These little things that do everything | These little texts that make a big whole

Should I leave? Why stay? Finally: what the fuck? Cheryl Strayed’s answers are never short, always thrusting, confronting, and eminently illuminating. More than ten years after the publication of her reflections and countless translations, a version in the language of Janette Bertrand finally lands here.

These little nothings that do everything, a brick of nearly 400 pages, brings together around fifty of his texts, in addition to several unpublished, published since 2010 as part of his popular heart letter, Dear Sugar, from the literary journal The Rumpus.

The most famous, featured extensively in the Tiny Beautiful Things series (inspired by his lyrics and available on Disney , spoil yourself, it’s candy for the soul), “What would you say to the girl you were 20 years if you could talk to him? is obviously part of the lot.

It was time ! “It’s always difficult to sell the idea of ​​​​publishing a letter from the heart, answers in a telephone interview Cheryl Strayed. But it is so much more than a letter from the heart. It’s a collection of essays about life and all the deep questions that so many of us struggle with. »

And that’s well said: we challenge you not to recognize yourself in any of the questions of “Stuck”, “Suffocated”, or why not “Oh mama”, on mourning, infidelities , but also our ambitions, our dreams and other disappointments, to which Cheryl Strayed responds with her powerful pen. Shock formulas to conclude in addition.

A pen qualified by some as “radically empathetic”, a qualifier which frankly suits the author, who does not lack tenderness either, as evidenced by her “my cat” and other “barley sugar” deposited here and there. “We’re all hurting. We all have our struggles, we all feel lonely sometimes, Cheryl Strayed knows all too well. No one knows what’s going on with the other. And yet, there is almost always something going on. So yes, I have a lot of empathy for people. It’s part of who I am. And writing this column reinforced that empathy even more. »

When she started (for free and bonus anonymously), Cheryl Strayed initially thought the task would be “fun”. Quickly, she understood that the case was nothing light and that it was awfully close to everything she had always done, namely “[to] wonder about human nature”. “And I put as much heart and brains into it as I do into anything I do.” ” Better :

“In my life, books have been such a consolation,” she continues. Dear Sugar lets me do that: tell a story in hopes of helping. »

This is indeed his approach: to tell a story, often his own, to draw new thoughts, although never gratuitous. The letter (included in the book) that actually started her down this path was mildly inviting: “What the fuck? simply asked one reader. Cheryl Strayed took a long and daring detour, recounting being molested as a child, to conclude, “This mess is your life. Answer it. »

Destabilizing, you say? It had to be daring, and it’s been her trademark ever since: “In a way, it’s been my way of saying, this is no ordinary heartfelt letter,” says Cheryl Strayed, who has the gift to find the “underlying” question behind the apparent questioning. “Finally, this person was telling me: what am I responsible for in my life? And I say: you are responsible for everything […], it is up to you to endure, to transform, and to carry on from there,” she sums up, drawing inspiration here from her lived, but also of his instincts and reflections.

Reading his many anecdotes, a question arises: must one have suffered so much to be such good counsel? “Not necessarily,” replies the author, who has lived through her share of challenges, starting with cancer and the untimely death of her mother. “But experience certainly helps us…”

Note that it obviously does not solve the problems of others. But rather helps its correspondents (us included) to see things differently and to navigate through their issues to find the strength to look forward.

Often, this amounts to posing as “a better version of yourself”, we note. “I don’t mean that you always have to work on yourself, it would be guilt-inducing,” retorts Cheryl Strayed. But yeah, I think people always do their best, and they can be even better. It requires compassion towards oneself and compassion towards others. I believe, yes, that there is always a way to go in the right direction in our lives. »

Cheryl Strayed wrote Wild (2012), an autobiographical novel about a solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail (1,700 km), adapted for film by Jean-Marc Vallée (2014), with Reese Witherspoon in the lead role.

The author also signs, from 2010, a letter from the heart called Dear Sugar, in the literary journal The Rumpus.

Several of his columns were collected in 2012 as a collection: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar.

A series inspired by his texts (Tiny Beautiful Things) has also recently been broadcast on Disney.