Getting to the Other Shore

I have not even finished reading this book yet I feel compelled to urge you to go get it  and read it immediately.   The first thing and really the only other thing I have read by Cheryl Strayed was her epic memoir "Wild."  And while her story was very different from my own what I overwhelmingly appreciated was her emotional journey of healing and the process she went through with time, experience, challenges and solitude to arrive at both an understanding of herself and her circumstances.   I have been picking up and putting down "Tiny Beautiful Things," for some time but the other day I was hit by an intense need to finally get a copy and see what Dear Sugar (Cheryl Strayed) had to say about life and love.    It was not at all what I expected and yet everything I should have expected from her.   The letters between these pages are heartbreaking and profound and on several occasions have moved me to tears.  Cheryl's replies are even more moving

It's words we may be blessed enough to hear from friends, family and loved ones but the person we don't hear it from enough, is ourselves....so today, right now, this is me, being you, because, you're basically me, and I'm basically you, and we're all going through some of the same shit in different ways on different days but.....YOU ARE AMAZING If everyday you get your butt out of bed and you plod through the day fiercely focused on loving your children and doing everything you can with every resource, whether its financial, mental, emotional or physical, that you have in that given moment (which is the best any of us can ever do) then you are succeeding.  Your success as a parent is not measured by whether or not you get all the laundry folded or hell, if it even makes it into the dryer before it gets what I'm told (cause I have no sense of smell), is that musty stench. It is not measured in the amount of homemade baking you can get done while you separate f