A gorgeous post, Ali. (And thank you for including Life, Almost here.) I haven’t read Tiny Beautiful Things, but there are two Dear Sugar letters that have stuck with me, including one to a grieving father and one on the concept of the ‘ghost ship that never carried us’. I wonder if they’re in it? Xxx
Of course, Jennie! How could I not include it? It is an essential part of my survival shelf. And yes, the ghost ship letter is in Tiny, Beautiful Things - that phrase has always stayed with me too. This is it, from p.248:
"I'll never know, and neither will you of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore.'
And I think I know the grieving father one too - 'Dear Stuck', Strayed replies: 'They live on Planet Earth. You live on the planet My Baby Died. This is how you get unstuck, stuck. You reach. Not so you can walk away from the daughter you loved, but so you can live the life that is yours- the one that includes the sad loss of your daughter, but is not arrested by it.... that place of true healing is a fierce place. A giant place. A place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have to work really, really hard to get there. But you can do it.' ❤️
A gorgeous post, Ali. (And thank you for including Life, Almost here.) I haven’t read Tiny Beautiful Things, but there are two Dear Sugar letters that have stuck with me, including one to a grieving father and one on the concept of the ‘ghost ship that never carried us’. I wonder if they’re in it? Xxx
Of course, Jennie! How could I not include it? It is an essential part of my survival shelf. And yes, the ghost ship letter is in Tiny, Beautiful Things - that phrase has always stayed with me too. This is it, from p.248:
"I'll never know, and neither will you of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore.'
And I think I know the grieving father one too - 'Dear Stuck', Strayed replies: 'They live on Planet Earth. You live on the planet My Baby Died. This is how you get unstuck, stuck. You reach. Not so you can walk away from the daughter you loved, but so you can live the life that is yours- the one that includes the sad loss of your daughter, but is not arrested by it.... that place of true healing is a fierce place. A giant place. A place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have to work really, really hard to get there. But you can do it.' ❤️