Cheryl Strayed: Tiny Beautiful Things writer on grief, wisdom and her kids reading her books
When Cheryl Strayed was still at college, her mother’s sudden death transformed her life.
She went from being a successful student to a heroin addict.
The grief she experienced, and the story of how she turned such loss around to become a best-selling author, has inspired fans around the world.
But the 54-year-old writer tells Sky News: “I have no interest in being anyone’s guru.”
Best known for her 2012 memoir Wild – an international bestseller adapted into the 2014 film both produced by and starring Reese Witherspoon – Strayed wasn’t always so willing to share her personal experiences with the world.
Laura Dern, Cheryl Strayed and Reese Witherspoon (L-R) at the premiere of Wild in 2014. Pic: AP
She describes her first deeply personal piece of writing, titled Heroin/e, as “a raw, personal essay about my grief, about my foray into drug use, and about the sorrow, the agony, essentially, I was in as a young woman – who didn’t have her mother”.
Published in a magazine called Double Take, she admits her first feeling on seeing her work in print wasn’t pride, but an urge to “go buy every copy of this magazine so nobody reads it”.
However, soon afterwards the magazine contacted her to say they’d received hundreds of letters – a bigger response than ever before – from readers saying they had truly connected with her work.
Strayed says: “That has really made me strong. I’m always afraid to publish personal things about myself. I’m always terrified.
“And yet every single time I’ve been terrified, they’re the times that people say, ‘Thank you for saying that, we needed that to be said. You saved me, you changed me, you helped me’…”
She goes on: “People need to hear the truth because they need to understand they’re not alone.”
Such a transparent approach to her life has won her a legion of fans, but Strayed admits she sometimes needs to take a step back.
“I feel like it is a gift that people feel that, kind of… open and warm towards me… But also, I’ve had to really learn.
“I’ve had to actually take some of the advice I would give to other people, learn how to maintain those boundaries.”
She adds: “I’ve already given you my best thing… The thing that I can give the world is through my writing… I have no interest in being anyone’s guru.
“And so I just try to greet people with gratitude and compassion and love, which I genuinely feel for the people who read my work and love it.”
‘Feeling less alone’
Now, following the success of Wild, another of her works has been adapted for the screen.
Disney+ original Tiny Beautiful Things is based on Strayed’s best-selling collection of essays Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar.
It was compiled from an advice column which she wrote anonymously on The Rumpus, an online literary magazine.
Kathryn Hahn plays a fictionalised version of Cheryl. Pic: Disney+
As much a personal memoir as an advice and self-help tool, Strayed says she began sharing her own personal experiences as part of her Dear Sugar advice in a nod to the many stories that had helped her during her own times of pain.
“When I was in the deep suffering in the years right after my mum died in my twenties, it was books I turned to, collections of poetry and collections of essays, and novels and plays, to see the humanity, to see the universal stories of love and loss and suffering and triumph.
“And all of those things made me feel less alone.”
Wisdom where you’d least expect it
Strayed says she has also learned to gain insights from the most unexpected of places.
“I think the most important thing ever is to stay awake and aware, and alive to wisdom in all of its forms,” she says.
“Sometimes it comes out of the mouth of your six-year-old child. Sometimes it comes from a stranger in the grocery store line.
“Sometimes it comes from a book, sometimes it comes from a therapist. Sometimes it comes from an advice columnist.
“[So it’s important] to stay awake to the fact that wisdom doesn’t come from a single source.”
Starring Kathryn Hahn, Sarah Pidgeon, Quentin Plair, and Tanzyn Crawford, Tiny Beautiful Things follows Clare – who is a fictionalised version of Strayed – as a struggling writer finding success as an advice columnist, while her own life is falling apart.
Sarah Pidgeon (L) in Tiny Beautiful Things. Pic: Disney+
No Hollywood version of grief
Touching on her mother’s death in the show, Strayed says one of the most important things for her was to portray the reality of grief – not a sanitised Hollywood version of it.
“It’s so important to me that we do not tell this false story about grief that gets told over and over again, which is like this idea that if you still experience grief years after somebody has died, that somehow, you’ve been held back and the way to heal is to let it go.
“To me, the way that grief functions is… of course, immediately after somebody has died – that is very often the fiercest, hardest grieving time.
“But you don’t leave that sorrow behind.”
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She says she has learned a valuable lesson about loss: “Grief is part of who I am. And it is both a very painful, hard thing that I wish didn’t happen to me and one of the greatest gifts of my life. And I will carry it always.
“I can carry it in a burdensome way that holds me back, that causes me pain, that forces me to be destructive, or do things that heavy weights can sometimes do.
“Or I can carry it like the basket of riches that it is…”
She goes on: “If you really want to honour that person you love so much, make something beautiful of that ugliness of that loss.”
And what do her children think?
A mother herself, she admits her children, son Carver, 18, and daughter Bobbi, 17, have yet to read any of her work.
So, does she ever worry about them learning so much about their mother’s life from her books?
On the contrary, Strayed says it’s the cherry on the cake: “It makes me feel happy that when they’re ready to know their mum on a deeper level, there’s a bunch of crazy stuff I wrote.”
Tiny Beautiful Things is streaming now on Disney+ in the UK, and on Hulu in the US.
They’re getting through 70kg of rice a day and the wholesaler has run out of noodles. Yes, Sumo returns to London on Wednesday.
It’s just the second time a Grand Tournament has been held outside of Japan – and this is a sport that has records going back more than 1,500 years.
It’s 34 years since the Royal Albert Hall hosted the only previous such event on foreign soil – and the appetite for tickets meant all five days sold out immediately.
Much of the focus is on the two grand champions or yokozuna, the 74th and 75th men to attain the rank.
They’re the Mongolian Hoshoryu Tomokatsu, plus Japan’s Onosato Daiki – who this year became the quickest wrestler to achieve the rank in the modern era.
“I’m happy that Sumo is back after so many years,” Onosato said. “I hope I can show the UK fans how fantastic Sumo is.”
“Being a yokozuna has a lot of responsibility,” Hoshoryu told Sky Sports. “We have to show everyone an example of what a yokozuna is – and that’s very difficult.
“My uncle was a yokozuna – and I’m happy to follow in his footsteps. But I came here to London as a yokozuna which he didn’t, so I’m even happier.”
The two are already great rivals.
Onosato Daiki became the quickest ever to achieve yokozuna rank. Pic: AP
At the recent Aki Basho – the most prestigious tournament on the sumo calendar – the pair finished with identical records after 15 days of bouts.
It all came down to a final play-off between the two yokozuna – the first time that had happened in 16 years. It was Onosato who came out on top on that occasion.
Hoshoryu says he is a big fan of basketball and football. He follows Chelsea, although his favourite players are going back a bit: “Didier Drogba and Petr Cech. He’s the ‘keeper. I like this guy!”
Early starts and a hearty stew: The life of a rikishi
The wrestlers – or rikishi – have a rigorous training regime.
They live in communal blocks called stables and practice starts early. Perhaps surprisingly, everyone skips breakfast. After training and practice – and for the younger rikishi, chores – the wrestlers all eat together.
The staple of their diet is chankonabe, a hearty stew packed with meat and vegetables. The feeding of the 40 rikishi who have come over for the five-day tournament is a challenge in itself.
Donagh Collins, the CEO of co-organisers Askonas Holt, said: “We are going through 70 kilos of rice a day. Somebody told me that the wholesaler for the noodles has run out of noodles. We’re really pushing the system here.”
The ring – or dohyo – is just 4.55m in diameter and quite small when two giant wrestlers leap at each other.
The aim of the fights is to either get your opponent onto the floor – or, more spectacularly, shove or hurl them out of the dohyo, so spectators in the ringside seats may be getting extremely up-close to the wrestlers.
The last time the tournament was in Britain, the massive Konishiki, known as the Dump Truck, took centre stage.
The giant Hawaiian was the heaviest-ever rikishi coming in at 287kg – or 45 stone. That’s a lot of wrestler to dodge if he comes falling out of the ring towards you.
Read more from Sky News:
Wildlife award revealed – see stunning snaps
Premier League players to take the knee again
The Royal Albert Hall may be firstly a concert venue, but it has hosted the likes of John McEnroe, Lennox Lewis and even Muhammad Ali.
And for the next five days, the cream of the world of sumo will be thrilling the crowds – provided a new noodle supplier is found.
What is a yokozuna?
Yokozuna is the highest rank in sumo, with its name meaning “horizontal rope” and refers to the rope worn around a competitor’s waist as they enter the ring.
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