Quotes About Self-discovery

I felt better than I'd ever felt in all of my life, now that the trail had taught me how horrible I could feel.

Someone's in here," I called, though that was obvious. Someone was in here. It was me. I was here. I felt in a way I hadn't in ages: the me inside of me, occupying my spot in the fathomless Milky Way.

I looked north, in its direction—the very thought of that bridge a beacon to me. I looked south, to where I'd been, to the wild land that had schooled and scorched me, and considered my options. There was only one, I knew. There was always only one. To keep walking.

I'd been on the PCT for a little more than a month. It seemed like a long time and also it seemed like my trip had just begun, like I was only now digging into whatever it was I was out here to do. Like I was still the woman with the hole in her heart, but the hole had gotten ever so infinitesimally smaller.

I didn't want to hurt for him anymore, to wonder whether in leaving him I'd made a mistake, to torment myself with all the ways I'd wronged him.

I only felt that in spite of all the things I'd done wrong, in getting myself here, I'd done right. I

But a woman who walks alone in the wilderness for eleven hundred miles? I'd never been anything like that before. I had nothing to lose by giving it a whirl.

La solitudine era sempre stata un luogo reale per me, come se fosse una stanza dove potevo rifugiarmi per essere davvero me stessa.

I'd thought I'd weep tears of cathartic sorrow and restorative joy each day of my journey.

The staying and doing it, in spite of everything. In spite of the bears and the rattlesnakes and the scat of the mountain lions I never saw; the blisters and scabs and scrapes and lacerations. The exhaustion and the deprivation; the cold and the heat; the monotony and the pain; the thirst and the hunger; the glory and the ghosts that haunted me as I hiked eleven hundred miles from the Mojave Desert to the state of Washington by myself.

Yes. I get to do this. I get to waste my life. I get to be junk.

I had to change. I had to change was the thought that drove me in those months of planning. Not into a different person, but back to the person I used to be—strong and responsible, clear-eyed and driven, ethical and good.

How strange and glorious it was to be anchored to nothing, to be free, in some particular way, for the first time in my life.

It seemed like such a small thing and such a tremendous thing at once, like a secret I'd always tell myself, though I didn't know the meaning of it just yet.

to me sitting alone in Old Station, California, on a picnic table beneath the magnificent sky. I didn't feel sad or happy. I didn't feel proud or ashamed. I only felt that in spite of all the things I'd done wrong, in getting myself here, I'd done right.

That both things could be true at once—my disbelief as well as my certainty—was the unification of the ancient and the future parts of me. It was everything I intended and yet still I was surprised by what I got.

I continued up, into the late afternoon and evening, unable to see anything except what was immediately before me. I wasn't thinking of snakes, as l'd been the day before. I wasn't thinking. I'm hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail. I wasn't even thinking, What have I gotten myself into? I was thinking only of moving myself forward.

Difficulty, solitude, and risk are the three things that all rites of passage have in common. It's because putting ourselves in situations where we must do hard things that scare us without anyone there to intervene pushes us beyond what we previously thought ourselves capable of. It expands our perception of our own courage, strength, and endurance. It forges us out of who we were before into the person we will become.

I told her it would likely go on and shed have to survive it. That she'd have to find a way within herself to not only escape the shit, but to transcend it, and if she wasn't able to do that, then her whole life would be shit, forever and ever and ever.

I had to do something hard so I could know my strength. I had to do something scary so I could find my courage. I had to do something alone so I could see who I was.

I strongly encourage you to let go of these beliefs. They are inaccurate and melodramatic and they do not serve you.

She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal.

She was a real human being laying herself bare, fearlessly, that we might come to understand the nature of our own predicaments.

Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore. ? Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar