Looking at the essay, “The Love of My Life” by Cheryl Strayed
“The first time I cheated on my husband, my mother had been dead for exactly one week.” With this powerful statement, Cheryl Strayed begins her personal story of love, life, and death that could very well alter the way we think about the “traditional” grieving process. On the surface, her story concerns the dissolution of her marriage in the aftermath of her mother’s death. Engaging in several extramarital affairs, she seeks refuge from the emptiness in the arms of complete strangers. On a deeper level, Strayed tackles issues such as denying one’s grief, society imposing boundaries on the process, and rediscovering oneself in the midst of tremendous upheaval.
After losing her mother to cancer at the young age of twenty-two, Strayed struggles to grasp her new reality. Constant reminders of her mother’s absence cause her to feel great pain, and yet, she puts significant effort into feeling hardly anything at all. “We are not allowed this,” she says, “We are allowed to be deeply into basketball, or Buddhism, or Star Trek, or jazz, but we are not allowed to be deeply sad. Grief is a thing that we are encouraged to ‘let go of,’ to ‘move on from,’ and we are told specifically how this should be done.” Mourning feels as unnatural to her as it does to society, and even though her friends encourage her to go through the five steps (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), it only seems to heighten her anxiety. The consolation she receives doesn’t seem to comfort her at all, as others try to relate to her loss. She explains, “After my mother died, everyone I knew wanted to tell me either about the worst breakup they’d had or all the people they’d known who’d died. I listened to a long, traumatic story about a girlfriend who suddenly moved to Ohio, and to stories of grandfathers and old friends and people who lived down the block who were no longer among us. Rarely was this helpful.” It is interesting to think that while one’s friends and family may try to relate with the best of intentions, comparing breakups to deeply impactful deaths hardly get to the magnitude of the experience.
Cheryl Strayed
By using sex as an outlet for her grief, she attempts to pacify it, which only exacerbates the main problem. That is, she can’t accept that she can go on living without her mother. She runs from emotional attachment, possibly as a way to protect herself. “I did not deny,” she says, “I did not get angry. I didn’t bargain, become depressed, or accept. I fucked. I sucked… The people I messed around with did not have names; they had titles: the Prematurely Graying Wilderness Guide, the Technically Still a Virgin Mexican Teenager, the Formerly Gay Organic Farmer, the Quietly Perverse Poet, the Failing but Still Trying Massage Therapist, the Terribly Large Texas Bull Rider, the Recently Unemployed Graduate of Juilliard… With them, I was not in mourning; I wasn’t even me. I was happy and sexy and impetuous and fun. I was wild and enigmatic and terrifically good in bed.”
This brave confession raises a number of questions, perhaps the most implied being: why is it so awful to be sad? Why should it be socially unacceptable to submit oneself entirely to their sadness and be absorbed by it? Isn’t that required of us to move on? And if we’ve already accepted that, that being deeply sad is a part of the process, why can’t we put it into practice? Not to say that Strayed’s choices are the direct result of American culture’s expectations, but who’s to say they didn’t affect her at all? Maybe it is time for us to ask these questions and take a hard look at how we want our relationship with loss to be. The avoidance, the distaste for genuine sadness, the rejection of overwhelming emotions—these are the concerns Strayed points to in a direct and honest way that, like most of life’s challenges, provide more questions than answers.
To read Cheryl Strayed’s insightful essay, go to: http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/321/the_love_of_my_life
And for more, check out her memoir, WILD, coming out in March 2012, http://www.cherylstrayed.com/works.htm
Our Annual Seven Holiday Gifts for Someone Who Is Grieving, 2024 Edition
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I was dumbfounded by this account of how Cheryl went through life following the death of her mother with her inability to cope. A brutally honest and unusual account, but who am I to judge. It certainly opens the door as to further conversations about what grieving is and the boundaries we accept or explore.
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Yes I agree with the comment above – not the usual! Today certainly was a day of educational posts for me, especially given the amount I read on the topic.
Thanks Katie!
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How can anyone condone such behavior because she lost her mother? This is inexcusable and a cop out as to some real problems this woman must have. Do you really think this is a good way to promote healthy healing through the act of cheating on a spouse. I would not label this as any form of healthy healing whatsoever!
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If you read the essay, I think you’ll look at this issue differently. I don’t think she (or anyone for that matter) is condoning the behavior, she is just documenting her struggle with grief in a society where being sad isn’t really acceptable. I think it is a brave admission of a highly personal, human experience.
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She is now a SWAMP DONKEY
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Cheryl’s essay reads like a Shock Jock’s version of Eric Jong’s concept of the zipless fuck. Though Cheryl’s essay doesn’t have any profound significance for me, it was well written and entertaining.
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Until you have walked a mile or hundreds of miles in Cheryl’s shoes or anyone else for that matter do not judge. We should not be so fast to talk down on another person. You are not God. We all deal with the death of a parent or family member or closes friends in different ways. No one is perfect. and if you say you are and that you don’t have skeletons in your closet your a lire.
I myself can relate to losing touch with reality and doing things that was not good choices but what you learn from those bad choices and mistakes is not to make them again. My life was not prefect not even close to it growing up and i am a survivor of child molestation, being abuse as a child, to rape and domestic violence. Foster care, death of three daughters and that was natural births and it was nothing i did wrong, so people need to understand we are not saying what we did was right, when it came to dealing with these issues. we tell our story so maybe the next person does not do what we did.
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Finally I feel that I am not alone in the world, that someone else has dealt with grief in the same way I am dealing with it. I have lost my mother, my father, my husband, and the man I felll in love with after my husband in the last 3 1/2 years (and no, I haven’t killed anyone! Three died from cancer, which was hell in and of itself, and one from a blood clot) . I went from a middle class soccer Mom who was faithful to her husband for 21 years to a raging slut within 4 months of my husband’s death. Just when I feel like I’m getting myself under control again, someone else seems to die. I am not trying to justify my behavior, I don’t necessarily want to act this way, and yet I do, because it makes me feel alive. It does help to know that other women have gone through it and, even though there are consequences to our actions, we survive and tell our stories to help the next woman. Thank you, Cheryl, for your vulnerability. It has given me hope!
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