We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 118. Cheryl Strayed: Don’t Let Your Dreams Ruin Your Life

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

1. Why Cheryl chose Strayed as her last name – the only one not given to her by a man.   2. How she ruined her life when her mom died, and how we can bear the unbearable. 3. Cheryl’s greatest lesson from her 3-month hike of the PCT, and her mom’s advice she uses everyday.  4. How to make peace with our ITS – “inner terrible someone” – who lives in each of us.  5. Why and how Cheryl is now exploring: “Can I be happy if my kids aren’t?” About Cheryl: Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Wild, as well as the bestsellers Tiny Beautiful Things, Brave Enough, and Torch.  Wild was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film starring Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern.  Tiny Beautiful Things is currently being adapted for a TV show for Hulu and will star Kathryn Hahn.  In addition to writing her widely acclaimed essays, stories and scripts, Strayed has hosted two hit podcasts for the New York Times — Sugar Calling and Dear Sugars, which she co-hosted with Steve Almond.  She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband Brian Lindstrom and their two teenagers. TW: @CherylStrayed IG: @cherylstrayed

I came out the other side. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. We have been waiting for this day for low so many months. The day is here when we get to sit down with the Cheryl Strait. Cheryl Strait is here today. Yay. I'm so thrilled to be here. Oh.

Yeah. I mean, I already said this. I love you guys. And I love this podcast. So thank you. We love you back. Cheryl Strait is the author of the number one New York Times bestselling memoir, Wild, as well as the bestsellers, Tiny Beautiful Things, Brave enough.

I know. And Torch. Wild was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film starring Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern. Tiny Beautiful Things is currently being adapted for a TV show for Hulu and will star Catherine Hahn. Would that have been cast any better? Oh. Obsessed.

I know. I love Catherine Hahn. We were looking for somebody who would be able to do like really funny, but also really, really deep and poignant and serious. Yes. Some really heavy stuff. And of course, she's the master of all of that. Yes, she is.

Catherine Hahn's one of my favorite actors, but tiny beautiful things is one of my favorite books of all times. Oh, thank you. This is a very big happening. Okay. In addition to writing her widely acclaimed essays, stories, and scripts, Strait has hosted two hit podcasts. Podcasts for the New York Times, Sugar Calling and Dear Sugars, which she co-hosted with Steve

Almond. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, Brian Lindstrom, and their two teenagers, and their two dogs, and their three cats. Is that right? That's right. And counting. It seems like we're always being conned into more animals living in our house. Okay. There's something that happens with the animals, but I actually have a deep discomfort in my body with the idea that I can't have all the animals. When I see a dog, I think that should be my dog. And then I think all the dog should be my dog. And that's not going to happen.

But maybe that's what heaven is. Yeah, maybe. We have three teenagers. And Glenn would then be the fourth because, you know, teenagers are like, can we get a new dog? Can we get a new cat? And Glennon's like, can we get a new dog? I'm not the bad guy. I'm like, no, we can't have 17,000 animals running around this house.

That's right. because animals require things. No, Abby, I just want to tell you, my husband, Brian and I have been conned into this over and over and over. My kids, Carver and Bobby, who are now, Bobby's 16, my daughter's 16. My son Carver is 18. They're going into their junior and senior years in high school. And since they were little babies, they would say, we promise, we will walk the dogs.

We will, you know, do the litter box. They don't even, I mean, no, they don't follow through. with any of them. It's just lies. I just think that they're all lying. It's just lies. And then we get the animals. And then what happens is you end up loving them, you know, because you can't, yeah. I mean, because they're the best. I mean, really, they are. I do think not only do they bring us joy and pleasure and laughter and cuteness and all that stuff, which I think you especially need when you have teenagers who maybe don't want you like loving on them and stroking them and cooing at them all the time. They're like a medium for emotions that kids. don't want our direct emotion, they can't give it back to us, but we just stand around the dog and we're like, look at me loving the dog. Are you receiving the transmittal through you? And maybe that's like a biological evolutionary. They con us because they know we need a transition animal. Yeah. Many years ago when my kids were little and still in that phase where they wanted to like snuggle in bed and be all like lovey-dovey, my friend Natalie had two teenagers and

she had this little dog that she just loved. She said, oh, I'm so, bonded to this dog. And she said, you know, I had to get him because then I would have at least one person in my family who loved me. Yeah. You know, I thought, I know. And what I thought at the time is my kids will never be that way. And of course, now her kids are in their 20s and they do love her and they always loved her. But they didn't necessarily act like it a lot. Exactly. So now I understand what she was talking about because my kids are in the, you know, just more like, they want to socially distance more than us. Like when the pandemic came, they were at this age, I was like, we're being told to socially

distance from everyone and they were forced to be like not socially distance with the two people they most wanted to socially distance from. That's interesting. Oh my God. That's so freaking true. Yeah. Poor teenagers during the pandemic. I know.

So Cheryl, we want to start by talking about your beloved mama. Oh. Because your love for her has been such a. I don't know, guiding. Teacher. Light for all of us. It's helped all of us a lot. Yeah.

So after your mama died, you were only 22. That's right. And she was only 45. And she was only 45. You were both seniors in college, right? Yes, we were. We were. So one of the things I heard you say that I thought was so fascinating is you

spiraled for a while after that. Yeah. And self-proclaimed what you would call unhealthy. promiscuity and heroin use. Of that time, you said, in so many ways, I was trying to honor my mother by ruining my life. That just rang a bell in me. Can you talk to us about what you meant by that in that time? Yeah.

So, you know, let's back up. I just want to tell you a bit about my mom. I mean, you know about her, but maybe some people listening don't. You know, she was really, in so many ways, my hero, you know, she was this incredibly wonderful, loving mom in really difficult circumstances. She got pregnant in 1965 when she had just graduated high school and she didn't want to be pregnant and didn't want to marry my father. But, you know, she really considered having an illegal abortion.

Her parents, when she told her parents, she was pregnant. they said, unless you get married, we'll send you to a home for wayward girls and you can have the baby. And, you know, she was, they wanted her to give her the baby and they would raise it as their own and pretend it was their own. So, you know, her choices were really limited. A lot of women in that era ended up getting married because they were pregnant. And that was my mom. And so she found herself really in this relationship that by day three was violent. my father beat her up for the first time on the third day they were together. And over the course of

the next 10 years, she had three kids with him. I'm the middle child. I have an older sister. I'm the middle and then a younger brother. And some of my earliest memories, I have this really kind of split childhood memories. My earliest memories, some of them are the most beautiful, lovely, wonderful, loving things you'd ever imagine with my mom who made, like, life magic in hard circumstances and loved us in a devoted, you know, with wild abandon, essentially. And then the terror and the fear and the sorrow of my father who abused her physically in front of us all the time and also to a lesser extent abused us. And, you know, I remember fleeing the house with my mom, her piling us into the car and driving all night because this was the 70s. I think a lot of us forget, like, how recent this, any understanding of, you know, intimate partner violence is really actually a new thing.

The first, what we used to call battered women's shelter was opened in 1975 in the nation. So this is like, really, within my lifetime, I'm 53, has changed. There was nowhere for my mom to go. There were no resources for her to leave that marriage. And she finally and bravely did. then I was the child of a single mom and we were poor. I spent every year of my childhood in poverty and yet it was only economic poverty. I spent every year of my childhood in riches. And it was because I had an incredibly emotionally rich mother who knew how to love and who really loved her kids.

And so I think of even though there were many hardships in my childhood, I do think, think, wow, what a glorious, glorious life I got to have because I had a mother who made me know with every breath that I was loved. And so we did go off to college. It ended up being together. It was a pretty amazing experience in those years that I was, for the first time, stepping through that portal into becoming this kind of educated person. I wanted to be the writer. I wanted to become a writer from the beginning, but to see my mom go through that transformation. And when she died in our senior year, on the spring break of our senior year, very suddenly of cancer, she only knew she had cancer for seven weeks before she died. She was like a perfectly healthy

woman who wasn't a smoker, who was told she had advanced stage lung cancer and died. And I, the only words I have for it, is. And there are words that I knew the day she died. I felt like life as I knew it ended the day my mother died. I thought for many years that I was crazy to say that. And now, of course, through my writing about grief, I've met thousands of people around the world who say, yes, that's how it feels when you lose somebody essential. And so I felt like, how do I live in the world without my mother? And one of the things that was so painful that I know now, too, is a really universal feeling.

is that the world goes on and doesn't notice that somebody extraordinary is gone. My mother on paper was the most ordinary woman ever, but in life, to her children, to the people who loved her, she was extraordinary. And I didn't have anything as a young woman, but my own life, my own body, my own trajectory. You know, I didn't have anything with which to prove to the world that her death mattered. So I wanted to say very loudly, listen world, we lost something big, and I'm going to wreck myself to prove it. I'm going to ruin my life to show you how much her life mattered. And of course, I didn't do it consciously.

It wasn't until years later I was understanding that this was an act of love, you know, that this decision to say, okay, I'm going to turn away from that ambitious girl I'd been and become somebody who is promiscuous in ways that are self-destructive, that does drugs that says yes to all the bad things to say, yeah, I'm going to show you. That's how I'm going to love my mother. Does that make sense? It makes utterly perfect sense to me. I mean, it floored me. It's like, oh, my gosh, you, to be able to come to that realization as well, I think one of the most interesting things that I've learned about you is that strayed, in fact, is not you're born into last name.

You chose it. Why did you choose straight? Yeah. Well, it's complicated, I think, for a lot of us who have, you know, who carry our father's names and who those of us who have fathers who aren't people who were what a father should be to us, who harmed us rather than loved us, who abandoned us rather than be there. for us. And that was the name I carried all through, you know, my childhood, Nyland. My name was Cheryl Nyland. I mean, we're sort of leaving ahead. But, you know, I got married super crazily young. And we wanted to be like this, my ex-husband and I were like, these feminists and were like, we're going to take on each other's names, which is, which was, of course, then I had this like

long, complicated, hyphenated name that nobody could ever say. Cheryl Nyland-Lidding, Cheryl Nyland Liddick. And my ex-husband also took on my name, which, of course, then he was, like, congratulated for being, like, this amazing man, you know, and I was just like this troublesome person who had insisted that he do this, of course, but even though he did it willingly. So when we got divorced, when I was, like, 25, what it was really a simple thing, Abby, is I got, you know, we were doing, like, do it yourself divorce because, like, we had no kids. We had two cats and, you know, nothing.

Like maybe a, like, I don't know, like some towels. Yeah. I don't even think we had a couch, Amanda. Okay. So we're doing this like, do it yourself divorce. And you fill it the form. And it literally says, my name after the divorce will be. And, you know, you could have written like Mickey Mouse in there.

And I was really struck by that line. And of course, by as someone who cares an awful lot about words. And, you know, at that point in my life, I realized. okay, I'm alone. I'm an orphan. My mom's dead. I don't have a father. He was still alive then, but I don't have a father. I'm nobody's daughter or wife or mother. And I need to step into my life in a powerful way. And what better way to do it than to define it through language. And so I spend some time searching for words. What am I? Am I a stone? I ran through all these different words. And I landed upon Strait and I saw the definition of it. And I just, it was like a punch

to the gut because I knew, this is me, this is me. And Strayed, you know, it has layers of definitions and meanings. But, you know, at Root, it's somebody who finds her way on an alternate path, who finds her way in the world without a mother and a father, somebody who carries her own home on her back. And it fit. What's interesting to me about that, too, is a lot of people, I'm so glad you asked the question the way you asked it out because so many people will say, well, straight isn't your real name. Which I find interesting that we use that language.

Because, of course, if I had taken on a man's name through marriage, nobody would say that's not your real name. That's right. People just feel really threatened and addled and bewildered by people choosing their own names. Yeah. I think it's cool. Badass. It's amazing. Thank you.

I've been Cheryl Strayed longer than I've been any other name. And it feels like my heritage. I read something where you were talking about how so many people think of Strayed as kind of an escape, but you think of it more as seeking and finding ourselves. Was that related to your hike? Yeah. One of the most interesting things. that I've come to understand about human experiences.

So many things that seem like one thing are actually at core, the other. So, you know, like when you go on the kind of journey that I went on in my 1100 mile hike on the Pacific Cross Trail, very often that's kind of framed as escape. You know, you're escaping. You're running away from. And I always think we're stepping into. And I even came to understand, honestly, my foray into using heroin is that way. In so many ways, what was compelling to me about heroin,

and I know anyone who has any experience with drugs understands this. And it's like you use it and you think, thank you, I have escaped. Now there's this other world that feels more bearable to me. It feels like a world that I don't feel my suffering. So even I, when I stepped into hair, when I was thought, okay, this is the escape. And really what I was looking for and looking for that experience is a way back in, a way into the depths of my suffering, a deeper understanding of how I could live with my suffering, not a way to escape it. And that's everything, too, that happened on my Pacific Crest Trail journey. I was alone, but never did I feel more connected to everyone in my life and to the world at large.

And not just the humans, all the living things. I felt myself a part of the world again when I was radically alone. And it was because I was consciously stepping in while also in some ways going away. And sometimes we have to go away to do that to understand how it is we're connected. So was that a way, because you talked about doing the destructive things, ruining your life to do something big enough to show your pain. And so was was hiking the trail something that you thought would be a positive huge action to show your loss? Was it constructive huge act instead of destructive huge act? And how does one decide?

Because most people are like, okay, I got to get my shit together. So I'm going to, I don't know, go to a yoga class. Yeah. You're like, no. I'm going to go hike 1,100 miles. Glennon, I somehow think that we're kindred spirits in this way. In fact, all three of you. Like, I go big rather than go home.

So here's what happened. I reached that place, I guess, of rock bottom that, you know, we talk about the bottom place, which I think is the glorious place of beginning. Amen. Because the only place to go when you hit the bottom is up. When I teach writing workshops, if I say, let's write, you know, write about that hardest moment. It's always the thing that also brought people their greatest strength and courage and beauty. And so what happened to me is I was ruining my life.

I was using heroin. I had gotten pregnant by the guy I was doing heroin with who had really become a heroin addict and stayed a heroin addict for many years. And I realized I was pregnant. And it was honestly. for me, I woke up and I thought, what has come of me? What has happened to me? Who am I? And the awakening I had was really connected with this destruction. It was like, I love my mother world, so I'm going to destroy myself. And then I realized that the exact opposite thing was true. This is what I said.

It was like something that looks one way is very often the other way. What was true is I have been loved too well to ruin my life. If I want the world to love my mother, if I want to honor my mother's life with my own life, I actually have to become everything she raised me to be. I have to become everything I ever intended to be. I have to live again ambitiously, like that girl I used to be before she died,

who was going to say unapologetically, I want to be a great American writer. I would say those things out loud and it seemed audacious and wrong. And I lost my way. Like I lost my sense of that ambition. And so I woke up. And I was like, okay, I have to do something big not to become a different person, but to find my way back to the person I knew I was inside of me.

And I think that's almost always true. That's the journey we need to take. It's not a like go find that great person. It's dig it back up. You know, you buried it inside of you. For your child, as the school year continues, patterns start to emerge. You can see what's clicking and where a little extra reinforcement could help. That's where IXL steps in, giving kids targeted practice so they can strengthen those areas early and keep moving forward with confidence.

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than it is. You know how frugal I am. And I've started picking up a few quince pieces for home too. They have travel bags and sheets. Their sheets are awesome. 10 out of 10. Refresh your wardrobe with quince. Don't wait. Go to quince.com slash hard things for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash hard things to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash hard things. It is one of my greatest dreams to hike the Appalachian Trail. And so when your book came out and then, of course, it got turned into a movie, I was so invested. I've struggled with addiction stuff throughout my life.

So this felt like it was such an important, poignant thing specifically to me. And so I have yet to do the Appalachian Trail. I am sober now, so that's good. What is the greatest lesson you learn? Like, what am I hoping to get out of hiking thousands of miles? Yeah, and just tell us so we don't have to do it. Okay, yeah. I was going to say, first of all, Abby, like, I want to know when you're going to do it.

Because, like, I don't want you to, you know, like, I've always wanted to do. I've always wanted to. Like, you've got to do it. You got to make a plan, okay? Even though it's like 10 years from now. Also, I hope, are you planning to bring, have you met Glennon? Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

I just feel like time apart is important for relationships. I literally, no, last week she just said for the first time in our marriage that maybe she could go camping for one night. Because Cheryl, working on it. I went hiking with my son. Yeah. And we hiked and hiked for hours and hours and hours. I felt very straight. And you thought of me.

And I saw the PCT. I didn't go on it. No, you did. You hiked a little portion of the PCT. A little portion. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, I also learned some great lessons, but I assume that you maybe learned more.

I mean, I was on it for 12 minutes. I'm proud of you, excited. I'm really proud of you. But Abby, maybe you and I've always wanted to hike the AT too. Maybe we'll go together. That would be amazing. And then we write a memoir called Really Wild. Yes.

What I learned, again, really just the biggest things, as I know you all know, are those tiny things that you're like, oh my gosh, if I can just live with this, if I can hold this. It was really acceptance. And what I mean by that is this. It was so hard so often that I just had to accept each moment. And I had to say, I know I have a long way to go, but the only thing I can do to get there is to take this step and then the next step and the step after that. And so this kind of like the humility and the, I guess, strength, that acceptance demands. It was something I had to do every day is to say, oh, it's really hot right now.

But here I am. This is where I live. This is my home. raining. It's snowing. I'm scared. I'm alone. I'm hungry. I'm mad at myself for being here. Because I was 26. And I was, one of the things I kept thinking about is I would get so mad at myself sometimes. I think like all of my friends are having so much more fun than me. They're like somewhere drinking margaritas and lounging around. And I'm just out here eating refried beans by myself in the dirt. But it was really good.

for me to just accept what was. And it really has allowed me to do that in other parts of my life, too, to realize that the only way we ever get anywhere is one step at a time, even if we want to, you know, tell ourselves otherwise. It's not true. Yeah. We felt like when we were talking about this part, we felt like it so reminded us of the we can do hard things idea because you said part of being able to bear the things we can't bear is not about tossing them off. Not about making the weight lighter, but simply learning that we have the capacity to carry it. So it's not we should do easier things or like we could do a few less hard. It's like we can do this hard thing that's been placed upon us.

I would say that if there was just one core kind of sentence I would use to describe Wilde, like what message people were like, what message would you take from it? I didn't plant a message in there, but what I think Wilde is at core about is that we can bear the unbearable. And of course, that was true when it came to lifting a backpack that I literally couldn't lift and carrying it through the wilderness. And also in a more emotional and metaphorical sense, like I, thought, I can't live without my mother. And everyone out there who's lost anyone who is essential to them thinks, I can't live without that person. And then what's true is that we can and we will

and we do. And so, you know, I've always, I love that you're famous for that. We can do hard things. And it's totally connected too. You know, we can bear the unbearable. It's just different language for a very similar idea. And I think it's one that it's incredibly important for all of us to remember every day because very often our first response is, I can't. Yeah. Yeah. And what's so cool about that is you don't have to believe it because the part of the grief is that you can't believe it.

You can't believe that you can live without your mother. It's just the one step on the trail at a time, one day at a time. And then you realize that even though you can't go on, you are. Yeah. And therefore you can. Yeah. It's not like you can do it because you believe you can. It's you can do it and therefore you begin to believe that you can.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's also about rejecting a kind of dichotomy, like the ways that we think about what courage looks like or strength looks like. It's like when people say like, I could never do that. And it's like, well, you actually could. You know, it's not like there's one category of people who are the strong ones who can endure tremendous loss or face very difficult physical circumstances or like fill in the trouble, whatever the hard thing is.

It's like they're not the people who can do it. And then there's this other category of people who can. It's that if we step into, I guess, embracing that you can, that both things can be true at once, that this is a hard thing that I don't want to do, but I'm doing it. And I will and I can. I mean, I think that's really, we can do hard things even if we don't like doing that. Yeah. Yeah. You said before about how even when you were a lot younger, you would say, I'm going to write the Great American novel. I'm going to do big things. I had a shift in me when I heard you talk about don't let your dreams ruin your life. So good. So good. Can you just tell us about that? Because so many times we have these big dreams that we know we're meant for them, but in the process

of trying to do what we think is our purpose, we are ruining the entirety of. ever once. Totally. I'm so glad you asked that, Amanda, because when I said that, I was like, oh, no, people are going to think that I'm just, yeah, I'm so glad I get to explain this a bit more. I do think it's really important. When I think about how I became a writer and my own journey into life, I think I really needed to have that kind of ambition and that sense of like, I'm going to aspire to greatness. And so that in so many ways was the engine that brought me to a certain place. And then, as with anything, our job here is to evolve.

So sometimes you need one story to get to the other story. And that's what I needed. The story I needed is, I'm going to be great. And then I found myself in a cottage in Sheffield, Massachusetts, in my mid-30s, trying to finish my first book, my novel torch. I just finished graduate school. And I was just like, okay, I'm going to just finish this book. I was like two-thirds of the way done with it.

And it was the first time I didn't have a job. I just was left to write. My husband was like, finish that dang book. And I was working on it. Except I ended up distracting myself with all kinds of other things. reality television, for example. And I would just kind of while the days away, and then in the last 15 minutes of the day, be like, oh my gosh, I'm going to just write, like, try to write.

And I got into this, like, really deep shame cycle. And I realized, like, I can't do this. And maybe, actually, not only have I been lying to everyone else when I keep saying, yes, I'm writing the Great American novel, that I was lying to myself. Because I thought, well, if I say that I want to do this, why am I not doing this? And I realized it was really deep shame and fear that I wouldn't be great. And it was really a powerful thing for me to sit down and just have that conversation with myself. So what matters more that I write the Great American novel or that I write a novel that I finish my humble little puny novel that may or may not be good, that may very well just be mediocre?

And I call this my sort of surrender to my own mediocrity moment. Yes. And, you know, which it seems like a reverse. It seems like, you know, it obliterates any, like, yeah, you go, girl, message. But I think it's one of the truest ones that we all need to take under our hearts where that surrender to my own mediocrity, what that means to me is I just accepted, Abby, that lesson from the PCT. I accepted what was true, which is this.

this. My dream is to write a book, and the only book I can possibly write is the one I write. And I don't know if it's going to be great or good or bad or terrible. And that is none of my business. That my work here, the true thing that I need to do is to let go of greatness, let go of all of those wild dreams. Don't let those wild dreams get in the way of my wild intention, which is to do this thing, write this story and to be able to say to myself, I did it, I did it. And what happens to it after I do it is not up to me. It's none of my business. And it was such a huge shift in my life to just accept. It really is ultimately about accepting yourself. And that word surrender. We think of it as a kind of weakness or a letting go. But in so many ways, again, it was the opposite of that.

It was me stepping into my truest power, the only true power that I could wield, which is the work that I could do. And it's so often the pursuit of the thing is what keeps us from the thing. Like the pursuit of greatness keeps us from greatness. The pursuit of happiness keeps us from happiness. The pursuit of love. It keeps us from love because those things are right here in the everyday mundane things that we're doing.

Right. And like the idea of being amazing is what keeps us from doing the daily mediocre shit. And it doesn't insulate us from pain either. I've been a gold medal. champion and a World Cup champion in my life. And I was riddled with an extreme amounts of pain. So it's got to be about that intention. I think that that's so beautifully put. Well, you have a different way of looking at that. Like you said when we read this quote together, you said, my dream destroyed my life, but in a different way, you achieved your dream too. But she didn't surrender.

She didn't do the surrender and you did beforehand. She just kept going to get to the greatness. And there was a lot of cost to that ambition for greatness. And so it's been a really interesting journey into what I would call mediocrity. Because now I'm stepping into a completely different life. And I think that your quote, this whole concept is just revolutionary for me right now. And just being a person. Like I just did soccer really well. And now I'm a parent, which is the most humbling, mediocre situation there is.

But, you know, Abby, you know, I'm curious. I mean, my assumption is to, like this shift that we're talking about, it's like in some ways, if you don't have that surrender to your own mediocrity moment, very often what's driving you to greatness is outside of you. Yes, right. And to me, that shift, I'm not saying that I'm definitely going to be mediocre. I'm saying I'm going to be only what I can be. And it might be any number of things.

It might be failure. It might be. And so, like, to be driven by the engine that is insane. side of you rather than the engine that is the cultures or your youthful idea of what success was or somebody else's expectation or hope for you. That engine always runs out of steam. That's right. It just does. And I see so many athletes and I never wanted to be one of these athletes that when they retire, they completely lose themselves. So my retirement has been spent trying to identify who I am and what I want and what is true about me and what I want out of

this life because I think I spent so much time exhausting the steam train that was external that was outside of myself. So I think that that's really interesting. I do think it's so important what you said about the it doesn't mean you're going to be mediocre. But surrendering to this is my thing to do regardless of whether it's mediocre or amazing is so important because when you think about it, sometimes we don't do things, even if we think there are a purpose. because some part of ourselves is protecting ourselves to say, well, if I don't do it, I can still tell myself and other people that if I did do it, it would have been amazing. Whereas if I do it and it's not amazing, I can't hold on to that myth that if I had done it,

it would have been amazing. That's right. It's really so courageous. It keeps you out of the arena in a way. If you're working on a book, you're still on that little safe shelf of, like, you know, it has the potential, right? Whenever I get the question, sometimes people will say, well, how do you write a bestselling book? It's like, I have absolutely no idea. I have no idea. There is no answer to that question. You don't sit down and write a bestselling book. You sit down

and you write a book that is in your heart and in your mind and your soul and then come what may. To really wrap your mind around that, you do have to redefine the definition of success, the way that we've been told that success is measured outside of us by attention and money and fame and gold medals. You know, Abby, I haven't yet fan-girled all over you. But like, I mean, that is so thrilling that you have those medals. Like, and there's so that's no way to diminish that achievement. And yet, it can't in the end be the thing that drives your passion for your work and for your life. come what may yeah this show is sponsored by midi health perimenopause and menopause aren't personality flaws or phases their medical transitions and yet nearly three out of four women who

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personalized insurance-covered virtual visit. That's join midi.com. Midi, the care women deserve. This show is brought to you by Alma. When I first tried to find a therapist, it felt like a scavenger hunt with no map, pages of names, long waitlists, voicemails that never got returned. I remember thinking if this is what it takes just to talk to someone, no wonder people give up. So when I found Alma, it felt like someone finally turned the lights on. Alma, ALMA, is this

beautifully simple way to find licensed in-network therapists without all the runaround. You can browse without even making an account, and you can filter for what actually matters. The therapist's approach, background, specialty, lived experience, whatever helps you feel understood. Nearly everyone who finds a therapist through Alma, 97% say they felt genuinely seen and heard. Better with people, better with Alma. Visit helloalma.com slash we can to schedule a free consultation today. That's hello a L-M-A-com slash W-E-C-A-N. Cheryl, one of the last things your mom said to you was you are a seeker. Now you see that as true, but it pissed you off at first.

And the fact that it pissed you off, we have talked about this endlessly this week, because I just love that it pissed you off at first. Because it just to me speak so much about the complications and relationship and between mother and daughter and how much you put on what your mom thinks of you. Yeah. Tell us about first of all why it pissed you off, you think. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because it's very much born of that era I was in in my life, which made my mom's death even more complicated. Again, now I've talked to so many people who relate to this. But when you lose a parent when you're in your teens or early 20s, you're developmentally

doing that, you know, that social distancing. Like your actual job, you know, as a teenager in an early 20s person is to establish yourself separate from your parents, right? And so I didn't want my mom to say I was anything. Like I wanted to define myself. So there was first this instant recoil like, oh, you can't say who I am or what I am. She said that to me in the context of I had told her I wanted to join there.

There was in the hospice where she was dying, there was this, like, I saw this sign for this grief support group. And I told her I was going to go to it. And there was something about it that embarrassed me too, that, like, she could see in me that kind of longing I had to sort of join, you know, join the world or find others or like find things, you know? I think it was a lot of it was really just that not yet wanting to be seen so clearly by my mother. And of course, now I would welcome her seeing me. Longing is embarrassing when you're young. Yeah. Anyone see you're longing or you're reaching or you're needing or you're need? It's like that's only when you're young. Do you not stop for you? No, I think at some point we can. Yeah. Yeah, good point. Well, it's too cool for school. You don't want to

embarrass yourself and you don't want to make yourself vulnerable to it not happening or whatever. Yeah, you don't want to ever admit you don't have everything you need. Yeah. Yeah. So now, though, how do you feel about the word seeker? And what is that to you? Oh, I think that would be one of the words I would use to define myself. Yeah, it's beautiful.

I mean, it's interesting, Glenn, that you're asking about this because I would use that word to define myself. that that is pretty moving to me to think like my mom said that to me all those years ago and that's what I've spent my life doing. And yeah, I think I'm very much a seeker. And I think in my work as Dear Sugar, one of the things I knew when I first took on the sugar column now like, gosh, 12 years ago or so, was that I wanted to seek. I wasn't going to be the person who would have the answers and to just tell people what to do, but that I would seek with them the questions that sat beneath their questions.

I would seek with them the ways to see more clearly their conundrum or their sorrow or their suffering or their question. And I do think that that's my work. From a very early age, what I felt called to do was to be a writer. And it was because as a reader, I could feel that sort of big transcendent thing we look for when we read and write. It's like I could feel myself connected to people who were not me, people through all time and place. And I've always sought, you know, to make that kind of beauty in my life and to find that beauty in my life and also to be a person who help people seek that in their own lives too. So what do you find yourself seeking now?

What are you seeking? Oh, my goodness. Well, you know, that's such a great question. The last couple of years of my life, basically since the pandemic care, I would say that they have been the second hardest era of my life after the era during which my mom died. It's been a very serious, difficult time just in my family's life and in my life as a mother, raising two teenagers through the pandemic has been hard in all the ways that we all have been reading about it. in the New York Times and elsewhere about like struggles that teens have had during this time. And I've been right there in the thick of it. And it has brought me, Abby, you use this word humility. It's the most humbling thing I've ever done is be a mother. And I'm really trying

to find my way, always to figure out how to be the best mother to my kids and also how to be stable and balanced in my own life when they're struggling. I said earlier that a teen's job is to find independence and to find themselves step into their own identity. And I think a lot of parents during this era of kids' lives go through that too. Who am I without my kids? Can I be happy if my kids aren't? Those are questions I've been asking myself a lot. And so the way it's been humbling for me is to remember that I'll always be a seeker, and that there are happy times and there are sad times and there are hard times and there are easy times, and they're going to come and go and come and go and come and go again. And I think sometimes there have been parts of my life, but I've gotten a little complacent

about that. You know, things were great, and I thought everything's going to stay great. And then things haven't been great. And it's like, wow, how do I move through this with some intelligence and grace. So humble seeker that I am, I'm just trying to do that thing I've told the world to do. They keep putting one foot in front of the other. Which leads to my next question. Do you still hike now that you have a family? Of course I hike. I mean, we're going to hike the AT together, Abby. That's right. Rees, get ready to revise your role. That's like, damn it to hell. That was hard. Just playing her. Yeah. So I love to hike. It's still my favorite thing to do. And my family loves to hike, too. I, I, my kids know every mother's stay on

on my birthday. They have to go on a hike to me. But I've also like made them hike before the pandemic. In 2017, we went to New Zealand and we hiked the Milford track and the Root Burn track. New Zealand has amazing hiking trails. And yeah, I'd love to hike so much. Yes. Wow. How stressful to go hiking with your mom and your mom is fucking Cheryl strained. Yeah. Yeah. They're like, when can we stop? She's like just another 400 miles, kids.

Well, that is such an awkward thing when I have been hiking and then I meet people on the trail. And I just always try not to really like say who I am. Because people are so disappointed. They're like, you're Cheryl Spray. Like, yeah, I'm just an old middle-aged mom trying to hike along the trail. Okay, that's so good. That's amazing. But so, yeah, I'm like, yeah, I'm Cheryl's straight motherfucker.

I don't love to say that on this podcast. That's right. We're not disappointed that it took this long. Okay, okay. Yeah, I'm Cheryl strayed motherfucker. Or as Liz Gilbert would say to me, you're Cheryl fucking straight. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. I love Liz. I loved your episodes with her. Isn't she the freaking best? She's the absolute best. We're lucky to have her. We really are. What are your little spiritual practices now?

Like you can't go for a hike, but life is so stressful and you're trying to make it through the day. What are your little things that you do to survive? Walking, I mean, I know this is different than a hike, but I think of myself as sort of, I do like walking meditation. And I think it's one of the things that I've literally never gone on a walk and felt worse afterwards. Like you always feel a little bit better. Yes. It's this part. It actually is part of my creative life.

It's part of my sort of psychological well-being life and part of my spiritual life. There's something about silence in motion that's really powerful, whether it be running or walking. I used to be a runner. Now I just walk. That's something I turn to a lot. Books, I mean, it's interesting to me how from a very young age, like I said, when I first felt called to be a writer. The beauty and the power and the truth in words is makes me feel like it puts me in contact, I think, with the divine. And I turn to words. I turn to stories and poetry and

words by others that make me feel less alone. I think that most people don't think of reading as a sacred act, but I do. I think of literature really kind of as my religion, to be honest. It's in the pages of books that I've felt, that thing I think a lot of people feel when they talk about God. And in writing them too, you know, I feel like all of my work is really spiritual, even though I am not what you would consider, I guess, I don't really believe in God, but I think I believe in the divinity that is in all of us. And my portal to that divinity is absolutely through my writing. It's a new year and instead of trying to reinvent myself, I've been asking a simpler question.

What would actually support me right now? And honestly, a big part of that answer is my home. I want my space to feel calmer, more functional, and a little more like a place that can reflect my goals and energy for this year. Which is why I've been turning to Wayfair. It's truly a one-stop shop for everything your home needs this season. What surprised me most was how easy it was to find exactly what I wanted in my style and within my budget, whether you're organizing kids' rooms, upgrading your work from home setup, tackling clutter, or just trying to make weeknight dinners easy. Wayfair really does have everything. Your home doesn't have to be perfect.

It just has to support the life you're living right now. Get organized, refreshed, and back on track this new year for way less. head to wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-A-Y-F-A-R-com. Wayfair. Every style, every home. So for you being a renowned advice giver, what's the best advice that you've ever been given that you still keep in the back of your mind and heart? Well, this one is from my mom, and in some ways it's also an answer to, to your previous question about what I do to feel better each day.

And my mother would always say to me, put yourself in the way of beauty. And when she would say that, I would just be a surly teenager and roll my eyes. But what I later came to understand is that she was right. What she would say is no matter how hard things are, no matter how miserable or ugly things seem in your life on any given day. You always have the opportunity to put yourself in the way of beauty. There's always a sunrise and there's always a sunset and it's up to you to be there for it or not. And I really did just ignore that. And I was on the Pacific Crest Trail and I'd been out there maybe 50 days and nights by that point. And I was standing there watching yet another gorgeous sunset and I remembered this advice from my

mother. And I realized she had given me in so many ways the tools I needed to save myself. And it was something that simple is that like, you know, seek beauty. Put yourself in the way of beauty and your life will be better for it. And I think about that all the time every day. You know, like I told you, the struggles I've had over these last few years, feeling just like things are difficult in my life, really each day going and seeking something, something simple. It can be the simplest thing, the thing that makes you feel that you are in the presence of beauty, that you are part of beauty. It's a powerfully transformative act to do that.

So for our next right thing, this is just a little helpful thing we like to give people at the end of an episode so that they can, you know, if they just don't forget everything else we just said, just one little easy thing that they could take with them. can you talk to us about our ITSs, our inner terrible someone's and how we can banish them? Yes. Just leave us. Did you say how we manage them? We can't banish them.

You're right yet. What the hell is the ITS? Okay, the it's. It's your inner terrible someone. I know all three of you have one inside of you. We all do. Okay. So here's, here's.

Can you have multiple it? This is my best advice. I triplet it. You have like, triplets. Okay. You have a lot of it. We all do. Let's put them into one big monster. It's your inner terrible someone. And that is that voice inside of you that says, no, you can't, you shouldn't. You're stupid. You're ugly. Nobody wants you. You know, like all that stuff. You can't write. You're a terrible mother. All that stuff. Right. And what I think is incredibly powerful and important is to remember that that's, that that is not something that we,

necessarily need to reject. Like for a long time, I think I felt like that is a sign that I'm not an evolved person, a sign that I'm in some way falling down at the job of being like an enlightened, healthy whole person. And, you know, this shift in me really in my own life is when I realized, no, no, hello, it's my friend. You are part of me. And here is your seat at my table. You get to be one of the people who guides me in my life, but the thing you need to know about yourself is you're like 99.9% of the time dead wrong. You're not going to be the thing that rules me. And we all have a friend like that who's always wrong. Yeah. Yeah. For me, the key Glennon was not to work against it. It's kind of like when I was, you know, a lot of people ask me like,

how did you hike the Pacific Crest Trail by yourself? Weren't you afraid? That's always the question. Weren't you afraid? Weren't you afraid? And one of the very first decisions I made, when I decided to hike that trail along is that I could not let fear rule me, which is different than saying I wouldn't be afraid. Okay? So the decision we're always making is like, here are all the feelings I have. Shame, fear, doubt, like all of those feelings we have, are they going to be the thing that makes the decisions for us, that rules our lives, that tells us what we can and cannot do? My answer to that is absolutely no. So harnessing your it's is saying, I see you. I see. you, you're part of me, and you're not my ruler. My ruler is my wise inner sage, my deepest inner

truth, that clarity at the core of me that knows that I am worthy of love, that I am capable of great things, even if they're mediocre. And I'm going to allow that, that bigger, I guess what I think of it is that bigger self within me to guide my life. And it can, you know, trail along behind me, you know, yammering away, saying all those negative things, but they're not going to be the things I believe. I remind my dad, you always says, you're never as good as you think you are, Glennon, but you're never as bad as you think you are. And it's like the two voices that screw us up are the one you started with and the one

you're ending with now, the voice that says, you are great and you must be great. That grandiosity is just the flip side of the it's, right? That's right. Those two highs and lows of telling us who we are. are those because really what the voice inside the wise when you're talking about is always saying is just one more step. That's right. The wise voice isn't the grandiose one. The wise one is to say it's a very humble, very grounded and very, I think, generous and loving voice. When I was on the Pacific Crest Trail, that thing that I said about deciding fear wasn't going to be my ruler and that's

what allowed me to go. And, you know, one of the ways that I would trick my brain is I decided before I went, that whenever I felt afraid, what I would say to myself, I would directly, like, out loud say, I am not afraid. I am not afraid. I'm not afraid. And of course, the contradiction is I only said it when I was afraid. And I think that in some ways, like, Glennon, you were talking about those two oppositions, your it's, and then that grandiose voice, like, for me to say, I'm not afraid while I'm afraid. But what happens when you, you know, bring those two together is the center, which is, okay, I'm a little bit afraid, but guess what? I'm brave. I'm a courageous person. I can do this hard thing. And so like doing hard things is not about it being easy. It's not saying like,

it's in your imagination that it's hard. It's saying I can do hard things. That's the middle path. Cheryl, thank you for being a sage of the middle. That's what you do, the two dichotomies. I cannot go on. I will go on. Yeah. I am afraid. I am not afraid. And as wisdom is the ability to hold two different ideas at the same time and keep walking. Thank you.

That's right. Thank you. Thank you, dear sisters. I could talk to the three of you all day long. I mean, you're just such wonderful, dear, brilliant, brave, good people. Well, lucky for us, we are going to continue this conversation. We're going to be right back in a couple days with an incredible episode where Cheryl turns in to sugar.

Yes. Do not forget. Do not miss this next one. But thank you so much. Cheryl Strayed. You are a guide for us. And for the rest of you, we know you can't go on,

but you will go on. See you next time. Bye. Bye. I give you Tishmilton and Brandy Carlisle. I came out the other side. I chased desire I made sure I got was mine. I continued to believe that as I'm a...

Because we're adventurers and heart breaks a map of final destiny They stopped asking directions Some places they had to be And to be lucky to we can do a heart, a brand new star And sometimes things fall apart I continue to believe We'll have re-look sometimes

But I'm finally fine Because we're adventurers and heart breaks On that's destined Stop asking directions to places they've never been. And too hard. So play. Never been. And two.

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