And hopefully what happens over time is we get better at doing it. And what's true is we have to constantly remind ourselves of the way out of that conundrum. You know, we all have basically the same problems. I have new stories.Īnd I think that that's the thing. I started writing the column more than a decade ago, when I was 41. And even though a new letter might detail a different situation, the answer to it would be pretty much the same.

STRAYED: Well, that's in so many ways, Rachel, why I stopped writing the column in 2012, because I'd written so many columns and had felt - you know, all those columns that were published in 'Tiny Beautiful Things,' I felt like, OK, I've answered in a sort of global way, in a universal way, any question that can be asked of me. MARTIN: Then how do you as a writer and as an advice-giver avoid giving out the same solution all the time? This is what I am also up against.Īnd so, you know, I do see that - you know, not just the pattern or the kinds of problems we have with family, with romantic partners, with children, with work, with ourselves, with those voices in our heads that say we're not enough or we can't - you know, those are the kinds of problems that come up over and over again. And what excites me probably the most about the Dear Sugar column is that when people write to me, what they're - what happens is by just simple virtue of me publishing their letter, I know that thousands of people out there are saying, me too. I mean, honestly, I could take all of those letters and divide them into about six buckets. STRAYED: When we boil it down, we only have really about five or six problems (laughter). I imagine every life is different and unique and people's pain is different, but do you see patterns in the trauma people experience? I tell those stories because I know that story has power. And so that's what I try to do as Dear Sugar. They make me feel more human, more part of the human family.

Our co-host Rachel Martin spoke with Strayed and asked her where she turns to for comfort and wisdom.ĬHERYL STRAYED: I have always turned to literature, to poems and plays and books and, you know, things that people wrote yesterday or things that people wrote 300 years ago. It's been about eight years since Strayed regularly wrote under the pseudonym Sugar, but she's now brought the column back as a monthly newsletter.

Struggling with professional jealousy? Her advice would be to, quote, 'get over yourself.' Grappling with a miscarriage? She would say it's OK to lean in and feel pain. Cheryl Strayed is the writer behind the hit 2012 memoir 'Wild.' She's also the once-anonymous voice behind Sugar, a loving, lively advice columnist that offered her readers wisdom through intimate stories of her own life.

Dear sugar author