You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.
Cheryl StrayedRead
It seemed to me the way it must feel to people who cut themselves on purpose. Not pretty, but clean. Not good, but void of regret. I was trying to heal. Trying to get the bad out of my system so I could be good again. To cure me of myself.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the struggle of confronting one's inner pain in a way that can feel both painful and liberating.
In this quote, Cheryl Strayed conveys the complex emotions associated with self-harm and healing. She draws a parallel between the act of cutting oneself and her own attempts to rid herself of emotional pain, suggesting that while these actions may appear harmful and ugly, they can also offer a sense of clarity and a path towards recovery. Strayed expresses her desire to cleanse herself of negativity in order to rediscover her true self, embodying a courageous struggle for personal transformation.
Themes
HealingPainStruggleSelf-HarmTransformation
In practice
Example use cases
In a therapy session discussing the healing process.
More from Cheryl Strayed
All quotes →The obliterated place is equal parts destruction and creation. The obliterated place is pitch black and bright light. It is water and parched earth. It is mud and it is manna. The real work of deep grief is making a home there.
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I walked all those miles, I learned all those lessons. It's as if my new life was the gift I got at the end of a long struggle.
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There is a path toward the light. The one that goes blink, blink, blink inside your chest when you know what you're doing is right. Listen to it. Trust it. Let it make you stronger than you are.
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Each evening, I ached for the shelter of my tent, for the smallest sense that something was shielding me from the entire rest of the world, keeping me safe not from danger, but from vastness itself. I loved the dim, clammy dark of my tent, the cozy familiarity of the way I arranged my few belongings all around me each night.
Cheryl StrayedRead
Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.
Cheryl StrayedRead
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