Quotes from Cheryl Strayed Every Writer Should Live By

Live from the A Writing Room Collective 2024 conference in Hollywood

Critically-acclaimed, award winning memoirist, Cheryl Strayed, speaks at the A Writing Room Collective workshop in Hollywood, CA in October, 2024.

I’ve come to learn to live my life boldly, loudly, and unapologetically, so this past Thursday, I found myself in Hollywood for the A Writing Room Collective workshop. I came for multiple reasons (Anne Lamott and Cheryl Strayed) and was eagerly expecting the unexpected.

I’d read Cheryl’s famous Wild at some point on my grief journey after Sean, my husband, died five years ago. The book, if you haven’t read it (and if you haven’t, why have you not read it?) is about her blowing her life up in the wake of her mother’s death and boldly, insanely, wildly hiking the Pacific North Rim alone to figure it all out. The moment and its metaphor dialed in when her pack of which she said, “It was heavier than this podium. You could strap this podium to me, and I could walk to fucking Canada.”

“I had this weight that I could not bear. That I could not bear, and the only thing I had to do was the only thing I could not do. The only thing I Had to do was lift that pack that I could not lift. The only thing that I could not do was live without my mother. If you’ve lost someone essential to you, then I know you understand that feeling.”

—Cheryl Strayed

I understand very much understand being unable to lift something unapproachable and ultimately, un-putdownable. It’s the freeze, the “stuckness” that occurs where you’re both trying to let go of a weight that is bearing down on your soul and to lift the burdens you believe you should be carrying. You cannot move because the weight on your back and the boulder stuck to your arms will not release you until you examine them, unpack them, and let them go.

I remember reading Cheryl’s book, and thinking, “Well, I can’t go on a hiking journey.” For one, we were still quarantining. For two, who would watch my three kids? I just didn’t think I could. I was feeling lack-minded in my ability to reignite my passion for travel and adventure, but I discerned, I could take the same journey right at home inside of myself, and that’s what I did.

I’ll give Cheryl this—hiking the Pacific North Rim took way less time than my five-year dark night of the soul—good times—where I made every mistake known to man but learned to shed the weight of guilt, shame, limiting beliefs, conditioning, not “enoughness”, a lack mindset, and fear. I picked up the strings to the helium balloons that are abundance, self-love, values, integrity, compassion, empathy, focus, passion, purpose, responsibility, discipline, intention, generosity, and gratitude. Definitely gratitude.

Though we and every writer in that room have different stories, we are all preaching toward the same gospel truth.

“The higher demand of art is becoming awake and aware and conscious of how your life is connected to all lives.”

And the demand in becoming awake is to witness yourself objectively, without judgement, with compassion. It’s the matter of doing that toward others.

At one point, Cheryl talked about writing her first novel and she put a scene in it where this dad had to admit he wasn’t capable of taking care of his child, which we learn in Wild was Cheryl’s experience in the wake of losing her mother. It was a shock, an abandonment, and she suffered greatly because of that experience, and she put it in the book and realized what I had already come to understand in my own complicated journey with my own mother—we remain children far after we should, and we project expectations on our parents that they cannot realistically meet, and we allow those unmet expectations to hurt us and cause deep wounds.

This is the moment when we realize we have to just see people as people—as assignments rather than as the constructed roles we have for them. In the past, people were far more involved in helping raise one another’s children in the community. What we have now are highly insular and isolated family units who aren’t reaching out for help, and so we are increasingly helpless because we have neglected the law of reciprocity, of giving and taking, of doing unto others. If we want to avoid becoming helpless, we must become helpers capable of giving and receiving and of asking for help. We are all in this together.

“Once we live long enough, we’ve all had to bear something we cannot bear.”

These are such unifying truths. Today, one of our special guest speakers was a Death Doula. She became so after her mother died in 2021, earning a PhD in this arena. She said she does what she does “so we don’t have to eat our love one’s ashes”, which is hilarious as Cheryl said that she has had many people from around the world confess to engaging this behavior. One ardent admirer in the workshop made it a point to thank Cheryl and to almost wistfully confess that she now had an urge to eat someone’s ashes.

But she made this point—we learn how to stop, drop, and roll if we get set on fire, right? She asked the workshop—how many of you have been set on fire? Hilariously, absurdly, one woman stood having indeed caught on fire and indeed having had to use “stop, drop, and roll” to put it out.

The point, though, is that we learn how to prevent something that is highly unlikely to ever transpire, yet, we do not prepare for death, which is guaranteed to happen to all of us. And why is this?

One way to prepare is to tell our stories. Now, legacy memoirs, which I will publish under Yellow Ink’s Golden Legacy imprint, are not the same as your memoir for everyone on the planet (God-willing) to read—rather it’s the stories you want to leave your family. Some she hoped to ask her mom when she was hospitalized on my birthday—March 30, 2021 were “who was your first friend?” Or “What would your second choice of career have been?” But she never had the opportunity. Her mother was intubated the following day and passed April 2.

We never know when, but we do know that, and that alone should shake your bones and wake your soul and bring you into yourself—it should awaken you to you. You are here for a purpose. Have you discovered it? Will you pursue it?

You pursue it because you must, or you will die, piece by piece unto yourself and the emptiness of this world rather than rising up to bask in its abundant riches. Ask yourself the literal and the metaphorical questions both as a writer and as a human being. Ask yourself what needs to die within you for you to live. Your fears of being seen or abandoned or rejected are real and valid—those are core fears in all of us that we must conquer in order to live lest we perish. And for all of us who tap into spirit, who lean into our creative and expand must do that in order to really live. When ask how to override the fear, Cheryl said this—

“I’m going to be wildly ambitious about the only thing I have the power and control over—my writing.”

But to get there, we have to ask ourselves the hard questions:

“How do I lift this backpack? How do I live without my mother? How do we bear the unbearable.”

This shepherd’s pursuit, this quest for the alchemist, requires us to become uncomfortable and to shed the layers of accumulation in that backpack that we do not need. We have to tell the truths that expose our souls, that reveal our “too muchness” or our wildness or the parts of us that we might want to hide in the shadows of shame. Cheryl spoke specifically about the moment in her book where she…unable to let go at the spreading of the ashes…ate the last handful. And said she’d take it out, but didn’t. And was gonna take it out, but didn’t. And ultimately…she didn’t. That gave other people who ate the ashes the opportunity to shine light on a behavior that perhaps they were ashamed of.

“Write the stuff that’s really uncomfortable and is too much. We aren’t trying to please people—we’re trying to do something bigger. Being courageous allows you to grow, change, and expand.”

Explore yourself. Express yourself. Expel your fears of getting it wrong or do it bad. Do it bad. Do it scared. Then be abundantly grateful that you have done it.

“Surrender to your mediocrity.”

After you surrender to your mediocrity and accept not everyone will get or love what you write or the way you write, once you get no one is required to find the things you find interesting, once you recognize that writing this one book perfectly will not change your life, and you can either toil away with this one thing in perpetuity, or you can finish it and move along.

“Write like a motherfucker.”

Once you can write without fear and inhibition, once you set yourself, your soul, your story free in whatever way that occurs for you, then, and only then can do you integrate with yourself, your truth—you can see yourself as if you were an object and describe that object and what it does without judging it or without shame.

“The real work happens on the ground level. It’s about humility, getting down into the dirt, getting dirty and doing the work.”

You will never find yourself here if you don’t get down dirty and do the work. Surrender to whatever is holding you back and get curious about it, so you can get past it. Don’t let anything hold you back.

You set yourself free in this. You release yourself from the shackles of your fear of knowing yourself. You do not need a permission slip to do this, to facilitate or initiate this release—you just need to make up your mind or change your mind to know that you’re worthy of being your entire authentic, fully integrated magical self and that your story matters and that people need to hear it. You are important, do this if you must, but literally give yourself permission:

“Cheryl has permission to…”

In response to that, I wrote this:

Amy, I give you permission to succeed, to publish your books, to boldly tell your stories, to pursue your dreams in spite of fear, to live among the stars and to shine as brightly as you were born to. I give you permission to not worry about what people say and to live and breathe and speak your truth boldly, passionately, loudly, and wildly. I give you permission to be your authentic self. I validate you. You are a wonder, and I love you. I’m so proud of you. Go raise high, Queen

I want to edit it, but at the same time, I don’t because that’s how I talk to myself. I don’t literally think I have subjects or that I’m some kind of like exception to what everyone can achieve because I’m not. I’m not any exception. I am just a person who discovered the secret and who gets it, who finally really gets it. I came to this conference for a purpose, and today, as I was walking a way from a “letting go” release ceremony with the hundreds of brave and amazing writers in attendance, my entire story came full circle, and I realized the title and the structure as it all coalesced.

At The Bayberry Writing Workshop at the Savannah Book Festival in February, this all began taking on some intention with my first go at organizing what I was doing, and I took the wisdom of those authors and started throwing paint at the wall on my Surthrival Substack. Just, tell the damn story and see what sticks. See what keeps coming up. I had like, eight followers, so what did it matter?

I knew what I desired for this story, but not how to get there. I picked it up and put it down on and off in the ensuring months, and here now, eight months later, it suddenly is made obvious—so obvious. As the dawning of the day the ends a long and exhausting dark night of the soul—one that lasted five years, landed upon my shoulders, I started crying. I just started crying. I stood there by the pool perfectly erect, as if in mountain pose, trembling as tears leaked down the slopes of my cheeks.

I cried with the emptying of it all, with the release, with the revelation of my sacred truth. The truth was right in front of me, and I cried with gratitude. It was here—here it was, the sacred star, the treasure I’d been searching for. I had no idea what it was, and here, I found it, and—I may have found love, too.

I had hoped I would find it, and while I didn’t find it, I was given the map, which once again, when I look at the clues on the journey to this treasure, I laugh because it was obvious, so, so obvious. I was already where he lives—or at least, a version of me is, and I’d been trying to tell myself in so many ways all along.

In the life I had before I did the work that I did to save my own life and to live the story that would one day make people say, “Wow—she really lived,” I unwittingly manifested my two biggest fears—losing a child and losing my husband.” I did not die. I learned just how much I can bear, but I also know just how close I came to dying to my trauma, my grief, my limiting beliefs of unworthiness and unlovability—those things nearly killed me.

But as I thrive in adversity, I pivoted and rose the entire fuck up to go beyond what I ever could’ve imagined. I am not just a writer. I am an entertainer. I am an advocate. I have a purpose, and ultimately, through all I do, that purpose is to wake you up to yours—to show you that you’re worthy. You’re enough. You’ve always been enough.

You’ve got a light and a fire and a passion in you. I’m the kerosine and the flame, and I blazed the path for all of you, so you don’t spend five years of your life stuck in thinking you have to “fix” yourself. My loves, as my therapist said to me when I’d just gotten a DUI shortly after my husband’s death because I was making the best choices at that time, “You’re not broken.” You’re not. You never were.

You have purpose.

You have passion.

You have power.

Now, with Cheryl’s permission, mine, and your own, go live it. Write like your life depends on it because my darlings it does. Pour into your soul and tell your truths for the it is in the truth that you set yourself fully and wildly free.