What is The Strength in Moving On

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When tough times are presented, how one reacts to such tragedy can end up defining them as a person. In Cheryl Strayed’s memoir, Wild, a tragedy strikes as her mother passes away without time to say goodbye, and her family, including her own marriage, falls apart. After four years of heartbreak and turmoil, she decides to take the reigns on her own life and voyage into the wild to hike the Pacific Crest Trail that ventures from the Mojave Desert, on to California and furthermore, to Oregon and Washington State. In the realization that this journey is desperately needed to save her life, she begins it alone, and finishes it alone, but as a different person. Throughout the journey, she reflects on the past, encompassing her abusive father, her loving mother and a marriage that she subsequently ruined. With outright honesty about her past, present and some future perspectives, Strayed pieces together a sad story, one with adversity, downslides and epiphanies. When talking of these events though, she shows no symptoms of being ashamed of her past, though she does speak of being sorry about the incidents she brought forth onto her own life and her ex-husbands. Thought it is hard to absorb that the lack of shame can be characterized as a strength, when looking at how Strayed handled the situation and moved on from it, it can better be understood as to why not holding disgrace in one’s own past can help to better create one’s future.

The definition of ashamed is being either embarrassed or feeling guilty because of what one has done or a characteristic they posses. When scrutinizing over Strayed’s characteristics, she could be labeled as someone who runs away from problems, who takes alternate routes such as heroine to escape r...

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...hame to take over her life in the things she has done in her past. Some have to learn this art, and some are born with it; but even to those who do finally master it, such as Strayed, they encounter a time in their lives where they undergo the feeling of freedom for simply letting things go, and possibly thought to themselves: “how wild it was, to simply let it be” (Strayed 311).

Works Cited

Coard, Micheal. "But Honey, All Presidents Cheat on Their Wives." News Opinion . Metro Corp, 13 Dec 2011. Web. 18 Feb 2014.

Strayed, Cheryl. Wild . est ed. New York : Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc. , 2012. Print.

Stone, Jeff. "Martin Luther King Cheated On His Wife & Other Lesser-Known Facts About The Civil Rights Leader For MLK Day." International Business Times . IBT Media Inc. , 21 Jan 2013. Web. 18 Feb 2014.

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