“I stood, unmoving, stunned… Tears filled my eyes. I want my mother, I thought. My mother is dead. I thought this every hour of every day for a very long time: I want my mother. My mother is dead.” In Cheryl Strayed memoir “Wild”, the death of her mother demolished her mental stability and consumed her each moment of her life. Not knowing how to handle her grief, Cheryl ended up doing things in her life that many people would consider regretful. She ended up losing her marriage, family, friends, became addicted to drugs, and lost her own state of being. Although Cheryl is sullen, her mistakes and setbacks was her destiny to create a better life.
Through her time in the Pacific Crest Trail, she endured physical pain; however, the suffering made her stronger. The trail had a robust amount of obstacles that forced her to overcome her grief. Such as, regardless of the fact she endured pain on the trail, she replaced the physical pain from the trail with grief. Essentially, by Cheryl pushing away the grief, it helped her get through it: “It had begun to occur to me that perhaps that it was ok that I hadn’t spent the days on the trail pondering the sorrows of my life, that perhaps being forced to focus on my physical suffering and some of my emotional suffering would fade away” (Stayed 92). Cheryl went on the trail to figure her life out,but she needed a little distraction to occupy her sorrow.
One of the things that makes this memoir more compelling is the physical endurance that Cheryl displayed. Before Cheryl went on this trail, she was not prepared physically or mentally for this extreme hike. In continuation with the memoir, people would of thought that there is no way she could endure the trail. Most readers would have thou...
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...act her mind from all the mental breakdowns she was having. The physical pain opted out cheryl from grieving. Regardless of the fact that people expected Cheryl to fail while walking the trail, she ended stronger and proved everyone wrong. The baggage she carried with while walking the trail also made her a better person as she continued her journey, and when her journey was over she had no regrets. Through all of the physical, mental, and emotional pain, she tried her best to remain strong. The way she dealt with her problems was dysfunctional to some people; however, it made her a better person in the end.
Works Cited
Strayed, Cheryl. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. New York: Vintage
Books, 2012. Print.
Strayed, Cheryl. "The Sun Magazine | The Love Of My Life." The Sun Magazine | The Love Of
My Life. N.p., Sept. 2002. Web. 03 Mar. 2014.
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Armstrong, Lance, and Sally Jenkins. It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life. New York: Putnam, 2000. Print.
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