposeful. Absolutely. And I think the wisest people know that. And to me, the wisest people I know are, the word humility always comes to mind as the threat. And to me, that's about that kind of daily remembering that we're always making choices about who we are. you know, which brings us back, you know, that advice that I said, you might as well not be an asshole. You know, I think in that same bit of advice I said, you know, cause it was somebody saying like, how do I, you know, I'm in my twenties, how do I be good? And you know, um, it's such simple things, but it's also like, you know, in the tiniest way, what path you walk, I recommended you go into a bookstore and buy 10 books of poetry and read them and see what happens.

15:26And so many people, since I wrote that, have been like, okay, tell me which 10 books. And I'm like, no, that defeats the whole purpose. And to me, I think that part of that seeking is about humility, is saying like, I'm just going to wander around in the wilderness of this bookstore, or library, and I'm going to find something that speaks to me, even in just a glimmer of a way, and I'm going to be humble before it and take it in. And some things are going to change my life and some things are not. And that's part of the journey, you know? And so I, you know, I think that, again, that's not something we just need to do in our 20s.

16:02People in their 30s and 40s and beyond benefit from that as well. Well, going to this idea of the noun versus the verb, I think my other, one of my other favorite lines from you, I think it's in Dear Sugar or from a Dear Sugar letter, but some young writer was asking you for advice or explaining something. And you pointed out, and I think about this all the time. You pointed out that they were confusing writing and publishing. And I think about that all the time because I've begun, I was telling someone the other day that I'm very ambitious as a writer and I'm no longer ambitious as an author.

16:37Like writing is the part of it that I control and publishing being an author, that's for other people. That's a label that other people have. That's what the New York Times decides. That's what the sales figures show at the end of the year. But my ambition is now directed more at the part of it that's up to me, that I get to control. And I think we often, as creatives, we make the wrong, we fail to distinguish between the process and the outcome. I think people in life tend to do that, which is they're confusing the part of it that's not up to them with the part of it that is up to them. And they want lots of advice on the part that's not up to them.

17:15Absolutely. And I mean, that's, I think the most essential core piece of writing advice that I give again and again, is be wildly, profoundly, deeply ambitious about the work itself. Because it is, as you said, it is the only thing that you have control of. And this was, you know, really, we get so confused because again, And so many of us have internalized these ideas about the definition of success, which is almost always, at least in our culture, defined outside of us. And it's dependent on the judgment of other people, right? You know, are you famous? Are you financially rewarded for your work?

17:56Are you rich and famous? That's success in America, right? And many other countries too. And of course, you know, that never really works. It certainly doesn't work for writers and artists of any kind. But I would say anyone in any field, you know, to me, the measure of success, I always say, you know, can I answer yes to these two questions? Did I make good on my intentions? Did I do what I said I would do? Yes or no? And did I do it? Did I give it everything I had? Did I do it with all of my intelligence? Yes, that's success to me. And I really came to that when I was struggling to finish my first book.

18:36It's a novel called Torch. And I, you know, had spent my life dreaming of being a great American novelist. And, you know, for years, everything I said I was doing was I'm writing my first novel. I'm writing my first novel. And I got to this point where I was almost done with it. I was like, you know, 75 % the way through. All I had was this last bit to write. and I found myself unable to write it. I just was in really a dark night of the soul. I thought, you know, maybe I've been lying to myself. Maybe I actually don't want to write a book because otherwise why am I spinning my wheels and procrastinating?

19:13And I had this realization that I had to surrender to my own mediocrity, which sounds terrible and not inspiring. But what I mean by that is I had to do that thing you just elucidated. I had to let go of all the parts of the story that were about being on the New York Times bestseller list or getting published or finding an agent or making money. I had to let go of all those dreams. And I had to hold really tight to the one dream that was within my grasp, which was writing this book, making good on my intentions, and giving it my all. And what that could mean, what I realized when I say surrender to my own mediocrity, It could mean that I did all that and I wrote a mediocre book that never made it.

19:58You just didn't make the cut. Yeah. And guess what, though? I would so much rather live with that than live with not finishing it because I was terrified of what the outcome would be. And so I've really held fast to that for all these years as a writer. I always persevere through all the doubt and anxiety because, of course, there is doubt and anxiety. And I remind myself almost daily of that definition of success that I have, you know, that it is not about something external. It's about what's within. It hit me, you know, working on a book one time. You go and you put in your day's labor and you're not really any closer to being finished.

20:37And these things just kind of exist. I don't know about you, but I save each draft each day as a new file. Right. So in case I ever screw anything up and I need to go back. But I remember just looking in Dropbox and seeing just days and days and days in a row of this manuscript that I didn't really feel any closer to finishing. And I was struggling with it and I wasn't having a lot of fun. And I just remember thinking, is this only worth it if I finish? Like, is this only, am I doing all this so that it will be done, then I'll get paid, then it'll come out, then it'll do well. And then all of this misery will have been worth it.

21:14That means that what I'm doing today is not actually in and of itself justifiable, right? Like if I got hit by a bus or if I decided to do something else, all of this would have been a waste because it didn't end with that thing being justified in some way. And that's just struck me as a strange way to spend your time given that you don't control the outcome, right? You could get hit by a bus. You could get canceled. You could get blacklisted. Your publisher could go out of business. There could be a natural disaster and people don't care about books anymore. So many things could prevent that thing from happening.

21:54And so how do you find a way that you can say today was a success day to day in and of itself? And I think your standard of, hey, did I do my best? And did I realize what I set out to do that day or what my intention was for that day? And I think what's really empowering about that, and I think this pertains to a lot more than just writing, is it allows you to be a winner every day. It allows you to have success every day as opposed to, you know, putting all this down, down, down, down. And then one day somebody else getting to anoint all of that as having been worth it or not. Right. And, you know, I think that the way I persevere through that is I really, truly, genuinely believe that I will forever be an apprentice.

22:46I never want to stop considering myself an apprentice to the craft and art of writing. And so even if those things happen that, you know, like even if I've everything I've written for the last, you know, whatever number of years is like, well, it, that, that doesn't then turn into a book or the last, you know, the last five years, I've actually been writing a lot of screenplays. And that's a really interesting lesson, you know, being hired to write a screenplay in Hollywood, I've learned does not mean that that, that, it's like, and I've said, where does that go? Like I've written whole, created whole worlds that are just like, you know, on my computer, on those pages in some producer's office and who knows what will happen to them.

23:27And, you know, I only say that to myself when I'm feeling kind of cranky and doubtful, but really in the end, what I can honestly say is, wow, I learned so much doing that work. And I trust that someday it will inform something else I'm doing. You know, the apprentice is one who's like, you know, you don't, if you're apprenticing yourself to a furniture maker, you know, you have to build a lot of chairs that aren't very good chairs, you know, and that's how you learn how to make the best chair ever. And so I think that that happens over and over again for all of us. And the more that we can come to peace with that, the better we'll be able to work.

24:08And also feel, you know, because I do think that everything I've ever written teaches me how to write the next thing.

24:23Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

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25:50Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at The Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that, but I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

26:31My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for Good Inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It Over the Holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr.

27:08Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

27:28I do imagine at this point as a author, you can publish pretty much anything you want. Your publisher is going to give you the green light because your track record. Has working on film challenged this sort of, hey, I'm going to focus on writing, not publishing, has it challenged that? Because I imagine you can say this stuff to yourself as much as you want, and then somebody else getting to decide whether your thing is a go or not. That's heartbreaking. Yeah. And that's Hollywood. But that's why, Ryan, I'm back to really working on my next book now. I'm like, okay, goodbye, Hollywood, for a while.

28:03I'm just going to write my next book, which I've had on the burner for a while, but I put it on the back burner to do this Hollywood stuff. And yeah, I'm excited about that. And I do think, you know, however, I want to say that a lot of people think like, wow, you know, now that you had this big bestsellers, like you can just write whatever you want. And that's true. That's true. I can, I have a lot easier. It's easier for me to pass through that gate. But what's interesting to me is just on the ground level, me alone in this room, my office in Portland, Oregon, contending with, you know, the, the, the computer, the blank computer screen and having to write the next thing and having, you know, the same, like, I, I don't know if you do this when I'm writing a lot.

28:49Like I actually kind of think about my writing all night, like while I'm sleeping, it's not quite dreaming, but my mind is still working and I'll like wake up in the middle of the night and think, oh my gosh, that's, nobody's going to want to read that. That's too depressing. How can you find some humor? How, you know, they're going to all be, they're going to say, this isn't wild, you know, and like all of the doubts go, they, they start yammering to me in the night and I'm not in bed thinking like, wow, I've written an international bestseller. Everyone can't wait. It's the doubt. And so I love, I actually think that's a gift, you know, because I don't think you write from a place of arrogance and confidence.

29:25I think you write from a place of fear and humility. And so I do that. Even though my, again, that external landscape has changed for me as a writer, the internal landscape is the same. Yeah, I think sometimes we see egotistical artists, entrepreneurs, etc., you know, even a Steve Jobs, you know, and our vision of him was him on stage presenting this finished product that's mind blowing. And I think what we're not seeing is that backstage, he was probably like, this sucks. What about this? As egotistical as the presenting performing figure is, the rock star or whatever, there's no way they're creating good art from that point of view.

30:12That has to come from a place of humility because it's fundamentally about relating to other people. And it's also nobody spits out good first drafts. Like even the most talented people need to edit and refine. And, well, could it be a little bit better? And what about this? And so if you're not familiar with it, the looks can be very deceiving because you just assume the person feels good and comfortable and it comes very easily to them. I would argue that almost all of them are pretty tortured while they're actually doing it. Absolutely. And also many of those same people who are making those assumptions about, if you asked them, they would admit what I just admitted to you, you know, that sense of doubt.

30:57I mean, it is fascinating to me. I would say, you know, having had the experience I've had and, you know, how many stories people project onto me. You know, whenever I teach, I teach these big writing workshops. And when I share my own sense of doubt or anxiety or fear about my writing, I always get these comments from the students like, oh my goodness, like I had no idea that you felt the way I just assumed it was easy for you. And I'm like, no, you know, we do make assumptions about people in the public eye. And very often those assumptions are absolutely not true. Yeah. It never actually gets easy, whatever the thing is.

31:34It never actually gets easy. It's still the task. And I do think that's why it's very healthy to attach yourself to a profession that is hard like that, because that can help keep the ego at bay. You know, though, I have to admit, I've so many times I've been like, why? Why did I have to be a writer? You know, plumbers like agonize about their work. Do they get woken up in the middle of the night thinking about it? I don't know. Maybe they do. All the plumbers will now write in. I would guess the ones who are meant to be plumbers definitely do. Do you know what I mean? You're called to be a plumber, yes.

32:10Yes, yes. If you are endlessly fascinated with the thing, the lucky part is that you are going to be endlessly fascinated with what you do. The bad part is you will always be fascinated and perplexed and frustrated with what you do because it's never as good as you want it to be. And that's sort of the double-edged sword of the calling. True. Very true. Sometimes you're like, could it not be calling me? I would like to be a normal person for a few minutes. Yeah. Stop knocking on the door writing. You know, I just want to be a normal person. But it's also really, I mean, honestly, I do think of it as like the most healing gift of my life.

32:47Sure. Because, you know, not only have I found the deepest, most profound consolation and illumination through books and literature of all sorts, but then also in my own writing, you know, that's always a healing act to write. And then, you know, the coolest thing, forget about all the exciting, you know, stuff that happened in my books. The most exciting thing to me of all always is the people who come up to me and say, you changed my life, or you helped me through this, or because of this, I did this because of something you wrote. And I think that's just really the most gratifying. That's success to me.

33:25You know, I mean, that's the final thing. Did you actually make others feel more human? Did you actually offer others some light or some sense of connectedness when they felt the most alone? Yeah, there's something magical, supernatural about what literature can do. So the founding story of Stoicism is that this young merchant suffers a shipwreck. He ends up in Athens, and he's walking through the Agora, and he sees a bookseller. And the bookseller is reading this story about Socrates. And it's in this moment that Zeno, he's the founder of Sozin, that Zeno, suddenly a prophecy that he'd heard as a young man makes sense to him.

34:07The oracle at Delphi had said that you will begin to become wise when you have conversations with the dead. And he realizes that that's what literature is, right? Socrates is no longer alive, but it sounds like he is because he's hearing those words come through another person in the Agora. And there's something about book that I think is so magical. Obviously, you see it in painting and music, too. But, you know, like so many of my favorite books, the person that is teaching me this thing has not been on the planet for decades or centuries. And yet here I am inside their world, inside their mind.

34:45That's just a magical thing. It's unbelievable. It blows me away endlessly. And I just, I talk about that so much when I talk to, you know, writers at beginning stages and when I teach my workshops, because I think it's, you know, so important always to remember when you are a writer that you, it's an act we do alone, usually. We are part of this tremendous tradition that goes back to the beginning of us, the beginning of humans. And, you know, I always make sure to teach the ancients. You know, in my workshop recently, I read a passage from Medea at Euripides' play Medea, where, you know, Medea is about to slaughter her children.

35:25And there's this wonderful kind of moment where she's stealing herself to do this terrible thing, this thing that she knows that will lead forever to her agony. And she's having this conversation with herself about how to do something that feels like this impossible, painful thing. And, you know, what's so powerful about that, I mean, that's just one example of so many. But what's so powerful about that is even though most of us would never and will never be in a situation where we slaughter our children, there's her humanity, her suffering, willing herself to do something, that internal monologue she has.

36:00It's a timeless experience. It's a timeless human experience. when we read, you know, Romeo and Juliet about love, we are like anyone who's ever been in love relates to a lot of those lines. Right. And this is what's so powerful, I think about the ancients and, and what puts us, you know, we get to touch that thread. We get to grab hold of that thread. When I said what I hope always is my writing makes people feel more human. It's about that. It's about stepping into and seeing the universal experience that's true not just now, but that's true through all time. Have you read that poem, Books Are Door-Shaped?

36:37I don't think so. Oh, it's books are door-shaped portals carrying me across oceans and centuries, helping me feel less alone. That's right. Just the image of the book. Oh yeah, it is. It's like a little door or a little window into this world, somebody else's world or a different era or a different understanding, a different country. It's time travel. It's the ability to communicate with the dead. It's all of these things. And then you bump into someone and they go, I haven't read a book since high school. And you just go, that's insane. There's a superpower on the table and you're like, Yeah, absolutely.

37:21And it's interesting that you use the word portal. I always call the books a portal too. And I think every art form has, you know, like one thing that they do better than any other art form. And without question, writing is, you know, the portal to not who we are, but who we are really. We get to step inside subjectivity and interiority. We get to see, if we are reading a book that you've written, Ryan, and you're telling us the story about the births of your children, it's the story that we get access to your body and your mind and your spirit in a way that we could not any other way. And I think that that's, and it's right there for us.

38:01We get to see what people were really thinking. That's one of my favorite writing prompts. You know, write us, you know, tell us what you were really thinking. And which is always great. It's funny or it's dark or it's painful or it's, you know, because it's real. It's the deepest, truest stuff. It takes us to that deepest level. Yeah, that is interesting. Every medium, every art form is really good at one thing above the other. It's like music. One note can evoke a whole array of emotion that it might take 500 pages in a book to even hint at. It's like in Spinal Tap, like E minor is the saddest of the notes, he says.

38:41I sometimes get so jealous when I hear even just the opening notes of a song or just a small refrain. I just go, I would kill to be able to do that. You could pile all of my work on top of itself, and I don't think I've approached so clearly accomplishing what they were accomplishing in this five-second snippet of music. There's just something powerful about that. But every medium is uniquely powerful in some way. Yeah. I was going to say the exact same thing about music is it's the emotion, you know, and it's always funny, you know, when they start playing like, you know, you're watching a show or you just hear like a really, really kind of sappy, you know, song and you're and you find yourself like you're getting teared up, even though you're like, I don't even like this song, but it's evoking this emotion.

39:29Or, you know, I recently my I have a 19 year old daughter and she discovered the cure a a couple of years ago, which is like a band I listened to a lot in high school. And I was listening to it again. I hadn't listened to it. And I was like, no wonder I was so depressed as a teenager. I'm sick girl. It just makes you feel, you know, it's so funny that, you know, how it can evoke so many different emotions or, you know, a happy song can, you know, suddenly you're all like jazzed up. And I love that about music. It's a powerful, powerful thing that, and that's why it's also so consoling to us. And so, you know, we turn to it when we need consolation.

40:09No, I was just thinking, yeah, like pictures of you. If you listen to that song on repeat, you're just like, this is a contained world. And I could just live in this thing. It's a mood. Yes. Yeah, exactly. It's a mood that matches the hair and the makeup and all of it. Yeah. And well, that's why, too, like, you know, that's why we have soundtracks for films and TV shows, because they know they're like, OK, we don't trust that the writing and the acting is going to be enough to like make you ball your brains out. So we're going to add a layer of music. You know, I always find that I'm like, please stop the music.

40:42It's too much. Yeah. Like if as a writer, you could be accompanied by a soundtrack, I don't think you would have to be as good as a writer to hit the same level of resonance. Do you listen to music when you write? Yes. But somewhat weirdly when I write, so there'll be a song and then I listen to that song on repeat for that day. And I might listen to that song 200 times over the course of several days, or I don't know the math, but the, but the point is I pick songs and then I just ring them completely dry. And then I move on to the next song. And then sometimes those songs will come back on like in my Spotify wrapped or whatever.

41:23I'll be like, Oh, it's weird. I listened to that song so many times, but, but for me to creatively, it can't be a shuffle. It has to be a loop of the same thing over and over and over. And can it have lyrics? Definitely. No, no lyrics all the time. But it has to get me to some emotional plane that allows me to be creative. And sometimes it's sad. Sometimes it's, you know, sweet. Sometimes it's what it doesn't have. It's not a specific emotional plane that it has to be on, but but it has to be something other than like normal waking life. Yeah, I've done that. I don't always do that. But it's, I have done that I know exactly what you're speaking of.

42:03And, and it's really interesting to me, like, I wrote this essay called the love of my life, many years ago. And I listened to Beth Orton's song Central Reservation, you know, probably, you know, in the two weeks that it took me to write that essay, I listened to that song over and over, probably 1000 times. And I couldn't tell you why. It's not like that song is in that essay. It was a vibe. It was a tone. And I would just listen to it. I didn't listen to it while I was actually writing. But if I'd stand up to get a cup of tea or something, I'd listen to it a few times, go back to work, listen to it a few times, go back to work.

42:44And it was just, yeah, it was a vibe. And I've had that a couple of other times. But yeah, and this essay, The Love of My Life, it's online somewhere. It's in the Sun magazine, and that was in Best American Essays. But it was really this big, powerful essay about my mom's death and grief and everything I did after that. Like, you know, it's a raw, powerful essay about my promiscuity and using heroin and all of these things. And like I said, there's no direct thread to that song, to the work. But they lived in the same world together while I was creating it. So there's like a frequency you're tuning into.

43:20Yeah, exactly. There must be some, maybe, you know, some neurologist who's listening will be like, this is what this is, you know, that they could explain that to us. But it's pretty fascinating. I found that essay very moving. And when I was reading it, I thought of, you know, people tend to think of the Stoics as sort of unfeeling and unemotional. But Seneca writes these three essays, which are called his consolations, once to his mother, once to a friend, once to the daughter of a friend. And it's weird to call it a genre. But if we could say that losing someone and being a wreck about it is one of the most timeless of human experiences, it would make sense that like a love song or a Western or a fantasy, that that would be an enduring genre because it is an enduring part of the human experience that hits us so suddenly and overwhelmingly.

44:15and we are just not equipped to deal with it. Flooded with that overwhelming emotion or sense of pain or suffering. Yeah, the intensity is not like any other human experience. No. And there's always that feeling of, I can't go on. And I think maybe the more painful thing, as I've written in a few different forms, that feeling, I think when we feel like we can't go on, what we're really thinking and knowing is that we will. Yes. And it's going to hurt. And it's going to be not the way we wanted it to be. That we wish it had been different and it can't be. Yeah. What's that Samuel Beckett thing?

45:00Like, I can't go on. I will go on or I must go on. We sort of know, we know we're not serious. We're not actually going to lay down and die, even though it feels like we could or should. And so there's something, yeah, there's something disorienting about this overwhelming feeling that we don't quite trust on some level or that we're able to, it feels like everything to us now, but we also have enough experience in life to presume that we probably won't feel like this forever. Right. I mean, I think there's two kinds of grief like that. You know, one of them, like romantic heartbreak, for example.

45:39Most of us, the feeling we have when our hearts are broken, like, I can't go on. I can't go on. I'll never love again. And of course, you know, time passes, we fall in love with somebody else, and we realize we were absolutely wrong about that. Yeah. And I think that the more, you know, when you lose someone who's essential to you, when somebody dies, like, for example, my mom, you know, that's a different kind of grief in that it is true. It is true that my life changed forever. And it is true that I would forever suffer for having lost my mom so young. Like those things are true. What I was, so I wasn't wrong about that.

46:15What I was wrong about is that I couldn't endure my suffering. And so I think that so much about, you know, that bigger grief, that more long-term grief, like, you know, when you lose a child, or I always say, when you lose somebody who's essential to you, it's not that you will ever get over it and it will be okay that that person died. It will be that you will learn how to accept it and live with it and bear that sorrow. And also, I think in the final chapter, turn that suffering into something healing and something beautiful and something powerful, rather than something that makes you weaker.

46:54And those things can exist at once. And that's why so much of, I wish we had a better way to talk about, to help people understand what grief is and to talk about grief. Certainly I try to do that in my work a lot, but I do think it's not this getting over, letting go. It's about accepting and holding, strangely, and learning how to carry, learning how to carry that burden that it is your fate to be required to bear.

47:31In one of Seneca's grief essays, he's writing to the daughter of a friend that he had lost. And he's saying, like, look, it's understandable that you would be grieving your father as intensely as you are. But he's like, you know, I sort of heard that every time his name comes up, you're just a mess, right? You just like fall to pieces. And he says, and I think about this a lot, he says, you know, is that what your father would want? Right. Right. Like, like, obviously, you know, if I died and someone said, by the way, your family's totally fine. They just shrugged it off. I'd be like, hey, that's not how this is supposed to work.

48:07But at the same time, if you said, hey, years later, the mere mention of your name is devastating and your memory haunts them like a ghost, I'd be like, well, okay, I don't want that. You would not want your memory to be this immense burden on people. The whole point is that you should have had a positive impact on your life. And I think about that all the time, this sort of tension between it's very sweet and beautiful that you feel so strongly and that there is such a big hole. And at the same time, if they have to physically exist and be alive for them to deliver any happiness or goodness in your life, that's not a great sign either.

48:49You should be able to not exist without them, but their impact on you, their positive impact on you should continue even when they are not there. Yeah. And the good news is, is I think that's what happens with most people when they grieve, you know, that you have to move through that time where you feel like I can't do it. And it's tremendously tumultuous. And in some ways, too, like when I look back in my early 20s, you know, I was a senior in college when my mom died. And those couple of years after that, I really, you know, I really grieved her in ways that were, you know, I just was trying to in such an outward way, like ruin my life to sort of show the world.

49:29Oh, this ordinary woman who nobody, you know, had ever heard of or knows. I mean, like just the people who loved her, like to say to the world, we lost something big when we lost my mom. Of course, that's how everyone feels when they lose someone who they love like that. And so I thought, okay, I'll show the world how much this means by ruining my life. Now, of course, I didn't know this consciously. I look back now and I think that's what I was doing. And then pretty quickly, I mean, that's what led to my hike on the Pacific Crest Trail is I realized really just what you said is like, actually, how do I honor my mom?

50:04Is it to ruin my life or is it to thrive? Is it to be the woman she raised me to be? Is it to make good on her best intentions and all the sacrifices she made in raising me and my siblings? And I knew the answer right away. As soon as that question came into my head, I was like, okay, Cheryl, it is time to reverse course and find your footing again. And which is, I found my, literally found my footing on the Pacific Crest Trail. And that was the, that was the awakening for me. And again, it wasn't that then like, okay, now it's just fine. And I've never sat about not having my mom, you know, in this world with me, but rather, oh, okay, I can bear this pain and it, and it is real sorrow and it will pop up from time to time in ways that will make me burst into tears.

50:54But it's going to end up being actually, I mean, the strange paradox of losing my mom was it's the worst thing that's ever happened to me. And it has brought me also the most profound, profound gifts. And in the form of self-understanding, compassion for others, empathy for others, an ability to see the world in ways that I wouldn't have been asked to see if I hadn't experienced that loss. And I think that that's true of all of us when we go through a loss such as like the death of somebody who is essential and beloved to us is if we can stay awake and open and brave enough, there will be gifts, you know, there will be gifts given to us by that thing that was taken away.

51:42Did you ever watch that show Intervention? I didn't. It was obviously a show about people with an addiction and it sort of has every episode has the sort of same arc, which is right. Start portraying this person in the midst of the final throes of their addiction, that their family is finally intervening. And then they start to tell the person's story. And then there's always this moment, the music shifts exactly. And you're like, ah, okay, this is the moment where they explain why this person became this way. Right. It's like, uh, this person was molested by a priest or there was a car accident and they lost their little brother or, you know, this person was a successful stockbroker.

52:24And then the market turned, there's always some kind of moment and it's usually like a grief or a loss or a betrayal. And then that's what sets in motion the downward spiral. And I kind of think about that a lot where it's like, okay, I don't control that this happened, but I do have some control over the direction of where this spiral is going. Is it an upward spiral or is it a downward spiral? Is this going to be the thing where when people go, hey, what happened to Ryan? And you're like, well, that happened. And that explains all of it in a negative way. I think that we just experience these things in life and it's not fair and it's awful and it's heartbreaking.

53:11And really all we get to decide is like, is this the beginning of the end or is this some kind of a new beginning? That's where we have some agency. see. And it very, I mean, all the epic, all the, all the tales throughout time, it's like the beginning of the end is also the beginning of the beginning. Like that, that very many of us have had to reach some kind of rock bottom moment in order to rise up. And very often, once you do rise up and look back, like there is some gratitude again, not that you would say like, I'm, I, I'm glad that this terrible thing happened. You wouldn't have chosen.

53:50That's right. But some gratitude for the experience that allowed you to see what you couldn't see without it and allowed you to find strength and courage that you didn't believe you had before you were asked to find it. And, you know, I think that so often one thing I'm always sort of correcting people about when when they've asked to talk to me about wild and my hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. They're like, did you you know that that I sort of took this journey and I and I went from being this like terrible person who had messed up everything to this like this good person who is now strong and brave.

54:28And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. You know, I think that really to me, that journey, and I think it's a journey that is probably more realistically what most of us take, is that really what I did is I was finding my way back to my strength, back to my courage. I was, all of that was already there. I really genuinely, genuinely believe that we all have within us everything we need, everything we need to survive the hardest things. And the journey isn't about, you know, discovering it from some outside source. It's about learning how to trust yourself, to accept suffering and difficulty and seek beauty and doing things, of course, that will put you in situations where you're asked to do that.

55:14I mean, a long walk alone in the wilderness is a mighty good way to find the incredible, the extraordinary inside of you. You know, again, I'm not the only person who's said that, but I'm certainly one of them. You know, my long walk is in a grand tradition of many other, you know, walks like that. And the reason that we've been doing it throughout time is because it actually works. Yeah, there's a Churchill thing where he says, you know, every prophet has to go into the wilderness. Yeah. That's where psychic dynamite is made. There's some period where it all goes sideways, where you didn't get what you wanted.

55:51You had to suffer. You had to go outside. You had to remake yourself. That is a part of the hero's journey or the arc to anyone getting where they wanted to go. It's never a straight line. Nope. And thank goodness for that. Thank goodness for that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's a Hemingway story I love where he's in France and his wife is traveling and she grabs all his writings to bring to him. And she somehow loses them on the journey. She loses like a novel and a bunch of articles. She loses basically everything he'd ever written. He's devastated. We sort of know how this contributes to him becoming the great writer, that he's sort of forced to reinvent himself and rethink what it is to be a writer.

56:36You can kind of see the signs of it just as you start to hear that story. You go, oh, I could see how this is good for him. You know, you lose everything. It's a fresh start. Burn the bridges or the boats behind you. But there's this beautiful letter between him and Ezra Pound shortly after it happened. And his writer friend is basically trying to say some version of this. And Hemingway goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not there yet, though. Like, he's like, don't tell me this shit. I understand it intellectually, but it's going to take me a little time to get there emotionally. And so there is something about whether it's grief or failure or heartbreak or setback or whatever, that we understand on some level, this is going to contribute to the future self that we want to end up as.

57:23But that doesn't mean it's fun right now. And that doesn't mean we have to accept it right now or that we're going to appreciate it right now. You can kind of have that ability to just sit with both of those contradictory feelings in your head at the same time. Like, just as you shouldn't convince yourself your world is over, and you'll never be okay again. You also don't have to accept that, hey, this is a good thing just yet. You can just sit with both of those feelings at the same time. Absolutely. I mean, I'm all for there is definitely a wallow, wallow in your sorrow period. Let yourself feel all of those, those emotions.

58:01And, you know, because that's part of the journey too. You know, you can't just hop to that sort of false sense of optimism and cheer. I think that's actually really harmful. And that's why, you know, there is that, I sort of accidentally wrote a book that's in the self-help category, which I really genuinely, when Tiny Beautiful Things was published and I saw it was in the self-help category in bookstores, I was like, what? You know, I never thought of that. But, you know, I love a lot of self-help books, but I don't love those books that are like just, you know, so immediately obliterating kind of those, you know, those negative feelings, you know, or what we see as negative feelings, you know, and no, hop to the cheer up phase of things.

58:45I don't think that's healthy, you know? Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. Well, as we wrap up, thinking about, you know, you're going to find yourself in these down moments, you're going to go in the wilderness, you're going to have pain, struggle adversity. You have a great line, something like, okay, this isn't your fault, but it's still your problem. Or this isn't your responsibility, but it's still your problem. It's not your fault, but it is your responsibility. Yes. You know, like, okay, you know, something happened that wasn't your fault. And now you're in a situation that you're responsible for because it's your life.

59:19And I really am, again, here's this value of like two things can be true at once and things that seem contradictory can sit along each other. A lot of us have had things happen to us that weren't our fault, that were wrong, that we were victimized in some way or harmed in some way when we didn't have any power to fight against that, whether it be as children or employees or partners in romantic relationships that were abusive. And we feel like that wasn't fair. And it's true it wasn't fair. And yet, But what's also true is our life is ours and it's up to us to save ourselves. I don't know one person.

59:58I don't know one person. I've never met one person who didn't ultimately save themselves from their suffering or from the harms that, you know, the injustices they've faced. You do have to make decisions that support your courage and your strength and your resilience and your capacity to find joy and beauty and love and happiness. And if you don't, you just sit around spinning your wheels, feeling angry and sad and blaming others for what you don't have and never getting what you actually deserve. We want to argue about why it shouldn't have happened or how it almost didn't happen or could have happened differently.

1:00:43And it's like, I don't know how to break this to you, but it did happen. That's right. And like, you have to actually actively go on the journey to find some good in it. You know, there's this wonderful quote by the novelist, the Irish novelist Edna O 'Brien, I quoted from that book in my first novel, Torch. I'm just going to paraphrase it. But she says, you know, there's a time when things happen that you go into a kind of darkness that you're never really going to truly emerge from. You can be brought to a darkness that you'll never emerge from. And she's writing about a character who was, you know, 13 or 14 and raped by her father.

1:01:19And she's like, okay, now she's going to live in that dark. But the quote goes on to say, and now, you know, what your job is to find some glimmer in it. Find that glimmer in the darkness. It will never not be true that that terrible experience didn't happen to you. But your job is to find the glimmer in it. And I really have taken that to heart. I mean, one great example of that is I did have a terrible father. I did have a very abusive, violent father who harmed me and my siblings and my mother and traumatized me. And a huge part of my journey in accepting that and letting that go and not having that be the thing that damaged me or held me back is to, I call him my dark teacher.

1:02:05What lessons did I learn from the man who showed me what cruelty was, what meanness was? And I did learn some lessons from him. When you come at things like that with a sense of agency, not like always spinning your wheels about what should have been, is to say, what did I learn from this? How did part of my personal power rise from the ashes of that terrible thing? That's when you start really doing, I think, that real work of emerging into, again, what I said, that you get to have access to all of that power that is actually within you from day one. Yeah, it's the value of the opposite of those things in many cases is what these things teach you.

1:02:53Yeah. And it's also a reminder, you know, one of the things that I've always practiced and been aware of is, you know, this is the gratitude for it all. Yes. You know, the gratitude for, you know, the whole range of experiences. Amor Fati. Yeah, that's right. Oh, man. Well, I think your work is an amazing testament to that. And it's been very valuable to me personally. So thank you so much for that. I mean, I guess that is one, that is the transformative, beautiful part of art is that even if it doesn't bring solace to you, there's some solace in the idea that it brings solace to others. And then it wasn't a wholly negative experience if some good came out of it there.

1:03:37Absolutely. For sure. For sure. You know, I want to say you mentioned Hemingway. I love Hemingway, too. So I've had, you know, there's a writer's residency that's available at his house in Ketchum, Idaho. It's the house he built. It's the house he lived his last couple of years in and actually the house he died in when he took his life. But they made the bottom floor, the top floor of the house is as it was as he lived in it with his wife. And the bottom floor that used to be like a garage, they converted it into an apartment. And they let writers come and have a residency. I've been there twice now.

1:04:14Really amazing place. So Ryan, I don't know if you want to go get inspired and spend a few weeks writing in Hemingway's house. I do. I do. I'll check it out. That sounds amazing. Yeah, I'm sure they'd love to have you. It's the Ketchum Library in Idaho that sponsors these residencies. Done. All right, that's exciting. Well, this is amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you. It was really a delight to talk to you. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it.

1:04:50And I'll see you next episode.

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