Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
Date read: 2/21/23. Recommendation: 8/10.

The best of Strayed’s advice from her column Dear Sugar in a single collection. The columns cover dozens of topics from relationships and finding yourself to writing and doing hard things. At its core, as Strayed explains, the column has always been about connection and one person writing a letter to another—in pain, courage, confusion, clarity, love, and faith. My favorite columns were those that discussed writing, authenticity, rites of passage, and taking what’s yours.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Origins of Advice from Dear Sugar:
At its core, Dear Sugar has always been about one person writing a letter to another—in pain, courage, confusion, clarity, love, and faith. And about connecting. “It has always been about believing that when we dare tell the truth about who we are and what we want and how exactly we’re afraid or sad or lost or uncertain that transformation is possible, that light can be found, that courage and compassion can be mustered.”

Writing:
“As my thirtieth birthday approached, I realized that if I truly wanted to write the story I had to tell, I would have to gather everything within me to make it happen. I would have to sit and think of only one thing longer and harder than I thought possible. I would have to suffer. By which I mean work.”

“But I’d finally reached a point where the prospect of not writing a book was more awful than the one of writing a book that sucked.” 

“When I was done writing it, I understood that things happened just as they were meant to. That I couldn’t have written my book before I did. I simply wasn’t capable of doing so, either as a writer or a person. To get to the point I had to get to to write my first book, I had to do everything I did in my twenties. I had to write a lot of sentences that never turned into anything and stories that never miraculously formed a novel. I had to read voraciously and compose exhaustive entries in my journals…”

“I’d finally been able to give it because I’d let go of all the grandiose ideas I’d once had about myself and my writing…I stopped being grandiose. I’d lowered myself to the notion that the absolute only thing that mattered was getting that extra beating heart out of my chest. Which meant I had to write my book.”

“I know it’s hard to write, darling. But it’s harder not to. The only way you’ll find out if you ‘have it in you’ is to get to work and see if you do.” 

“So write, Elissa Bassist. Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a motherfucker.” 

Take what’s yours:
“Nobody is going to give you a thing. You have to give it to yourself. You have to tell us what you have to say.” 

“I woke up to the realization that if it was true that my life was going nowhere and the reason it was going nowhere was me, then it was also true that only I had the power to change it. No one could do it for me. I had to do it myself, wildly.”

Authenticity is your now:
“The future has an ancient heart.” Carlo Levi

“Who we become is born of who we most primitively are; we both know and cannot possibly know what it is we’ve yet to make manifest in our lives.” 

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with law school, but don’t go unless you want to be a lawyer. You can’t take a class if taking a class feels like it’s going to kill you.”

“Let whatever mysterious starlight that guided you this far guide you onward to whatever crazy beauty awaits.” 

Rites of passage:
“Difficulty, solitude, and risk, are the three things that all rites of passage have in common. It’s because putting ourselves in situations where we must do hard things that scare us without anyone there to intervene pushes us beyond what we previously thought ourselves capable of. It expands our perception of our own courage, strength, and endurance.”

“I tested myself when I went on my long hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, which I embarked on about nine months after I hacked my braid off in Blue Fourche. I had to do something hard so I could know my strength. I had to do something scary so I could find my courage. I had to do something alone so I could see who I was. I didn’t know that doing those things at twenty-six would change my life in all the ways it has….”