the love of my life essay

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Looking at the essay, “The Love of My Life” by Cheryl Strayed

After losing her mother to cancer at the young age of twenty-two, Strayed struggles to grasp her new reality.  Constant reminders of her mother’s absence cause her to feel great pain, and yet, she puts significant effort into feeling hardly anything at all.  “We are not allowed this,” she says, “We are allowed to be deeply into basketball, or Buddhism, or Star Trek , or jazz, but we are not allowed to be deeply sad. Grief is a thing that we are encouraged to ‘let go of,’ to ‘move on from,’ and we are told specifically how this should be done.”  Mourning feels as unnatural to her as it does to society, and even though her friends encourage her to go through the five steps (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), it only seems to heighten her anxiety.  The consolation she receives doesn’t seem to comfort her at all, as others try to relate to her loss.  She explains, “After my mother died, everyone I knew wanted to tell me either about the worst breakup they’d had or all the people they’d known who’d died. I listened to a long, traumatic story about a girlfriend who suddenly moved to Ohio, and to stories of grandfathers and old friends and people who lived down the block who were no longer among us. Rarely was this helpful.”  It is interesting to think that while one’s friends and family may try to relate with the best of intentions, comparing breakups to deeply impactful deaths hardly get to the magnitude of the experience.

Cheryl Strayed

By using sex as an outlet for her grief, she attempts to pacify it, which only exacerbates the main problem.  That is, she can’t accept that she can go on living without her mother.  She runs from emotional attachment, possibly as a way to protect herself.  “I did not deny,” she says, “I did not get angry. I didn’t bargain, become depressed, or accept. I fucked. I sucked… The people I messed around with did not have names; they had titles: the Prematurely Graying Wilderness Guide, the Technically Still a Virgin Mexican Teenager, the Formerly Gay Organic Farmer, the Quietly Perverse Poet, the Failing but Still Trying Massage Therapist, the Terribly Large Texas Bull Rider, the Recently Unemployed Graduate of Juilliard… With them, I was not in mourning; I wasn’t even me. I was happy and sexy and impetuous and fun. I was wild and enigmatic and terrifically good in bed.”

This brave confession raises a number of questions, perhaps the most implied being: why is it so awful to be sad?  Why should it be socially unacceptable to submit oneself entirely to their sadness and be absorbed by it?  Isn’t that required of us to move on?  And if we’ve already accepted that, that being deeply sad is a part of the process, why can’t we put it into practice?  Not to say that Strayed’s choices are the direct result of American culture’s expectations, but who’s to say they didn’t affect her at all?  Maybe it is time for us to ask these questions and take a hard look at how we want our relationship with loss to be.  The avoidance, the distaste for genuine sadness, the rejection of overwhelming emotions—these are the concerns Strayed points to in a direct and honest way that, like most of life’s challenges, provide more questions than answers.

To read Cheryl Strayed’s insightful essay, go to: http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/321/the_love_of_my_life

And for more, check out her memoir, WILD , coming out in March 2012, http://www.cherylstrayed.com/works.htm

8 Responses to Looking at the essay, “The Love of My Life” by Cheryl Strayed

I was dumbfounded by this account of how Cheryl went through life following the death of her mother with her inability to cope. A brutally honest and unusual account, but who am I to judge. It certainly opens the door as to further conversations about what grieving is and the boundaries we accept or explore.

Report this comment

Yes I agree with the comment above – not the usual! Today certainly was a day of educational posts for me, especially given the amount I read on the topic.

Thanks Katie!

How can anyone condone such behavior because she lost her mother? This is inexcusable and a cop out as to some real problems this woman must have. Do you really think this is a good way to promote healthy healing through the act of cheating on a spouse. I would not label this as any form of healthy healing whatsoever!

If you read the essay, I think you’ll look at this issue differently. I don’t think she (or anyone for that matter) is condoning the behavior, she is just documenting her struggle with grief in a society where being sad isn’t really acceptable. I think it is a brave admission of a highly personal, human experience.

She is now a SWAMP DONKEY

Cheryl’s essay reads like a Shock Jock’s version of Eric Jong’s concept of the zipless fuck. Though Cheryl’s essay doesn’t have any profound significance for me, it was well written and entertaining.

Until you have walked a mile or hundreds of miles in Cheryl’s shoes or anyone else for that matter do not judge. We should not be so fast to talk down on another person. You are not God. We all deal with the death of a parent or family member or closes friends in different ways. No one is perfect. and if you say you are and that you don’t have skeletons in your closet your a lire. I myself can relate to losing touch with reality and doing things that was not good choices but what you learn from those bad choices and mistakes is not to make them again. My life was not prefect not even close to it growing up and i am a survivor of child molestation, being abuse as a child, to rape and domestic violence. Foster care, death of three daughters and that was natural births and it was nothing i did wrong, so people need to understand we are not saying what we did was right, when it came to dealing with these issues. we tell our story so maybe the next person does not do what we did.

Finally I feel that I am not alone in the world, that someone else has dealt with grief in the same way I am dealing with it. I have lost my mother, my father, my husband, and the man I felll in love with after my husband in the last 3 1/2 years (and no, I haven’t killed anyone! Three died from cancer, which was hell in and of itself, and one from a blood clot) . I went from a middle class soccer Mom who was faithful to her husband for 21 years to a raging slut within 4 months of my husband’s death. Just when I feel like I’m getting myself under control again, someone else seems to die. I am not trying to justify my behavior, I don’t necessarily want to act this way, and yet I do, because it makes me feel alive. It does help to know that other women have gone through it and, even though there are consequences to our actions, we survive and tell our stories to help the next woman. Thank you, Cheryl, for your vulnerability. It has given me hope!

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“The Love of My Life” by T. C. Boyle Critical Analysis

“ The Love of My Life” is a fictional story by T. C. Boyle, an American short story writer, and novelist. The narrative presents the dramatic events in the lives of the two young characters, China and Jeremy, whose irresponsible behavior forced them to make a cruel life-changing decision and question the meaning of love. The following paper will analyze the theme of the story, the symbol, and the literary theory that might be used to critically read the story and understand its meaning.

The contemporary fiction genre determines the story’s close connection to the modern world with its realistic characters and an approachable theme. Common themes in literature, such as love, death, or loss, allow the reader to learn more about human similarities despite cultural differences (Kusch, 2016). The story’s main theme is teenage love in the form of an infatuation, while true love requires responsibility. At the beginning of the literary work, the reader learns about Jeremy’s belief in eternal and unconditional love shared by his lover. The character often expressed his love for China by saying, “I love you,” and she would do the same, as “a hundred times a day she said it, too” (Boyle, 2000). While the characters were confident in the eternity of their love, their irresponsible behavior challenged the strength of their feelings when they learned about China’s pregnancy.

The high-school couple could not risk losing the comfort of their current lives or taking responsibility for their actions, so they decided to hide the pregnancy and then murder the baby. At this point in the plot, love cannot be viewed as unconditional or eternal as it starts to fade. Jeremy began to notice the faults in his lover’s character, whom he described as “stupid” and “spoiled by her parents and their standard of living” (Boyle, 2000). The story ends after China agrees to testify against her lover in court. The event signifies the decline of the loving relationship between the young characters, as China mentions in the final lines that Jeremy “ was the love of her life” (Boyle, 2000). Overall, the author questions the validity of teenage love by utilizing the theme that displays the transformation of the characters’ feelings from unconditional love to indifference caused by irresponsibility and guilt.

The main symbol in the literary work is a tree that transforms its appearance across different settings throughout the story depending on the situation or the period in the characters’ lives. According to Kusch (2016), symbols “create a shorthand for referring to the larger concept” and “translate that concept into a tangible object” (p. 48). Thus, the tree might be viewed as a symbolic tree of life representing the characters’ personal development based on a series of life-changing decisions. The story begins with the description of the trees covered in ice, which might be interpreted as a calm, stable, and dormant period in the story without any dramatic events or changes.

The next symbolic setting was in early spring, when the leaves on trees turned green too early, which might be a reference to China and Jeremy’s premature introduction to adulthood and future parenthood. The street was decorated with blossoms of “fruit trees in the development” when Jeremy told his lover to relax and “experience” life (Boyle, 2000). Along with the green color’s symbolic meaning of fertility, the blossoming trees symbolize the beginning of the new life signifying the downfall of the young lovers caused by their immaturity and lack of responsibility.

The story might be read using the literary theory of formalism, which emphasizes the role of the form and literary devices in the text. The interpretive approach concentrates on the objective analysis of the literary devices, as the Formalists deny the importance of cultural context and the author’s personal or professional background (Brewton, 2020). Since the story is rich in literary devices, such as foreshadowing and the aforementioned symbolism, the analysis of its form might help the reader to understand the author’s intent and the meaning of the work. For example, while watching a horror movie, Jeremy said that “teens have sex, and then they pay for it in body parts” (Boyle, 2000). Jeremy’s words serve as a reference for future events crucial for the development of the theme and might teach the reader about the consequences of irresponsibility. Thus, the formalistic approach allows the reader to detect the foreshadowing at the beginning of the story, which gives some hints about China’s pregnancy and the attempts to get rid of the baby.

“The Love of My Life ,” the title and reoccurring phrase in the story, is a serious statement that contrasts with the author’s choice of immature characters, whose actions express infatuation rather than love. Focusing on formal aspects of the literary work, such as the repetition of a particular phrase, helps the reader to understand the moral or social mission of the author (Bertens, 2017). As the characters are still alive, the choice of past tense in the phrase “he was the love of her life” does not make sense (Boyle, 2000). It possibly translates the author’s message reminding the reader that promises of eternal love are meaningless without responsibility. Overall, critical reading using a formalistic approach and the analysis of the theme and the symbol of the story facilitated the understanding of the story’s meaning and the author’s moral message.

Bertens, H. (2017). Literary theory: The basics (3 rd ed.). Taylor & Francis.

Boyle, T. C. (2000). The love of my life. The New Yorker . Web.

Brewton, W. (2020). Literary theory . Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Web.

Kusch, C. (2016). Literary analysis: The basics . Routledge.

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The Love of My Life

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My Life Essay - 100, 200, 500 Words

Life is the state of being alive and the experience of living. It is a characteristic that distinguishes physical entities with biological processes, such as growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli, from those without such processes. Life is a complex and diverse phenomenon that encompasses a wide range of forms and functions. Life can be found in every corner of the earth, from the tiniest microorganisms to the largest animals. It is a precious and fragile thing, and scientists continue to study and understand more about the intricacies of life every day.

100 Words on My Life Essay

200 words on my life essay, 500 words on my life essay.

My life has been a journey of growth and learning. From a young age, I have always been curious and eager to explore the world around me. I have had many experiences that have shaped who I am today. Growing up in a small town gave me a sense of community and belonging while also allowing me to develop a love for nature and the outdoors.

My education has also played a significant role in shaping my life. I have always been a dedicated student and have worked hard to achieve my goals. I have learned valuable lessons about perseverance and determination, and I have been able to apply these lessons to other areas of my life.

My life has been a journey full of ups and downs, but overall it has been a fulfilling and meaningful experience.

Routine of My Daily Life

I am a student, and I have always been passionate about learning. My daily routine starts with waking up early in the morning, and I usually wake up at 6 am. I get dressed and have my breakfast, which generally includes cereal or toast with some fruit. After breakfast, I spend some time reviewing my notes and studying for my upcoming exams.

I then head off to school, where I spend most of my day attending classes and participating in various activities. I am involved in several extracurricular activities, such as sports, debate teams and volunteering which keeps me busy and active. After school, I come back home and spend some time doing my homework and finishing any pending assignments.

Overall, my life is filled with a balance of work and play. I am always busy, but I make sure to make time for the things that matter most to me. I believe that life is about making the most of every opportunity and making the most of every moment. I am grateful for the experiences that I have had, and I am excited about the future.

Life is a journey full of ups and downs, opportunities, and challenges. It is unique for everyone and it is something that we all have to experience on our own. As a student, my life is currently focused on school and my future aspirations. There have been some important moments in my life that I will always remember, and I am always looking for ways to improve my life.

Memorable Life Experiences

One of the most important moments in my life was when I received my first acceptance letter from a university. It was a moment of pride and accomplishment, and it made me feel like all of my hard work had finally paid off. This moment inspired me to work even harder and to strive for success in all of my future endeavours.

Another important moment that made me incredibly proud was when I received the first prize in an inter-school science competition. I had been working on my project for months, conducting experiments, analysing data, and perfecting my presentation. The competition was fierce, with students from all over the city presenting their projects.

How I Felt | When my name was called as the winner, I was overwhelmed with emotion. All of my hard work and dedication had paid off, and I was being recognized for my achievements. The audience erupted into applause, and I felt a sense of pride and accomplishment that I will never forget.

Despite these positive moments, there have also been challenges that I have had to face. One of the biggest challenges I have faced is balancing my schoolwork and extracurricular activities. It can be difficult to find the time to study, participate in sports and clubs, and still have time for my friends and family. However, I have learned that time management and prioritisation are important skills to have, and I am always working to improve in these areas.

Moving forward, I have many aspirations for my future. I hope to continue my education and obtain a degree in a field that I am passionate about. I also want to travel the world and experience different cultures, and to use my education and skills to make a positive impact on others.

Volunteer Activities

I have also been involved in several volunteer activities, and I have found them to be incredibly rewarding. I have volunteered for various causes, such as helping out at homeless shelters and working with underprivileged children. It has given me a sense of purpose, and it has made me realise the importance of giving back to society.

In order to achieve my goals, I know that I need to continue to work hard and to be proactive. I want to stay focused and determined, and to never give up on my dreams. I also want to continue to learn and grow, and to always be open to new opportunities and experiences.

My life has been a journey that has been full of memorable experiences. I have had my fair share of ups and downs, but I have learned to appreciate and make the most of every moment. I am grateful for the people in my life, and I am excited to see what the future holds.

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Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary. 

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

GIS officer work on various GIS software to conduct a study and gather spatial and non-spatial information. GIS experts update the GIS data and maintain it. The databases include aerial or satellite imagery, latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and manually digitized images of maps. In a career as GIS expert, one is responsible for creating online and mobile maps.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Database Architect

If you are intrigued by the programming world and are interested in developing communications networks then a career as database architect may be a good option for you. Data architect roles and responsibilities include building design models for data communication networks. Wide Area Networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and intranets are included in the database networks. It is expected that database architects will have in-depth knowledge of a company's business to develop a network to fulfil the requirements of the organisation. Stay tuned as we look at the larger picture and give you more information on what is db architecture, why you should pursue database architecture, what to expect from such a degree and what your job opportunities will be after graduation. Here, we will be discussing how to become a data architect. Students can visit NIT Trichy , IIT Kharagpur , JMI New Delhi . 

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive. 

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Product manager.

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.  

Operations Manager

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Stock Analyst

Individuals who opt for a career as a stock analyst examine the company's investments makes decisions and keep track of financial securities. The nature of such investments will differ from one business to the next. Individuals in the stock analyst career use data mining to forecast a company's profits and revenues, advise clients on whether to buy or sell, participate in seminars, and discussing financial matters with executives and evaluate annual reports.

A Researcher is a professional who is responsible for collecting data and information by reviewing the literature and conducting experiments and surveys. He or she uses various methodological processes to provide accurate data and information that is utilised by academicians and other industry professionals. Here, we will discuss what is a researcher, the researcher's salary, types of researchers.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues. 

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems. 

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software. 

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description:  A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Field Surveyor

Are you searching for a Field Surveyor Job Description? A Field Surveyor is a professional responsible for conducting field surveys for various places or geographical conditions. He or she collects the required data and information as per the instructions given by senior officials. 

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Pathologist

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Veterinary Doctor

Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth. 

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Are you searching for an ‘Anatomist job description’? An Anatomist is a research professional who applies the laws of biological science to determine the ability of bodies of various living organisms including animals and humans to regenerate the damaged or destroyed organs. If you want to know what does an anatomist do, then read the entire article, where we will answer all your questions.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs. 

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story. 

They are responsible for overseeing the finance involved in the project and distributing the film for broadcasting on various platforms. A career as a producer is quite fulfilling as well as exhaustive in terms of playing different roles in order for a production to be successful. Famous movie producers are responsible for hiring creative and technical personnel on contract basis.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook. 

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion. 

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article. 

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Individuals who opt for a career as a reporter may often be at work on national holidays and festivities. He or she pitches various story ideas and covers news stories in risky situations. Students can pursue a BMC (Bachelor of Mass Communication) , B.M.M. (Bachelor of Mass Media) , or  MAJMC (MA in Journalism and Mass Communication) to become a reporter. While we sit at home reporters travel to locations to collect information that carries a news value.  

Corporate Executive

Are you searching for a Corporate Executive job description? A Corporate Executive role comes with administrative duties. He or she provides support to the leadership of the organisation. A Corporate Executive fulfils the business purpose and ensures its financial stability. In this article, we are going to discuss how to become corporate executive.

Multimedia Specialist

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications. 

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product. 

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans. 

Process Development Engineer

The Process Development Engineers design, implement, manufacture, mine, and other production systems using technical knowledge and expertise in the industry. They use computer modeling software to test technologies and machinery. An individual who is opting career as Process Development Engineer is responsible for developing cost-effective and efficient processes. They also monitor the production process and ensure it functions smoothly and efficiently.

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party. 

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems. 

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

Information Security Manager

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack 

ITSM Manager

Automation test engineer.

An Automation Test Engineer job involves executing automated test scripts. He or she identifies the project’s problems and troubleshoots them. The role involves documenting the defect using management tools. He or she works with the application team in order to resolve any issues arising during the testing process. 

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The Love Of My Life

As part of our ongoing celebration of the magazine’s fiftieth year in print, this month’s Dog-Eared Page is an essay previously published in The Sun .

— Ed.

I didn’t read “The Love of My Life,” Cheryl Strayed’s essay about grieving her mother’s death, when The Sun first published it in 2002. I was a sophomore in college — about the same age Strayed was when her mother died — and navigating my own tragedy. My dad had gone to rehab for an alcohol addiction and developed such severe withdrawal symptoms that he required life support. At eighteen years old I became his court-appointed medical guardian. While my friends went to parties, I made important medical decisions and visited my dad in his long-term-care facility. Overwhelmed by stress, I repressed my feelings. When I started getting debilitating headaches, I spoke with doctors, but I didn’t know how to seek comfort for my grief.

My dad eventually recovered. Then, six years later, he was diagnosed with cancer and died within four months. All the stress that I hadn’t dealt with hit me at once, and I buckled.

Strayed coped with her grief by living each day as if it were her last, without stopping to think about her actions. I, too, became fixated on how fleeting life is and did something irrational: in my emotional upheaval, I decided to quit graduate school. What good is studying writing, I thought , when people are dying? Thankfully, in one of the most profound moments of grace in my life, I was talked out of it by the graduate director, who had also recently lost her father to cancer. Since then I’ve come to realize how addled my thinking was.

After Strayed’s essay appeared in The Sun , readers sent letters to the editor about how it had shaped their view of grief and despair. In sharing her deeply personal experience, Strayed touched on the universality of loss. Her memoir, Wild , published in 2012, added to the story begun in “The Love of My Life.” It became a bestseller, then a movie. As I read it, I underlined, annotated, and starred the pages, grieving in a way I hadn’t been able to on my own. Her words helped me understand myself.

The Sun has sometimes been called depressing. And it’s true we don’t shy away from the ugly parts of life, often publishing work about difficult subjects. Because of this, writers know they can be vulnerable and honest in our pages, as Strayed is here. When I finally read “The Love of My Life,” it filled me with empathy and made me feel less alone. I must not be the only one; it remains the most-visited article on our website, attracting more readers each year.

I can hardly believe there was a moment when I thought the written word couldn’t help people. Writing — the kind that shows the heartache and beauty of this world, writing like Strayed’s — is one of life’s richest gifts. It saved me.

— Staci Kleinmaier Assistant Editor

The first time I cheated on my husband, my mother had been dead for exactly one week. I was in a cafe in Minneapolis watching a man. He watched me back. He was slightly pudgy, with jet-black hair and skin so white it looked as if he’d powdered it. He stood and walked to my table and sat down without asking. He wanted to know if I had a cat. I folded my hands on the table, steadying myself; I was shaking, nervous at what I would do. I was raw, fragile, vicious with grief. I would do anything.

“Yes,” I said.

“I thought so,” he said slowly. He didn’t take his eyes off me. I rolled the rings around on my fingers. I was wearing two wedding bands, my own and my mother’s. I’d taken hers off her hand after she died. It was nothing fancy: sterling silver, thick and braided.

“You look like the kind of girl who has a cat.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. He just kept looking at me steadily, as if he knew everything about me, as if he owned me. I felt distinctly that he might be a murderer.

“Are you mature?” he asked intently.

I didn’t know what he meant. I still don’t. I told him that I was.

“Well then prove it and walk down the street with me.”

We left the cafe, his hand on my arm. I had monstrous bruises on my knees from how I’d fallen on them after I walked into my mother’s hospital room and first saw her dead. He liked these. He said he’d been admiring them from across the room. They were what had drawn him to me. Also, he liked my boots. He thought I looked intriguing. He thought I looked mature. I was twenty-two. He was older, possibly thirty. I didn’t ask his name; he didn’t ask mine. I walked with him to a parking lot behind a building. He stopped and pressed me against a brick wall and kissed me, but then he wasn’t kissing me. He was biting me. He bit my lips so hard I screamed.

“You lying cunt,” he whispered into my ear. “You’re not mature.” He flung me away from him and left.

I stood, unmoving, stunned. The inside of my mouth began to bleed softly. Tears filled my eyes. I want my mother , I thought. My mother is dead. I thought this every hour of every day for a very long time: I want my mother. My mother is dead.

It was only a kiss, and barely that, but it was, anyway, a crossing. When I was a child I witnessed a leaf unfurl in a single motion. One second it was a fist, the next an open hand. I never forgot it, seeing so much happen so fast. And this was like that — the end of one thing, the beginning of another: my life as a slut.

When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, my husband, Mark, and I took an unspoken sexual hiatus. When she died seven weeks later, I couldn’t bear for Mark to touch me. His hands on my body made me weep. He went down on me in the gentlest of ways. He didn’t expect anything in return. He didn’t make me feel that I had to come. I would soak in a hot bath, and he would lean into it to touch me. He wanted to make me feel good, better. He loved me, and he had loved my mother. Mark and I were an insanely young, insanely happy, insanely in-love married couple. He wanted to help. No, no, no , I said, but then sometimes I relented. I closed my eyes and tried to relax. I breathed deep and attempted to fake it. I rolled over on my stomach so I wouldn’t have to look at him. He fucked me and I sobbed uncontrollably.

“Keep going,” I said to him. “Just finish.” But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He loved me. Which was mysteriously, unfortunately, precisely the problem.

I wanted my mother.

We aren’t supposed to want our mothers that way, with the pining intensity of sexual love, but I did, and if I couldn’t have her, I couldn’t have anything. Most of all I couldn’t have pleasure, not even for a moment. I was bereft, in agony, destroyed over her death. To experience sexual joy, it seemed, would have been to negate that reality. And more, it would have been to betray my mother, to be disloyal to the person she had been to me: my hero, a single mother after she bravely left an unhealthy relationship with my father when I was five. She remarried when I was eleven. My stepfather had loved her and been a good husband to her for ten years, but shortly after she died, he’d fallen in love with someone else. His new girlfriend and her two daughters moved into my mother’s house, took her photos off the walls, erased her. I needed my stepfather to be the kind of man who would suffer for my mother, unable to go on, who would carry a torch. And if he wouldn’t do it, I would.

We are not allowed this. We are allowed to be deeply into basketball, or Buddhism, or Star Trek , or jazz, but we are not allowed to be deeply sad. Grief is a thing that we are encouraged to “let go of,” to “move on from,” and we are told specifically how this should be done. Countless well-intentioned friends, distant family members, hospital workers, and strangers I met at parties recited the famous five stages of grief to me: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I was alarmed by how many people knew them, how deeply this single definition of the grieving process had permeated our cultural consciousness. Not only was I supposed to feel these five things, I was meant to feel them in that order and for a prescribed amount of time.

I did not deny. I did not get angry. I didn’t bargain, become depressed, or accept. I fucked. I sucked. Not my husband, but people I hardly knew, and in that I found a glimmer of relief. The people I messed around with did not have names; they had titles: the Prematurely Graying Wilderness Guide, the Technically Still a Virgin Mexican Teenager, the Formerly Gay Organic Farmer, the Quietly Perverse Poet, the Failing but Still Trying Massage Therapist, the Terribly Large Texas Bull Rider, the Recently Unemployed Graduate of Juilliard, the Actually Pretty Famous Drummer Guy. Most of these people were men; some were women. With them, I was not in mourning; I wasn’t even me. I was happy and sexy and impetuous and fun. I was wild and enigmatic and terrifically good in bed. I didn’t care about them or have orgasms. We didn’t have heart-to-heart talks. I asked them questions about their lives, and they told me everything and asked few questions in return; they knew nothing about me. Because of this, most of them believed they were falling instantly, madly in love with me.

I did what I did with these people, and then I returned home to Mark, weak-kneed and wet, bleary-eyed and elated. I’m alive, I thought in that giddy, postsex daze. My mother’s death has taught me to live each day as if it were my last , I said to myself, latching onto the nearest cliché, and the one least true. I didn’t stop to think: What if it had been my last day? Did I wish to be sucking the cock of an Actually Pretty Famous Drummer Guy? I didn’t think to ask that because I didn’t want to think. When I did think, I thought, I cannot continue to live without my mother .

I lied — sometimes to the people I messed around with (some of them, if they’d known I was married, would not have wanted to mess around with me), but mostly to Mark. I was not proud of myself. I was in love with him and wanted to be faithful to him and wanted to want to have sex with him, but something in me wouldn’t let me do it. We got into the habit of fucking in the middle of the night, both of us waking from a sound sleep to the reality of our bodies wet and hard and in the act. The sex lasted about thirty seconds, and we would almost always both come. It was intensely hot and strange and surreal and darkly funny and ultimately depressing. We never knew who started it. Neither of us recalled waking, reaching for each other. It was a shard of passion, and we held on to it. For a while it got us through.

We like to say how things are, perhaps because we hope that’s how they might actually be. We attempt to name, identify, and define the most mysterious of matters: sex, love, marriage, monogamy, infidelity, death, loss, grief. We want these things to have an order, an internal logic, and we also want them to be connected to one another. We want it to be true that if we cheat on our spouse, it means we no longer want to be married to him or her. We want it to be true that if someone we love dies, we simply have to pass through a series of phases, like an emotional obstacle course from which we will emerge happy and content, unharmed and unchanged.

After my mother died, everyone I knew wanted to tell me either about the worst breakup they’d had or all the people they’d known who’d died. I listened to a long, traumatic story about a girlfriend who suddenly moved to Ohio, and to stories of grandfathers and old friends and people who lived down the block who were no longer among us. Rarely was this helpful.

Occasionally I came across people who’d had the experience of losing someone whose death made them think, I cannot continue to live . I recognized these people: their postures, where they rested their eyes as they spoke, the expressions they let onto their faces and the ones they kept off. These people consoled me beyond measure. I felt profoundly connected to them, as if we were a tribe.

It’s surprising how relatively few of them there were. People don’t die anymore, not the way they used to. Children survive childhood; women, the labors of birth; men, their work. We survive influenza and infection, cancer and heart attacks. We keep living on and on: 80, 90, 103. We live younger, too; frightfully premature babies are cloistered and coddled and shepherded through. My mother lived to the age of forty-five and never lost anyone who was truly beloved to her. Of course, she knew many people who died, but none who made her wake to the thought: I cannot continue to live .

And there is a difference. Dying is not your girlfriend moving to Ohio. Grief is not the day after your neighbor’s funeral, when you felt extremely blue. It is impolite to make this distinction. We act as if all losses are equal. It is un-American to behave otherwise: we live in a democracy of sorrow. Every emotion felt is validated and judged to be as true as any other.

But what does this do to us: this refusal to quantify love, loss, grief? Jewish tradition states that one is considered a mourner when one of eight people dies: father, mother, sister, brother, husband, wife, son, or daughter. This definition doesn’t fulfill the needs of today’s diverse and far-flung affections; indeed, it probably never did. It leaves out the step-relations, the long-term lovers, the chosen family of a tight circle of friends; and it includes the blood relations we perhaps never honestly loved. But its intentions are true. And, undeniably, for most of us that list of eight does come awfully close. We love and care for oodles of people, but only a few of them, if they died, would make us believe we could not continue to live. Imagine if there were a boat upon which you could put only four people, and everyone else known and beloved to you would then cease to exist. Who would you put on that boat? It would be painful, but how quickly you would decide: You and you and you and you, get in . The rest of you, goodbye.

For years, I was haunted by the idea of this imaginary boat of life; by the desire to exchange my mother’s fate for one of the many living people I knew. I would be sitting across the table from a dear friend. I loved her, him, each one of these people. Some I said I loved like family. But I would look at them and think, Why couldn’t it have been you who died instead? You, goodbye.

I didn’t often sleep with Mark, but I slept beside him, or tried to. I dreamed incessantly about my mother. There was a theme. Two or three times a week she made me kill her. She commanded me to do it, and I sobbed and got down on my knees, begging her not to make me, but she would not relent. In each dream, like a good daughter, I ultimately complied. I tied her to a tree in our front yard, poured gasoline over her head, and lit her on fire. I made her run down the dirt road that passed by the house where I’d grown up, and I ran her over with my truck; I dragged her body, caught on a jagged piece of metal underneath, until it came loose, and then I put my truck in reverse and ran her over again. I took a miniature baseball bat and beat her to death with it. I forced her into a hole I’d dug and kicked dirt and stones on top of her and buried her alive. These dreams were not surreal. They took place in the plain light of day. They were the documentary films of my subconscious and felt as real to me as life. My truck was really my truck; our front yard was our actual front yard; the miniature baseball bat sat in our closet among the umbrellas. I didn’t wake from these dreams crying; I woke shrieking. Mark grabbed me and held me. He wetted a washcloth with cool water and put it over my face. These dreams went on for months, years, and I couldn’t shake them. I also couldn’t shake my infidelities. I couldn’t shake my grief.

What was there to do with me? What did those around me do? They did what I would have done — what we all do when faced with the prospect of someone else’s sorrow: they tried to talk me out of it, neutralize it, tamp it down, make it relative and therefore not so bad. We narrate our own lesser stories of loss in an attempt to demonstrate that the sufferer is not really so alone. We make grossly inexact comparisons and hope that they will do. In short, we insist on ignoring the precise nature of deep loss because there is nothing we can do to change it, and by doing so we strip it of its meaning, its weight, its own fiercely original power.

The first person I knew who died was a casual friend of my mother’s named Barb. Barb was in her early thirties, and I was ten. Her hair was brown and shoulder length, her skin clear and smooth as a bar of soap. She had the kind of tall body that made you acutely aware of the presence of its bones: a long, knobby nose; wide, thin hips; a jaw too pointed to be considered beautiful. Barb got into her car and started the engine. Her car was parked in a garage and all the doors were closed and she had stuffed a Minnesota Vikings cap into the exhaust pipe. My mother explained this to me in detail: the Vikings hat, the sitting in the car with the garage door closed on purpose. I was more curious than sad. But in the months that followed, I thought of Barb often. I came to care for her. I nurtured an inflated sense of my connection to her.

Recently, another acquaintance of mine died. He was beautiful and young and free-spirited and one hell of a painter. He went hiking one day on the Oregon coast and was never seen again. Over the course of my life, I have known other people who’ve died. Some of them have died the way we hoped they would — old, content, at their time; others, the way we hoped they wouldn’t — by murder or suicide, in accidents, or too young of illnesses. The deaths of those people made me sad, afraid, and angry; they made me question the fairness of the world, the existence of God, and the nature of my own existence. But they did not make me suffer. They did not make me think, I cannot continue to live . In fact, in their deaths I felt more deeply connected to them, not because I grieved them, but because I wanted to attach myself to what is interesting. It is interesting to be in a Chinese restaurant and see a poster of the smiling face of an acquaintance, who is one hell of a painter, plastered on the front door. It is interesting to be able to say, I know him , to feel a part of something important and awful and big. The more connections like this we have, the more interesting we are.

There was nothing interesting to me about my mother’s death. I did not want to attach myself to it. It was her life that I clung to, her very, very interesting life. When she died, she was about to graduate from college, and so was I. We had started together. Her college was in Duluth, mine in Minneapolis. After a lifetime of struggle and sacrifice, my mother was coming into her own. She wanted to major in six subjects, but the school wouldn’t let her, so she settled on two.

My mother had become pregnant when she was nineteen and immediately married my father, a steelworker in western Pennsylvania when the steel plants were shutting down; a coal miner’s son born about the time that the coal was running out. After three children and nine years of misery, my mother left him. My father had recently moved us to a small town near Minneapolis in pursuit of a job prospect. When they divorced, he went back to Pennsylvania, but my mother stayed. She worked as a waitress and in a factory that made small plastic containers that would eventually hold toxic liquids. We lived in apartment complexes full of single mothers whose children sat on the edges of grocery-store parking lots. We received free government cheese and powdered milk, food stamps and welfare checks.

After a few years, my mother met my stepfather, and when he fell off a roof on the job and hurt his back, they took the twelve-thousand-dollar settlement and spent every penny on forty acres of land in northern Minnesota. There was no house; no one had ever had a house on this land. My stepfather built a one-room tar-paper shack, and we lived in it while he and my mother built us a house from scrap wood and trees they cut down with the help of my brother, my sister, and me. We moved into the new house on Halloween night. We didn’t have electricity or running water or a phone or an indoor toilet. Years passed, and my mother was happy — happier than she’d ever been — but still, she hungered for more.

Just before she died, she was thinking about becoming a costume designer, or a professor of history. She was profoundly interested in the American pioneers, the consciousness of animals, and the murders of women believed to be witches. She was looking into graduate school, though she feared that she was too old. She couldn’t believe, really, that she was even getting a degree. I’d had to convince her to go to college. She’d always read books but thought that she was basically stupid. To prepare, she shadowed me during my senior year of high school, doing all the homework that I was assigned. She photocopied my assignment sheets, wrote the papers I had to write, read the books. I graded her work, using my teacher’s marks as a guide. My mother was a shaky student at best.

She went to college and earned straight A’s.

She died on a Monday during spring break of our senior year. After her funeral, I immediately went back to school because she had begged me to do so. It was the beginning of a new quarter. In most of my classes, we were asked to introduce ourselves and say what we had done over the break. “My name is Cheryl,” I said. “I went to Mexico.”

I lied not to protect myself, but because it would have been rude not to. To express loss on that level is to cross a boundary, to violate personal space, to impose emotion in a nonemotional place.

We did not always treat grief this way. Nearly every culture has a history, and some still have a practice, of mourning rituals, many of which involve changes in the dress or appearance of those in grief. The wearing of black clothing or mourning jewelry, hair cutting, and body scarification or ritual tattooing all made the grief-stricken immediately visible to the people around them. Although it is true that these practices were sometimes ridiculously restrictive and not always in the best interest of the mourner, it is also true that they gave us something of value. They imposed evidence of loss on a community and forced that community to acknowledge it. If, as a culture, we don’t bear witness to grief, the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up. And if they don’t — if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live — well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease.

We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help.

Nobody knew about my sexual escapades. I kept waiting for them to cure me, or for something to cure me of them. Two years had passed since my mother’s death, and I still couldn’t live without her, but I also couldn’t live with myself. I decided to tell Mark the truth. The list was long. I practiced what I would say, trying to say it in the least painful way. It was impossible. It was time.

Mark sat in the living room playing his guitar. He was working as an organizer for a nonprofit environmental agency, but his real ambition was to be a musician. He had just formed his first band and was writing a new song, finding it as he went along. I told him that I had something to tell him and that it was not going to be easy. He stopped playing and looked at me, but he kept his hands on the guitar, holding it gently. This man whom I’d loved for years, had loved enough to marry, who had been with me through my mother’s death and the aftermath, who’d offered to go down on me in the gentlest of ways, who would do anything, anything for me, listened as I told him about the Technically Still a Virgin Mexican Teenager, the Prematurely Graying Wilderness Guide, the Recently Unemployed Graduate of Juilliard.

He fell straight forward out of his chair onto his knees and then face down onto the floor. His guitar went with him and it made clanging, strumming, hollow sounds as it went. I attempted to rub his back. He screamed for me to get my hands off him.

Later, spent, he calmly told me that he wanted to kill me. He promised he would if I’d given him AIDS .

Women are used to the bad behavior of men. But I had broken the rules. Even among our group of alternative, left-wing, hippie, punk-rock, artsy politicos, I was viewed by many as the worst kind of woman: the whore, the slut, the adulteress, the liar, the cheat. And to top it all off, I had wronged the best of men. Mark had been faithful to me all along.

He moved out and rented a room in the attic of a house. Slowly we told our friends. The Insanely Young, Insanely Happy, Insanely In-Love Married Couple was coming apart. First, they were in disbelief. Next, they were mad, or several of them were — not at us, but at me. One of my dearest friends took the photograph of me she kept in a frame in her bedroom, ripped it in half, and mailed it to me. Another made out with Mark. When I was hurt and jealous about this I was told that perhaps it was exactly what I needed: a taste of my own medicine. I couldn’t rightfully disagree, but still my heart was broken. I lay alone in our bed feeling myself almost levitate from the pain.

We couldn’t decide whether to get divorced or not. We went to a marriage counselor and tried to work it out. Months later, we stopped the counseling and put the decision on hold. Mark began to date. He dated one of those women who, instead of a purse, carry a teeny-weeny backpack. He dated a biologist who also happened to be a model. He dated a woman I’d met once who’d made an enormous pot of very good chili of which I’d eaten two bowls.

His sex life temporarily cured me of mine. I didn’t fuck anyone, and I got crabs from a pair of used jeans I’d bought at a thrift store. I spent several days eradicating the translucent bugs from my person and my apartment. Then the Teeny-Weeny Backpack Woman started to play tambourine in Mark’s budding band. I couldn’t take it anymore. I went to visit a friend in Portland and decided to stay. I met a man: a Punk Rocker Soon to Be Hopelessly Held under the Thumb of Heroin. I found him remotely enchanting. I found heroin more enchanting. Quickly, without intending to, I slipped into a habit. Here , I thought. At last.

By now Mark pretty much hated me, but he showed up in Portland anyway and dragged me back home. He set a futon down for me in the corner of his room and let me stay until I could find a job and an apartment. At night we lay in our separate beds fighting about why we loved and hated each other so much. We made love once. He was cheating on someone for the first time. He was back with the Biologist Who Also Happened to Be a Model, and he was cheating on her with his own wife. Hmmm , we thought. What’s this?

But it was not to be. I was sorry. He was sorry. I wasn’t getting my period. I was really, really, really sorry. He was really, really, really mad. I was pregnant by the Punk Rocker Soon to Be Hopelessly Held under the Thumb of Heroin. We were at the end of the line. We loved each other, but love was not enough. We had become the Insanely Young, Insanely Sad, Insanely Messed-Up Married Couple. He wanted me gone. He pulled the blankets from my futon in his room and flung them down the stairs.

I sat for five hours in the office of an extremely overbooked abortion doctor, waiting for my abortion. The temperature in the room was somewhere around fifty-six degrees. It was packed with microscopically pregnant women who were starving because we had been ordered not to eat since the night before. The assistants of the Extremely Overbooked Abortion Doctor did not want to clean up any puke.

At last, I was brought into a room. I was told to undress and hold a paper sheet around myself. I was given a plastic breast and instructed to palpate it, searching for a lump of cancer hidden within its depths, while I waited for my abortion. I waited, naked, palpating, finding the cancer over and over again. The Extremely Overbooked Abortion Doctor needed to take an emergency long-distance phone call. An hour went by. Finally, she came in.

I lay back on the table and stared at a poster on the ceiling of a Victorian mansion that was actually composed of miniature photographs of the faces of a hundred famous and important women in history. I was told to lie still and peacefully for a while and then to stand up very quickly and pull my underwear on while an assistant of the Extremely Overbooked Abortion Doctor held me up. I was told not to have sex for a very long time. The procedure cost me four hundred dollars, half of which I was ridiculously hoping to receive from the Punk Rocker Soon to Be Hopelessly Held under the Thumb of Heroin. I went home to my new apartment. The light on my answering machine said I had three messages. I lay on my couch, ill and weak and bleeding, and listened to them.

There was a message from the Punk Rocker Soon to Be Hopelessly Held under the Thumb of Heroin, only he didn’t say anything. Instead he played a recording of a Radiohead song that went, “You’re so fucking special / I wish I was special / But I’m a creep / I’m a weirdo.”

There was a message that consisted of a thirty-second dial tone because the person had hung up.

There was a message from Mark wondering how I was.

My mother had been dead for three years. I was twenty-five. I had intended, by this point in my life, to have a title of my own: The Incredibly Talented and Extraordinarily Brilliant and Successful Writer. I had planned to be the kind of woman whose miniature photographed face was placed artfully into a poster of a Victorian mansion that future generations of women would concentrate on while their cervixes were forcefully dilated by the tip of a plastic tube about the size of a drinking straw and the beginnings of babies were sucked out of them. I wasn’t anywhere close. I was a pile of shit.

Despite my mother’s hopes, I had not graduated from college. I pushed my way numbly through that last quarter, but I did not, in the end, receive my bachelor’s degree because I had neglected to do one assignment: write a five-page paper about a short story called “The Nose,” by Nikolai Gogol. It’s a rollicking tale about a man who wakes up one morning and realizes that his nose is gone. Indeed, his nose has not only left him but has also dressed in the man’s clothes, taken his carriage, and gone gadding about town. The man does what anyone would do if he woke up and found that his nose was gone: he goes out to find it. I thought the story was preposterous and incomprehensible. Your nose does not just up and leave you. I was told not to focus on the unreality of it. I was told that the story was actually about vanity, pretentiousness, and opportunism in nineteenth-century Russia. Alternately, I could interpret it as a commentary upon either male sexual impotency or divine Immaculate Conception. I tried dutifully to pick one of these concepts and write about it, but I couldn’t do it, and I could not discuss with my professor why this was so. In my myopic, grief-addled state, the story seemed to me to be about something else entirely: a man who woke up one morning and no longer had a nose and then went looking for it. There was no subtext to me. It was simply a story about what it was about, which is to say, the absurd and arbitrary nature of disappearance, our hungry ache to resurrect what we’ve lost, and the bald truth that the impossible can become possible faster than anyone dreams.

All the time that I’d been thinking, I cannot continue to live , I’d also had the opposite thought, which was by far the more unbearable: that I would continue to live, and that every day for the rest of my life I would have to live without my mother. Sometimes I forgot this, like a trick of the brain, a primitive survival mechanism. Somewhere, floating on the surface of my subconscious, I believed — I still believe — that if I endured without her for one year, or five years, or ten years, or twenty, she would be given back to me; that her absence was a ruse, a darkly comic literary device, a terrible and surreal dream.

What does it mean to heal? To move on? To let go? Whatever it means, it is usually said and not done, and the people who talk about it the most have almost never had to do it. I cannot say anything about healing, but I can say that something happened as I lay on the couch bleeding and listening to my answering machine play the Radiohead song and then the dial tone and then Mark’s voice wondering how I was: I thought about writing the five-page paper about the story of the man who lost his nose. I thought about calling Mark and asking him to marry me again. I thought about becoming the Incredibly Talented and Extraordinarily Brilliant and Successful Writer. I thought about taking a very long walk. I decided to do all of these things immediately, but I did not move from the couch. I didn’t set out the next day either to write the paper about the guy who lost his nose. I didn’t call Mark and ask him to marry me again. I didn’t start to work on becoming the Incredibly Talented and Extraordinarily Brilliant and Successful Writer. Instead I ordered pizza and listened to that one Lucinda Williams CD that I could not ever get enough of, and, after a few days, I went back to my job waiting tables. I let my uterus heal and then slept at least once with each of the five guys who worked in the kitchen. I did, however, hold on to one intention, and I set about fulfilling it: I was going to take a long walk. One thousand six hundred and thirty-eight miles, to be exact. Alone.

Mark and I had filed the papers for our divorce. My stepfather was going to marry the woman he’d started dating immediately after my mother died. I wanted to get out of Minnesota. I needed a new life and, unoriginally, I was going west to find it. I decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail — a wilderness trail that runs along the backbone of the Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Mountains, from Mexico to Canada. Rather, I decided to hike a large portion of it — from the Mojave Desert in California to the Columbia River at the Oregon-Washington border. It would take me four months. I’d grown up in the country, done a good amount of camping, and taken a few weekend backpacking trips, but I had a lot to learn: how, for example, to read a topographical map, ford a river, handle an ice ax, navigate using a compass, and avoid being struck by lightning. Everyone who knew me thought that I was nuts. I proceeded anyway, researching, reading maps, dehydrating food and packing it into plastic bags and then into boxes that would be mailed at roughly two-week intervals to the ranger stations and post offices I’d occasionally pass near.

I packed my possessions and stored them in my stepfather’s barn. I took off my wedding ring and put it into a small velvet box and moved my mother’s wedding ring from my right hand to my left. I was going to drive to Portland first and then leave my truck with a friend and fly to LA and take a bus to the start of the trail. I drove through the flatlands and Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota, positive that I’d made a vast mistake.

Deep in the night, I pulled into a small camping area in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming and slept in the back of my truck. In the morning I climbed out to the sight of a field of blue flowers that went right up to the Tongue River. I had the place to myself. It was spring and still cold, but I felt compelled anyway to go into the river. I decided I would perform something like a baptism to initiate this new part of my life. I took my clothes off and plunged in. The water was like ice, so cold it hurt. I dove under one time, two times, three times, then dashed out and dried off and dressed. As I walked back to my truck I noticed my hand: my mother’s wedding ring was gone.

At first I couldn’t believe it. I had believed that if I lost one thing, I would then be protected from losing another; that my mother’s death would inoculate me against further loss. It is an indefensible belief, but it was there, the same way I believed that if I endured long enough, my mother would be returned to me.

A ring is such a small thing, such a very small thing.

I went down on my hands and knees and searched for it. I patted every inch of ground where I had walked. I searched the back of my truck and my pockets, but I knew. I knew that the ring had come off in the river. Of course it had; what did I expect? I went to the edge of the water and thought about going back in, diving under again and again until I found it, but it was a useless idea, and I was defeated by it before I even began. I sat down on the edge of the water and cried. Tears, tears, so many kinds of tears, so many ways of crying. I had collected them, mastered them; I was a priestess, a virtuoso of crying.

I sat in the mud on the bank of the river for a long time and waited for the river to give the ring back to me. I waited and thought about everything. I thought about Mark and my boat of life. I thought what I would say to him then, now, forever: You, get in . I thought about the Formerly Gay Organic Farmer and the Quietly Perverse Poet and the Terribly Large Texas Bull Rider and the Five Line Cooks I Had on Separate Occasions over the Course of One Month. I thought about how I was never again going to sleep with anyone who had a title instead of a name. I was sick of it. Sick of fucking, of wanting to fuck the wrong people and not wanting to fuck the right ones. I thought about how if you lose a ring in a river, you are never going to get it back, no matter how badly you want it or how long you wait.

I leaned forward and put my hands into the water and held them flat and open beneath the surface. The soft current made rivulets over my bare fingers. I was no longer married to Mark. I was no longer married to my mother.

I was no longer married to my mother. I couldn’t believe that this thought had never occurred to me before: that it was her I’d been faithful to all along, and that I couldn’t be faithful any longer.

If this were fiction, what would happen next is that the woman would stand up and get into her truck and drive away. It wouldn’t matter that the woman had lost her mother’s wedding ring, even though it was gone to her forever, because the loss would mean something else entirely: that what was gone now was actually her sorrow and the shackles of grief that had held her down. And in this loss she would see, and the reader would know, that the woman had been in error all along. That, indeed, the love she’d had for her mother was too much love, really; too much love and also too much sorrow. She would realize this and get on with her life. There would be what happened in the story and also everything it stood for: the river, representing life’s constant changing; the tiny blue flowers, beauty; the spring air, rebirth. All of these symbols would collide and mean that the woman was actually lucky to have lost the ring, and not just to have lost it, but to have loved it, to have ached for it, and to have had it taken from her forever. The story would end, and you would know that she was the better for it. That she was wiser, stronger, more interesting, and, most of all, finally starting down her path to glory. I would show you the leaf when it unfurls in a single motion: the end of one thing, the beginning of another. And you would know the answers to all the questions without being told. Did she ever write that five-page paper about the guy who lost his nose? Did she ask Mark to marry her again? Did she stop sleeping with people who had titles instead of names? Did she manage to walk 1,638 miles? Did she get to work and become the Incredibly Talented and Extraordinarily Brilliant and Successful Writer? You’d believe the answers to all these questions to be yes. I would have given you what you wanted then: to be a witness to a healing.

But this isn’t fiction. Sometimes a story is not about anything except what it is about. Sometimes you wake up and find that you actually have lost your nose. Losing my mother’s wedding ring in the Tongue River was not OK . I did not feel better for it. It was not a passage or a release. What happened is that I lost my mother’s wedding ring and I understood that I was not going to get it back, that it would be yet another piece of my mother that I would not have for all the days of my life, and I understood that I could not bear this truth, but that I would have to.

Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it’s one thing and one thing only: it’s doing what you have to do. It’s what I did then and there. I stood up and got into my truck and drove away from a part of my mother. The part of her that had been my lover, my wife, my first love, my true love, the love of my life.

“The Love of My Life,” by Cheryl Strayed, first appeared in the September 2002 issue of The Sun . Copyright © 2002 by Cheryl Strayed. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Cheryl Strayed

Correspondence

Despite having a (mostly) perpetual subscription to The Sun for the last forty years, I didn’t read Cheryl Strayed’s essay “The Love of My Life” [September 2002] until you republished it in your October 2023 Dog-Eared Page . It was heart-wrenching.

My mom died five years ago. I loved her, and I miss her, but I did not have the kind of intense connection with her that Strayed had with her mom. Coincidentally I’d purchased Strayed’s memoir, Wild , a few months ago at a consignment shop but hadn’t opened it. I started it shortly after finishing the essay in The Sun , and I remain impressed by her determination to heal and come to terms with the pain of loss.

Reading Cheryl Strayed’s “The Love of My Life” was like being blasted with a fire hose of emotions. I alternated between feeling shocked and feeling seen.

I lost my own mother a year ago and moved across the country unexpectedly. I’ve been dazed and numb for months, helplessly struck by inaction when there was so much to do. After reading Strayed’s essay, though, it felt like something shifted inside me. There is now a crack letting in light.

Cheryl Strayed’s essay and Staci Kleinmaier’s introduction to it are a striking contrast. Strayed details how she turned to drugs and sex to cope with her mother’s death. The account of her loss and grief is like sausage-making: it ain’t pretty. Kleinmaier’s (admittedly much briefer) comments felt satisfying and relatable. It’s probably beyond the pale to compare that short intro with the much longer essay, and obviously an author will write what they must. Maybe I’m simply seeing a reminder that between the author and the reader, it’s the reader who has the final say.

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I was 1 of millions who traveled for the eclipse. Here's how it went

I first heard about the Great American Eclipse from my now husband , Dave, three years ago. He told me he was absolutely, without a doubt going to see the eclipse in 2024, because the last one had changed his life.

He described what really happened once the moon fully blocked the sun’s light back in 2017: The sky grew dark. The air cold. To him, it felt like being on another planet entirely. While he stood there in a field in rural Tennessee, the strangers around him began to cheer. “It’s like, you’re not even human anymore,” he said about witnessing totality firsthand.

Eclipse comes from the Greek word for “abandonment,” because for a few minutes, it’s as if the sun leaves us, and something strange and magical takes its place. 

Dave's experience lasted for about two minutes before life returned to normal — but onlookers everywhere felt like they had been changed for good. They were aware of having passed through a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Actually, a once-in-a-universe one. 

One that I, stupidly, missed out on because I was too cheap to pay for an overpriced flight to Greenville, South Carolina, and too nervous to take yet another day off from my first job. Seeing that 2017 partial eclipse from downtown Manhattan, I realized that my human concerns got in the way of a celestial breakthrough. After that very human error, I vowed I would see an eclipse eventually. Next time, I would get my chance in 2024.

The eclipse on April 8 was notable for a few reasons. For one, it cut across many major metropolitan areas, from Mazatlan, Texas through Dallas, all the way up to Maine and Montreal. Timing matters, too: This eclipse hit North America on a day with clear weather and it’s the last one the contiguous U.S. will see until 2043. 

This eclipse stands to be an even more powerful experience than the last. “This one will be even longer, with more than four minutes of darkness along much of the path of totality,” said Catherine Pilachowski, the Kirkwood Chair in Astronomy at Indiana University Bloomington.

“A total eclipse is a deeply moving experience — it's a sense of connection to nature, to the universe, in a way we don’t often experience,” she said, echoing Dave’s words.

But what is an eclipse, and why is this one special enough to send millions in search of a few minutes in the dark?

“Eclipses occur when the moon and sun appear to be the same size and line up in the sky,” Dr. Anita Cochran of UT Austin said. The alignment of the sun, earth and moon is a “complex dance,” she said, given their elliptical patterns. Actual eclipses aren’t uncommon and occur multiple times a year, though solar eclipses happen less frequently. The trouble is that most eclipses occur over the ocean and their paths of totality are very small.“You get really lucky when you get into the path,” Cochran said of the small but populous swath of America that will have front-row seats to the show.

Astrologer Lisa Stardust has a different take. She warns that astrologers recommend staying far away from the path of totality, since “eclipses can bring intense emotions and secrets to the surface, causing people to act out or behave unpredictably.” 

I decided that was a risk I would take, which was good, because Dave and I planned to travel to the epicenter of it all: Texas. Historically, Texas is the state along the eclipse path with the lowest cloud cover this time of year. Because of the weather conditions, an estimated 1.1 million people would travel the state to view the eclipse.

John Beckman, who traveled to Montana to witness the eclipse in 2017, drove across the country from California to Texas this year to meet a group of 20 family members and friends.

“It’s really hard to get through to people that you’re going cross country for three minutes (of eclipse),” he said.

A whole year prior to the eclipse, we solidified our plan to hit the road. We would meet up with Dave's cousins, who live in Austin, and drive to a camp site in Llano, Texas, right at the center of the eclipse path. There, over 120 people from around the wold — from Melbourne to Colorado — would convene to witness the cosmic event together.

In the months leading up to April 8, we met the fellow travelers on Zoom calls. We learned who would be bringing telescopes and tents, and signed up for potlucks and Peruvian fire rituals (yes, really).

Meanwhile, the people of Llano, Texas — a town of 2,000 — prepared for an influx of eclipse chasers just like us. Michelle Long Hagli, the owner of Brown Chicken Brown Cow Ranch, warned us to have supplies. At times, I couldn’t tell if we were preparing for a natural phenomenon or disaster.

Public notes from the mayor of Llano seemed to take on the same tone of resignation and anticipation as Michelle. She advised townspeople to have “ two weeks of supplies” secured by April 1, and put it this way in a poetic Facebook post to her constituents: “We could not stop this wave of eclipse watchers from coming here to Llano even if we wanted to, so we will make the best of it. And even though it will be a boost for the economy, it will be like trying to get a drink out of a fire hose.”Diana Stewart, a Llanite who owns a local tamale business, said, days before the eclipse, “We’re not sure what to expect. We don’t know if we should prepare for the masses, or if it will be similar to a Christmas holiday.” She adds generally, she and her neighbors are “excited,” saying, “We think this will be a great time to show everyone how beautiful and unique our little town is.”

As we prepared (and as I watched airfare rates nearly triple) I started to relax and dream of totality in a small Texas town.

Last eclipse, I was so worried with my human concerns I missed out on something great. This eclipse, I was so sure of my human plans that I forgot about the other key player: The sky. It turns out that weather doesn't care for even the best-laid plans.

The weekend before the eclipse, I began to panic at the sight of the weather forecast. Clouds . I studied the forecast so much, I felt like I had accrued enough credits for a meteorology minor. I learned the difference between cloud types: High, cirrus clouds were good; it meant the sun could poke through. Cumulus clouds, which cover the sky like a blanket, foretold total eclipse doom. Still, as I looked at chart after chart, it felt a bit like reading tea leaves. How were we to know until Monday at 1:35 CT?

Dave, forever calm, kept telling me to close the computer and my multiple browser tabs for “Texas weather eclipse.”

All the local Texans I spoke to, including our family, said not to bother: Texas weather changes on a dime. Still, I wanted certainty that this trip would be worth the trek.

Looking at cloud cover blanketing Texas, I entertained canceling the whole trip and going to Alexandria Bay, New York, where the forecast appeared to be clearer. There, I could watch the eclipse on the St. Lawrence River.

But Dave and had a plan, and we would stick to it, whether or not we had a pact with the sky.

Our flight to Austin from Newark on April 6 was nearly full. Just before takeoff, the flight attendant got on the loudspeaker and asked, “How many of you are going to see the eclipse?” Passengers cheered as if it were a sporting event, myself included.

While boarding the plane, I realized this trip, and the weather, hadn’t just consumed me — it had consumed nearly everyone else as well.

A family of five boarded ahead of us. The dad, wide-eyed, said his friends told him about the 2017 eclipse, and he couldn’t miss out on this one, so he was bringing the whole family along. His son chimed in saying it was going to be cloudy, but they all seemed determined to have a good time despite the weather.

One of the sons chimed in with “Spain 2026.” It was an invocation I heard often on my eclipse Facebook groups, calling to the next visible total solar eclipse. As if to say: we might not have Texas, but we’ll always have Spain.

I asked a woman ahead of me if she was traveling to see the eclipse. “More like not going to see it,” she said. She went on to compare the eclipse to her wedding night: “Dark and cloudy.”

The flight attendant warned me as I left. She said her friend was from Llano, where we were headed — and that it was going to be mobbed. I decided not to text my mom that.

Once we landed in Austin, Dave’s cousin, Brian, and his partner Erika picked us up from the airport. On Sunday morning, we left for the campsite. Michelle Long Hagli, who bought the land with her husband after the pandemic, greeted us with a huge hello, wearing the eclipse shirts she had designed for the occasion. On it was a brown chicken and a cow donning eclipse glasses.

My first impression of Brown Chicken Brown Cow Ranch is that it smells much better than I thought a ranch ever could. The bluebonnets has blossomed, and so did a sense of excitement among everyone we passed. What followed was a slideshow of Texas’ greatest hits: We ate barbecue from Cooper’s, went to a big, empty bar in downtown Llano, met four longhorn cows and hiked Enchanted Rock. Yes, it was enchanted (and also steep). By night, we could see the stars. The evening before the eclipse, we woke up in the dark to a clear night sky.

The next day, those skies had changed to gray. Still, Michelle was cheery when I asked if she ever worried about the weather. She said at 56, she had lived long enough to stop worrying about things out of her control. Anyway, she said, “it was all a gift from God.”

By then, I was so happy in the Texas landscape that I started to believe she was right.

We had pancakes, then we participated in a ritual meant to situate ourselves as one with the planet, harness the manifesting powers of the eclipse and release baggage, guided by healers Woody Strickland and Kay Jantzen. Obviously, I prayed for a clear sky. As we were directed us to pray toward the sun, the sun suddenly broke through the clouds.

Then came the crucial decision that would determine our entire eclipse experience: The question of whether to stay put or go elsewhere. To play the cards we had, or drive until we found a better deck.

Dave, who reads weather maps for fun, made the call. We would go west for an hour where it seemed less cloudy — 25% coverage to Llano’s 75% — and totality still stretched for over three minutes.

Still, I was worried. What if we left, and the conditions were clearer back at BCBC Ranch? What if we encountered traffic and missed it all? I thanked myself for marrying someone so decisive. Dave dismissed my worries and we hit the road.

We took a nearly empty stretch of Road 171 westward toward Brady, before stopping in the small community of Voca. The only structure we could see was a vineyard (closed) and a post office (also closed). The post office parking lot was filled with about 10 cars and plenty telescopes — it was clear that others were waiting in anticipation.

We parked and set up our chairs in a field of bluebonnets. Together, all us strangers waited patiently. Many had waiting for years, but the last few minutes leading up to the eclipse felt the longest.

The other onlookers were seemingly in this tiny town on accident. Vice, Texas (population: 50), was not the plan, but the travelers I met and spoke to had made the same calculations that Dave and I had. All except Shirlene Miller, the woman whose field we congregated next to. She moved to Voca for her husband, who was born and raised there. At 84, she told me this was her last chance at an eclipse. I hoped the clouds would clear for her. And, ok , for me, too.The moon started its journey into the sun’s path at 12:15 and would reach totality at 1:35. I felt like I was at a championship game and the teams were tied, only there was no coaching, no reason, nothing that could be done. Low clouds started to gather. For about 15 minutes, the sun was gone. 

Then, like some sort of cosmic red carpet, a pathway opened between the clouds. It looked like a path made for the sun to travel — and travel it did. We all looked up, glasses on. Everything but the sun was dark. We watched as the sun went from a crescent to a sliver. Then, it was gone.

I took off my glasses and saw it: totality. The moon blocking the sun. This is what no one else could see outside the path of totality.

Here is where I get to the part that's almost impossible to express. Now that I've experienced a total solar eclipse, I know that no video, photo or description will do it justice.

The best thing I can say is to travel in 2026 to see the next total eclipse yourself. All words and video will fail you in the meantime.

Because you’re curious, I’ll try my best to describe the experience. It is like a third sun or moon you never knew before coming out to introduce itself, and you wondered how you missed it this whole time. It’s like the eye of God coming out to blink. It’s like the clock turning to 1/1/2000 and standing in a crowd, trying to make sense of time and the universe and our place in it. It’s feeling that not only are the sun, moon and earth aligned but somehow, you are too.

It was enough to make me literally fall to my knees.

This is actually what happened. The moon covered the sun and the world grew dark. Venus and Mercury were visible in the dusk-like sky. People cheered and shouted (fine, people being me). Simply put, it was so incredibly cool.

Perhaps Brian put it best when he said, “I get why people 1000 years ago were terrified. It gets dark out, and you look up and there’s a black circle?”

Then it was over, the vista was gone. I put my eclipse glasses back on, and realized I couldn’t get back that magical moment if I tried. If I tried, I'd quite literally go blind.

The sky lightened. The birds began chirping again — I didn’t realize how silent it had become. We all looked back at each other in awe.

We did it. With plenty of planning and a lot of luck, we actually accomplished what we had come to Texas to see.

I’m still processing the eclipse and processing the lessons it has for me. Is there a way to make sense of luck? Does it just happen? Or does luck happen by putting yourself in its path, and making sure you’re looking up, ready to marvel at whatever comes your way?

I do know this; I got lucky, and it’s only because I didn’t get in the way of myself. I surrendered to the day — and to Dave — who never worried.

The truth is my worries never mattered. They never had any sway over the clouds. No matter what happened, I was lucky to come along for the ride — lucky for another day under this sun.

My sense of awe and luck was shared with Jay Lawson, an amateur astronomer at the Brown Chicken Brown Cow Ranch, who wore a shirt emblazoned with four eclipses he has seen from 1979 to 2024. It turns out that totality was visible for only 90 seconds at BCBC ranch, but it was still something.

“You plan for years, and it’s done in a few seconds. And all you can think is, ‘When can I see another?’” Lawson said, taking the words right out of my mouth.

It goes without saying: Spain 2026! Dave and I hope to see you there.

Elena Nicolaou is a senior entertainment editor at Today.com, where she covers the latest in TV, pop culture, movies and all things streaming. Previously, she covered culture at Refinery29 and Oprah Daily. Her superpower is matching people up with the perfect book, which she does on her podcast, Blind Date With a Book.

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