The Daily Stoic - Cheryl Strayed: “I Had to Lose EVERYTHING to Find Myself”

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

At some point, you realize courage isn’t something you are born with, it’s something you build. In this episode, Ryan sits down with bestselling author Cheryl Strayed (Tiny Beautiful Things, Wild) to talk about what it really means to be brave. They discuss how fear and courage always show up together, why you can’t wait to “feel ready,” and the difference between saying you’ll change and actually doing it. Cheryl shares what hiking alone on the Pacific Crest Trail taught her about courage, loss, and starting over. Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which was made into an Oscar-nominated film. Her bestselling collection of Dear Sugar columns, Tiny Beautiful Things, was adapted for a Hulu television show and as a play that continues to be staged in theaters nationwide. Strayed's other books are the critically acclaimed novel, Torch, and the bestselling collection Brave Enough, which brings together more than one hundred of her inspiring quotes. Her books have sold more than 5 million copies around the world and have been translated into forty languagesYou can grab copies of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed at The Painted Porch: https://www.thepaintedporch.com/Follow Cheryl Strayed on Instagram @CherylStrayed and check out more of her work at her website CherylStrayed.com🎟️ Come see Ryan Holiday LIVE: https://www.dailystoiclive.com/Seattle, WA - December 3, 2025 San Diego, CA - February 5, 2026 Phoenix, AZ - February 27, 2026 📖 Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday is out NOW! Grab a copy here: https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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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. Hey, 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 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 Strad 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. And 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 of my publisher. There have been moments where I thought my stuff wouldn't get out in the world. But 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 a person that you want to be. And you definitely shouldn't be the kind of person that you don't want to be. Cheryl Strad is a mega bestselling author for a reason at 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,

became a huge movie. As 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 things. favorites. She has other novels like Torch. She has a bestselling collection called Brave Enough. And her books have sold millions of copies all over the world that 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. And 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 can follow her on Instagram at Cheryl Strayd. Check out her work on her website, Cheryl Strait.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, and 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. While it was 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 you soon. I'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, 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. But I think anyone who's, you know, made it to 30 can look back at their 20s and realize just what a powerfully intense emotional journey our 20s are for most of us because you are becoming. You know, 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, you know, your ethical code. And, you know, 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. Sure. 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 it's 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 that's who we're are. So 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, like, 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 we're born with. Absolutely. And this is, is something I talk about a lot. 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. And one of the most common responses I've gotten over, you know, these years that I've had so many conversations with people about it as 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, you know, 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. It'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 a verb, not a noun. that it's an action that you take and the time i mean aristotle talks about this that that virtue is a is a is an action it's a 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. 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 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. That 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. Yeah. 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, you know, 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. And I think that when I have been the happiest, and again, and my work is there's 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 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. But 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 de facto. 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, very

very often via fear, suffering, doubt, anxiety, all of those things that we think of as the opposite of those emotions. Yeah, 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? So, so, you know, wisdom isn't impressive as maybe not the right word, but wisdom isn't virtuous without the opportunity to be the fool instead, right? If ignorance is not all, an option, why is it impressive or why is it meaningful to pursue wisdom, you know, 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. You know, Hercules comes to the crossroads

and he has to choose between one path or the other. It's that choice that makes the right choice meaningful and purposeful. Absolutely. And I think, I think the wisest people know that. And it's, it's, you know, the wisest people I know are, you know, the word humility always comes to mind is the threat. And to me, that's like about, about that kind of like daily remembering that, you know, 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, because it was somebody saying, like, how do I, you know, I'm my 20s. How do I be good? And, you know, 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. And so many people since I wrote that, I've been, okay, tell me which 10 books. Yeah. 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, and I'm going to find, 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 humbled 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 on our 20s, people 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 Deer 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.

Like, 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 failed to distinguish between, you know, 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. Absolutely. And I mean, that's, I think the most essential core piece of a writing advice

that I give again and again is be wildly, profoundly, deeply ambitious about the work itself, about, 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, we've, 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? Are 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. It's a novel called Torch. And I, you know, had spent my life dreaming of being a great American novelist and, you know, all everything, for years, everything I said I was doing was I'm writing, 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 ways where 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? And 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 like being on the New York Times bestseller list or getting published or finding an agent or, you know, 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

me at mediocrity. It could mean that I did all that. And I wrote a mediocre book that never made. They 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. And 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, is, if 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. That seems like a, that, that 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 like you could you could get hit by a bus uh you could get canceled you could get blacklisted your publisher could go out of business you know there could be a natural disaster and people don't care about books anymore. So many things could prevent that thing from happening. And 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. I never want to stop considering myself an apprentice to the craft, an art of writing. And so even if those things happen, like even if I've, everything I've written for the last, you know, whatever number of years is like, well, 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. create a whole world 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? And, 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 and also feel, you know, because I do think that everything I've ever written teaches me how to write the next thing. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. I've talked here before. We've made whole videos about it.

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People are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute we've been talking, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed. Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes, less stress, less time, more results now with Indeed sponsor jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to help you get your job, the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash Daily Stoak. Just go to Indeed.com slash Daily Stoak right now to support the show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash daily stoic terms and conditions apply. If you're hiring, do it the right way with Indeed. I do imagine at this point as an 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 your 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, you know, really working on my next book now. I'm like, okay, goodbye, Hollywood for a while. I'm just going to write my next book, which I've, you know, 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 best sellers, 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 computer, the blank computer screen and having to write the next thing.

And having, you know, the same, like, I don't know if you do this when I'm writing a lot. Like, 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 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. I think you write from a place of fear and humility. Yes. And so I do that. I'm, 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, 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, whatever, there's no way they're creating good art from that point of view. That 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 and well what 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 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 ask them, they would admit what I just admitted to you, you know, that sense of doubt. I 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 on to me? Yeah. 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. Yeah. It 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. So I have to admit, I've so many times I've been like, why?

Why did I have to be a writer? You know, do 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 bummer, yes. Yes, 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. Sure. 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 help 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, you know, did, I mean, that's the final thing. Like, 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, you know, this story about Socrates. And it's in this moment that Zeno, he's the founder of Stozen, that Zeno suddenly a prophecy that he'd heard as a young man makes sense to him. The 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. That'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 the 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, And 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 Eurbides' play Medea where, you know, Medea is about to slaughter her children. And 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. It'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 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 not that's true not just now but that's true through all time have you read that poem books are door shaped i don't think so oh it's it books or 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, you know, it's time travel. It's the ability to communicate with the dead. It's all of these things.

And then, and then, you know, you bump into someone and they go, I haven't read a book since high school. And you just go, that's insane. What do you? I know. There's a superpower on the table. And you're like, eh. Absolutely.

And 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, you know, 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, you know, we get access to your body and your mind and your spirit in a way. that we could not any other way, you know? And I think that that's, and it's right there for us,

we 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, every medium, every art form is really good at one thing above the others 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 is the saddest of the notes he says or so you know there i 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.

Or, you know, I recently, my, I have a 19-year-old daughter, and she discovered the cure a couple years ago, which is like a band. I listened to a lot in high school. Sure. 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. It just makes you feel, you know, it's so.

funny, 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. No, 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, okay, 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? Yes. I always find that. I'm like, please, stop the music.

It'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 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 rapt or whatever. I'll be like, oh, it's weird. I listen to that song so many times. But for me, 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 act 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 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 and and it's really interesting to me like i wrote this essay called the love of my life many years ago and um 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 a thousand times. And I couldn't tell you why. Like, I couldn't, it's not like that song is in that essay. Yeah. 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 like, 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. And 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 word. Yeah. But they lived in the same world together while I was creating it. So there's like a frequency you're tuning into. Yeah, exactly. There must be, 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, ones to his mother, once to a friend, ones 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, and 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, you know, as I've written in a few different forms, you know, that 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, that Samuel Beckett thing? Like, I can't go on. I will go on or I must go on.

Like, we sort of know, like, we know we're not serious. Like 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, most of us, the feeling we have when hearts are broken is 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 realized 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. So I wasn't wrong about that. What 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. 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, you know, something that makes you weaker. And those things can exist at once, you know, 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, 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. I feel like we just got our Halloween decorations up, and now the next holiday season is here.

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It'll even help you set up. Don't miss on early Black Friday deals. Head over to Wayfair.com right now to shop Wayfair's Black Friday deals for up to 70% off. W-A-Y-F-A-R.com. Sale ends December 7th. In 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 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. But 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 just, I think. 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. You 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, I think that's what happens with most people and 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. Oh, 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? Is it to ruin my life or is it to thrive? Is it to be the woman she raised me to beat?

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 literally found my footing on the Pacific Cross 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'm 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 really.

sorrow and it will pop up from time to time in ways that will make me burst into tears. But 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 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. Did 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 they start portraying this person in the midst of the final throws 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 this person was molested by a priest. There was a car accident and they lost their little brother or, you know, this person

was a successful stockbroker and then the market turn. There's always some kind of moment and it's usually like a grief or a loss or a betrayal. Right. 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 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, right? Like I think that we kind of, we just experience these things in life and it's not fair and it's awful and it's heartbreaking. And really all we get to decide is like, you know, is this the beginning of the end or is this some kind of a new beginning? That's where we have some, some agency. And very, I mean, all the epictale, all the, all the, all the tales around time. It's like the beginning of the end is also the beginning of the beginning. Like 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,

back. Like, there is some gratitude. Again, not that you would say, like, I'm glad that this terrible thing happened. You wouldn't have chosen. That'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 they've asked, talk to me about wild and my hike on the Pacific Christ Trail, they're like, did you, you know, that I sort of took this journey 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. And I'm like, no, no, no, no,

you know, I think that really to me that journey, and I think it's a journey that 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 strengths 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. I mean, a long walk alone in the wilderness is a mighty good way to find the incredible,

the extraordinary inside of you. 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 through all time is because it's actually, 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. That there's some period where it all goes sideways, where you didn't get what you wanted, you 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. Of course. 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. You 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, 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. But 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 emotions. And, 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. Winley when tiny beautiful things was published and I saw it was in the self-help category in bookstore. I was like, what? 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 feeling, you know, or what we see as negative feelings, you know, and no, hop to the cheer up phase of things. I 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. And I really am, again, here's this value of like two things can be true at once and things that seem contradictory

can sit alongside each other. A lot of us have had things happen to us that weren't our fault, that we're 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, you know, employees or partners in romantic relationships that were abusive. And we feel, you know, like that wasn't fair and it's true it wasn't fair. And yet what's also true is our life is ours. And it's up to us to save ourselves. I don't know one person.

I 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, you know, 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, you know, deserve.

We want to argue about why it shouldn't have happened or how it almost didn't happen or it could have happened differently. And 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 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, she's writing about a character who was, you know, 13 or 14 and raped by her father. And 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. What 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, you know, 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 all, 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. Yeah. And it's also a reminder, you know, one of the things that I've always practiced and been aware, it was, you know, this is the gratitude for it all. Yes. You know, the gratitude for, you know, the whole, 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. Absolutely, 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. Wow.

It's the house he lived his last couple of years, and it 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. Yeah. 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, really 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 sponsors these residences. 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, and I'll see you next episode. Thank you.