Eddie sat on my other side, but I could not look at him. If I looked at him we would both crumble like dry crackers. I thought about my older sister, Karen, and my younger brother, Leif. About my husband, Paul, and about my mother’s parents and sister, who lived a thousand miles away. What they would say when they knew. How they would cry. My prayer was different now: A year, a year, a year. Those two words beat like a heart in my chest.

Cheryl Strayed Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Also known as: Cheryl Nyland
English
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About Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl Strayed (née Nyland; born September 17, 1968) is an American writer and podcast host. Her 2012 memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is an international bestseller, adapted into the 2014 Academy Award-nominated movie Wild.

Biography information from Wikiquote

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Additional quotes by Cheryl Strayed

It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn’t have to know. That it was enough to trust that what I’d done was true. To understand its meaning without yet being able to say precisely what it was, like all those lines from The Dream of a Common Language that had run through my nights and days. To believe that I didn’t need to reach with my bare hands anymore. To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything. It was my life — like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be.