Over the past couple of weeks, as I’ve pondered what I’d write in this final newsletter of the year, so many horrible things have happened in the world. I probably don’t need to tell you that the news has been a relentless onslaught of heartbreak and cruelty; injustice and hatred, spite and stupidity. So very often in 2025 (or 2024, for that matter), I’ve felt overwhelmed, outraged, and just plain sad. Given this, it might seem that making a silly list of some of my favorite things over this past year would be a ridiculous undertaking, but the opposite is true. Remembering things that made me laugh, smile, cry, think, sigh in wonder, or fill up with gratitude was exactly the medicine I needed just now—and not only because it put me in a good mood. It reminded me yet again how vital it is we seek fun, pleasure, entertainment, and enlightenment on a daily basis so we don’t let the bastards get us down. If anything good has risen out of these challenging (okay, dreadful) times, it’s been that I and so many of the people I know seem to have a heightened sense of how important it is to do what my beloved mother used to implore me to do every day: put yourself in the way of beauty. Even if that beauty is as quiet and common as a book or a TV show or a podcast or a text chain that makes you happy. This list is that.

But first, a bit of business before I get to my list: there are still a few spots open for the Silent Writing Retreat in Malibu, where I’ll be the guest teacher on January 10th. It’s going to be an incredibly fun and special day, full of creativity, silence, community, and writing all those words you’ve been aching to get down on the page. What’s better than that? Chocolate? Okay, maybe I’ll bring some chocolate for us all too. Please join us if you can. All the details are here.

Okay, so here we go—onward to the list!

The Best Daily Confab: The (sweet, sometimes rancorous, loving, photo-filled) Family Text Chain.

If you’d asked me twentyish years ago that I—or anyone, for that matter—would agree to carry a damn phone around wherever I went I wouldn’t have believed you. And I still feel kind of bummed that we’re all tethered to our phones. And yet! And yet. Oh my goodness, how I treasure the family text chain. It’s a constant stream of good nights and love yous and who left these damn dirty dishes in the sink AGAINS and, most awesomely, it’s a nonstop series of highly specific photos taken by my husband, Brian, each of them a tiny beautiful thing he’s noticed on his many daily walks. Lost mittens, abandoned boots, faded notes blowing in the street, fallen flowers, shadows against dilapidated buildings, chalk drawings on the sidewalk, a light bulb dangling from a wire hung in a tree. It’s a visual poem on my phone every single day and I thank my lucky stars for it.

The Best Books I Read.

I read (and listen to) oodles of books, a good number of them that aren’t yet published, so in order to not turn this paragraph into a book itself, I’m going to keep it tight and simple and tell you about two of the books that are at the very tippy top of my most-loved list this year. One was a book I read at the beginning of the year; the other was one I read just this month. Both are absolutely stunners. I started the year off with Endurance, by Alfred Lansing. Published in 1959, it’s an epic, astonishing account of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s attempt to cross the Antarctic with his crew of 28 men aboard the ship called Endurance (which, spoiler alert, did not endure!). But the men did and boy howdy was that hard. It’s such a good book. A classic. And if you’re inclined to listen to books instead of read them, I cannot recommend listening to the version narrated by Simon Prebble highly enough.

My favorite novel this year (which was published in 2023) was Loved and Missed, by Susie Boyt. Boyt is the author of several books, but this is her first to be published in the US. I’d never heard of her until I picked this book up after seeing someone recommend it on Instagram, but by page five I knew I wanted to read everything Boyt’s ever written. The book is about Ruth, who is raising her granddaughter, Lily, because her daughter, Eleanor (Lily’s mother), is addicted to heroin. It’s a heartbreaking subject and yet this book is so rich with love and light and tenderness and longing and grief and strength. I found myself crying from the beauty of it rather than the sorrow. But what really makes it good—what always makes books really good to me—is just how fucking excellent and incisive and unexpected the sentences are. What a writer, is what I kept thinking as I read it. What a writer.

The Best Instagram Feeds Featuring Wild Animals and Wildly Cool Women.

A good half of the time when I’m scrolling on Instagram I have no idea what I’m doing there other than wasting my life. The other half of the time, I’m happily catching up with friends, people I admire, and a handful of feeds that make me love the world even more than I do already. Robert Martinez’s astonishing feed features the stunning photographs and videos of wild animals that he captures in the Angeles National Forest in California. The folks at the Voyageurs Wolf Project have an equally impressive feed of the animals living in Voyageurs National Park in my home state of Minnesota. The number of times that looking at these two feeds has settled my addled mind and filled me with awe cannot be counted.

The talented Sparrow Smith has a similarly calming/awe-striking impact on me, but in a different way. Her wonderful feed is rich with music, love, and the most spectacular outfits and hairdos anyone could ever dream up. I pretty much just want to go to North Carolina and spend a week drinking lemonade on her front porch while she strums her banjo and sings to me while showing me how she does her hair in all the crazy gorgeous ways she does it (which would be rather hard to do while also playing a banjo). Barring that, I’ll just keep watching her feed in admiration and gratitude and maybe go to her show when she comes to Portland in February with her band, The Resonant Rogues.

Another woman who fills me with glee and admiration is the only fashion influencer who’s ever truly had my heart. Vivian Truran is an 81-year-old woman from Wales and on her absolutely delightful feed she shows us how she puts together her smashing outfit each day. It’s sweet. It’s real. And the result is always fabulous. Plus, in watching her closely, I’ve finally learned how to tie a scarf more than one way. Oh my goodness, I love this woman. (Viv, if you’re reading this, come over and help me jazz up my look.)

The Best Movies and Television Shows I Watched.

Here again, I saw SO many good shows and movies, but this list is all about those way up high on my list so I’m going to keep it concise. The feature film I cannot stop thinking about—one so richly layered and emotionally complex that I want to watch again (rare for me) because I want to absorb more of it—is Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value. It’s a movie about family, generational trauma, emotional abandonment, healing, forgiveness, acceptance, and the terrifying healing power of making art. It’s just so damn good. It stars the spectacular Renate Reinsve, who also starred in Trier’s 2021 film, The Worst Person In the World (which I also loved madly). My pick for documentary actually came out in 2024, but it’s still blazing into the world in 2025: Between the Mountain and the Sky, by my friend Jeremy Power Regimbal. It’s about the tremendously beautiful family and community my friends Maggie Doyne and Top Malla have created in Surkhet, Nepal through their nonprofit organization BlinkNow. It’s so good. You’ll cry, but you’ll also laugh, and most of all, you’ll be profoundly inspired. You can watch it on their web site for a limited time, so get to it!

As for television, oh my goodness. I loved a lot of what so many of you loved (Severance, The Diplomat, The Pitt, The White Lotus, Slow Horses—all of it brilliant), but the show that blew me away and that I keep telling everyone to watch is all four seasons of My Brilliant Friend, based on the Neapolitan novels, by Elena Ferrante. (And yes, I know the show didn’t come out in 2025, but that’s when I watched it.) It’s epic and wrenching, gorgeously written and shot, full of desperation and cruelty and struggle and sex and my god, the lives of these two women! As Brian and I watched it we kept putting it on pause so we could say to each other that it was the best thing we’d seen in forever. I wish I could watch it again for the first time.

The Best (Annual) Arts and Culture Sojourn.

My favorite week of the year is the one I spend in Telluride, Colorado with my family at Mountainfilm, which is a phenomenal documentary film festival dedicated to showcasing world-changing, awe-inspiring, heart-filling (and sometimes heartbreaking) movies and conversations about (as their web site states) “adventure, activism, social justice, environment and indomitable spirit.” Every year I leave feeling lifted, invigorated, restored, and more in love with the wild world and its complicated humans and majestic non-human animals than I was before. It feels like medicine to me and it’s also so much damn fun. It’s my family’s favorite thing to do together. We’ve been going every year (minus a pandemic year or two) since 2015 and our plan is to keep going forever. (And, as a member of the Mountainfilm Board, I want to add: festival passes are on sale now!)

Best Podcast.

I listen to loads of podcasts but the one with the most episodes that stick with me weeks, months, and even years after listening to them is Jonathan Goldstein’s Heavyweight. In the podcast, Goldstein guides his guests as they attempt to resolve past issues that have never stopped haunting them. The teenage bank robber who, decades later, wants to apologize to those he traumatized. The man who wonders why a now-famous musician never returned the CDs he long ago “borrowed” back when they were friends. The woman who wants to know why her sorority kicked her out years ago. And even the host himself, reckoning with his first love. Every episode is a slowly unwinding story and a love song to the complexity of being human.

So there it is. Some of what I loved 2025. What’s on your loved list? Feel free to share in the comments below, if you’d like. Thanks for reading my newsletter, dear hearts! I’m wishing you a beautiful solstice, a happy Hanukkah, a merry Christmas, and the happiest of new years. I’m rooting for you, always.

xCheryl

It’s time for another installment of my occasional Tells Us series, in which I ask an author to tell us about five things. It’s a true pleasure to have my beloved friend Roda Ahmed sharing her brilliant heart with you today. Roda and I met ten years ago, when she and our mutual friend, Maggie Doyne, popped by a book event I was doing in NYC for the release of Brave Enough. The connection was instant. Over the past decade our deepening friendship has extended to include our families as well—together, in various formations, we’ve traveled in Hong Kong, Nepal, and Norway, hung out in California, Oregon and Colorado, and, perhaps most importantly, my husband Brian and I have a daily Wordle battle with Roda’s husband Tor via an epic text thread full of loving trash talk and begrudging applause.

Roda was born in Somalia, but spent most of her childhood in Norway where, in her twenties, her debut novel, “Forberedelsen” (The Preparation), became a national bestseller. After she moved to the United States, she began writing children’s books, such as Etta Extraordinaire and Mae Among the Stars, which was inspired by Mae Jemison, the first African American woman to travel into space. Roda’s desire for more diversity in children’s literature compelled her to found Hightree Publishing, which has published numerous books where all children can see their sweet faces reflected. In her interview, Roda tells us about her forthcoming book, Daniel’s Dream, which she co-authored with the chef, Daniel Humm.

Roda is also the founder of The Silent Writing Retreat in Malibu, where I’ll be the guest author on January 10, 2026, sharing everything I know about writing—or at least as much I can fit into one long day together. I wrote all about the retreat in my recent newsletter, but the big news today is that Roda is giving away a free spot at the retreat. If you’re interested in joining us, you can submit your entry for the free spot giveaway here. The deadline is Sunday, November 23rd and the winner will be drawn at random and announced on Monday, November 24th—so do it today if you want to come write with us in silence and beauty.

Speaking of which, Roda has some things to tell us about both of those things. I hope you enjoy her beautiful interview as much as I do.

xCheryl

Tell us about a time when you took advice that turned out to be really good or really bad.

Nearly fifteen years ago, my dear friend Erling Kagge and I were out for a long walk when he shared about a revolutionary experience — 52 days in total silence, exploring the North Pole. He asked me if I had ever practiced silence or been to a silent retreat. “It’s really good for you,” he said.

If you know me, you know I love talking. I’m a true people person who loves connecting with others, so the idea of visiting a place where I’d be with people but couldn’t talk sounded like a challenge. At that time in my life, I was really looking for ways to push myself, so I took Erling’s advice and signed up for a week-long silent retreat in Sedona. It was early spring, and the thought of being alone in beautiful, budding nature sounded like a dream. The only two sounds a day would be the gong that rang when it was time to gather for the optional, hour-long meditations.

The first day, I felt like I was going insane. I never noticed how many open tabs existed in my mind at once. One for each child, husband, family member, friend, and to-do list item. My brain kept a never-ending list. I wanted to scream. It was like having a Shakespearian dialogue with myself in multiple languages. I was constantly running lines and rewrites. It was, to be honest, one of the hardest days of my life. I’d voluntarily exposed myself to something so horrible, by choice. It was dumb — and ironically, so far from silent. I left the next day, thinking it was the worst advice I’d ever taken.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d let myself down, that I’d given up too easily, so I went back in the fall to try again. By day two, the crazy calmed down, and a peace washed over me. I could hear my inner voice; she was soft, observant. I could hear the difference between the bird songs. I could feel the speed of the wind. I could feel the sun warm my face. It was as if time slowed down a bit, and I could be in it — fully. It transformed me, reminded me of who I was and what was available to me, beyond that never-ending list.

Every year since, I’ve gone away for a few days to disconnect from the world and connect deeply back to myself. I’ve even started my own silent writing retreat to offer that same experience to others. It’s for anyone who feels the call to write, no matter their experience level or skill set. I even bring in inspiring guests to speak, as you well know, dear Sugar, as you’re going to be my next guest author!

Turns out, that really bad advice was actually pretty good.

Tell us about a personal transformation in your life or a change that you’ve made for the better.

When I became a mother, I naively thought that my writing life would merely be put on hold. I thought that once the kids were old enough to go to school, I could spend a few hours writing uninterrupted every day. It will come as no shock to all you mothers out there that I quickly found out that dream was nothing but a dream. By the time I got my kids ready for school, dropped them off, had coffee, and worked out, half the day was already gone and it was time for pickup again.

Eventually, I realized that I had all these books and stories screaming loudly inside me, desperate to come out, and that time was fleeting. As a mom, no one was going to make time for me — I had to make it for myself. So ten years ago, I changed my routine to wake up before my kids. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried waking up before a six-year-old that spent eight hours of the night occupying your bed like a royal, leaving you with half a duvet and a pillow under your head if you were lucky, but if you have, you know that it takes the strength of a thousand suns and a healthy dose of luck.

At first, I got only one hour. But it wasn’t the amount of writing or the structure of it that mattered the most. It was that it got done. “Writers write, so let’s go write today,” I’d tell myself.

And as time passed, the kids slept in later, and I got up earlier. Slowly but surely, I found the time to create my own sort of magic. I made the time. This little routine change, as simple as it sounds, changed my life for the better. I now have this golden hour before the world demands of me all my other identities, when I get to be alone with the blank page. It is in that hour that I turn ideas into realties, pages into books, and back to myself.

Tell us about your forthcoming book, Daniel’s Dream.

My next book, Daniel’s Dream is co-written by Michelin chef Daniel Humm. We connected over our love for children and our shared hope that the coming generation will end food insecurity and take better care of our planet.

We also bonded over the fact that we were both kids who didn’t fit the mold — he was too loud, too much; I was a quiet rebel in a big family. Growing up in a family of eight siblings, I was often left to myself and had limitless dreams. If I was home, I loved reading and dreamt of having my name on a book one day. If I was out, I was often off breaking the rules. I wasn’t a very obedient kid and always took “No” as a suggestion I didn’t like. I did outrageous things. Things like sneaking out to the king’s summer house nearby and taking the horses for a ride, without permission and certainly without riding gear.

As dangerous as it was, I like to think following my whims in childhood made me into a more strong-willed and imaginative person today. That’s why I want to inspire kids to do the same. Daniel’s Dream is a book for kids who color outside the lines while other kids in class are happy to follow the rules. The main character, Daniel, can’t help but follow his heart. There are no rules for dreams.

Tell us about a regret you have or a mistake you’ve made.

I had the privilege of attending a book reading with Toni Morrison in 2008. I got a chance to meet her and have her sign my book. It was a big moment for me, both because I’d just published my first novel, and it was an instant Norwegian bestseller, and because she was my favorite author and the reason I wanted to become a writer. I told her all of this and thanked her for inspiring me.

I’ll never forget her smile and her “WOW, congratulations!” She asked if it was translated, and I said yes; I’d received an unofficial translation for my birthday. “Send it to me,” she said. She wrote down her address on a piece of paper. “Send it to me — I would love to read it.”

Toni Morrison wanted to read my book.

I left the event in awe of her knowing about my existence. I was determined to send my novel to her later that week. But that week turned into weeks, into months, and then into years...

I really wanted to send it. It had become required reading at schools, taught and analyzed in universities. But the truth no one knew was that my novel had caused such harm in my family. Both my grandmother and mother were illiterate and disapproved of me becoming a writer, and even though it was fiction, some family members found fragments of themselves in it. I was a new writer, a daughter of immigrants that treasured pride and privacy, and writing stories was closely attached to shame. I hadn’t yet learned to defend my own voice, and I didn’t yet understand that my dream could hold such consequences.

It was the most celebrated time of my life and the most painful one at once. I wanted to send my book to Toni Morrison, but I kept telling myself it wasn’t the right time, the right translation, or the right version of me. I didn’t think I was worthy of the time she’d spend on my work. I didn’t believe I deserved to be read by a woman whose words had changed the world.

The years went by, and one day, beloved Toni Morrison passed away, as did my chance forever.

In the midst of moving, I recently rediscovered that translated manuscript. And I thought of how much I’ve changed. I’ve outgrown that girl who was scared of being read, scared of the power of her stories, scared of how people saw themselves in the pages. I understand now that shame comes from survival. And that bravery skips a generation. I wasn’t brave enough back then to send Toni my book, but I grew to become brave enough.

If this happened today, I would send it with a note of gratitude. And that growth is what matters most. So I’ve learned to live softly with my regrets. My grandmother and mother couldn’t read and write, but I became a writer, and my books paid for my daughter’s college. I’m proof that in one generation, we can rewrite an ending. Regrets are just part of the story.

Tell us your best advice.

Always choose love. Love is at the center of everything I do and write and am, and I believe it is at the center of every good piece of advice that’s ever been given. When I’m off balance, in fear, in conflict, overstretched, or overwhelmed, love is the thing that brings me back to peace. Love is what makes me remember the women who came before me, the ones who shaped me, lifted me, and taught me how to stand in my own light. It holds infinite power. It strengthens, softens, and restores.

So whatever you do, let love be the place you return to. Choose it in your words, in your art, in your work, in the way you show up, in how you treat yourself and how you treat others. Choose love not because it’s easy, but because it’s the only thing that endures. In the end, love is the only thing that lasts and the only thing worth choosing again and again.

Roda Ahmed was born in Hargaisa, Somalia and, as a child, moved to Norway with her family and seven siblings. A graduate of the Norwegian University of Technology and Natural Sciences, Ahmed has mastered five languages: Somali, Arabic, Norwegian, English and French. Her debut novel, “Forberedelsen” (The Preparation), was published by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag in Norway and became a bestseller. Her first children’s book Mae Among the Stars, was published in the US by Harper Collins in 2018 and is now in its 27th printing. In addition to her writing, Ahmed is the founder of The Silent Writing Retreat and also Hightree Publishing, which is committed to bringing more diversity and inclusiveness into children’s books. She lives in southern California with her family.

I hope you’re having a wonderful autumn. I love this time of year, when everything darkens and changes and falls. I spent the last day of summer at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark. It’s the most beautiful museum I’ve ever been to—an astonishing convergence of art and nature on the coast of the Oresund Strait. As I wandered around looking at art, I came upon a few people waiting outside a closed door in a little nook of the museum. Without knowing what they were waiting for, I got in line and waited too, then stepped inside the doorway when it was my turn. What I entered into was Yayoi Kusama’s installation, “Gleaming Lights of the Souls.” It’s a wonderment of darkness and light—at once dazzling and cave-like, disorienting and enveloping. Among the mirrored walls and glimmering orbs I could see both myself and what felt like infinity. It struck me as the perfect place to be as the summery season of light spun toward the autumnal and wintery seasons of darkness.

At this time of year, when the days shorten in the Northern Hemisphere and the planetary tilt pushes us inward, I can’t help but contemplate what lessons the darkness offers us and what meaning I can take from them in my life. What can I say? I’m a sucker for metaphor. And even though the lessons I take from the approach of the winter solstice don’t change much from year to year, I still find it useful to remind myself of them: That it’s from darkness that everything grows. That, like a seed planted deep into the dirt, it’s in the stygian, underneath places where we germinate before we can bloom. That some parts of growth are about stillness and silence, patience and pause. That change is constant, even when it’s unseen and imperceptible. And perhaps most powerfully, what the winter solstice reminds me each year is that it’s only on the very darkest day that we begin the inexorable march toward the brightest one.

The number of times those lessons from darkness have saved me cannot be counted because they are so many. All the days I felt lost or spent or useless or sad or ashamed or alone or afraid or ruined, they were all days on which I germinating, incubating, wending my way upward and onward. Same as you, dear hearts, I know without knowing. Eventually the seeds we were when we thought we were hopelessly buried found the light and reached for it. We emerged and bloomed. From the darkness, we grew. Isn’t that cool?

So I’m thinking about all of that again as I contemplate the year that’s coming to an end and the new one that will soon begin. I’m asking myself what I want to grow in this season of darkness. Asking what seed I’ll be tucking into the soil. Asking what I should nurture with the most care during these subterranean months. Most years on the winter solstice I write down my answers to these questions on a scrap of paper and burn it, though half the time, truth be told, I’ve forgotten what it was before the spring equinox rolls around.

But the other half of the time? Something grew or shifted, big or small, because I set an intention and made good on it. Some new, gleaming Kusama-esque orb ended up dangling from the dark ceiling of my soul cave because I conjured it into being long ago.

These little scrap paper fires are usually the closest I get to making new year’s resolutions, and whether something comes of them or not, I always feel that they that set me off on the right foot. I like to have some joyful activity lined up in the month of January too, for that same reason, so I’m pleased to tell you that one of the first things I’m doing in 2026 is one of my favorite things to do and that’s teaching writing, but, in this case, in a slightly different format than usual. I’ve been invited to be the guest speaker on January 10th at The Silent Writing Retreat in Malibu, which is led by my dear friend Roda Ahmed.

Roda is both a writer and a publisher and, with her Silent Writing Retreats, she’s fostered a community too, creating an intimate space at a beautiful Malibu home, where people gather for a day of intentional silence, listening, and writing. When Roda first began her Silent Writing Retreat she shared with me that her idea was born out of her experiences using silence as a powerful tool in her own creative practice, which has been enriched and expanded by retreating temporarily into silence, which frees our minds up to ponder our work on a deeper level.

While the participants are silent for all but a portion of the day at the retreat, I, as the guest speaker, will be talking quite a lot, sharing the most essential lessons I’ve learned about how to write stories that are brave, deep, revelatory, and crackling with life. I’ll speak about the power of vulnerability and fearlessness in writing, about the importance of delving beneath the surface by writing with a depth of consciousness, and about the artistic energy that’s created when we write vividly about our senses and the world. I’ll also share several writing prompts and there will be time for writing. If you’re interested in learning more about The Silent Writing Retreat and possibly attending, you can find details here.

Later in 2026, I’ll be teaching my weekend workshop at Kripalu on May 1-3. And on October 9-11, I’ll be back at the Omega Institute. Both workshops are offered in-person or via livestream—which is a great option if your budget is tight or travel is difficult or impossible. Neither workshop is up on their websites yet, but check back after the new year to register. In July, I’ll be leading a five-day retreat in Cordova, Alaska, which I wrote about in more detail here. And you can always check my website for the most updated list of upcoming events and and workshops.

Thanks for reading and I hope your heart is well. I’m wishing you all good things and rooting for you always. Go find something in this dark season that makes your soul shine bright.

xCheryl

Happy September! It’s my favorite month of the year. It feels to me like the month of sweet endings and fresh starts. Summer’s over and autumn begins. The sundresses get pushed to the back of the closet and the sweaters are pulled out (at least here in Portland, Oregon). My birthday lands mid-month and I do the usual birthday business of contemplating what’s ahead and reflecting upon what’s behind me. This month feels particularly momentous because it marks a milestone: thirty years ago—on September 15th—I completed my hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, which seems astonishing to me because it feels both like yesterday and seven lifetimes ago.

I’ll be hitting the figurative and literal trail again soon, doing two days of events at the Happinez Festival in the Netherlands on September 12 and 13 and, later in the month, giving a couple of talks in Collioure, France—at Karen Karbo’s Come to Your Senses writing retreat and at the Ciné de Mondial, at a screening of Wild on September 24. I’ll then go for a long hike on the Camí de Ronda on the Costa Brava in Spain before returning to the US—with, hopefully, all ten of my toenails still intact!—to teach my weekend writing workshop at the beautiful Omega Institute. If you’re so inclined, you can join me for the in-person workshop on October 10-12 and experience the beauty that is upstate New York in autumn or register for the livestream (which you can attend in real time, watch later, or both).

Whenever I teach a writing workshop I hope to spark creative and personal awakenings in those who attend, but I invariably end up feeling sparked and awakened too. Part of it is that I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing the creation of so many powerful, funny, sad, transformative stories, but another part is that my teaching takes me away from home and going places inspires me. Travel, to me, is like a constant September. Going places gives me a sense of ending and beginning. I can’t help but contemplate what’s ahead and reflect upon what was. Travel, like September, puts us in that beautiful, complicated, middle space of this crammed up against that, which is a space that almost always wakes us up and give us a fresh perspective.

That’s one of the reasons I said yes when the folks at Let’s Meet in Alaska invited me to host a special six-night/five-day adventure/writing retreat next summer at the historic Orca Adventure Lodge, nestled between the ocean and the mountains in Cordova, Alaska. It’s unlike any retreat I’ve done before, where we’ll not only be writing, we’ll be hiking, paddling, fishing, wildlife viewing, feasting, lounging, sauna-ing and soaking up the midnight sun in a place so remote the only way you can get there is fly in or take a six-hour ferry from the mainland. I should note that none of these adventure activities are required—you can add them onto your day or leave them off, as you wish. As for the writing workshop component, we’ll gather four times over the course of the five days for sessions that last a couple of hours, so there will be a balance of creativity, adventure, and relaxation in days structured to give you options to suit your preferences.

I’ve never been to Cordova, but I’ve heard many stories about this singular, remote town on Prince William Sound, as my dear husband Brian worked at the St. Elias salmon cannery in town for eight summers to earn money as he put himself through college and film school. He’ll be there with me next summer, rediscovering an important place of his youth while I discover it anew—along with our cozy group of 20-52 people, which I hope will include some of you. If you want to learn more about this trip, click here and also watch the slideshow about it here and, if after you look at those things, you still have questions, feel free to ask me in the comments below. What I can say right now is I think it’ll be spectacular fun. Bring your family and friends. We’ll probably even make s’mores.

Wishing you all good things, as always, wherever you go.

xCheryl

It’s time for another installment of my occasional Tells Us series, in which I ask an author to tell us about five things. I know I often say something along the lines of “and this one is extra special,” but this one…really is extra special because it’s Chloé Caldwell who, from pretty much the moment I met her, has felt like family to me.

Chloé and I met at a party in Portland in 2011 on my 43rd birthday, when she was 25, but we’d been corresponding online for several months before that, after she’d read and tweeted about an essay I’d published nine years before called “The Love of My Life.” Shortly after we got to chatting, we discovered that when the essay was originally published in The Sun magazine, Chloé’s mom, Michele, had read it and written to me—saying things that her then-teenaged daughter would echo years later—and Michele and I also discussed our mutual love for Lucinda Williams. Chloé was gobsmacked by this and in her email to me she wrote: “I guess I am more like my mother than I thought.”

Which always makes me laugh because, girl, DUH.

Ever since then, I’ve rooted for Chloé the way one roots for their favorite wild niece. It’s been an exquisite pleasure to watch her do exactly what she said she was going to do and make a life of writing, as an author and teacher. Her books are intimate and honest, edgy and bold, tender and searching. When I have a book she’s written in my hands, I never want to put it down. It always feels like a box of secrets you get to open.

Her new book is Trying. It’s a memoir about her efforts to become pregnant and her deep desire to have a baby and also about her life falling apart suddenly. (Spoiler alert: she puts it back together, better than before.) I read it in a couple of big gulps, staying up too damn late to finish it. Afterwards, I lie in bed wondering if I should text her to say how much I loved it, but decided to wait until morning, since it was the middle of the night in her time zone. When I picked up my phone the next morning there was a text from Chloé telling me she loved me and she was grateful for the years of our friendship in its “many stages and colors.”

I am too, Chloé. Happy pub day!

xCheryl

Tell us about a time when you took advice that turned out to be really good or really bad.

My dad passed away last December, and he was in the top three closest people to me over my life. He used to have a phrase he used with his guitar students: “You get good at what you do. If you practice guitar, you get really good at guitar. If you don’t practice, you get really good at not practicing.”

I love this phrase because you can apply it to every single thing in life, in ways both literal and abstract. If you write, you get good at writing If you look at Instagram, you get good at looking at Instagram. If you walk, you get good at walking. If you swim, you get good at swimming. If you write, you get good at writing. If you don’t write, you get really good at not writing. If you look at Instagram, you get REALLY good at looking at Instagram.

I think my dad’s lesson seeped into my brain from hearing him say it so much. It wasn’t advice as much as a notion. Now I pass it along to my students and think about it once a day. It seems simple and like something we all know, logically, but the way it is phrased really drives it home.

When he died, one of his guitar students wrote, “Rob was good at love and music. It’s what he did.”

There are so many more nuggets of advice I’ve gleaned from people, one of those people is, you, Cheryl. Once you (she?) told me your friends remember if you go to your wedding or not, and I’ve applied this to friends’ book launches and other big live events. I’m definitely not always there! But I do my best to put in the effort because I think you’re right that people remember. You don’t have to do anything drastic, just make an appearance. Also, “Your book has a birthday, you don’t know what it is yet” — that ran through my head again and again in my twenties. I definitely attended the School of Cheryl Strayed.

I suppose the above is not advice either; it’s also a notion. Apparently I gravitate toward notions, philosophies, and nuggets rather than advice. Interesting.

Actual advice: my mom always said to put sunscreen on your hands to protect them from sunspots. Another one from my dad: Lean forward and roll down the hill. When I asked him what it meant, he said, “Make a decision and don’t think, just act.” Advice from Lidia Yuknavitch: “collect rocks.” My uncle once said “pay yourself first” meaning put some of what you get paid into a savings account. It stuck.

There are some notions I loved in a class I once took with Sheila Heti, one being “You are your own authority.” She meant of your book project, and it resonated so deeply with me. She explained no one is above you, no teacher or mentor or professor or workshop class mate. You get to choose. There is something really powerful about creative agency.

Tell us about a personal transformation in your life or a change that you’ve made for the better.

In May 2023 I left my marriage, once the way I was being deceived came to light. I wasn’t really conflicted on the decision.

Once I left, so much in my life improved — some immediate and some over time. It was as though the clouds parted and the sky broke open. My writing became a big focus, the way it had been in my twenties. Financially, I began thriving more than I had. Spiritually, I felt lighter and more connected to the world and everyone around me. It showed me—quickly—because life changed quickly—what and who my resources were. It came to light how many inner resources I’d built within myself. Some people fell away, and the real ones came into focus. It clarified my friendships. And finally, I could write. No matter how uncertain other aspects of my life had gotten, no one could take that away from me.

Even though I’d sold my book under one premise (notes on desire and unexplained infertility) I allowed it to morph into another book about disenfranchised grief and queer reawakening. The whole experience made me trust my intuition in an intense way.

Tell us about your new book, TRYING.

Yikes. Trying is maybe the book I’ve been writing toward for a while now. I’ve published four books of nonfiction and autofiction, and never had this experience where my life blew up while writing the book. When I sold the book in March 2023, it was a book of notes observing the fertility industrial complex, yearning to get pregnant. In May 2023 everything changed and my life as I knew it was over. A more honest, queer, and authentic life was waiting in the wings. From there, I continued writing my book in real time, because it was all I could do. I kept the first section of the book true to how I’d written it, and over time, with support from my editor, Yuka Igarashi at Graywolf, figured out how to approach what would become Act 3, which actually doesn’t come at the end but comes halfway through the book. In Act 3, the structure and tone and voice changes, because in life, my structure and tone and voice changed. Yuka and I have described it as the book going from black and white and into color. Suddenly, the book becomes loose and fast and unhinged the way my life did. I ended up having a spiritual experience writing the book, learning my body and subconscious knew something my surface-brain did not. It was powerful and made me love writing all the more. There’s a line in the book, “I love writing.”

It’s a book that’s perfect to give divorced and gay friends, or anyone who thought they were living one life and ended up living another.

Tell us about a regret you have or a mistake you’ve made.

It’s wild how this stumps me, even though I’ve made massive mistakes. My dad used to roast me saying the alternate title for one of my essay collections was “Feel Bad For Me: I Fucked Up 28 Times and I’m About To Do It Again.” He said this lovingly, of course!

I definitely regret the times I didn’t live with integrity or authenticity, but without those times I wouldn’t know what integrity or authenticity feels like, so I don’t fully regret those either.

I have some silly meaningless tattoos, sometimes I consider getting rid of them. There are many instances I could have been a better friend, communicated better, been less reactive. I don’t think I needed to get married. But again, I don’t regret that stuff, because it led me here, and I like my life. Writing has been a huge reason why.

Tell us your best advice.

Make art and writing. I am obsessed with something I read once about how writing strengthens the immune system. I think that’s fascinating. It doesn’t matter if people read or see your art, but if you feel the need to make / write something, the worst thing you can do for humanity is to not honor that. Art and writing heal and connect us. I’m unclear how people survive without it.

Be clear and direct. Clarity is underrated.

Use your resources. I love this one because it can (like “you get good at what you do”) be applied to anything. You can apply it to creativity, community, and your town. You can apply it to your friends with skills, your mentors you’ve fallen out of touch with, your local library. It can be something as small as your pantry and something as large as New York City. I use this phrase / concept for everything and it’s lowkey life-changing.

CHLOÉ CALDWELL is the author of the national bestseller, Women (Harper Perennial, 2024). She is also the author of the books I’ll Tell You In Person, The Red Zone, and Legs Get Led Astray. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, The Believer, Bon Appétit, The Cut, Vice, Longreads, Nylon, The Rumpus, and half a dozen anthologies including Goodbye To All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NYC and Without A Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class, and Sluts. Chloé lives in Hudson, New York. She offers writing support at www.scrappyliterary.com and on her Substack.

Asterisks aside, I do hope you’re finding beauty and joy in each and every day. I hope your summer (or winter, if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere) has so far been a happy one. When I went hunting for a happy picture to run with this newsletter, I came upon this photo of myself holding a cake I made a long time ago:

It struck me immediately as the one to run, not only because Friday is Independence Day in the US, but because it calls forth in me precisely what I wanted to write about in this little summer (winter?) missive to you, my dear subscribers: the simple truth that making and doing things feels good. It makes us happy, or at least content. And it does that especially well in times like these, when so many of us are feeling like we don’t know what to do, or we doubt anything we do will matter, or we think we can’t do a damn thing because we feel so beaten down by the things that have been done to us or others we care about. When we feel lost in sorrow, spent with rage, sunk by despair, or simply bewildered by it all.

Every time I’ve made or done something, I’ve felt better. It’s a fact I’ve returned to over and over again in these past months/years/decades in order to save myself or toss a lifeline to someone else. Action and creation are a salve, a balm, a cure.

Perhaps making and doing things is so powerful because in doing or making you break out of stasis. Even if only fleetingly, you get unstuck and, afterwards, have proof of that. Something exists because you made it. Something happened because you did it. You baked the cake and decorated it attentively and inexpertly. You showed up at the protest with longing in your heart and a smile on your face. You shot and edited the footage and now you’ve got a movie. You stitched the scraps of fabric together and ended up with a quilt. You put the seeds in the soil and eventually a flower bloomed. You put one foot in front of the other and then looked back and realized you’d covered all that ground on your own steam. Your troubles were not over. Your problems were not solved. But you had something. You did something. You could not deny that. You made it this far and making it this far meant you could keep going.

About three-quarters of my life is staked on that humble belief.

I think this idea I have about making and doing things being central to our ability to save ourselves when we need saving—or at least prop ourselves up—is connected to a feeling I’ve had for a long time about teaching writing. At the end of my workshops I often say that teaching feels like my spiritual practice and what I mean by that is I believe that when we do or make things—as we do when we write—we’re deepening and often finding our connection to self, to others, and sometimes even to the divine (whatever your conception of that may be). We’re asking, answering, and grappling with the beautiful and hard questions that give our lives meaning and purpose. We’re telling the stories we’ve longed to tell or been afraid of telling or know we must revise so we can survive and thrive. To be a part of that experience as teacher, to guide others to their own awakenings and illuminations through writing, feels sacred to me.

And of course I don’t think it’s only through writing that we can achieve that. It’s through all the aforementioned things—making the cakes and communities and movies and quilts and flowers and tracks in the dirt on a long, difficult trail—and a zillion other things too. But when you do it through writing, wow.

Speaking of which, I’m leading a writing workshop at the wonderful Omega Institute October 10-12 and I’d love if you’d join me. You can attend in person on the beautiful Omega campus in Rhinebeck, New York, or you can sign up for the online class, which you can attend via the livestream or watch later at a time of your choosing. (In fact, all participants—whether you are registered for the in-person experience or the livestream—will have access to the video of the workshop for a couple of months afterwards.) Please come! It’s always a fun and special weekend and October is an incredibly gorgeous time of year to be in New York.

Before that, I also I have a few other things coming up this summer:

On Sunday, August 3, I’ll be giving a talk at the Willamette Writers Conference in Portland, Oregon. The conference is full of great classes, speakers, and useful sessions offered by writers and other professionals in the lit biz. It runs from July 31-August 3. You can find more information and register here.

On Wednesday, August 6, I’ll be at Cinema 21 in Portland with my beloved friends Jeremy Power Regimbal and Maggie Doyne, where they’ll be screening their beautiful documentary, “Between the Mountain and the Sky,” which Jeremy directed and Maggie is featured in. The film is screening only once in Portland—at 7pm that evening—and I’ll be interviewing Jeremy and Maggie afterwards. The film is about so much, but at core it’s very much about the power of making and doing by leading with love. If you want to come, I recommend you buy your tickets now, as it’s sure to sell out.

In September, I’ll be at the Happinez Festival in The Netherlands, in Utrecht. The festival is billed as “the largest spiritual festival in Europe.” I’ll be appearing along with all sorts of interesting people who have a lot to say about doing and making happy, meaningful lives. My appearances are on Friday, September 12 and Saturday, September 13. You can get more information about the festival and register here. I’d love to meet some of my Europe-based subscribers, so please find me at my book signings after my talks and say hello!

As for this newsletter, I’ll be back with another installment of my “Tells Us” series in early August, when we’ll be hearing from the fabulous and wise Chloe Caldwell, who has a wonderful new book coming out called “Trying,” which you can pre-order here.

Until then, happy summer, friends. Full stop. No asterisk.

xCheryl

P.S Scroll down to: 1. See a sweet cake my daughter made and 2. Listen to this newsletter if that’s your jam.

P.P.S. If you’ve been trying to become a paid subscriber and can’t, it’s because I’m still on hiatus from my paid Dear Sugar newsletter, so all payments are on pause. Thank you anyway. I appreciate you.

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I hope you’re hearts are holding strong in these harrowing times. My own heart zigs and zags between holding strong and silently shriveling up into a tiny ball of rage, sorrow, and despair. I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, but at the beginning of the year I decided to do a dead hang (almost) every day for as long as I can bear to do it and it’s helped me in this heart zig-zag situation in ways I didn’t expect.

Have you ever done a dead hang? Holy hell, it’s hard. In case you don’t know, to do a dead hang, you simply grip a bar that’s high enough that you can hang from it while holding the entire weight of your own sweet body in the palms of your hands. Every time I do it I feel like I’m going to die. Every time, about three seconds in, my brain starts silently shrieking: Stop this right now! Let go! You cannot do this! This is insane and impossible! Get me the hell outta here! And every time this other part of my brain calmly replies: It’s okay, Cheryl. Just hang on. I know this is hard, but you can do this. I know it’s uncomfortable, but you can breathe through it. I know you don’t want to, but you must.

It feels like this conversation goes on for an hour and a half, but the whole thing’s over in less than a minute (so far!). It’s kind of saved me, this near daily reminder that we can endure, we can push through, we can keep hanging even when it hurts.

Well, that, and all the other good things that don’t involve me having to dangle my entire ass from a metal bar: art, walking, the sky, snuggling up with my cats and dogs, writing, reading, watching good movies and tv shows with my dear Brian, seeing all the ways the people I know and love in real life and/or follow and love online keep spreading kindness, generosity, courage, and delight.

I hope, in the midst of everything, you’re finding lots of those good things too.

I’m writing to you now because I’m looking ahead to spring and beyond, when I have lots of fun in-the-world things coming up, and I want to tell you about them, in hopes that you’ll join me. Here they are, in list form, because you know I love a list:

1. I’ll be returning to the beautiful Art of Living Retreat Center in Boone, North Carolina to teach a weekend writing workshop March 21-23. The Art of Living Retreat Center is in the spectacular Blue Ridge Mountains and it’s such a special place. This workshop is for anyone who wants to write—whether you’re an experienced writer or entirely new to the idea of putting your stories on the page. I’ll share all the best things I know about writing, the creative process, trusting yourself, and finding the truest, bravest, deepest stories you have to tell and we’ll also do lots of writing together. You can get all the details and register here.

2. Right before I head to North Carolina, I’ll be in Buffalo, New York to give a talk for the Just Buffalo Literary Center’s BABEL Authors Series at Kleinhans Music Hall on March 20th. There’s also a livestream option if you’re not able to attend in person. You can get your tickets here.

3. On April 27th, I’ll be in Denver for the Lotus Network’s “It’s Never Too Late To Be Brave” event, where I’ll be interviewed on stage at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts at 11am. Tickets and more information can be found here.

4. I’ll be returning to the wonderful Kripalu Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts the first weekend in May to teach my weekend writing workshop—and there’s also a livestream option for those of you who can’t make it in person. As I said above, my writing workshops are for writers at all levels, so all are welcome. We always have the most incredible time when we gather and write and Kripalu is a truly fabulous place to do it. You can register and get more details here.

5. I’ll also be doing a couple of talks in my hometown of Portland, Oregon in the coming months. On March 13th, I’ll be at the University of Portland’s Buckley Center Auditorium as their Schoenfeldt Speaker. The event is free and open to the public. More details here. And this summer, I’ll be the closing keynote speaker at the Willamette Writers Conference, which runs from July 31-August 3. You can read more about the conference here.

6. Memorial Day weekend is my favorite weekend of the year because my family and I always spend it in Telluride, Colorado at Mountainfilm. It’s an amazing documentary film festival that inspires me beyond words every May. I’ve recently joined the Board of Directors because my passion for the festival runs so deep. The profoundly moving films featured at Mountainfilm remind all over again how and why story matters so very much. Each year, I co-lead a closing session with the wonderful director, writer, and human, Tom Shadyac. Please come! And if you use the code MFSTRAYED50 you’ll get 50% off the Palmyra pass (full price is $400) until they sell out. (And no, I don’t make any money off that! Just sharing the love.)

7. Looking ahead to fall, I’ll be at the Happinez Festival in the Netherlands and the Come To Your Senses writing retreat in France in September. October 10-12, I’ll be back at the fabulous Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, teaching a weekend writing workshop (that also has a livestream option).

I hope to see you somewhere! It’s so important we look into each other’s eyes and smile, isn’t it? Until then, I’m wishing you well. I’m rooting for you always. And I’m 100% sure that you can keep hanging on.

xCheryl

I’m so pleased to share another installment of the occasional series I do, in which I invite an author to tell us five things—not only about their most recent book, but about their life too.

I had the good fortune to meet the great Lidia Yuknavitch seventeen or so years ago when I joined her writing group in Portland. We immediately recognized each other as kindred spirits and became beloved friends, but even if I didn’t know her from Jack, I’d be a rabid fan of her books. The thing I say a lot when I talk to people about Lidia’s writing is she’s so fucking GOOD, but let me try to say more specifically why. It’s because she rings all the bells in my personal list of the five qualities of good writing, which are: clarity, engagement, dazzlement, enlightenment, and motherfuckitude. She goes all the way in all the directions that writing can go and she lets us swim there with her, alongside her beautiful, generous heart and her drop-dead brilliant mind.

Her new book is a memoir called Reading the Waves and when you read her interview you won’t need me to tell you that you need to get it immediately because it’s full of wisdom and beauty and love and pain and healing and wonder. It’s classic Lid. It’s so fucking GOOD.

xCheryl

Tell us about a time when you took advice that turned out to be really good or really bad.

I talk to water. A lot (ha). Mostly rivers and oceans, but occasionally, if no one is near me, even swimming pool water. Though I am suspicious of chlorine...Who knows what people think. Probably just something like “Oh there’s an old woman muttering to herself.” This is good. I feel like a new superpower has emerged in this part of my life: stealth mode.

In addition to the fact that my daughters ashes live there, I think the reason I feel comfortable speaking to the ocean is that I feel quite kindred with seals. They look like they are struggling when they are on land, scooting along on their bellies, flapping their flippers, stretching their neck muscles. But the moment they enter the water, my god. The beauty. The acrobatic wonder. The playfulness. I do not think I am as adept in the water as a seal, but I do feel a kindredness. I am not as comfortable on land as I am in water. In water I feel released from my own mass and bulk, from pressures to be beautiful or young or thin or successful. In water I’m just me. Fully.

So it should not surprise anyone that the best advice I ever received and followed came from a seal. I mean this literally, not symbolically or metaphorically.

On my 60th birthday, I bought myself a wetsuit. I’d been staring at the river that leads to the ocean outside the window of my home. I wanted to swim in the river, but I knew it was too cold to spend much time within. So I had a surfer thought, a seal thought. Buy a wetsuit.

Honestly the first time I put the wetsuit on I looooooooved it. I just wanted to wear it around all day. Like at the grocery store. Around the house. I wanted to sleep in it. Instead, I swam in the river.

This river water is also ocean water—the tides move in and out and turn the water brackish. Salt wetted my lips and made my hips extra buoyant. While in the water, I saw a large dark mass alongside me.

I had the same thought most people would have I guess, the theme music from JAWS made its way into my head, and a little tremor of fear rose in my chest. Because I was in water, I managed to stay at least a little calm, and I looked over through my goggles and realized it was a seal. My fear dissipated instantly.

S’up, seal.

She looked at me warily. Or he did. Doesn’t matter. Gender was nothing important between us.

That’s when I asked my question: so listen, seal? How do I age? What am I supposed to do next? Do I make my way to the ocean? Swim toward my own ending?

And the seal said, there is no ending. No beginning. There is only shapeshifting. And rolled on its back so that the sun warmed its belly.

Or maybe the seal didn’t say anything, the seal was just being all seal-Y. Who knows. I’ve been known to hear voices. Make up stories.

Anyway I already know this story. We all do. When we remember. Most “advice” is remembered over all time and space, shared between generations and species. So I rolled on my back and let the sun warm my boobies and belly.

My wetsuit a second skin.

Tell us about a personal transformation in your life or a change that you’ve made for the better.

I don’t know how everyone else feels about this idea, but lately I’ve been profoundly moved by something small inside the question of personal transformation and change. What I mean is, I’ve been meditating on and noticing the micro movements in my life, little non-events within daily living, small flashes or moments in the periphery of the drama of our lives. And I am certainly drawn to art and writing by people—living and dead—that zooms in on this smaller world. For example, Willem de Kooning’s idea that content is in fact tiny, not dramatic or large, or Virginia Woolf talking about “little daily miracles” or “moments of being” that are barely noticeable next to the big dramatic events in one’s life, which she hilariously calls wool.

So yeah. I’m more and more feeling intimate connection to the micro intensities all around me in a single day, a single hour. And that intimacy is yielding ten thousand micro transformations. Obviously I can’t catch all of them, but I can bring my focus to one or two here and there. Whether or not anyone else notices.

For example, last summer, a dragonfly flew into my room through an open window, and landed on my writing desk. Seriously you can’t make this shit up. Of course I thought it was beautiful. Blue-green luminescent colorings, huge wings. And of course I started up the magical thinking: "this magical dragonfly landed here just for me to make my writing more magical!" Three hours went by and it didn’t move. Was it dead? I devoted an entire day watching over this dragonfly. Later, while I was staring at it, I noticed it was vibrating. So I thought oh! Maybe it was just resting? That sent me down an internet vortex of learning about dragonflies.

I did exactly zero writing.

Among the first things I learned was that dragonflies lay their eggs in water and spend most of their lives in their larval stage. As naiads. Ever the woman attracted to water, this detail captured my attention. The rest of the day and night. Their adult lives are shorter than their larval lives, and their shapeshifting into winged creatures marks their ending.

The dragonfly on my desk never moved again. But something in me moved, mightily, even though no one would have seen it. Not some huge transformational moment, but something tiny. Spending a day with a dragonfly at the end of its life. Thinking about the span of one’s life, the elements, the conditions of being, the beauty, the hurt, the transmogrifies. And of course I went back to reread (a practice I find profoundly illuminating—rereading) Virginia Woolf’s The Death of a Moth: “It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig-zagging to show us the true nature of life.” Like my vibrating toward its own ending dragonfly.

I hope I’m vibrating as beautifully.

Tell us about your new book, Reading the Waves.

Reading the Waves performs the practice of rereading as a possible shapeshifting experience. By moving through fluid narrative streams—literally streams of consciousness—I am asking if there are ways to re-enter our own memories and rearrange the pieces so that we might change and grow. I am sharing a narrative space with others, those interested in shapeshifting both personally and relationally. I am learning to lay down with love some stories I have carried too long.

Tell us about a regret you have or a mistake you’ve made.

Oh good god. I’m woven through with mistakes. I’ve made more mistakes than whatever the opposite of a mistake is…I am a walking blunderpuss! Ha…but I do not mean that I am worthless, or that I should feel bad about that, so let me try to describe what I mean.

Like so many other people who are smarter than me and who have deeper experiences than I do, people I have learned from and been inspired by, I think mistakes are portals. Mistakes are how we learn, aren’t they? And they are like tiny thresholds—to be willing to risk failing or making a mistake is also to be willing to change and grow? To have a look at your own mistakes is to be willing to be all the way human.

I mean, there are a few doozies for sure (does anyone get out of this thing we call life without some fairly major fuck ups?)…like a DUI. Or getting fired. Or marriages that went busto badly. Or harms I caused without meaning to. Or letting down people I love. But I can’t go back and subtract whatever mistake I made, I can only go back, walk around the event, examine it from different points of view to see if anything shifts, opens, rearranges enough for me to learn something useful in my present.

There is a giant Sitka tree—a pretty old one—who knows how old, I've read they can live up to 800 years, so they are mos def smarter than us—next to my house. Sitka spruce are the ones with all those octopus-looking arms. Crazy looking deeply beautiful trees. This particular Sitka also has a bunch of broken branches, what look like tree scars on its trunk, it’s been ravaged no doubt by serious coastal storms and winds. I identify with this Sitka. I talk to it all the time. She or he or they hold my heart well. The stories I have to tell just don’t look or sound like other peoples’ stories sometimes, so why not confess to a forest. Beats the hell out of hiding in a little box talking to some dude in robes (early bad experiences with Catholicism).

Yesterday near the Sitka tree there was a herd of Elk. I took that to be something of a gift in place of answers to anything.

I also think mistakes and regrets are all tangled up in that complex thing we call memory. Like we carry these stories around in our bodies about our fuck-ups. Maybe too long.

I love this sequence by Joy Harjo in her book Poet Warrior, “At some point we have to understand that we do not need to carry a story that is unbearable. We can observe the story, which is mental; feel the story, which is physical; let the story go, which is emotional; then forgive the story, which is spiritual, after which we use the materials of it to build a house of knowledge.”

Yeah. THAT. I’d add: “and thank the story for helping us on our imperfect journey.”

Tell us your best advice.

When afraid, become a new story. Become a new creature. Conjure the new myths, new shapes, new voices and bodies. There may be journeys, but not just journeys. There may be carryings, transitions, silences, liminal spaces, circles, repetitions, returns, figures of being and becoming more profoundly powerful than achieving actions and knowing.

Lidia Yuknavitch is the award-winning author of The Chronology of Water, Thrust, The Book of Joan, The Small Backs of Children, Dora: A Headcase, and The Misfit's Manifesto, based on her TED Talk, On The Beauty of Being a Misfit, with 4.5 million views. Kristen Stewart has adapted her memoir into film. She is the founder of the literary arts organization Corporeal Writing. She is grateful to have lived a life amongst other artists, writers, healers and activists who lead with heart. She is a very strong swimmer and hopes to become a seal soon.

I’m so pleased to share another installment of the occasional series I do, in which I invite an author to tell us five things—not only about their most recent book, but about their life too.

I first fell in love with Pam Houston decades ago, when, as an undergraduate in a fiction writing workshop at the University of Minnesota, I read her story “How To Talk to a Hunter,” in the Best American Short Stories 1990. Gobsmacked is the word that comes to mind to describe how I felt when I met this bold, smart, funny, brave, strong woman on the page. She immediately became a guiding literary light to me. Years later, when we started appearing on literary panels and teaching at writing workshops alongside one another, I had the opportunity to to tell her as much, and once I finished with my fangirling, we became dear friends.

Her new book, Without Exception, is classic Pam Houston. Unflinchingly honest, wildly compassionate, and fearless in the questions it asks and seeks to answer. It’s a book about reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy that’s part memoir, part call to action, part history of abortion rights in the United States. I read it with a racing heart, not only because (sadly) the subject is so timely, but because Pam writes about it all just so damn powerfully.

It’s a riveting, must-read and, lucky us, her publisher is offering a special discount. You can buy it at the Torrey House Store and use the code FREEDOM at checkout for 15% off your purchase. I hope you enjoy the beautiful words she shares with us here, in my interview with her.

xCheryl

Tell us about a time when you took advice that turned out to be really good or really bad. 

I had a really rough time with Covid and an even worse time with long Covid. I lost nearly a whole year of my life and though I am much better now I still have some lingering symptoms. This was in 2020 and Western doctors didn’t even want to talk to me, but an acupuncturist in Santa Fe named Alix Bjorklund saved my life. About half way through the year, when things were a bit better but my kidneys just couldn’t get well, Alix told me to go home and find a reason to live before the day was out. I pulled into the driveway of the house I was renting in Santa Fe so that I could see Alix three times a week, walked inside, opened my computer and with what seemed like zero forethought and dwindling savings, booked a 250 kilometer, seven-day ride on Icelandic Horses to a place called Landmannalaugar one year from that day, figuring that by then, I would either be better or dead.

I wasn’t dead, but I was still weak and exhausted when I flew to Iceland to make that ride. It was the best and among the hardest seven days of my life, which before Covid had been pretty great and full of good health and adventures. Those horses taught me, not only that I could fly again, but that I could trust the world again. It opened up pathways of complex cross species communication, a thing I had been dabbling with all my life, but after that trip committed to wholeheartedly in the form of the new book I have begun writing.

There is photo of me from that trip I look at these days whenever I have to make a big decision. Dirt all over my face, I am exhausted from a long day of tolting and galloping in the rain, but my eyes tell me I am as sure as I have ever been in my life that I am in exactly the place I am supposed to be.

Tell us about a personal transformation in your life or a change that you’ve made for the better. 

Twelve years ago this January, I was asked to fill in for another writer at the last minute, teaching for a few days at the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA program in Santa Fe. I was asked because I was within driving distance of Santa Fe and because I am not afraid to drive in a blizzard, and not because I had any particular experience with any Native Nation. But I liked everyone I met there tremendously, and most of them liked me, so I was invited to be a contracted member of the faculty. I had to quit another job to do it, a job I liked, but something in me understood that working with the faculty and students at IAIA was going to be one of the most important and most transformative decisions of my life.

At IAIA I have received an education like no other. I have learned about my country and all its inequities, all its white supremacies.  All the childish notions about US exceptionalism have been revealed to me for what they are. I have seen up close what 500 years of genocide and generational trauma has wrought, and I have seen deep healing in action, through the arts, and through community and compassion and a world view that sees all beings—all beings—as sentient and valuable.

Mostly I have learned better how to bear witness, how not to try to fix but to hold space for. I have learned to shut my mouth and wait for those who have been silenced by fear to speak. I have also been invited into the warmth of so many communities, so many homes. I have been forgiven when I have misstepped, mostly. I have learned how to earn trust, not across the board and not whole cloth, but just enough that I can be of some value to these amazing books coming into the world. I have learned about Native Futurism, who’s Earth-centric values are the only values possible if there is to be a future at all. I have been invited to practice allyship, and I am not perfect at it, but I am always working to be better. It has been the most valuable work of my life.

Tell us about your new book, Without Exception.

In the summer of 2022, when the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision put an end to forty-nine years, five months and two days of Roe V Wade and gave the government control over what a woman does and does not do with her body, I realized that my reproductive life corresponded precisely with Roe’s lifespan. I got my first period in 1973, the same month the Supreme Court ruled on the case Jane Roe and a doctor brought to them concerning a woman’s right to privacy, and I was just at the fully into menopause moment as Dobbs came down the pike. I mentioned this to my editor at Torrey House and without a moment’s pause she said, “Do you want to write a book about that for the 2024 election?” And I said “I guess I do.”

Writing this book seemed like the best way for me to use both my particular skill set and my particular history to help get out the vote. I was sexually abused by my father throughout most of my childhood. Had I become pregnant during that time and been forced to carry that baby to term, I think I would have ended my life. The particular cruelty of abortions bans that have no exception for rape or incest, no exceptions for endangerment to the life of the mother, reveal these laws for what they are, an attempt to keep women down, to keep them poor and overburdened, to eliminate all possibility they might have time to organize, to run for office, to help make a world where everyone can thrive. It is my belief that if women could ever, collectively, make a decision to drop the cloak of imposed shame that we have been encased in forever, there would be no stopping us, and we might never have another male president again.

I wanted the book to be multifaceted and multi-voiced. I do include my own history with abortion as well as what I know of my mother’s, but the book also contains a song written about abortion by a young singer-songwriter team called The Montvales, a formal poem on the hypocrisies of Catholicism written by Jen Simon, one of my students, the language of several studies done by the University of San Francisco including the Turn Away Study, and the Post Roe Study and excerpts from Sonia Sotomayor’s moving dissent. Like all books, Without Exception is also about language, the language we have agreed to use as a culture to give men an infantile and simplistic power, and the language we use to keep women in their place.

Besides the book’s number one goal of getting out the vote in 2024, it is also my hope that it will get women talking to each other more and more about their abortions (it is certainly working among my friends and fans so far), that we might take some of the shame out of this procedure that one third of women will have at least once in their lifetime, that we will treat each other with grace and mercy, and help each other to be free.

Tell us about a regret you have or a mistake you’ve made. 

The two main categories of regrets in my life are men and ranch-sitters, but I have made up for those lately with one really good man and a whole lot of great ranch-sitters, so I don’t think those are worth talking about. I also try not to spend a lot of time with regret. I’m ready with an apology, ready to try to make up for whatever I have done wrong, but I am not a wallower and never have been.

One serious regret of my life is that I have not become fluent in a second language. I speak a little French, and I am trying to learn Icelandic, just because of how much I love the horses and the country and the Icelandic people. But Icelandic is hard, and most of the Icelanders prefer I don’t even try. I would have liked to live in another country too, for a few years, though I have been lucky enough to visit many places for extended periods. I have spent my life searching for home and I thought I had found it those 30 years in Creede until the Trumpers took over the county. If we get democracy saved in November, I might get serious about spending at least a year or two elsewhere and becoming at least passable in the language of that place, and if we don’t…well if we don’t, I guess I will learn the language of whatever country lets me in.

Tell us your best advice. 

My best advice might sound like it only applies to writing, but I mean it to apply not only to writing but also to life. It is “trust the metaphor, it knows more than you do.” As you can see in Without Exception, my writing process involves paying strict attention to the metaphors the world offers me, and bringing them together in odd combinations to make my stories. The Mother of the Forest in Big Trees Calaveras State Park, the American Flag made out of twinkly lights that covers one side of my neighbor’s house, the first summer in twenty years that we had enough rain, and therefore no fire danger, and therefore more wildflowers than I ever remember in the pasture behind my barn, these are all metaphors that are central to Without Exception.

But trusting the metaphor extends beyond writing to trusting the signs we are given about how to live our lives. If I can’t stop laughing every time I get to gallop an Icelandic horse across a meadow, this means I should ride Icelandic horses absolutely as much as possible. If I feel small and shamed every time I get together with a particular friend, it may be evidence that the friendship ended some time ago without my exactly knowing it. Mother Earth gives us warning signs daily now, about all the ways we have mistreated her in the form of hurricanes and floods and fires and disease, and we fail to pay attention at our own peril. 

Trusting the metaphor means to me flowing with the current of events rather than against it. While writing, sometimes I feel as though I have jumped into some magical river of collective unconscious (you might call this spirit, or even God(ess)) and for a minute, or sometimes even an hour, it carries me along from idea to idea to revelation. Sometimes, if I am really lucky, life feels like that too.

Pam Houston is the author of the recently published, Without Exception: Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood and Freedom, the memoir Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country, as well as two novels, Contents May Have Shifted and Sight Hound, two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me, as well as a book of essay between Pam and environmental activist Amy Irvine, called Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics and Place. Her stories have been selected for volumes of The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Short Stories of the Century among other anthologies. She is the winner of the Western States Book Award, the WILLA Award for contemporary fiction, the Evil Companions Literary Award and several teaching awards. She teaches in the Low Rez MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, is Professor of English at UC Davis, and co-founder and creative director of the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers, which puts on between seven and ten writers gatherings per year in places as diverse as Boulder, Colorado, Tomales Bay, California and Chamonix, France.

Pam’s passions include Icelandic Horses (especially the ones who live in Iceland, where she goes as often as possible), Irish Wolfhounds, travel, mentoring and teaching, particularly teaching writing about the more than the human world. She lives on a homestead at 9,000 feet near the headwaters of the Rio Grande in Colorado with her husband Mike and two dogs, a quarter horse, a miniature donkey, four Icelandic ewes, four hens and a rooster.

I’m so pleased to share another installment of the occasional series I do, in which I invite an author to tell us five things—not only about their most recent book, but about their life too.

I first discovered Chelsea Bieker’s work a few years ago when I was culling the bookshelves in my bedroom and came upon a glittering gold copy of her debut novel, Godshot. I didn’t know how the book came to be in my bedroom, but there it was and when I opened it and began reading, I was utterly hooked. Chelsea lives in Portland, like me, but we’ve never met, so I’m nothing but a fan of her wise, fierce, perceptive, electric prose.

That fandom deepened when I read her new novel, Madwoman, which is out today. It’s a gripping, gritty, gorgeous book about motherhood, the traumas of domestic violence, and the mad, raw, funny, wrenching, astonishing things we do to survive, or, as Chelsea puts it in her beautiful interview, about “facing the darkest parts of yourself to finally be free.” This book made me laugh and cry. It reads like a thriller and a love song. It’s about being crushed and rising strong. I hope you’ll get your hands on it as soon as possible, or go out and see Chelsea at one of the stops on her book tour, which you can read about on her Substack.

Happy pub day, Chelsea!

xCheryl

Tell us about a time when you took advice that turned out to be really good or really bad. 

I’ve always been interested in psychology and somatic healing modalities, and after I got my creative writing degree at twenty-five, I pretty quickly started researching counseling psychology programs. I felt excited about this potential viable career path with more stability than fiction writing and the unstable adjunct teaching I’d fallen into, and, perhaps more true, was that I was comforted by the idea of staying in school longer, school having always been a safe place. But then a close friend offered some straight talk advice I was not asking for. She told me she was worried if I jumped right into this other area of study, that I wouldn’t write fiction anymore, and she really, really wanted me to keep writing.

I think in the moment, I was taken aback because instead I could only hear that she didn’t think I should become a therapist. I felt hurt, and like she wasn’t seeing me. I explained that I felt strongly I could keep writing fiction and do this (pretty grueling) new degree program at the same time, but after the days wore on and my first giant payment was due for the program, I couldn’t get her words out of my head. Slowly, I began to see that actually, she just really believed in my talent want to see me put something major in front of it before I gave myself a chance. She was seeing me as…a writer. And maybe also she saw that I wasn’t ready to be a therapist in the traditional sense (I wasn’t!).

Days after turning down my acceptance, I was awarded a residency at MacDowell, a total shock to me. I went there for six weeks and wrote a first draft of what would become my first novel (something I couldn’t have done so swiftly if I was in that program), met some lifelong soulmate type friends there, one of which is still in my writing group today, had a baby, and lived a lot of life. My interest in psychology and healing hasn’t faded a bit and I’ve continued to explore it on my own terms, and I hope one day I’ll study it in an official capacity, but I’m glad I did what seemed to be the riskier choice at the time by not jumping right into the next thing. Sitting in the discomfort of the unknown, leaning into being a writer. I think in some ways it was a defining moment, having another person dig their heels in for me. I’m glad I was able to receive that, and that she saw me as an artist first and foremost. It was a tremendously powerful lesson in the importance of having friendships that contain that sort of love-based honesty. It was also a lesson in listening both to another, and to myself and parsing out the truth.

Tell us about a personal transformation in your life or a change that you’ve made for the better. 

Getting sober in 2008 is by far the best decision I’ve ever made, because every other good thing came out of it. Without sobriety, I would not be able to mother, create, be a partner, or a friend. Alcohol only took, never gave. Alcoholism is one of the most brutal diseases. I think if you haven’t seen it up close maybe it’s hard to understand, but I saw it up close in my family from my earliest memories, and saw it culminate in horrific alcoholic deaths, so I have a very clear idea about what it can do. I knew the only way to truly create generational change would be to stop completely. Since then, I’ve gotten to show up as myself now for almost seventeen years. I can hear my intuition, and more than anything, it created a strong trust muscle in me that I can do whatever I set my mind to. I will never regret not drinking. In the same way I’ll never regret reading more, or writing more, or spending time with the ones I love. It’s one of the foundational things about me, and really feels redemptive. In the beginning I didn’t always talk about it because there was so much judgement, but then I realized that it’s my duty to show others that an alcohol-free life is possible, joyous, and amazing. I know it's expanded people because they’ve told me, and that’s the best gift, getting a DM that says, “hey, so I’m a week sober!...” The power in people sharing their stories cannot be underestimated.

Tell us about your new book, Madwoman.

Madwoman is dedicated to my mom who died two years ago. I had the wildest experience writing this novel, where I’d call her and describe a new scene I’d written (she was always asking, what happens next?!) and I would think I’d totally made it up, and she would be like, “oh yeah, that really happened.” I was accessing memories from a very young age not totally realizing it, and then she would give me the run down on what had actually happened. I am not surprised by this; I think so much of what we write comes from those deep subconscious places but I feel grateful her and I had moments like that where the alchemy of both of our days hit right and we could really, really connect. Those moments were super hard to come by, but there was something unifying in talking about the book.

Here’s the thing: I write so much about how difficult my relationship with her was, and believe me, loving her was and is incredibly painful, but actually the core of the relationship itself was awesome. She was so damn funny and smart and one of the most expressively loving people I’ve ever met. It is hands down because of her that I can be effusively affirmative to my children, no holds barred, just so enthusiastic with them, because she offered that to me.

So, the relationship was fine, it was everything that stood in the way of it that was problematic. Yeah, some things she placed there herself, and then the things that came from outside (violent men). I mean, that opens up a whole other topic, but the fact that even though my mom’s abusive partner was apt to walk in at any moment and interrupt her meager phone time with me—we still had our moments despite him. I’m here for women reclaiming space, narrative, and time. The women in my family who have been diminished by men…I mean this is the most serious sense—my aunt was literally murdered by her ex-husband—and then others spiritually killed. When my mom died, the coroner’s report said she died of “complications of alcoholism.” When I saw that, I remember something felt off to me, even though nearly her entire life was marked by addiction. I thought to myself, no, that could be truer: she died of complications of domestic violence. So that’s the sort of spiritual imprint of the book.

In story terms, Madwoman is a novel that follows Clove, a mother of two young kids in Portland, Oregon. She has a pretty great life with a loving, safe partner. Sure, there’s her secret mounting credit card debt, undiagnosed post-weaning anxiety disorder, and the fact that no one, not even her husband, knows who she really is, or the truth of her past. When she receives a letter from a women’s prison in California, shit goes sideways, and her past comes back to her. Essentially, it’s about facing the darkest parts of yourself to finally be free; how to mother when you haven’t been mothered yourself; how violence invades women’s relationships with each other.

In the beginning I thought I was writing a darkly funny book about wellness culture and motherhood, and I quickly realized I was writing a much deeper exploration of the long-term effects of domestic abuse, escape, and what healing really looks like. Spoiler—there’s no amount of green juice and supplement in the world that can help you avoid looking squarely at your darkest places! I wanted to write a book about women who were hell-bent on surviving, and not just that, thriving. The women of Madwoman are not merely victims—they are full bodied individuals navigating friendships, falling in love, mothering, hating small talk, navigating aging, and all the rest. It’s about owning your story so it doesn’t own you. I hope it sparks conversations and healing for readers.

Tell us about a regret you have or a mistake you’ve made. 

In the powerful book on aging and death, Being Mortal, by the physician Atul Gawande, he opens with an anecdote from The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy’s classic novella. In it, Ivan lies on his death bed as the people around him remain convinced he is not dying, but instead merely ill, focusing on his treatment, and upholding the vague idea that if they just do all they can, something it will all turn around. But Ivan knows he is dying and he is scared. Yet no one around him will acknowledge his impending death, ill-equipped to handle death themselves. He longs to be pitied and petted and comforted like a “sick child.” He longs for them to stop what they are doing, and simply witness and acknowledge this phase that awaits us all.

I wish I’d read this book before my father began to decline, before he was very obviously (or should have been obvious) dying. My last conversation with him was over the phone in the early part of the pandemic. His voice was nearly gone. I remember saying, “When you get better, dad, we’ll take you to Hawaii. Something nice.” He agreed to that, and we hung up shortly after. But I so regret this.

While logically I can have compassion for myself in that moment—a mother of two children under age six in lockdown, exhausted in a thousand ways—I was holding on to the hope he would get better. But didn’t I know he wouldn’t? I’m not sure some days. Maybe it was all too much. I wish, I wish, I wish. I wish I’d gotten in my car and driven to him. Pushed past all the fear of making that long journey through the gorge in the middle of icy winter, my fear of infecting him with covid, or him infecting me. So many barriers. But at the very least, I regret not acknowledging that he was dying. How alone he must have been. His daughter mentioning Hawaii as if that could be true. I wish I had said, “dad, I know you are dying. Dad, I love you so much. How does it feel for you? What can I do for you, or say in this moment?” Something. Anything. I wish I’d never hung up the phone.

But my father and I had never talked about death before. He wouldn’t. Not even after all the close calls he’d had in his lifetime. He wasn’t capable, and I knew so little about it really, because no one had ever talked about it with me. Death, always pushed to the side of things. I wish I could have held his hands as he died, and just been with him for that. Just witnessed him in that moment. People try to convince me out of this, probably because they can see the things I can’t—how hard I tried in other ways, how much I advocated for him with his doctors, all the calls, all the work, all the nervous system devastation. A few months ago, expressing this regret, a wise body worker reminded me that logic has no place when it comes to grief. “Forget logic!” she said. “You are feeling this and that’s all that needs to be known. We work with feeling.” So I feel regret. I live with regret. The only thing I am at peace with is the fact of this regret’s presence. Absolution of it might not even be the goal, but a softening that only time can offer.

Tell us your best advice. 

My best advice is to find a way to love yourself. Really love yourself, every stage and every age. When I started doing Internal Family Systems work (IFS) which essentially is acknowledging you are a Self made up of many Parts, and these Parts are formed in childhood in our traumatic moments and operate in the now with the intent to keep us “safe” but likely cause more harm than good. Doing the work of getting to know my Parts and reassigning them has been one of the most therapeutically helpful things I’ve ever done. They just need to be heard and seen and soothed. I realized there were parts of me I really did not want to acknowledge or felt ashamed of, and learning to love these more shadowy parts has been hugely transformative and healing.

I do think for a long time I thought I could bypass self-love and focus instead on outward success, and that eventually the outward success would equal self-love, or rather, the success would allow me to finally really love myself. But it’s not true. For so many reasons this is faulty thinking, but I just didn’t want to look at it. I think once I finally surrendered to the idea that the Work would be to actually love myself no matter what success I achieved or didn’t achieve, things really opened up in new ways for me. I could hold everything more loosely. If I really value myself and believe in my own inherent worth, then things like a bad review, or not getting x y z can just roll right off me. But there was a time when rejection felt devastating, like proof that I’d never be good enough. I think that’s what happens when you’re looking for parental love in all the wrong places, but I would tell anyone that building that unshakable love and trust in yourself is paramount. I like to practice it in lots of ways, but one way is literally recording kind affirmations to myself in my phone and listening back to them, as if I’m talking to the sweetest child, how I’d talk to my own children. Because I am talking to a sweet child! We’re all sweet, lovable, children but it can be so hard to believe that truly. It takes some repetitive work to feel the changes there.

Chelsea Bieker is the author of two novels: Madwoman, released on September 3, 2024, and the national indie bestseller, Godshot, which was longlisted for The Center For Fiction’s First Novel Prize and named a Barnes and Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, Heartbroke won the California Book Award and was a New York Times “Best California Book of 2022” and an NPR Best Book of the Year. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, The Cut, Wall Street Journal, McSweeney’s, and others. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, as well as residencies from MacDowell and Tin House. Raised in Hawai’i and California, she now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children.

Hello dear subscribers,

Before we get to this month’s double-decker Dear Sugar Letter, I want to share some news. After nearly four years of writing this monthly column on Substack, I need a break. It’s not a permanent stop—only a pause so I can focus on a couple of other writing projects…

Read more

Hello friends,

Growing up in Minnesota, summer meant swimming to me. I’m not talking about an occasional dip in the lake. I’m talking about living in my swimsuit night and day. It wasn’t until I was an adult and had moved away from my beloved Land of 10,000 Lakes that I realized not everyone grew up with a body of water around every bend. Even when my mom and siblings and I lived in a series of low-rent apartment complexes and we were so broke that being down to our last dollar was a weekly occurrence, we always had the luxury of a shimmering lake with a sandy beach just down the hill.

From late May to early September in those years, Lake Grace was the center of our universe. My siblings and I went there even when we were forbidden to by our mother, who didn’t want us swimming without supervision when she was away at work in a factory or a restaurant, depending on the job or the year. We were technically too young to be left unsupervised in the apartment too, but it was the 70s and my mom couldn’t afford a sitter, and she’d made a pact with all the other single moms in the apartment complex to look out for each other’s kids.

But no one looked too hard. After our mother departed, my brother and sister and I immediately and gleefully raced barefoot down the hill, vowing to keep our secret, knowing that no matter what, we’d take care of each other. The three of us, a tiny school of fish to whom no harm could come.

In Lake Grace, we learned to swim without the benefit of lessons, progressing, by trial and error, from the doggy paddle to the front crawl to the back stroke to our own flailing version of the butterfly, which we’d gleaned from watching the Olympics. Together, my sister and I worked up the nerve to swim all the way out to the wooden dock that was anchored in the deep part of the lake, leaving our brother in the shallow end, with the lifeguard keeping watch. The dock is where the big kids gathered, sunning themselves and periodically rising to push each other into the water or leap there themselves in great splashing cannonballs or tidy elegant dives. My sister and I, still in elementary school, watched them in awe as we shivered, fresh out of the water, having survived the long swim. We dangled our legs over the edge of the dock until we were warm and almost dry again and we could work up the courage to jump into the lake and swim back to our little brother.

We swam in other lakes too, in part because our mother encouraged us to do as she did and wear our swimsuits underneath our clothes whenever we were out and about, so any time the opportunity presented itself, we could strip down and dive in. Which was often. My hair was always wet or about to get wet. My shoulders were eternally marked by the tug of my spaghetti straps. There is no scent that reminds me more of summer—and perhaps of my entire childhood—than the vegetal, musty, turtle waft of a swimsuit damp with lake water.

When my own kids were young I was frantic to get them into lakes, though they were harder to come by in Portland, Oregon, requiring a drive outside the city, which often enough ended up being too daunting a task. It was a roadtrip rather than a race down the hill. My kids learned how to swim in the city’s community center pools, taking lessons over the course of few years, progressing from Goldfish to Penguins to Otters to Seals to Sea Lions to Dolphins, while their father and I cheered them on poolside and, afterwards, got in to swim with them to practice what they’d learned.

Then, over time, I kind of forgot about swimming. I liked it in theory, but in practice it seemed like it had become too much of a hassle. It was too far, too cold, too windy, too chlorinated, too rocky, too crowded, too hard to find a parking spot, and definitely too much of an ordeal to squiggle into and out of a swimsuit. It isn’t that I stopped swimming entirely—I managed to get some glorious swimming in a couple of times on Gabriola Island last summer—but, on the whole, swimming rather significantly fell off for me. It became a rare thing over the past dozen years, an annual-ish event. Like drinking egg nog or getting my eyes checked.

But something shifted this summer. I found what I thought I’d lost. I got my body into the water again. And it was FUN.

In Portugal, I swam with Mary and Sarah while the three of us were recovering from the COVID we gave each other. In Greece, I swam alone and with my husband Brian and with our friends Rachel and Zayd and with all four of our collective kids and off the side of a boat with a good number of the sixty people who were taking our writing workshop. In Norway, I swam with my family and our friends Roda and Tor and their kids in the middle of Oslo.

I floated. I paddled and kicked. I waded and wavered and eventually dove in. And I remembered how I used to love to do those things. I realized that I still do.

It made me think about what mustering up the energy to dive in gives us, in a larger sense—both in the water and out of it. It rattles the bones. It makes us shiver and squeal. It wakes us up and gives us the chance to feel the kind of liberation one feels when you plunge ahead and dive in, which is another way of saying let go.

There was another kind of diving in I got to bear witness to this summer. I was in Greece to co-lead a writing workshop with Brian, Rachel, and Zayd and I felt the way I always do when I teach a workshop of the sort we did (generative). I felt like I had the mad good fortune to have the opportunity to watch a lot of people approach the edge of what thrilled or scared or intrigued or haunted or gripped them and then I got to cheer them on as they boldly dove in.

It’s an invigorating, inspiring, enlivening thing to witness. And seeing others do it makes me more ready and willing to do it again and again too.

I’m back at home in Oregon now and I plan to get some more swimming in before summer’s over, but I’m also looking ahead to fall (when Brian and I will officially be “empty nesters,” with both of our kids off at college!). I’ll be teaching a few more writing workshops in the months ahead—one is coming up soon, in early October—and also giving a couple of talks. You’ll find them listed below my signature, with links to more information if you’re interested.

I hope you’re having a good summer (or winter, to those of you in the Southern Hemisphere). I hope you find joy each day in something you love. I hope you always find the courage to dive in. And swim.

xCheryl

Links to my upcoming talks and workshops:

Sept 19: I’ll be having an on-stage conversation at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s annual Illumination gala. Tickets and details here.

Oct 4-6 (and online): I’ll be teaching a weekend writing workshop at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. Click here for the in-person workshop and here for the livestream option.

Oct 25-27 (and online): I’ll be speaking at the Writers Rising Retreat in Los Angeles (my talk is on Sat, Oct 26). Click here for both in-person and livestream options.

March 20, 2025: I’ll be giving a talk in Buffalo, NY as part of the BABEL series at the Just Buffalo Literary Center. Click here for tickets and info.

March 21-23, 2025: I’ll be teaching a weekend writing workshop at the Art of Living Retreat Center in Boone, North Carolina. Click here to register.

Sept 21-26, 2025: I’ll be the visiting guest author at the Come to Your Senses retreat in Collioure, France (hosted by the fabulous Karen Karbo and located steps away from the most lovely swimming spot!). Click here to register.

I’ll also be returning to teach a writing workshop at the Kripalu Center in Stockbridge, MA in May of 2025, but registration isn’t yet open. Check their web site (or mine) in the coming months if you’re interested in attending. There will be both in-person and online options for this workshop.

Dear Sugar,

I don’t know what to do. I’m 36 years old and, from where I stand, I have everything a woman could ask for. I’m in love with my husband, and he loves me too. We’re loosely planning on having our first child in the near future. We met in the US (where I lived for a while), and no…

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Dear Sugar,

I grew up in South America in a very conservative, Jewish home. When I was younger I thought I had the perfect life (not that I think that a “perfect life” exists anymore). That changed when I turned 30 and realized I was a lesbian. At the time, I was married to a man and we had three girls, all under the age …

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Dear Sugar,

I am writing you this note because I’m deeply in love with my girlfriend of three years. We met the first week of college and have been together since then. She is all anyone could ask for—funny, endearing, whole-heartedly herself, and incredibly emotionally intell…

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It’s time for another installment of the occasional series I do, in which I invite an author to tell us five things—not only about their most recent book, but about their life too.

This month’s author is the wonderful and talented Suzy Vitello, whose new novel, Bitterroot, was described in a Kirkus Reviews rave as a “gripping and emotionally intelligent tale of resentment and loss” whose “memorable characters nimbly embody the larger cultural forces at war in contemporary America.” I couldn’t agree more. It’s also an absolute page-turner and—like everything Suzy writes—a deep pleasure to read.

I met Suzy many years ago through the Portland literary scene and, shortly after my first novel was published, she invited me to join her writers’ group. I was in the group for only a few years, but they were incredibly fruitful years, during which I wrote both Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. Many gifts came from that time of sitting around a table sharing work with other writers each week, but high among them was getting to know Suzy, who is, quite simply, one of the best people there are. She’s smart, kind, thoughtful and good to her bones—and all of those qualities shine through in her writing.

Suzy also has an excellent Substack newsletter called Let’s Talk About Writing that I encourage you to check out after you’ve read her inspiring and insightful interview, in which she tells us all about how to make friends with our spidey sense.

Happy pub day, Suzy!

xCheryl

Tell us about a time when you took advice that turned out to be really good or really bad.

Back in the mid-eighties Cosmopolitan had this recurring feature: “What it’s like to live in…” Well, one mid-March day, my fifth year at Syracuse University, I was sitting in a café, reading that month’s feature, which happened to highlight the growing opportunities in Phoenix, Arizona. Gazing out the window into the icy squall that was typical of protracted Syracuse winters, the bleakness in contrast to the photos of blue skies, cactus and swimming pools that were spread out on the table next to my coffee, I thought, why not?

Yes, folks, I made a huge decision based on the advice of a fluff article, packed up my car two months later, and headed west. That led to three years of desert-living. And I mean “desert” both literally and figuratively. In those salad days I made one stupid career decision after another, cobbled together a serial sequence of minimum-wage jobs with school loan debt looming, while navigating triple-digit commutes in an un-air-conditioned Dodge Colt. I never did achieve the promised poolside tans (hello pale, freckled complexion that only burns to a radiant pink). But I did, during those years, give birth to a beautiful boy, my first child, Sam. So total waste? Maybe not.

Tell us about a personal transformation in your life or a change that you’ve made for the better.

If I ever write a memoir, I might title it: The First Domino. As many of us do, I occasionally ponder “the road not taken” and its cousin “what would have happened if.” I guess I’m talking about catalysts, and how they informed my path forward. The prelude to the first domino would be the choice to apply to Syracuse University as an undergraduate. Many authors state they knew they wanted to be writers from childhood. I did not. My choice to attend a huge university had everything to do with options. Freshman year, I declared myself an English major and then took classes in Hindi, public policy, and anthropology. I got hooked on the latter, and started down that road. A random exposure had me deathly ill with mono the first week of junior year, and I was sent home to recuperate. At the time my parents were in the process of divorce, so that was weird.

As soon as I could I scrambled back to SU, got a job at a local beer and sandwich place, and, due to my father’s badgering about “what the hell job can you get with a degree in anthropology” I changed my major to dietetics. This is where the story gets unwieldy, but the short version is, due to that first tipped domino (the mono germ) the road eventually led to meeting, then marrying, my first husband, and starting a family. Skip ahead three years, pregnant with baby number two, my husband died in a car accident.

Here’s where the dominos make a right-angle turn.

Another chance encounter led me to Oregon (by way of Southern California, but that too, is a long story). With two kids under three, a bit of cash from the accident’s settlement (a windfall at the time, but not enough to buy a home in SoCal), I set down roots in Portland in 1989. My extended family thought I was nuts. I was a twenty-eight-year-old single mom who knew only one person in Oregon, but my heart, my whole being, responded to Portland with love-at-first-sight hunger. And along with my lust for the city came a concurrent bolt of understanding that I wanted to write.

The sound of the fall of those dominoes still reverberates in my ear. Part music, part calamity, but connected so specifically to the life I now live, I’d be hard-pressed to extract a domino from the line-up.

Tell us about your new book, Bitterroot.

The striking beauty of Northern Idaho is only surpassed in my mind by its ideological polarity. Over the years I’ve had occasion to visit the area, most recently a couple of years ago when my friend Natalie and I passed through on our way to Montana where we were scouting the feasibility of holding a writing workshop (which we are doing in late June of this year).

The combination of breathtaking and rugged terrain, the history of Native exploitation, the boom-and-bust nature of Western life generally, and the interdependence that exists in a small rural community is such a tension-filled recipe for a novel—but in exploring all of this, and spending time researching recent policies in the state, I became particularly vexed over the recent law in Idaho poised to not only remove LGBTQ content from libraries and schools, but to arrest librarians who refuse to comply.

So that was the starting point. But at its heart, Bitterroot is a family story. Generational upheaval, sibling connection, and the way in which we define family beyond biology are all themes that drive the story. My main character, Hazel, is your classic outlier. Half-Japanese, but white-passing, after college she pursues a career in forensic sketch art, returning to the fictional town of Steeplejack where she was raised. Her fascination with kusôzu—which is the artistic rendering of decaying corpses—pushes her further from the normative sphere. Only her marriage to high school sweetheart (and town golden boy) Ethan Mackenzie affords her membership to Steeplejack’s “notable families.” But at the beginning of the novel, Ethan dies in a car crash, and from there, things get increasingly complicated.

Hazel’s twin brother Kento, married and living in the more liberal environment of Seattle, hires his former high school girlfriend, Corinda, as surrogate for a baby, but he’s shot by a member of Steeplejack’s growing anti-LGBTQ community during a gender reveal party. Kento survives, but the tables turn when Corinda changes her story, claiming that she was coerced into surrogacy, and reneges on her agreement with Kento and his husband, Tom.

Meanwhile, Hazel discovers her husband wasn’t who she thought he was. She also uncovers hidden family secrets about her grandparents’ forced internment during World War II, mirroring the same racism and prejudice that threaten to strip Kento and his husband of their basic rights to their baby. Then, a local militia set on physical violence charges up her driveway, but with the help of a local lawyer (and love interest), Hazel thwarts the effort. From there, there are more twists and turns, but the upshot is built on our heroine forging an identity that honors her heritage as well as her unique qualities, while coming to terms with the divisions in her town. A town she refuses to abandon.

Having experienced some of the same conundrums as Hazel (sudden loss of spouse at a young age, generational trauma due to parental and grandparental war-related displacement, and LGBTQ family members directly affected by religion-based anti-gay policies), I wanted to explore these tensions via a character struggling with her own burgeoning sense of self.

Once I embodied Hazel’s determination, Bitterroot was written at the pace of a fever dream, and found a home with a brand-new publisher, Sibylline Press, focused on publishing women aged fifty and older. Their collaborative model and enthusiastic advocacy immediately appealed to me, and the run-up to publication has been akin to being absorbed by a found family of sisters. (I hope that doesn’t sound too cult-like.)

Tell us about a regret you have or a mistake you’ve made.

I lost my only sibling, Patti, to an aggressive cancer in 2017. We lived on opposite coasts, and had, other than our parents, little in common. She was a devout Catholic, and I’m somewhere between agnostic and atheist. She was an accountant, managing the books for a nursing home, but her true love was running her own horse farm—a demanding and physical job always threatening catastrophe. My work, in contrast, has always been less traditional, more flexible and ephemeral. Just like my earlier decision to attend a big university with options, I celebrate all those forks in the road—the chance to try something new, write something new, or just wake up and play with my four-year-old grandson all day.

That said, I regret that I wasn’t more proactive in planning get-togethers with my sister. Our semi-annual visits took place mainly in our hometown in rural New York State—where she continued to reside. She came out to Oregon a handful of times over the course of thirty years, but I wish I’d prioritized some trips to neutral locations, where, free of quotidian toil, we may have deepened our relationship in adulthood.

As cliché as it sounds, you never know what the universe will fling your way. Don’t take your people for granted.

Tell us your best advice.

Embrace and continually feed your hunger. Joy isn’t doled out in a vacuum; the crucial ingredient is your recognition of those elements that create that personal joy. So curate them. Celebrate them. Learn from rejection, regret, wrong turns, and apply the lessons to the next thing. Hone your intuition. Make friends with your spidey sense. Pursue your particular passion and then share your wisdom and expertise. The sharing of wisdom and expertise has been particularly hard for me (hello imposter syndrome), but I’m working on it. On reflection, that impulsive decision I made forty years ago to take the advice of a perfume-scented article may have been off the mark, but I continue to draw from the youthful wonder of those days. I make art from it.

Suzy Vitello’s award-winning short pieces have appeared in AARP, The Rumpus, The Southampton Review, Mississippi Review, anthologies and other literary journals. Her novel, FAULTLAND, was published by Ooligan Press in March, 2021, and her young adult novels include THE MOMENT BEFORE, THE EMPRESS CHRONICLES, and THE KEEPSAKE. She holds an MFA from Antioch Los Angeles, and works as a freelance developmental editor and book coach.

Hello subscribers!

Welcome to part two of the Dear Sugar Letter #42. The exchange below will make more sense to you if you’ve already read part one, which I sent out a couple of weeks ago. If you haven’t, you can hop on over now and read it here. Thanks to those of you who…

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Dear Sugar,

I know you usually answer letters from people who are struggling with something painful or difficult, but I’m writing to you about what you could call a “good problem.” My father, 68, my daughter, 18, a I—a 45-year-old woman—are all about to go through big changes and I’m writing …

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Hello friends,

A while back I was feeling down about my writing, lambasting myself for not having yet finished the book I’ve been working on in a stop-and-start fashion for ages and I did what I do when I feel sunk. I went for a long walk and had a little internal talk with myself. Which was really more of an argument.

The asshole in my head was saying something like, Why haven’t you written your next book, you lazy twit? The wise inner sage hollered back, What the fuck are you talking about, dumbass? I’ve been writing nonstop for YEARS!

(Is anyone surprised that my inner sage likes to curse?)

To prove my inner sage’s point, when I got home I opened up my laptop and created a Word doc titled Things I Made and I wrote a list of all the things I’ve poured my creativity into over the past decade. On the list were numerous essays, short stories, feature-length screenplays, TV scripts, Dear Sugar columns, podcasts, a short documentary film, and portions of what will indeed someday be my next book, among other things. It was a lot of stuff.

Looking at the list calmed me down, but it also got me thinking about how much of my creativity is funneled into work. I love work. I’ve been working like a buzzy worker bee ever since I got my first job as a janitor’s assistant in my high school in McGregor, Minnesota when I was 14 (which I wrote about here). And yet, I wondered if part of the reason I often despair about what I’ve accomplished when it comes to writing is that I have done so much of it with the goal of accomplishing. Of producing. Of cranking it out and delivering. Where was play—that word we most often associate with creativity—and how might I be happier in my work if I let a bit more of it in?

Play is open-ended. It doesn’t have a deadline. It’s about being absorbed in the moment and the task at hand. It’s about discovery and and curiosity and following the path to where it leads. It’s about desire and delight. Mess and mucking around. And when my writing is going well, play becomes my work, the two joined in a mad union that’s both incredibly taxing and terribly fun.

In my writing workshops (I have some coming up and I’ll tell you about them in a minute), I talk a lot about how important a sense of play is to one’s work as a writer, and yet it’s a lesson I’ve had to teach myself over and over again. I’ve had to remember that the things I made don’t just go on the list if I accomplished something by making them. The most meaningful accomplishment is seeing the creative act through to its fullest fruition, regardless of how long it takes to do or what comes of it after the work is done. I believe that with all of my heart, even if I forget it sometimes.

One thing I did recently to inject more play in my creative life was take part in Wendy MacNaughton’s “30-day Drawing Habit” via her truly wonderful newsletter, DrawTogether. In January, each day for thirty days Wendy sent me and the thousands of other participants a drawing prompt. Our “work” (or play) was to draw in response to the prompt for ten minutes, though I often went longer. It was spectacularly fun, even when my drawings didn’t turn out as “good” as I hoped they would. The drawings you see here are some of those I made.

Okay, so here are the workshops I have coming up (and one event). My workshops are open to writers at all levels, from novice to experienced and published writers. They’re generative workshops, meaning I’ll talk a lot about writing and then you’ll be given writing prompts and you’ll write in class, so you’ll go home with some new words and stories and hopefully a lot of inspiration to keep going. I promise it’ll be fun.

1. I’ll be giving a talk in Frederick, Maryland on Thursday, May 2 at the Weinberg Center for the Arts. Tickets and information can be found here.

2. On May 3-5 I’ll be teaching at Kripalu in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The in-person workshop is sold out, but you can sign up for the online workshop, which gives you the option of watching the livestream or watching it later, when you’re sent a recording of the workshop, or both. You can register and read about it here.

3. July 11-21 on the beautiful island of Patmos, Greece I’m co-leading a story salon with three other amazing humans—Rachel DeWoskin, Zayd Ayers Dohrn, and my dear husband, Brian Lindstrom, whose new documentary, Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill, is just out. (You can watch it here or here, among other places.) We did this workshop nine years ago and it was absolutely magic. You can read more about it and sign up here.

4. On Oct 4-6 I’ll be teaching at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. This is another weekend workshop like the one I’m teaching at Kripalu, with both in-person and online options. If you’re interested in coming in-person, click here. If you’re interested in registering for the online workshop (again, either via the livestream or watching the recording later), click here.

Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. I love the many wonderful responses I’ve had to my “Tells Us” series featuring authors. There’s another great writer coming up next month. Also, as always, my eternal gratitude to those of you who are paid subscribers and get the Dear Sugar Letter each month.

Wishing you all love in your heart and a sense of play in everything you make.

Yours,

xCheryl

I’m pleased to share another installment of the occasional series I do, in which I invite an author to tell us five things—not only about their most recent book, but about their life too.

Those of you who’ve listened to the Dear Sugars podcast know that the wonderful writer Steve Almond is not only a dear friend of mine, he was also the originator of the Dear Sugar column back when it was published on The Rumpus. I’ve been a fan of Steve’s perceptive, funny, compassionate, beautiful writing since well before I knew him and my admiration for his work has only grown over the years. He makes every paragraph a pleasure to read. He goes right to the heart of things and he does it with tremendous empathy, intelligence, honesty, and humor.

Steve also happens to be a fantastic teacher—as his thousands of students can attest. His new book, Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories, is drawn from his decades of experience as a writer and a teacher of creative writing. It’s full of wisdom and truth about the heart, stamina, humility and courage it takes to write well. Of course the writers and aspiring writers among you will love it, but it’s also a book for anyone who is interested in the creative process and curious about telling stories in any form.

I’m so pleased to share Steve’s insightful interview with you here. Steve will be doing several events and leading workshops in various cities over the coming months (Seattle tonight! Portland later this week!) and he’s also doing many events online. You can check them all out here.

Happy pub date, Steve!

xCheryl

Tell us about a time when you took advice that turned out to be really good or really bad.

Long ago, a girlfriend of mine suggested that it would be a good idea for me to grow my hair out. As the accompanying photo will attest, this was not a good piece of advice, at least in the late Eighties, when all this was happening. The result was a hairstyle I would call “The Sensitive Mullet.” Behold your hirsute narrator:

On the other hand, I’m thinking about the time my dad told me I should get back into therapy. I was 35, still full of petulant complaint, fizzing away in a bacterial apartment north of Boston. I hated him for suggesting such a thing and told him so. That’s often how you know a piece of advice is useful: the inconsolable urge to tell the advice-giver to fuck off. Dad wrote me a note saying, “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, sonny boy. I can see that you’re struggling.”

It’s probably worth mentioning here that my dad is a psychoanalyst.

So I got my ass back into therapy. It was a slow, humiliating, expensive process, as the acquisition of self-awareness tends to be. All these heartbroken fascist wannabes are running around, yelling about how being “woke” is like some form of chemical castration. All it means is that you are becoming less of an asshole. That’s what therapy did for me. I woke up to the various ways in which I was being inconsiderate to other people—and to myself.

It wasn’t because of therapy that I got married and had three kids and wrote a bunch of books and taught a ton of classes. But therapy helped me make those decisions, and has helped me do these things with greater compassion and less anxiety. The goal of therapy—maybe the goal of life—is to esteem who you are and what you’re doing.

Tell us about a personal transformation in your life or a change that you’ve made for the better.

A couple of years ago, I was taking a walk with my teenage daughter. It was winter. Beside us, the Mystic River was sheathed in a plain of gray ice. I don’t remember what we were discussing, only that, at some point, she turned to me and said, “Dad, you’re like this guy who’s always walking on thin ice. But underneath that ice is a lake of rage.”

It was the single most devastating, and precise, assessment of my personality ever rendered. I wanted to drop to my knees—in awe and gratitude. And I’ve spent every day since thinking about what I can do to drain that lake of rage, which can be properly understood as a lake of poison.

Mostly, that’s consisted of me trying to shift from reaction to reflection. That is: to recognize when I feel the lake start bubbling and to ask myself: What’s going on here? Why am I being triggered? What pain or doubt or fear am I concealing?

I’m not suggesting that I’m walking around in some state of grace. Far from it. But I am in the process of trying to identify when and why I feel wronged. There are moments when I need to speak up (to stop walking on thin ice). But there are far more moments when my contempt is simply a way of hiding my vulnerabilities behind grievance.

Tell us about your new book, Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow.

Like you, Cheryl, I’ve been teaching creative writing for many years. And teaching writing is a weird thing, because it’s not just about helping students master a subject. It’s really about helping them discover what stories they’re meant to tell, how best to tell those stories, and how to overcome the inhibitions that inevitably arise when we seize the mantle of narration.

In other words, I didn’t want to write a craft book. I wanted to write a book about the entire creative process. What inspires us to write, the common mistakes we make, and the evil voices that try to shut us down. That’s the part of the book I found most exciting to explore, the scary stuff we don’t often talk about in workshops: writer’s block, ego need, envy, the anxiety we feel around exposure.

As I wrote, I thought a lot about the letters we received when we were doing the Dear Sugars podcast. They were composed, for the most part, by ordinary people. And yet they were almost all gorgeous. Why? Because our correspondents were being so honest about their pain and confusion. The luminous prose was the residue left behind by their dogged pursuit of truth. The more I thought about those letters, the more convinced I became that every human being is a storyteller, that stories are how we seek to understand the meaning of our lives.

I also found, as I tromped through various drafts, that the voice of the teacher, dispensing wisdom from on high, was all wrong. Because whatever insights I’ve gained from teaching are completely useless to me the moment I sit down at the keyboard. Instead, I wanted the book to offer my perspective as a writer, someone who has struggled, and often failed, for whom success isn’t about making the bestseller list but simply outlasting my own doubt. That’s another thing that I learned from you, Cheryl, in your role as Dear Sugar: people don’t need advice so much as they need a companion, someone who will listen to them, and share stories that make them feel less alone.

Tell us about a regret you have or a mistake you’ve made.

Ok, this one is pretty fresh: I failed to thank my wife, the novelist Erin Almond, in the acknowledgments for Truth Is the Arrow. For those who don’t know, the acknowledgments is that little section in the back of the book where the author thanks everyone who helped along the way. My acknowledgments listed all the folks who have hired me to teach over the years, and the various writers who taught me. I concluded with this:

To Erin, Josephine, Jude, and Irvo: I love you. I am working to learn more about what that means. Thanks for being there each day to teach me.

My point was that I’m not always great at loving my wife and kids but am trying—with their help—to get better.

That’s all fine and well. But it ignores the fact that Erin isn’t just my wife. She’s also my creative partner. She’s played an integral role in the development of my ideas about writing. The struggle to write is what brought us together more than two decades ago, and it’s central to our bond. We talk about our work, and the books we’re reading, nearly every day. She’s a magnificent writer and the most talented manuscript editor I’ve ever encountered. I’m lucky to have her as a reader, and lucky, too, that she trusts me to read her work. I should have thanked her for all that, and acknowledged something more: that I never would have been able to teach so many students, in so many far-flung classrooms, without her support.

I’m happy to report that my publisher has agreed to revise the acknowledgments section of Truth Is the Arrow so that it now ends like this:

Last (and first) of all, to my brilliant wife, the novelist Erin Almond, without whom this book would not exist.

That’s not as complete an accounting as she deserves, but it’s a start.

Tell us your best advice.

For a long time, I had a set answer to this question, the one I cited above, and that you, Cheryl, heard many times over the years we recorded Dear Sugars: Our job in life is to esteem who we are and what we’re doing. I don’t mean by this that we should just give ourselves a big hug and pretend that solves all our problems. But I do think that people tend to be too hard on themselves, and that this self-loathing inevitably gets inflicted on the folks around us.

I see this as a writing teacher, too. It’s the reason my new book has such an awkwardly aphoristic title. Over and over, I find myself encountering students who are, in one way or another, blocked when it comes to telling the truth—about their own experiences, and that of their fictional characters. The reason they’re blocked is because they felt guilty about breaking a long-held silence, fearful of the reaction they might receive, ambivalent about all the emotional disruption that comes with writing into deep truth. I tell them that the only path forward is through mercy. If they write with the intention of understanding, and forgiving, everyone involved, they’re going to travel further into the truth.

So I stand by that advice, especially for writers.

But recently, because of some intense stuff going on within my family, I’ve been thinking about how important it is to be able to take the perspective of other people. That can be a real challenge for writers, because our work often depends on being able to offer the reader our voice, our perspective, our radically subjective version of the story.

What I’m realizing, as a partner and a parent, is that my version of the story—insightful and compassionate as it might be—doesn’t really help when my people are struggling. They’re not looking for my solution to the problem. They want to feel seen and understood. The only way for that to happen is for me to think about the situation from their perspective. To do in life what I try to do on the page.

This is especially important for someone like me, because I’m always trying to fix things. I get worried about the people I love and that worry gets in the way of my love. I get impatient to make things all better. But what we call love is really the act of patient attention, of caring enough to imagine how someone else sees the world: what they yearn for, what frightens them, what causes them pain or confusion. My job isn’t to be the hero with just the right medicine. It’s to stay in the room and listen without trying to fix anything.

Steve Almond is the author of Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories and eleven other books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His recent books include the novel All the Secrets of the World, which has been optioned for television by 20th Century Fox, and William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life. Steve hosted the hit New York Times Dear Sugars podcast with his pal favorite Virgo, Cheryl Strayed. He is the recipient of a 2022 NEA grant in fiction, and his short stories have been anthologized in the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Erotica, and Best American Mysteries series. He also publishes crazy, DIY books.