Love Is Our Essential Nutrient

"Love is our essential nutrient. Without it, life has little meaning. It’s the best thing we have to give and the most valuable thing we receive. It’s worthy of all the hullabaloo."

-- Cheryl Strayed

The Cure of Time

"You let time pass. That’s the cure. You survive the days. You float like a rabid ghost through the weeks. You cry and wallow and lament and scratch your way back up through the months. And then one day you find yourself alone on a bench in the sun and you close your eyes and lean your head back and you realize you’re okay."

-- Cheryl Strayed

Be a Warrior for Love

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

--Cheryl Strayed

Accept and Move On

"Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room."

-- Cheryl Strayed

Known With The Wisdom of Age

"Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It’s good you’ve worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness."

-- Cheryl Strayed

There Is Enough For All Of Us

"The people who don’t give up are the people who find a way to believe in abundance rather than scarcity. They’ve taken into their hearts the idea that there is enough for all of us, that success will manifest itself in different ways for different people, that keeping the faith is more important than cashing the check."

-- Cheryl Strayed

You Make The Choice No Matter What

"You have to do it yourself, whether you’re rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things have befallen you. Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It’s up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out."

-- Cheryl Strayed

You Will Thrive In Spite of Your Losses

 "When you recognize that you will thrive not in spite of your losses and sorrows, but because of them, that you would not have chosen the things that happened in your life, but you are grateful for them, that you will hold the empty bowls eternally in your hands, but you also have the capacity to fill them? The word for that is healing."

-- Cheryl Strayed

Folly To Measure Success in Money or Fame

"It’s folly to measure your success in money or fame. Success is measured only by your ability to say yes to these two questions: Did I do the work I needed to do? Did I give it everything I had?"

-- Cheryl Strayed

Forward is The Direction of Real Life

"We all get stuck in place on occasion. We all move backward sometimes. Every day we must make the decision to move in the direction of our intentions. Forward is the direction of real life."

-- Cheryl Strayed

The Healing is Entirely Up To You

"Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and 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. Therapists and friends can help you along the way, but the healing— the genuine healing, the actual real-deal, down-on-your-knees-in-the-mud change—is entirely and absolutely up to you."

-- Cheryl Strayed

We Are Responsible for Our Own Lives

"We do not have the right to feel helpless. We must help ourselves. After destiny has delivered what it delivers, we are responsible for our lives."

-- Cheryl Strayed

Trust What You Have Learned

"Trust that all you’ve learned was worth learning, no matter what answer you have or do not have about what practical use it has in your life. Let whatever mysterious starlight that guided you this far guide you onward into the crazy beauty that awaits. When the path reveals itself, follow it."

-- Cheryl Strayed

You Get To Make Your Life

"What’s important is that you make the leap. Jump high and hard with intention and heart. Pay no mind to the vision that the committee made up. You get to make your life."

-- Cheryl Strayed

Power or Fear Its Your Choice

"Every time I felt something horrible cohering in my imagination, I pushed it away. I simply did not let myself become afraid. Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn’t long before I actually wasn’t afraid."

-- Cheryl Strayed