I was working too hard to be afraid. - Cheryl Strayed

The truth was, in spite of all that, she’d been a spectacular mom. I knew it as I was growing up. I knew it in the days that she was dying. I knew it now. And I knew that was something. That it was a lot. I had plenty of friends who had moms who — no matter how long they lived — would never give them the all-encompassing love that my mother had given me.

The thing about hiking the Pacific Coast Trial, the thing that was so profound to me that summer — and yet also, like many things, so very simple — was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. (69)

It was really over, I thought. There was no way to go back, to make it stay. There was never that.