19 Astoundingly Insightful Dear Sugar Quotes That Will Save Your Life
“Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.”
If you haven’t read Cheryl Strayed’s advice column “Dear Sugar”, you need to. With gentle, humorous and absolutely honest panache, the author of bestselling “WILD” has the kind of salve for the soul truth seekers have been dreaming of. Life, love, and becoming is as beautiful as it is messy and hard – and Strayed has the exact words for the feelings we all experience.
“The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.”
“You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.”
“Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start here.”
“What’s important is that you make the leap. Jump high and hard with intention and heart. Pay no mind to the vision that the commission made up. It’s up to you to make your life. Take what you have and stack it up like a tower of teetering blocks. Build your dream around that.”
“Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.”
“The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love.”
“But we can’t erase our lives. We can’t change what our mothers or fathers or step-parents were like or what demons or gods ruled them or when they died or how. We can only change who we are in relation to them. We can revise how we narrate those stories of our lives.”
“There are some things you can’t understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding.”
“Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word ‘love’ to the people you love so when it matters the most to say it, you will.”
“You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what your plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history of economics or science or the arts.”
“Forgiveness doesn’t sit there like a pretty boy in a bar. Forgiveness is the old fat guy you have to haul up a hill.”
“You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding and my dear one; you and I have been granted a mighty generous one.”
“We have the power to heal what needs to be healed. We get to give ourselves that. We have the capacity to stand before the scorching flames and decide what to swallow and what to cast out.”
“Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible… Let it nurture you, because it will.”
“You have to say I am forgiven again and again until it becomes the story you believe about yourself.”
“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 realise there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.”
“Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore.”
“But the reality is we often become our kindest, most ethical selves only by seeing what it feels like to be a selfish jackass first.”
“The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of it.” 
