Our book club read Wild by Cheryl Strayed, which was also an Oprah Book Club selection that was purchased by thousands of other women in our demographic. In an interview Strayed said that most were strongly affected by her book, either loving it or hating it, and we found that to be true in our own female microcosm. Several women said they wanted to cheer for her, wanted her to be the resilient heroine that was promised on the book jacket, but were let down by her pain and all-too-human foibles. Others were completely disenchanted by the drugs and men and drama, not empathetic to her pain at the time of her hike on the Pacific Crest Trail or to her struggle to climb out.
I could understand these frustrations, but was ultimately impressed by Strayed's journey through pain and suffering into wholeness (or what we understand to be wholeness by her later body of work, lovely family, and responsible-seeming life). The author's mistakes were only visible because of her honesty, her rawness and her use of writing as catharsis. I doubt that Strayed wrote the book intending to make Oprah's list or the NY Times Bestseller column; she wrote it out of necessity for her own healing.
In my own life healing has not been pretty. The way I broke down wasn't pretty, either, and both paths were littered by evidence of my own imperfections. Struggle is rarely pretty, and though we hate to see the ugly, it exists right in front of us as well as inside. Maybe that is why it's hard to face it in movies or books or real life, but if we ignore the true nature of the struggle we fail to fully appreciate the triumph and joy that lies on the other side. Which brings me back to this Easter week and the the paradox that takes us from triumph to pain and suffering back to a joy that can only be realized after the tragedy has played out.
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