-NYTimes.com. Riveting. Dwight Garner, The New York TimesStunning . The Wild movie true story confirms that Cheryl's younger brother Lief disappeared as their mother grew worse in the hospital. We pulled the futon from our truck and slept on it in the living room under a big wide window that looked out over a filbert orchard. Cheryl Strayed near the PCT in Old Station, California, July 1995. They have two children and live in east Portland, Oregon,[40] where Strayed has lived since the mid-1990s. A month ago, Id been firmly advised to pack my backpack just as I would on my hike and take it on a trial run. When Cheryl was 12 her mother married Glenn Lambrecht, and the following year the family moved to rural Aitkin County, where they lived in a house that they had built themselves on 40 acres. Blood is thicker than water, my mother had always said when I was growing up, a sentiment Id often disputed. A year later, he and my mom took the twelve-thousand-dollar settlement he received and with it bought forty acres of land in Aitkin County, an hour and a half west of Duluth, paying for it outright in cash.There was no house. She waited tables at a place called the Norseman and then a place called Infinity, where her uniform was a black T-shirt that said go for it in rainbow glitter across her chest. . . Some background on Cheryl Strayed, the woman who wrote the book that has been turned into the film, Wild, starring Reece Witherspoon: Strayed married Marco Littig on August 20, 1988. Paul and I had finalized our divorce the month before, after a harrowing yearlong separation. She didnt have time to get skinny. Strayed hammers home her hard-won sentences like a box of nails. Plus, St. Thomas was a three- hour drive away. Strayed worked as a waitress, youth advocate, political organizer, temporary office employee, and emergency medical technician[7] throughout her 20s and early 30s, while writing and often traveling around the United States. Radiation might reduce the size of the tumors that were growing along the entire length of her spine.I did not cry. By then we werent at St. Thomas anymore. Id brought the bags here instead. And I said it again and again as we talked throughout the next weeks, my conviction growing by the day. Unable to deal with her grief, she had become involved with drugs and had sex with random men. My mother planted a garden and canned and pickled and froze vegetables in the fall. My prayer was not: Please, God, take mercy on us.I was not going to ask for mercy. She left and came back. Our kitchen was a Coleman camp stove, a fire ring, an old-fashioned icebox Eddie built that depended on actual ice to keep things even mildly cool, a detached sink propped against an outside wall of the shack, and a bucket of water with a lid on it. It didnt have electricity or running water or a phone or an indoor toilet or even a single room with a door. It was my hiking outfit and in it I felt a bit foreign, like someone I hadnt yet become. By twenty-eight she managed to leave him for the last time.She was alone, with KarenCherylLeif riding shotgun in her car.By then we lived in a small town an hour outside of Minneapolis in a series of apartment complexes with deceptively upscale names: Mill Pond and Barbary Knoll, Tree Loft and Lake Grace Manor. Cheryl met "Joe" when she and Marco were separated but not yet divorced. I loved him, but Id been impetuous and nineteen when wed wed; not remotely ready to commit myself to another person, no matter how dear he was. the extended Cheryl Strayed interview that I would be a writer who lived in New York City. Trees that had once looked like any other to me became as recognizable as the faces of old friends in a crowd, their branches gesturing with sudden meaning, their leaves beckoning like identifiable hands. and how Reese Witherspoon got on board I fucked a cook at the restaurant where Id picked up a job waiting tables. The beautiful thing about going alone is that every triumph is yours, every consequence of every mistake is yours, everything that you have to figure out is on you. I was dressed in the clothes Id been wearing since Id left Portland the night before, every last thing brand-new. It was such an easy thing to do. She did not want to use the hyphenated last name Nyland-Littig that she had shared with her former husband, nor did she want the last name Nyland that she had in high school since she could not go back to being the girl she used to be. Each word I spoke erased itself in the air.It was the same when I tried to pray. She hasnt had a cigarette for years.The doctor shook his head sadly and pressed on. They divorced in 1995, shortly before she started hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Spouse: Marco Littig ( m. 1988; div. He was drinking a lot, some said. I cant. Cheryl Strayed is a writer, advice columnist, and memoirist whose 1995 summer-long trek along the Pacific Coast Trailor the PCTbecame the basis for her breakout memoir Wild.In the wake of her mother Bobbi 's death, Cheryl spent years pinballing around the country from place to place, both with and without her husband at the time, a man named Paul. This is perhaps the biggest change from the Wild true story. I had beloved friends whom I sometimes referred to as family, but our commitments to each other were informal and intermittent, more familial in word than in deed. She held it stiffly with the other hand, trying to calm it. Does Cheryl Strayed still hike? A breathtaking adventure tale and a profound meditation on the nature of grief and survival . Littig has a major connection to the upcoming film "Wild," starring Reece Witherspoon, which will be widely released Friday. In March 1991, when Strayed was a senior in college, her mother, Bobbi Lambrecht, died suddenly of lung cancer at the age of 45. It is just a wild ride of a read . This is a great book. Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia and Seeking PeaceCheryl Strayed is one of the most exciting writers Ive come across in a long time. Hope Edelman, author of The Possibility of Everything and Motherless Daughters Smart, funny, and often sublime, Wild has something for everyonea fight for survival in the wilderness, a bad girls quest for redemptionall in the hands of a brilliant and evocative writer. Chelsea Cain, author of The Night Season and Heartsick "A candid, inspiring narrative of the authors brutal physical and psychological journey through a wilderness of despair to a renewed sense of self," Kirkus Reviews, starred review (12/19/2011). I wanted to know. [23] The film was a box office hit, grossing $52.5 million, and led to Academy Award nominations for both Witherspoon and actress Laura Dern, who played Strayed's mother. Not that I didnt love him. Then listen to a candid Cheryl Strayed interview from George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight. How many times has Cheryl Strayed been married? Shed tell me what to type and Id type it. Marco Littig Cheryl Strayed Spouse Marco Littig ( m. 1988; div. Ive traveled alone a lot. I got out with my backpack and two oversized plastic department store bags full of things. But I couldnt do that anymore. I wanted neither to get back together with Paul nor to get divorced. To think about listening to the same song now. Following the divorce, she changed her surname to Strayed, a name she chose after months of contemplation. Shed held out her hands and watched me turn blue, my mother had always told me. The PCT in Oregon, near Timberline Lodge. So I started in, but I could not go on. Paul was dating a smattering of women, but I was suddenly celibate. . Her original name was Cheryl Nyland. My mother was forty-five. Im traveling, so IWrite down the address youll be returning to, she said.See, thats the thing. I left my truck and the boxes with my friend Lisa in Portlandshed be mailing the boxes to me throughout the summerand boarded a plane to Los Angeles, then caught a ride to Mojave with the brother of a friend.We pulled into town in the early evening, the sun dipping into the Tehachapi Mountains a dozen miles behind us to the west. This image was fixed in my mind, like one of the memo- ries from her childhood that Id made her explain so intricately that I remembered it as if it were mine. We made them into toysbeds for our dolls, ramps for our cars. No, wed say, with sly smiles. She was separated from her husband Marco at the time, not yet divorced. [20] The paperback edition of Wild, published by Vintage Books in March 2013, spent 126 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. She also grew up surviving in nature. It stood of its own volition, sup- ported by the unique plastic shelf that jutted out along its bottom. I couldnt explain.But now that she was dying, I knew everything. It was well past dinnertime, but I was too anxious to feel hungry, my aloneness an uncomfortable thunk that filled my gut.You finally got what you wanted, Paul had said when we bade each other goodbye in Minneapolis ten days before.Whats that? Id asked.To be alone, he replied, and smiled, though I could only nod uncer- tainly.It had been what I wanted, though alone wasnt quite it. Cheryl used heroin during the four-year period between her mother's death and the Pacific Crest Trail hike. Does Cheryl Strayed Dead or Alive? Where did Cheryl Strayed start on the PCT? I could hear her breathing deeply, slowly.God damn it, I said. The Wild Effect has even seeped into popular culture. I did not want to want this, but I did, inexplicably, as if I had a great fever that could be cooled only by those words. Wed lived in New York only a month when Paul dropped out of gradu- ate school, deciding he wanted to play guitar instead. The biggest lake in the world, and the coldest too. Occupation: Writer . Not pretty, but clean. Reese Witherspoon como Cheryl Strayed [10]. She lives in Portland, Oregon. The same as shed always done when shed seen me suffer because I wanted something to be different than it was and she was trying to convince me with that single word that I must accept things as they were.Well all be together tomorrow, I said. At trips end in late spring, we landed in Portland and found restaurant jobs, staying first with my friend Lisa in her tiny apartment and then on a farm ten miles outside the city, wherein exchange for looking after a goat and a cat and a covey of exotic game henswe got to live rent-free for the summer. Cheryl Strayed was married to Marco Littig for 7 years, and Brian Lindstrom for 23 years. Ask for a room.Its eighteen dollars, said the old woman who stood behind the counter. She lives with her family in Portland in Oregon. It was only after her death that I realized who she was: the apparently magical force at the center of our family whod kept us all invisibly spinning in the powerful orbit around her. Love, she said again as I left her room.I rode the elevator and went out to the cold street and walked along the sidewalk. . 101 likes. Her internal thoughts that occur during her therapy sessions in the book are turned into dialogue with her therapist in the film. Sometimes he gave it to her without a word, and sometimes he told her no in a voice as soft as his penis in his pants. The cumulative welling up I experienced during Wild was partly a response to that too infrequent sight: that of a writer finding her voice, and sustaining it, right in front of your eyes. Mary Stevens, 70 Mcdonald Noland, 78 Nikko Godoy, 34 Marco Littig Rosa Littig Cheryl Strayed, 54. The winter after my mother married him, Eddie fell off a roof on the job and broke his back. She sat with her hands folded tightly together and her ankles hooked one to the other. Strayed married Marco Littig in August 1988, a month before her 20th birthday. This scene is from the book and is very real. By the third of March, she had to go to the hospital in Duluth, seventy miles away, because she was in so much pain. Bye, house, she said as she followed me out the door.It hadnt occurred to me that my mother would die. But now, here, having only these clothes at hand, I felt sud- denly like a fraud. . The horse doesn't die from the first shot. The incredible story is based on the real Cheryl Strayed's self-discovery journey in 1995, . 2995 . This is your spine after radiation, he said. Each day that passed, another month peeled away.On her first day in the hospital, a nurse offered my mother morphine, but she refused. She also blames her drug use and rampant infidelity for contributing to her failed marriage (TIME.com). . Cheryl returned to Minneapolis with Marco and into counseling. I was certain of this. I knew that her love for me was vaster than the ten thousand things and also the ten thousand things beyond that. I was trying to heal. It looks good, shed say. . "Reese agreed to go without makeup on the trail," says Wild director Jean-Marc Valle, "just so she could feel what it is to go on a hike and not focus on looking at herself. It was from the New School in New York City. An incredible journey, both inward and outward.Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the RainStrayeds language is so vivid, sharp, and compelling that you feel the heat of the desert, the frigid ice of the High Sierra and the breathtaking power of one remarkable woman finding her wayand herselfone brave step at a time. People (4 stars)An addictive, gorgeous book that not only entertains, but leaves us the better for having read it.The Boston GlobeDazzlingly beautiful. Los Angeles TimesDevastating and glorious . Id married him in the woods on our land, wearing a white satin and lace dress my mother had sewn.After she got sick, I folded my life down. She spoke in Spanish to the people gathered around her, her family and perhaps her husband.Do you think she has cancer? my mother whispered loudly to me. I love you, I said, bending to kiss her cheek, though she fended me off, in too much pain to endure even a kiss.Love, she whispered, too weak to say the I and you. My acceptance letter men- tioned that parents of students could take classes at St. Thomas for free. My little boy, the one Id half mothered all of my life, having no choice but to help my mom all those times shed been away at work. View the latest Biography of Cheryl Strayed and also find estimated Net Worth, Salary, Career & More. She herself took what she called a break. I didnt have time to do much about it, consumed as I was each day at my mothers side, holding plastic pans for her to retch into, adjusting the impossible pillows again and again, hoisting her up and onto the potty chair the nurses had propped near her bed, cajoling her to eat a bite of food that shed vomit up ten minutes later. Her daughter, Bobbi I sat between my mother and Eddie in my green pantsuit, the green bow miraculously still in my hair. Tell them youre my daughter.I was her daughter, but more. Shattered at 26 by her mothers death, her familys fragmenting, and the end of her marriage, Strayed upped and decided to do something way out of the realm of her experience; here she confronts snowstorms and rattlesnakes even as she confronts her personal pain. One of the nurses was a man, and I could see the outline of his penis through his tight white nurses trousers. My mom was dead. The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods. Every night we talked one another to sleep, slumber-party style. Some of them were just what I dreamed of having, others less so. She was double majoring in womens studies and history, I in womens studies and English. Most likely Ill flunk out anyway. To prepare, she shadowed me during the last months of my senior year of high school, doing all the home- work that I was assigned, honing her skills. We were swarmed by mosqui- toes as we worked, but my mother forbade us to use DEET or any other such brain-destroying, earth-polluting, future-progeny-harming chemical. I took everything from the cupboards and put new paper down. But now, alone in my room at Whites Motel, I knew there was no denying the fact that I was on shaky ground.Perhaps you should try a shorter trip first, Paul had suggested when I told him about my plan during one of our should-we-stay-together-or- get-divorced discussions several months before.Why? Id asked with irritation. 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