Speaker 1: What do you do when life doesn't go according to
Speaker 1: plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one,
Speaker 1: or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this
Speaker 1: is now What, a podcast about pivotal moments as told
Speaker 1: by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down
Speaker 1: with a guest to talk about the times they were
Speaker 1: knocked off course and what they did to move forward.
Speaker 1: Some stories are funny, others are gut wrenching, but all
Speaker 1: are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and
Speaker 1: every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice
Speaker 1: answers one question, Now, what have your children ever if
Speaker 1: they read everything that you've written? Do they what do
Speaker 1: they feel about it?
Speaker 2: They've read little bits of my work, and they've sometimes
Speaker 2: been in the room when I've read work or talked
Speaker 2: about it. But neither of them have yet like sat
Speaker 2: down and read my books, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: It doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 2: I think I always have had this idea that, like,
Speaker 2: when they're about thirty, they'll be able to do that,
Speaker 2: because you know, my work is so personal, there is
Speaker 2: so much about my interior life. The other interesting thing is,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not sure if you know this book.
Speaker 2: But my daughter Bobby, who's named after my mother, Bobby,
Speaker 2: actually was.
Speaker 3: In Wild, the movie. She played the young me.
Speaker 2: So when Reese Witherspoone remembers her childhood, they're these flashbacks
Speaker 2: and you see this blonde girl. Well, that's my daughter Bobby,
Speaker 2: and she had just turned eight and she was.
Speaker 3: In the movie.
Speaker 2: And even though she was in the movie, they've neither
Speaker 2: of my kids have ever watched the film. They just
Speaker 2: think it's too much and it's so funny because their
Speaker 2: friends have all watched the movie, their friends have read
Speaker 2: the books, some of their friends have been assigned to
Speaker 2: read the book in high school and college. And my
Speaker 2: own kids hapened. But I think that it's also like,
Speaker 2: really naturally.
Speaker 1: My guest today has a way with words. Cheryl Strad
Speaker 1: is a renowned author, public speaker, advice columnist, and podcast host.
Speaker 1: Her books, including the New York Times bestseller Wild, have
Speaker 1: sold millions of copies worldwide and have been adapted to
Speaker 1: both big and small screen. I loved Hulu's version of
Speaker 1: her book, Tiny Beautiful Things, and I marveled at both
Speaker 1: the resilience of her spirit and the quality of her advice.
Speaker 1: Cheryl's a celebrated essayist, a wife, a mom to two teenagers,
Speaker 1: and I just think a genuinely kind person, a conversation
Speaker 1: with a gift, and I'm grateful to her for allowing
Speaker 1: me to share it with you all. So, without further ado,
Speaker 1: here is Cheryl Strade. I'm so happy to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Nice to meet you, Cheryl.
Speaker 3: I'm so excited to meet you.
Speaker 2: I was telling my daughter, who just turned eighteen on Sunday,
Speaker 2: Oh boy, I was telling her this morning, I was
Speaker 2: going to talk to you, And I was like, if
Speaker 2: you had gone back in time and told my sixteen
Speaker 2: year old self that I would ever get to talk
Speaker 2: to Brookshields, I would never have believed you.
Speaker 3: So I was telling her how much I've loved you
Speaker 3: for so long.
Speaker 1: Oh well, thank you. And if you had told me
Speaker 1: at sixteen that I would be talking to such an
Speaker 1: accomplished writer person human, I probably would have said, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't think so like. I'm just like, I'm just
Speaker 1: like a model and a you know, kind of actress.
Speaker 3: Oh well, thank you.
Speaker 1: So you've got two kids though, right, I.
Speaker 3: Had two kids? Yeah, I have.
Speaker 2: My son is a freshman at college. He just started
Speaker 2: at university of Oregon last month, and my daughter is
Speaker 2: a senior in high school.
Speaker 1: Wow, I've got one who's will be going into her
Speaker 1: junior year in college. She's a sophomore. And I've got
Speaker 1: a senior in high school. So okay, I'm sure if
Speaker 1: I were to ask you advice, you would give me
Speaker 1: very healthy advice. But people know you from your books
Speaker 1: predominantly they tell us a lot about you, which I believe,
Speaker 1: but they don't tell you everything about you. And I
Speaker 1: always am interested in how people describe themselves. So if
Speaker 1: you were to have to describe yourself in your day
Speaker 1: to day life right now, what would you say?
Speaker 2: Oh, gosh, I think that I really am like many parents,
Speaker 2: It's like they realize, Okay, I'm all these things in
Speaker 2: my work life, but my main job is mommy.
Speaker 3: I'm a mom.
Speaker 2: And I really had this idea when my kids were
Speaker 2: younger that when they got to be teenagers, that would
Speaker 2: be a time that I could like kind of step
Speaker 2: back and you know, you don't have to follow them
Speaker 2: around at the playground anymore, but you have to do
Speaker 2: other things that are really, I think equally demanding, and
Speaker 2: especially these last few years brook where it's been what
Speaker 2: I think of as like very high impact parents through
Speaker 2: a pandemic and all of the changes that COVID brought
Speaker 2: on in terms of like my kids were not in
Speaker 2: school for a long time, they were navigating adolescents, which
Speaker 2: is this time when, of course, all they wanted to
Speaker 2: do was be with their friends. So it's been really
Speaker 2: a very consuming part of my life. So I'm a mom.
Speaker 2: I'm a partner to my wonderful husband who I've been
Speaker 2: with since really I met him nine days after I
Speaker 2: finished my hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, which I
Speaker 2: wrote about in Wild, my husband, Brian Linstrom. And of
Speaker 2: course I'm a writer, and as a writer, I wear
Speaker 2: many hats. When I first started writing, I always thought
Speaker 2: that I would be somebody who just wrote books. And
Speaker 2: what's been really cool and fun about my career, and
Speaker 2: I think so many of our careers what ends up
Speaker 2: happening is is as you walk down the path, all
Speaker 2: of these other paths open up. My writing led me,
Speaker 2: for example, to write this Dear Sugar advice column, which
Speaker 2: I never in my wildest amount and thought, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm going to write an advice column someday, And to
Speaker 2: be a really central part of my work, well, I
Speaker 2: do that or I've also branched out into I write
Speaker 2: screenplays and I've been involved in television writing as well,
Speaker 2: and that's sort of a surprise. And then I also
Speaker 2: have an accidental career, as you know. I had a
Speaker 2: couple of podcasts, I do a lot of public speaking.
Speaker 2: Those are things that were great surprises. So I'm a
Speaker 2: bunch of different things. And I also am a cat
Speaker 2: mom and a dog mom too.
Speaker 3: We can't forget that.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I'm interested in, first of all, how you're
Speaker 1: because you were You were brought up very Let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about your upbringing. And you lived in
Speaker 1: a very rural community with your mom. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: meant what without.
Speaker 3: Or a toilet?
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I had a really well first of all,
Speaker 2: I was born in western Pennsylvania in Appalasia, my where
Speaker 2: my father in this tiny town where my father had
Speaker 2: grown up and his whole family, his father and grandfather,
Speaker 2: were coal miners, and so I grew up, you know,
Speaker 2: came from very humble beginnings. My parents had married in
Speaker 2: the sixties because my mom, when they were dating, my
Speaker 2: mom got pregnant and it was a very difficult marriage.
Speaker 3: They had three kids together. I'm their middle.
Speaker 2: Child, and by the time I was six, my parents
Speaker 2: were divorced and I was living in a little town
Speaker 2: outside of Minneapolis, about an hour outside of Minneapolis, where
Speaker 2: my mom was a waitress and worked in a factory,
Speaker 2: and we were you know, we received welfare, we were poor.
Speaker 2: We were basically living hand to mouth, and by the
Speaker 2: time I was a teenager, we had moved to northern Minnesota,
Speaker 2: where we essentially were homesteaders. You know, we lived in
Speaker 2: the woods, we built our own house with my by
Speaker 2: then my stepfather, who was a carpenter, and we you know,
Speaker 2: my mom and stepfather were in some ways kind of
Speaker 2: back to the landers.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: My mom certainly had a lot of values that were
Speaker 2: out providing for yourself and growing your.
Speaker 3: Own food and making things. But also we were broke.
Speaker 2: You know, we didn't have an indoor toilet, not because
Speaker 2: of any sort of political ideology. It was because we
Speaker 2: couldn't afford to have one installed until I was actually
Speaker 2: away at college. And so I grew up in a
Speaker 2: really rustic way. I grew up with a lot of
Speaker 2: financial struggle and strife, but I also grew up in
Speaker 2: a really happy you know that was in so many
Speaker 2: ways very much nurtured me and made me who I
Speaker 2: am today.
Speaker 1: How So, because I you know, you hear that story
Speaker 1: more often than you hear you know, those born to privilege,
Speaker 1: you know, don't have the understanding of have not or
Speaker 1: or whatever. But how do you think that that that
Speaker 1: experience and the memory of that experience from such a
Speaker 1: young age, for as many years as you experienced it,
Speaker 1: how do you think that that differentiated you or shaped
Speaker 1: you differently and different from your peers.
Speaker 2: Well, it's such a big question. I mean, we could
Speaker 2: talk this whole hour about that, because I really do
Speaker 2: think that, you know, when we use that word privilege,
Speaker 2: we think of just a very specific things. And of course,
Speaker 2: you know, people who have in this case, like economic
Speaker 2: advantages that I didn't have have more. I also just
Speaker 2: want to share with you, Brooke, there was something that
Speaker 2: my mom would always say to me, we aren't poor
Speaker 2: because we're rich in love. And so there's a way
Speaker 2: in which I was poor and unprivileged, and there was
Speaker 2: a way in which I was rich and extremely privileged.
Speaker 2: I have so many dear, dear friends who grew up
Speaker 2: with great economic privilege and were poor in every other way,
Speaker 2: and so I think it's really important to remember that
Speaker 2: because love is the essential nutrient. I wrote that as sugar,
Speaker 2: and I do believe it. And so an answer to
Speaker 2: your question is I got plenty of that.
Speaker 3: I had very.
Speaker 2: Difficult experiences and trauma with my father, witnessing him physically
Speaker 2: abuse my mother. I have also myself been a victim
Speaker 2: of sexual abuse as a child. But and that's a
Speaker 2: big but I had to heal those wounds. This isn't
Speaker 2: to diminish that, but I did have a mother who
Speaker 2: really loved me and my siblings, and she always made
Speaker 2: us feel safe and secure, even when we were, you know,
Speaker 2: really financially precarious and insecure.
Speaker 1: And this was with your real biology, my biological father.
Speaker 2: So he was violent and abusive and menacing, and that
Speaker 2: those were really painful things. But my mother, you know,
Speaker 2: eventually steered us out of there, and you know, we
Speaker 2: I do think that that so many of the things
Speaker 2: that made me are those difficult things, but also my mother,
Speaker 2: who modeled resilience, who modeled the ability to walk in
Speaker 2: the direction of the better thing.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I think think it's funny that, like I'm sort of
Speaker 2: famous for walking, and I think like I can trace
Speaker 2: that back to witnessing my mother walk walk out of
Speaker 2: a marriage, walk away from something that was harmful, even
Speaker 2: though that was, you know, all these other ways difficult
Speaker 2: to do, and she was a very really self sufficient person.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I can describe my childhood in a lot of ways
Speaker 2: where I say, well, we didn't have an indoor toilet,
Speaker 2: or we didn't have this, or we didn't have that,
Speaker 2: But I could also tell you so many things we
Speaker 2: had what.
Speaker 1: Has mostly helped you? How do you heal from that pain?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: How did you know to do that? Because it's got
Speaker 1: to be practiced over the years.
Speaker 3: It does. That's it.
Speaker 2: I mean, you put your finger on it. It is,
Speaker 2: you know that we find healing through learning how to
Speaker 2: tell our stories and also to revise our stories to
Speaker 2: be able to have some perspective. I have always said,
Speaker 2: I really do believe in the power of art because
Speaker 2: it is essentially telling us the story back to us
Speaker 2: of what we already know. What it means to be human,
Speaker 2: what it means to love, to lose, to heal, to
Speaker 2: triumph over over the things that have traumatized us, you know,
Speaker 2: and so so much of I think the way we
Speaker 2: think about the world is dichotomy. Right, You're either a
Speaker 2: victim or you're not, or you're weak, or you're strong,
Speaker 2: or you're this, or you're that, you're damaged, or your
Speaker 2: whole you know, you're broken, or your whole. And I
Speaker 2: have always been such a believer that we're all of
Speaker 2: those things at once that I can say to you, yeah,
Speaker 2: those I had some horrible traumas as a child, and
Speaker 2: those things don't just go away because I snap my fingers.
Speaker 2: They are always with me. But over time, what I
Speaker 2: did is I learned how to allow myself the pain
Speaker 2: of those experiences. I allowed myself the understanding of those experiences,
Speaker 2: and I allowed myself to tell i'll revise story about
Speaker 2: those experiences.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Of course, it took something from me to be sexually
Speaker 2: abused by my grandfather, for example, it also eventually gave
Speaker 2: me something back in my ability to understand how it
Speaker 2: is sometimes those who are suffering make other people suffer,
Speaker 2: how it is sometimes we have to walk through and
Speaker 2: learn how to carry those ugly things we wish we
Speaker 2: didn't have to carry, and how we can let those
Speaker 2: negative experiences make us actually not only stronger, but able
Speaker 2: to help others by telling the story of that experience.
Speaker 1: I'm so deeply moved by your insight, you know, in
Speaker 1: your compassion. You Now if you've done a lot of therapy.
Speaker 3: Too, you know I haven't.
Speaker 1: That is Oh, I hate you. I've been in therapy
Speaker 1: forever and it's the only reason why I feel sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, grounded. I know, yes, is you naturally this?
Speaker 3: I mean I think that this is my interviews.
Speaker 2: I've never been through therapy, you know, really, so, I
Speaker 2: mean I've done I've done therapy like with my kids
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, but I, like myself, have never
Speaker 2: fully gone through therapy. But let me tell you. My
Speaker 2: theory of that book is that because at first it
Speaker 2: was really just a socioeconomic thing. Like I didn't grow
Speaker 2: up in a culture or community where people went to therapy,
Speaker 2: you know, Like I have friends who grew up in
Speaker 2: New York City in LA and they're like they were
Speaker 2: in therapy like age eight and a half, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean.
Speaker 3: It's just like how it is.
Speaker 2: And like I grew up in northern Minnesota, and also
Speaker 2: I'm fifty five, so generationally, like it wasn't just it.
Speaker 3: Hadn't really seeped into the culture in the way it
Speaker 3: has now.
Speaker 2: Back when I was younger, so I couldn't and then
Speaker 2: and then in my young adult years, I couldn't afford it,
Speaker 2: you know, I didn't have holll insurance. And then now
Speaker 2: that I'm old enough, it was like, Okay, what I
Speaker 2: realized is has been such a therapeutic act for me. Accidentally,
Speaker 2: I was doing what we do in therapy, like when
Speaker 2: you write about your life, you have to deeply, deeply,
Speaker 2: you know, interrogate your assumptions. You have to think about
Speaker 2: other perspectives, like when you wrote about your mom and
Speaker 2: I've written about my mom. You know, there is if
Speaker 2: you're going to actually write something that's worth reading and
Speaker 2: we're sharing with other people, you have to really struggle
Speaker 2: to get to the truth.
Speaker 3: And the truth isn't just your truth.
Speaker 1: And that is one thing that what I've really found
Speaker 1: from Deer Sugar, which was a popular advice column that
Speaker 1: you just contributed to right and then it became a podcast,
Speaker 1: is that.
Speaker 3: No I wrote the column.
Speaker 2: So I first wrote the column for The Rumpust and
Speaker 2: I still write it. It's a monthly column. I have
Speaker 2: a subtech newsletter, but I took so I wrote. I
Speaker 2: wrote it for The Rumpus for a couple of years.
Speaker 2: It became my collection Tiny Beautiful Things. Then I stopped
Speaker 2: writing it for a little while, and I did a
Speaker 2: podcast for The New York Times in w R called
Speaker 2: Dear Sugars with my co host Steve Allman. Then we
Speaker 2: stopped doing that, and then I picked up writing it
Speaker 2: again monthly for my Substeck newsletter and recently well to
Speaker 2: sort of at the same time that the TV adaptation
Speaker 2: came out. Earlier this year, Hulu released Tiny Beautiful Things,
Speaker 2: the TV show Starry Katherine Hans Katherine Han, Who's amazing,
Speaker 2: And at that time we reissued Tiny Beautiful Things the
Speaker 2: tenth anniversary with some new columns. So it's really like
Speaker 2: this whole deer sugar giving advice thing, Brooke. That's such
Speaker 2: a prime example of when I said, all these paths
Speaker 2: presented themselves, Dear Sugar has taken me on a journey.
Speaker 1: It makes me think that you were, in some way
Speaker 1: always a listener, a watcher, an advice giver. Do you
Speaker 1: think that's just in your DNA.
Speaker 2: Like I do. I do you know?
Speaker 3: And I think it's connected to.
Speaker 2: Me being a writer and not just being a writer,
Speaker 2: but really essentially being feeling called to be a writer.
Speaker 2: I have always been somebody who felt like the way
Speaker 2: I could contribute to the world, you know, the thing
Speaker 2: I had to give was to tell stories, to write stories,
Speaker 2: to make people feel less alone through words. And when
Speaker 2: I think about the things that have helped me in
Speaker 2: my life over time, it's almost always a book or
Speaker 2: a poem or you know, an essay that made me
Speaker 2: feel seen and recognized and validated and inspired or consoled
Speaker 2: and so in the form of their Sugar, when I
Speaker 2: had the opportunity to write this column, I first wrote
Speaker 2: it anonymously and then revealed my identity as Sugar. I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: this is interesting because I can use this in a
Speaker 2: really practical way, like writing can actually be directly helpful
Speaker 2: to people. And I didn't know, you know, I was like, listen,
Speaker 2: I've never been through therapy, I've never taken.
Speaker 3: A psychology class. But what I did know was the
Speaker 3: human condition.
Speaker 2: I mean, as a writer, that's which when you apprentice
Speaker 2: yourself to the craft of writing, it's not just forming
Speaker 2: sentences in metaphors and so forth. It's actually understanding how
Speaker 2: you know what motivates or animates this person, what scares
Speaker 2: this person, this character? Right, And so I applied that
Speaker 2: kind of thinking to these letters. And as for the
Speaker 2: empathy piece, you know, yeah, I've always tended to be
Speaker 2: somebody who suffered at the idea of others suffering, and
Speaker 2: Brooke one of the things I learned right away is
Speaker 2: that the only way I could possibly give people advice
Speaker 2: as sugar was.
Speaker 3: I couldn't judge them.
Speaker 2: Whatever you say to me about what you did or
Speaker 2: you regret or your fear or you're you know, messing up,
Speaker 2: I'm going to say, I'm going to validate you, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to hold you with with loving kind and
Speaker 2: I'm going to write to you from that position, even
Speaker 2: if I ultimately say things that maybe, like, you know,
Speaker 2: challenge you. For example, you could say, like, you know,
Speaker 2: we could put out like if we could put a
Speaker 2: poll out right now and go, Okay, my husband cheated
Speaker 2: on me, Should I divorce him?
Speaker 3: Yes or no?
Speaker 2: Like, and then people would like they would vote yes
Speaker 2: or no based on like whatever actually they bring to it,
Speaker 2: like their ideas, their assumptions, their history. But the truth
Speaker 2: is we don't know the answer to that question because
Speaker 2: actually It depends. It depends on that story, on that relationship,
Speaker 2: on that situation. And that's what I listened to really closely,
Speaker 2: that these that this you know, this qualified advice isn't
Speaker 2: about just some dispensing what should be. It's listening carefully
Speaker 2: to what the person who's seeking advice wants and needs
Speaker 2: and knows and fears.
Speaker 1: It can be dangerous, though, can it be dangerous?
Speaker 3: Like do you mean dangerous that? Like it's dangerous to
Speaker 3: say I think you should do this?
Speaker 1: I mean delicate or maybe dangerous isn't the proper word.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't applay it. There's a delicacy with which you know,
Speaker 1: these are basic strangers. Yeah, okay, so now you're trying
Speaker 1: to get into their psyche, not just by using your
Speaker 1: own experience, because maybe you did or didn't have a
Speaker 1: husband who cheated on you. Right, But like if someone
Speaker 1: said that, I would say, I can't answer that for you.
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't say you should divorce this guy
Speaker 1: you shouldn't. But I could say, well, tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit more what led up to this?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And is what's happening in your heart when you realize that?
Speaker 3: But here's what I do.
Speaker 2: I whether it be even on the podcast. So whether
Speaker 2: it's on the podcast or in the column, people have
Speaker 2: written me a letter and they do say more than that.
Speaker 2: You know, I wouldn't answer a letter that just said
Speaker 2: my husband, she's obviously I break up with them. They
Speaker 2: say all the things, and very often what I do
Speaker 2: in my advice because I agree with you, you're right,
Speaker 2: it's delicate, and I am so not like signing up
Speaker 2: for telling people what to do and then be like, whoops,
Speaker 2: that was a mistake. Yeah, I say to them, here's
Speaker 2: what I hear you saying, you know, I hear you
Speaker 2: saying you don't, you know, believe you'll ever feel safe
Speaker 2: again in this relationship, So maybe you should trust that.
Speaker 2: Or I hear you saying you understand that people make mistakes,
Speaker 2: and your partner is telling you he regrets this, and
Speaker 2: you feel like that there's a way that you could
Speaker 2: work this out, So maybe trust that.
Speaker 3: Like I very often say back to people, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, I'm just using this infidelity as one example, but
Speaker 2: very often they kind of tell me in their letter
Speaker 2: what they know they want to do, what their gut is,
Speaker 2: and what I say is I affirm that and I
Speaker 2: show it to them. Very often people are afraid to
Speaker 2: know what they know. They're afraid to know they what
Speaker 2: they most want because once they know it, they have
Speaker 2: to act on it. So if somebody is writing to
Speaker 2: me and saying, I'm an attorney, but I've always dreamed
Speaker 2: of being a writer, should I quit my job? You know,
Speaker 2: and they tell the whole story about how their heart
Speaker 2: sings when they're writing, an aches when they're writing. I say, like, listen,
Speaker 2: you know what you want to do. You just need
Speaker 2: me to say it's okay that you do what you
Speaker 2: want to do, even if you end up failing, you know,
Speaker 2: And I think that that's a glorious that to me.
Speaker 2: You know, it's if the qualification to be what I
Speaker 2: am an advice colmnist is to listen deeply. The best
Speaker 2: advice I can ever give is not listen to me,
Speaker 2: trust me, I know the path. It's listen to yourself.
Speaker 2: Trust yourself. You know the path, and you have the power,
Speaker 2: the courage and the strength to walk in.
Speaker 1: I named this podcast now What because it is about
Speaker 1: those rather pivotal but good or bad moments in our lives.
Speaker 1: You know, the times that we have to really look
Speaker 1: at our current reality and ask ourselves, now, what the
Speaker 1: hell do I do in this scenario? And I'd be
Speaker 1: really interested to know what and now what moment for
Speaker 1: you has been or is that? I'm sure we all
Speaker 1: have many yes, but does one stick out to you?
Speaker 3: Well? Absolutely? You know, when I came to the end
Speaker 3: of my hike on the Pacific Crest Trail.
Speaker 1: I had long did it take you again? Remind me?
Speaker 2: Because I was out there for ninety four days, and
Speaker 2: you know, I had really gone on that hike. I
Speaker 2: was twenty six when I took the hike. I finished
Speaker 2: it two days before my twenty seventh birthday. And I
Speaker 2: had gone on the hike really to heal myself. My
Speaker 2: mother had died very suddenly of cancer at the age
Speaker 2: of forty five a few years before. And there's no
Speaker 2: other way to put it. My life had gone off
Speaker 2: the rails, you know, and I thought I had a
Speaker 2: kind of awakening moment where I thought, where who am
Speaker 2: I anymore? You know, in my grief, I have given
Speaker 2: up this sort of ambition of being a writer. I
Speaker 2: had just gotten involved with drugs and just led myself
Speaker 2: down a self destructive path. And so hiking the PCT
Speaker 2: was away for me, not so much to change myself,
Speaker 2: but to find myself again, to come to bring myself
Speaker 2: back to my strength.
Speaker 1: And when I.
Speaker 2: Finished my hike, I really had this glorious feeling of
Speaker 2: what next. And what was cool about being able to
Speaker 2: ask that question at the end of that big journey
Speaker 2: is that I felt okay. I felt that I had
Speaker 2: through taking that journey, grounded myself in a way that
Speaker 2: even though I didn't know the answer, I didn't know
Speaker 2: where I was going to live, I didn't know what
Speaker 2: I was going to do to earn money. I didn't
Speaker 2: know when I was going to finally see through that
Speaker 2: dream of writing my first book. But what I knew
Speaker 2: is at core I could do all of those things that.
Speaker 3: I would be okay.
Speaker 2: And if I can also add I'm kind of in
Speaker 2: that moment right now. I'm fifty five, my son's it's
Speaker 2: freshmen in college, my daughter's a senior in high school.
Speaker 2: My children are growing up and moving on, and I
Speaker 2: who am I? And I've been really asking myself And
Speaker 2: it's interesting that I began my answer to you with
Speaker 2: this journey, this big journey that shook me up and
Speaker 2: allowed me to see myself more clearly and I have
Speaker 2: to say, Brook, I think that what's next for me
Speaker 2: in this next big transition is I need to go
Speaker 2: on a journey again.
Speaker 3: Because I don't know the answer.
Speaker 1: To that question.
Speaker 2: I know that there's a big life shift on the
Speaker 2: Herriz very close, and I feel like I need to
Speaker 2: retreat and do something hard like I did on the
Speaker 2: PCT in order to see what's next.
Speaker 1: It's not a natural journey to success, but I'm curious
Speaker 1: about the journey to commercial success.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's a lot to navigate and it's a lot to
Speaker 1: grapple with, and I'm curious as to how it affected
Speaker 1: you and if fame in the in and of itself,
Speaker 1: whatever that word means, has that changed your relationship with
Speaker 1: other writers? Could you talk to me just a little
Speaker 1: bit about your journey to success and how it has changed, Yeah,
Speaker 1: fundamental parts of your life and people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're I mean, the first thing I want
Speaker 2: to say is So Wild was published when I was
Speaker 2: forty three, and I'm so, so so grateful that I
Speaker 2: was a real grown up before I became famous and
Speaker 2: before I had that kind of success for a couple
Speaker 2: of reasons. One the one is, first of all, it
Speaker 2: allowed me to write my own definition of success.
Speaker 3: Wild is not my first book.
Speaker 2: My first book is a novel called Torch, and I
Speaker 2: before that had published several essays, a couple of which
Speaker 2: were in Best American Essays. I was a successful writer
Speaker 2: before Wild was published. Now I was, and by a
Speaker 2: successful writer, I mean I was successful in the way
Speaker 2: that most writers are successful, which is to say, known
Speaker 2: to a fairly small orbit of people who are tuned
Speaker 2: into literary America. And I really realized in that, you know,
Speaker 2: in those younger years, in my twenties and thirties, when
Speaker 2: I was writing my first novel and writing those essays
Speaker 2: and stories that were being published, I realized, okay, you know,
Speaker 2: success for writers or most artists. In fact, I'd say
Speaker 2: all artists isn't money and fame. What they're doing is
Speaker 2: they're out there creating and making art and they're barely
Speaker 2: piecing together a living. But really the way they measure
Speaker 2: success is by doing the work, By doing the work
Speaker 2: and giving it they're all and connecting with an audience,
Speaker 2: even if it's a small audience. Right. So I really
Speaker 2: attached myself to that idea of success. That's what success
Speaker 2: looked like to me. And I was My dreams came
Speaker 2: true before Wild was published. Then Wild came along, Bam,
Speaker 2: my life absolutely exploded, bloated. It was an international bestseller.
Speaker 2: It was an Opra pick withtherspoons start, you know, all
Speaker 2: all that stuff. And I felt like I was on
Speaker 2: a rocket ride, you know. I was like all the
Speaker 2: all the metaphors. There was a volcano, there was a rocket,
Speaker 2: there was a tornado. There was everything right, and I
Speaker 2: was at the center of it. And what was really
Speaker 2: cool to me is that I because I was a
Speaker 2: grown up in my forties by then, I was really
Speaker 2: grounded in this feeling of like, wow, okay, this is
Speaker 2: this other kind of a success, this very external success.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It didn't change my life inside myself. I had already
Speaker 2: felt like I'm a writer and I'm successful, and then
Speaker 2: this other thing happened. And the biggest change was, for
Speaker 2: the first time in my life, I could afford to
Speaker 2: pay my bills without struggling strife. But it didn't shift
Speaker 2: who I was in the world. Now other people would
Speaker 2: project that onto me. The other people would be like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, now you must be moving to la I
Speaker 2: live in Portland, Oregon. I'd be like why am I moving?
Speaker 2: Why I don't even understand now you must be sending
Speaker 2: your kids to a fancy school.
Speaker 3: No, my kids are still at public school. Like you know.
Speaker 3: They would project a narrative onto me, and it was uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: That happens with people though that's their name. I think
Speaker 1: people and their nature like wanna because because then then
Speaker 1: they can criticize it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Then they turn around and like, oh, so you're fancy.
Speaker 2: Now, well right, and they would say, now people met
Speaker 2: me think you're just so like down to earth and earth.
Speaker 3: Why wouldn't I be like what like what?
Speaker 2: I don't understand why I wouldn't be And so yeah,
Speaker 2: and so that's that whole experience did did change my life,
Speaker 2: and I will say I'm so grateful for it because
Speaker 2: of course, what a thing to be able to connect
Speaker 2: with such a big audience.
Speaker 1: But I also think that, like you know, people have said,
Speaker 1: what does success mean to you? To me and to me,
Speaker 1: it's the ability to keep working, you know. To me,
Speaker 1: that's like longevity. If I had to pick one word,
Speaker 1: it would be longevity. The work is appealing, the registering
Speaker 1: with other people, making someone laugh, you know, and this
Speaker 1: is what you're saying you're you're saying that that that
Speaker 1: ability to do what you're put on this earth for
Speaker 1: which or you believe you are, that to move people,
Speaker 1: to put them in a place where they can experience. Period.
Speaker 1: You mentioned needing another type of wild type of journey.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's any ideas of what you might
Speaker 1: want to do?
Speaker 3: I need a mild, A mild journey, A mild.
Speaker 1: Instead of wild, Okay, just a little more maybe self
Speaker 1: loving and less painful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe a bed like you know, instead of sleeping
Speaker 2: on the in the dirt, you know, in the tent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I shoes that fit.
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly. I mean, I'm a real and
Speaker 2: I want to say too, I do think the journey. Obviously,
Speaker 2: travel is a wonderful way to journey, and it might
Speaker 2: be the way I choose to journey in this next
Speaker 2: era to but I think a journey can also be
Speaker 2: an experience or an era of your life in which
Speaker 2: you delve into something deeply. So again, you know, and
Speaker 2: I use this phrase earlier so that you can more
Speaker 2: clearly see yourself in your situation or this time of
Speaker 2: your life, and to answer that big question of what
Speaker 2: next it's a sort of stepping out of the usual.
Speaker 2: And you can do that right at home. I mean,
Speaker 2: it takes some real intention, but you can do that.
Speaker 2: And I haven't yet figured out what it's going to
Speaker 2: be for me. I just know that when something is
Speaker 2: big as this era of my life, of you know,
Speaker 2: bringing these two children to adulthood, raising them to adulthood,
Speaker 2: giving them everything I could give them, when that comes
Speaker 2: to an end, and of course, and I'm using that
Speaker 2: very softly because you know, our kids still need us
Speaker 2: very much.
Speaker 1: It's even worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, a certain time of our of
Speaker 2: a certain era has come to it is coming to
Speaker 2: an end very soon, and I need to shake up
Speaker 2: my life to see what it is next.
Speaker 3: And I don't know what it will be.
Speaker 1: That was Cheryl Strade. If you want to hear more
Speaker 1: from her, check out the TV adaptation of her best
Speaker 1: selling collection of Deer Sugar Collar, Tiny Beautiful Things, streaming
Speaker 1: now on Hulu. That's it for us today, Talk to
Speaker 1: you next week now. What with Burke Shields is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. Our lead producer and wonderful showrunner is
Speaker 1: Julia Weaver. Additional research and editing by Darby Masters and
Speaker 1: Abu zafar Our. Executive producer is Christina Everett. The show
Speaker 1: is mixed by Bahed Fraser.