Fall Reading: Tiny, Beautiful Things: Advice on Life and Love from Dear Sugar, by Cheryl Strayed.
The Art of Therapy: Book Review of Tiny, Beautiful Things
IN THE 1970s, THE VOYAGER 1 space probe was sent up into the galaxy with a recording of the pianist Glenn Gould playing Bach on a golden record. The music is set to emanate as long as the probe lasts and is broadcasting Gould’s music as one sign of our humanity and beauty and capacity for genius. In our next probe, I’d like to add the words and advice of Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny, Beautiful Things: Advice on Life and Love From Dear Sugar to echo into the deepest parts of the galaxy. (Along with a dictionary and a bottle of fine scotch, for good measure.)
In Tiny Beautiful Things, Cheryl Strayed—the author of two novels, Wild and Torch—responds to letter writers who are heartbroken or lost or confused or pained (i.e., everyone of us in the universe at some time or other). She answers each person with empathy, wisdom, humour and, sometimes, downright badass directness.
On more than one occasion when I listened to the audio book as I was driving, I had to pull over from tears of joy or pain or recognition—or because I was simply laughing too hard. In short, my reaction was simple: I felt less alone. In her words—and I’ve included some quotes below—I’m reminded of someone’s seemingly crazy Aunt who loves you enough to tell you what she really thinks.
On love: “You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.”
On grief, after losing her mother to cancer,
“Small things such as this have saved me: how much I love my mother—even after all these years. How powerfully I carry her within me. My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger. So is yours. You are not grieving your son’s death because his death was ugly and unfair. You’re grieving it because you loved him truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of his death.”
And her words to a couple who were unsure about having children, and who were in their late 30s:
“I’ll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”
Or on the reality of some of the difficulties that will occur in our lives:
“Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.”
And then there’s the other side of acceptance, too, that I imagine might come out of the mouth of a kind of Buddha-figure but in a leather jacket: “The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the %$$#*&(^ing shit out of it.”
I began this with a thought that some alien being in the universe might see something of our humanity from these words (while bopping their heads to Glenn Gould’s Bach on the golden record, sipping scotch.). And yet it is, of course, us who may gain something by hearing the words of someone who has plunged into the seeming void of their own inner universe of shame and despair—and of sex and grief and trauma, and love, courage and healing—and come out on the other side.
And for more quotes from Tiny Beautiful Things, click here.
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Assertiveness Group
One thing Cheryl Strayed is not short of is assertiveness, at least in her writing. A theme through her work is that we need to take control of our own lives to live them well. “Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.” But it also helps to have some language and support to help live that “you” out.
I have long believed that part of the way we heal and change is through assertiveness with others. If you are interested in taking part in a fun, safe & professional 4-week group, starting Oct. 9th, 2014, click here for more details.
