Praise for DEAR SUGAR “These pieces are nothing short of dynamite, the kind of remarkable, revelatory storytelling that makes young people want to become writers in the first place. Over here at the Salon offices, we’re reading the columns with boxes of tissue and raised fists of solidarity, shaking our heads with awe and amusement.” —Sarah Hepola, Salon “Sugar doesn’t coddle her readers—she believes them, and hears the stories inside the story they think they want to tell. She manages astonishing levels of empathy without dissolving into sentiment, and sees problems before the reader can. Sugar doesn’t promise to make anyone feel good, only that she understands a question well enough to answer it.” —Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker critic “Powerful and soulful, Tiny Beautiful Things is destined to become a classic of the form, the sort of book readers will carry around in purses and backpacks during difficult times as a token or talisman because of the radiant wisdom and depth within.” —Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake “Sugar is turning the advice column on its head.” —Jessica Francis Kane, author of The Report “Sugar’s columns are easily the most beautiful thing I’ve read all year. They should be taught in schools and put on little slips of paper and dropped from airplanes, for all to read.” —Meakin Armstrong, Guernica editor “Dear Sugar will save your soul. I belong to the Church of Sugar.” —Samantha Dunn, author of Failing Paris “Charming, idiosyncratic, luminous, profane.… [Sugar] is remaking a genre that has existed, in more or less the same form, since well before Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts first put a face on the figure in 1933. … Her version of tough love ranges from hip-older-sister-loving to governess-stern. Sugar shines out amid the sea of fakeness.” —Ruth Franklin, The New Republic Cheryl Strayed TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS Cheryl Strayed is the author of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail and the novel Torch. Her stories and essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Allure, The Rumpus, The Missouri Review, The Sun, The Best American Essays, and elsewhere. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Cheryl Strayed is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please contact the Random House Speakers Bureau at [email protected]. ALSO BY CHERYL STRAYED Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail Torch A VINTAGE BOOKS ORIGINAL, JULY 2012 Copyright © 2012 by Cheryl Strayed All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Much of the material in this work was originally published in the Dear Sugar column on TheRumpus.net. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Strayed, Cheryl, 1968– Tiny beautiful things : advice on love and life from Dear Sugar / Cheryl Strayed. p. cm. —(A Vintage Books original) eISBN: 978-0-307-94932-5 1. Conduct of life—Miscellanea. I. Title. BJ1589.S84 2012 070.4′44—dc23 2012007154 Cover design by John Gall www.vintagebooks.com v3.1 For Stephen Elliott and Isaac Fitzgerald And for all the people who wrote to me