Editors Note: Please be advised the following story includes profanity
When Cheryl Strayed was admitted to the University of St. Thomas, her mother couldn’t have been more excited. The college provided free classes for parents of students, and her mom now had the opportunity to get her bachelor's degree. Strayed later transferred from St. Thomas to attend the University of Minnesota, and her mother decided to transfer alongside her daughter.
With two classes short of a degree, Strayed's mother suddenly passed away from cancer during their last semesters of college.
Her memoir, “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,” recounts Strayed’s journey coping with her mother’s unexpected death while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. In 2014, Reese Witherspoon starred in the Oscar-nominated film adaptation of “Wild.” Strayed's other bestselling work, “Tiny Beautiful Things,” was also adapted into a Hulu miniseries in 2023.
As part of this year's ReadUP event, Strayed visited UP on March 13 to discuss her memoir, writing process and working through grief. Hosted by the Schoenfeldt Distinguished Writers Series in the Buckley Center Auditorium, the free and public event consisted of Strayed’s lecture, followed by a Q&A and book signing.
A recording of the event will be uploaded next week to the ReadUP webpage and will be available for UP community members to view for two weeks.
Below are selected quotes from the event.
Cheryl Strayed answering an audience member's question during the Q&A portion of the event
On writing
“From a very young age, I felt called to be a writer… I remember reading those words [from a children’s book] that communicated something to me that I had never seen with words, that was sort of like a transcendence — a piercing truth and beauty. At that age, I remember thinking that whatever this person who wrote these words has created, which were words on a page that created feelings in me, that’s what I wanted to create in others.
“One of the questions I always get is ‘Why did you wait so long to write [‘Wild’]?’ And the thing is, I didn’t wait. I wrote it as soon as I had something to say about it.
“When you write from experience, those experiences have to be very, very, particular and very, very, intimate. They have to be palpable, vivid and real. But they also have to be universal, they have to be experiences that other humans have had. The goal isn’t to cast a spell and make you think I’m so interesting, the goal is to cast a spell and make you see our common humanity.”
On her mother
“In my grief, I genuinely thought I cannot go on. I can’t live without my mom. I don’t even know who I am without this woman who had raised me and I don’t even want to find out because my heart hurts too much. In all the years that I’ve written about my grief, what I’ve learned is how very unoriginal that thought is, how very unalone I am… The most beautiful gift that ‘Wild’ has given me is that sense of not being alone, and being able to tell others as a writer that they are not alone in that sorrow.
“I realized that the only way to honor my mom would be to thrive and to flourish, and to actually become the woman she had raised me to be.
“I had in my grief done what a lot of people do when they are suffering… I turned all that pain and suffering inward. I made bad decisions that made my life worse… I can see now that what I was so much trying to do was love my mother. I was so much trying to honor [her] and I was so much trying to show that the death of this entirely ordinary woman meant something. That the world just couldn’t keep going on like nothing happened, because something incredibly big had happened.”
On journeys
“I think one of the tropes or assumptions made about journeys is that someone is changing by becoming someone else… I really think of it in a different way. Because I very much felt within myself that the journey I was seeking because I had to change my life, was like a return. It was a return to that girl I'd been who said ‘I feel the call to use words for truth and beauty.’ It was a return to the strength, courage and love I knew I had in me. It was a return to somebody who could walk the path of my truest intentions, rather than my most f***** up desires. I really believe that so often what we seek is already within us and the journey is about finding it and trusting it and believing that we can use it, that we have it.
“In that crisis moment I realized that what I had to do was the one thing I couldn’t do. There I was setting off on a journey because I felt like I could not live without my mom, and the journey was about coming to understand that was not true. That I would always love my mom and I would always miss my mom, but that I would absolutely live without her and I would live with joy and everything she gave me. I would have the life I built, even if it wasn’t the life I would have ordered up.
“I created for myself a right of passage. Rights of passages are those things we do where we push ourselves outside of our comfort zones. We learn from the discomfort, we learn from that sense of derivation and we rely on ourselves.”
On courage and power
“[Courage] comes from that foundational gift of having a parent or someone who loves you with that kind of totality and wholeness, and also someone that tells you that love is the greatest treasure. And if you have that, you are rich.
“What I didn't know is actually sitting in that and looking up from the bottom of that darkness — that was the first step in finding that power again… The bravest triumph is often when we look the most weak and the most failed.
“You are the most centered in your power when you are the very most lost and in despair. Because that is the opportunity you have to see what is out there the most clearly and powerfully.”
Samantha Zavala is a reporter for The Beacon. She can be reached at zavala27@up.edu
