love of my life essay

Essay on Love for Students and Children

500+ words essay on love.

Love is the most significant thing in human’s life. Each science and every single literature masterwork will tell you about it. Humans are also social animals. We lived for centuries with this way of life, we were depended on one another to tell us how our clothes fit us, how our body is whether healthy or emaciated. All these we get the honest opinions of those who love us, those who care for us and makes our happiness paramount.

What is Love?

Love is a set of emotions, behaviors, and beliefs with strong feelings of affection. So, for example, a person might say he or she loves his or her dog, loves freedom, or loves God. The concept of love may become an unimaginable thing and also it may happen to each person in a particular way.

Love has a variety of feelings, emotions, and attitude. For someone love is more than just being interested physically in another one, rather it is an emotional attachment. We can say love is more of a feeling that a person feels for another person. Therefore, the basic meaning of love is to feel more than liking towards someone.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Need of Love

We know that the desire to love and care for others is a hard-wired and deep-hearted because the fulfillment of this wish increases the happiness level. Expressing love for others benefits not just the recipient of affection, but also the person who delivers it. The need to be loved can be considered as one of our most basic and fundamental needs.

One of the forms that this need can take is contact comfort. It is the desire to be held and touched. So there are many experiments showing that babies who are not having contact comfort, especially during the first six months, grow up to be psychologically damaged.

Significance of Love

Love is as critical for the mind and body of a human being as oxygen. Therefore, the more connected you are, the healthier you will be physically as well as emotionally. It is also true that the less love you have, the level of depression will be more in your life. So, we can say that love is probably the best antidepressant.

It is also a fact that the most depressed people don’t love themselves and they do not feel loved by others. They also become self-focused and hence making themselves less attractive to others.

Society and Love

It is a scientific fact that society functions better when there is a certain sense of community. Compassion and love are the glue for society. Hence without it, there is no feeling of togetherness for further evolution and progress. Love , compassion, trust and caring we can say that these are the building blocks of relationships and society.

Relationship and Love

A relationship is comprised of many things such as friendship , sexual attraction , intellectual compatibility, and finally love. Love is the binding element that keeps a relationship strong and solid. But how do you know if you are in love in true sense? Here are some symptoms that the emotion you are feeling is healthy, life-enhancing love.

Love is the Greatest Wealth in Life

Love is the greatest wealth in life because we buy things we love for our happiness. For example, we build our dream house and purchase a favorite car to attract love. Being loved in a remote environment is a better experience than been hated even in the most advanced environment.

Love or Money

Love should be given more importance than money as love is always everlasting. Money is important to live, but having a true companion you can always trust should come before that. If you love each other, you will both work hard to help each other live an amazing life together.

Love has been a vital reason we do most things in our life. Before we could know ourselves, we got showered by it from our close relatives like mothers , fathers , siblings, etc. Thus love is a unique gift for shaping us and our life. Therefore, we can say that love is a basic need of life. It plays a vital role in our life, society, and relation. It gives us energy and motivation in a difficult time. Finally, we can say that it is greater than any other thing in life.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

Search 45 years of archives

• Popular Pages
• Readers Write

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.

Also In This Issue

October 2023.

Lawn Skeletons

Related selections, send to a friend.

Jean Iversen

Writer & Editor

Why Do We Write? (Or, My Real Take on Cheryl Strayed’s “The Love of My Life”)

Chicago Iversen · March 9, 2021 · Uncategorized · Cheryl Strayed , grief

In late fall 2019, I was nearing the end of my first semester in an MFA Creative Writing program, when students still met in classrooms. My literature class assignment that week, as it was most weeks, was to read two essays. One was “The Love of My Life” by Cheryl Strayed . The other, I don’t remember.

Week after week, we had been assigned readings about death, illness, divorce, disfigurement, violence, and more death. I remember seeing Strayed’s name on the syllabus and thinking, okay, lighter material ahead. I had devoured her memoir, Wild , and the movie that followed. Wild wasn’t exactly a comedic romp, but Strayed’s account of hiking the Pacific Northwest Trail after losing her mother to cancer was extraordinarily interesting to me and more my speed than the darker, heavier material we discussed in class so far.

Then I actually read “The Love of My Life.”

It punched me in the gut harder than any other piece we’d been assigned. As I read Strayed’s essay, about the years leading up to, and immediately following, her mother’s death, I felt a pain way too close to home.

I entered an MFA Creative Writing program to write about my personal life experiences with health and other issues. My health, or lack thereof, has radically changed my life in recent years. All around me, students wrote about race. Abuse. Sexuality. Immigration. Gender. Identity. Loss. And they read their stories aloud without so much as a crack in their voices. How? I wondered in my hard, uncomfortable chair in class. How can you remain so still when unearthing such deep topics?

I had never written about my mother, other than a dedication in a published book. I hadn’t planned on writing about her, either. To bring that to the surface, even in everyday conversation, was still too much to bear. Too private. Too soon.

As students went around the room, dissecting Strayed’s tortured essay about her acute grief, it took everything I had not to burst into tears as my own grief was brought to the surface. The discussion was too polite, I thought. Too detached. As several students offered their insights in the minutes that crawled forward, it became clear to me: No one in this room has ever lost the love of their life. No one gets this piece. No one.

Was I momentarily smug in my solidarity with the author? Or just not as good an actor as someone else living with grief, I thought.

As the polite conversation continued, I pressed my lips tighter and tighter and prayed that I’d make it to the 10-minute break without giving way to the tears that threatened the calm class discussion. At one point, the conversation steered toward the author’s intention. Why write this piece? What was Strayed’s intention on baring her soul in written word? One student offered that perhaps Strayed seized on using her life experience to make money, at which point my tears suddenly hardened to rage.

In my mind, I passionately pounded my fists on the table and cried out, “None of you…have EVER…lost…the love of your life!!!!”

But of course, I stayed silent.

I did feel a collective umbrage ripple throughout the room. “It’s okay,” the professor nodded calmly, perhaps anticipating some kind of revolt. I admired her composure and made a mental note to demonstrate a similar neutrality in future experiences as a writing teacher.

To my great relief, another student offered a stern, yet calm rebuttal, something along the lines of, “I highly doubt that Cheryl Strayed went through a tragic loss, ended her marriage, got pregnant, had an abortion, all so she could write a story about it and make money.” I felt grateful that someone was in my emotional ballpark. I had been close to clocking the other classmate, but held my silent self intact.

One of my other professors that semester said that writers sometimes need distance from a life-altering event before embarking on the brave task of writing about it. Strayed wrote her essay several years after her mother’s death. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t had the ability or the will to write about my mother, or the years leading up to, and immediately following, her passing. It is only with distance that I can now assemble the beginnings of words I wanted to say in that class on that night, words that, in my mind, betrayed emotions that only I could understand.

It took major, major courage for Strayed to write that piece. No one. Absolutely no one looks into the darkest, deepest recesses of themselves and offers up its reflection to the public without an enormous amount of bravery, humility, love, and faith. In baring one’s soul, writers risk being misunderstood. Criticized. Analyzed. Insulted. Denounced.

In reading “The Love of My Life,” I knew what Strayed meant when she wrote:

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.

I also understood how someone in acute grief could break up her own marriage. Self-destruct. I didn’t—couldn’t—express my grief in class that night so many months ago for reasons, ironically, that Strayed so eloquently explained in the very essay we were discussing:

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.

I understood why Strayed chose her title. The love of your life can have multiple meanings. The person who knew your life story, the person who contributed greatly to your center of gravity, however flawed its existence, is no longer there. The clearinghouse, the warehouse of information, the holder of data, is gone. The person with whom you’ve shared the most complicated, most meaningful relationship of your life so far, has left. Who’s exquisitely documented and stored every memory of you, celebrated you, was there when you needed her most, held your heart, loved you the strongest, is no longer in your life.

You can’t possibly understand this, I wanted to say that night, if you haven’t lost the love of your life. You can’t possibly understand how difficult it could be to talk about it, write about it, expose yourself this way. I find it profoundly courageous. Profoundly human.

Why do we write?

I don’t know what Cheryl Strayed’s exact intentions were in writing “The Love of My Life.” But in reading it, I joined her circle of solemn faces, saw myself in her tribe. In reading her essay, I felt that Strayed knows grief the way I do. It messes with your insides and reorders your life, without ever asking your permission or whether you can handle it. Reading it made me feel less alone, however alone I felt in class that night.

And that, to me, is the reason I write. It’s to connect, to find, to locate similar beings with similar experiences. To let others know they are not alone in their sorrow, their grief, even their joys, in their seemingly isolated experiences.

I plan to contact Cheryl someday, to let her know that she is not alone in her grief, that I can relate to her suffering, though I know thousands, maybe more, have already let this incredible writer know just that. Maybe someday, when I have more distance. When those words, expressed in an email, or said out loud, or even typed out here, won’t make my loss more real.

Strayed, Cheryl. “The Love of My Life.” The Sun . September 2002.

Share this:

•  Book review: Small Animals
• Frank Bruni’s “The Beauty of Dusk” Tackles Vision Loss, Aging, and Human Capacity for Change 

Books by Jean Iversen

Northwestern University Press, 2018

Belt Publishing, 2019

BYOB Chicago, 2009

Website Built with WordPress.com .

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Being Yourself — The Importance of Self-love

The Importance of Self-love

• Categories: Being Yourself Believe in Myself Finding Yourself

About this sample

Words: 555 |

Updated: 11 December, 2023

Words: 555 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited

• Baumeister, R. F., & Campbell, J. D. (1999). The Psychology of Self-Esteem: A Revolutionary Approach to Self-Understanding that Launched a New Era in Modern Psychology. Jossey-Bass.
• Branden, N. (1994). The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem: The Definitive Work on Self-Esteem by the Leading Pioneer in the Field. Bantam Books.
• Chaudhary, H., & Kaur, P. (2015). Role of self-esteem in building healthy relationship among adolescents. Indian Journal of Positive Psychology, 6(2), 216-219.
• Crocker, J., & Park, L. E. (2004). The costly pursuit of self-esteem. Psychological Bulletin, 130(3), 392-414.
• Harter, S. (1999). The Construction of the Self: A Developmental Perspective. Guilford Press.
• Heatherton, T. F., & Polivy, J. (1991). Development and validation of a scale for measuring state self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(6), 895-910.
• McKay, M., Fanning, P., & Davis, M. (2007). Self-Esteem: A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem. New Harbinger Publications.
• Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and the Adolescent Self-Image. Princeton University Press.
• Ruffin, J. (2016). Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
• Sowislo, J. F., & Orth, U. (2013). Does low self-esteem predict depression and anxiety? A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 139(1), 213-240.

Video Version

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Prof Ernest (PhD)

Verified writer

• Expert in: Life

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3 pages / 1501 words

1 pages / 514 words

2 pages / 1053 words

4 pages / 1697 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Being Yourself

Dove. 'Dove Real Beauty Sketches.' YouTube, uploaded by Dove US, 14 April 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=litXW91UauE.Neff, Kristin D. and Elizabeth P. Shoda. 'Self-Compassion: An Alternative Conceptualization of a Healthy [...]

Essay about self-image delves into the intricate relationship between how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. Our self-image plays a pivotal role in shaping our confidence, choices, and interactions with the world. [...]

“I wish I may, I wish I might, Wish up on this star tonight.” “twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are, like a diamond in the sky, twinkle twinkle little star.” As children we are taught these nursery rhymes, at [...]

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the endangerment of finding the ridicule of others, rather than to be false and finding my own detestation. Why should I worry about what others think of me? I don’t give a shit about how [...]

“Some things may be equally essential but nothing is more important than a healthy sense of self-esteem and loving yourself.” - Henrik Edberg. Having confidence in your own worth or abilities is defined as having a healthy [...]

I consider myself fortunate to have grown up in a household filled with books. My mother, a librarian by profession, instilled in her children a deep appreciation for reading from an early age. While I may not recall the name of [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• CALL: (415) 431-3717   Hours: 9AM-5PM PST. EMAIL: [email protected]
• PLANNING GUIDE
• LOCAL RESOURCES
• BEFORE DEATH
• AFTER DEATH
• SevenPonds Home

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!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG

Welcome to the sevenponds.com blog – a community-driven extension of sevenponds.com i hope you find comfort and community in the resources and stories featured here. i’m always happy to hear from readers and can be reached at [email protected] ..

Our Monthly Tip: Make an “In Case of Death” File to Ease Loved One’s Grief :  How preparing for your own death can be the ultimate act of love

Passing of Beloved Comedian Births a New Comedy Festival :  Kenny DeForest keeps us laughing long after he's gone

Forest Bathing Eases Grief by Soaking in Nature :  Mindfulness and a leisurely pace are key elements of the practice

• Definitions
• About SevenPonds
• Advertise with Us
• Terms & Conditions
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy

Try these stylist-approved hair trends: Cowgirl curls, '90s blowout and more

• TODAY Plaza
• Share this —

• Watch Full Episodes
• Read With Jenna
• Inspirational
• Relationships
• TODAY Table
• Newsletters
• Start TODAY
• Shop TODAY Awards
• Citi Concert Series
• Listen All Day

Follow today

More Brands

• On The Show

I did my own makeup on my wedding day. Here's how it went

Let me start by saying I had a small wedding with about 160 guests (and I say small because weddings in India, where I live, often have upwards of 1,000 guests) in our garden at home. And just like every bride, I wanted to look amazing. But I also wanted to look like myself. And that meant that I wanted to do my own makeup.

A few weeks before the wedding , when I was busy making trips for my wedding dress fittings (brides usually wear a red dress called “lehenga” in India), I took a break to meet with some friends. We all sat down and went over everything that needed to be done. When I told them I would do my own makeup, they looked at me with horror. They all suggested that I hire a makeup artist. “It’s your big day! You must get a makeup artist,” many of them said, highlighting the gravity of the situation.

I told them that I had decided to do my makeup, and this information appeared to be difficult to digest. They all thought I was crazy. “Who even does their own makeup on their wedding day?” a friend said, trying to snap me out of my delusional state.

It didn’t work.

Doing your own makeup on your big day might sound daunting to some, and maybe I was expected to simply enjoy my day, sit in a chair with a glass of wine and let someone else do the work. But I happen to be a Virgo and a control freak, especially when it comes to my own body and look.

The idea of someone else applying makeup to my face was scary.

Don’t get me wrong. I have seen makeup artists work and many are brilliant, but I’ve also seen some results that are, to put it nicely, questionable. (Remember that scene in “Girls” where Marnie is getting married and her makeup artist terribly misinterprets her preferred “Laurel Canyon classic” aesthetic as “Selena Gomez meets Jesus”?)

The sheer number of products usually involved in professional makeup application made me nervous: the layers and layers of foundation, concealers, color correctors, eye shadows, mascara, setting spray and more. So many things on one little face? Nope. I was clear on my decision — no one would touch my face except for me. I’ll be honest that cost was a factor here, too — some makeup artists in India charge upwards of $1,000 for wedding day looks. That’s a lot of money!

In general, I am not big on makeup or trying a million different products, although I would occasionally scroll makeup videos on social media. When I worked full-time and was required to go to an office, I would only apply three makeup staples: moisturizer, foundation and mascara. Sometimes I would even throw in some blush.

When the pandemic began and I started working from home permanently, my relationship with makeup completely changed. I didn’t need any of it. I became very comfortable in my skin and preferred to go out makeup-free, even to parties. At most, I filled in my eyebrows and applied mascara.

But when the wedding was a couple of weeks away, I started watching videos again to find the best makeup for my skin and complexion. I was back down the rabbit hole.

Even though I wasn’t wearing much makeup at the time, I still felt confident in my (basic and limited) makeup skills. My first step was investing in some quality products: I bought a Huda Beauty eyeshadow palette, a MARS color corrector, Too Faced foundation and face primer, a L’Oreal mascara, a Faces Canada face palette, and a MAC Cosmetics lipstick.

I wanted a minimal look. My wedding dress wasn’t a traditional Indian lehenga but a blouse, palazzo and long scarf (called “dupatta” in India). The entire outfit was bright red with beautiful embroidery done by local artisans. It wasn’t a conventional wedding dress, but I had a vision, and with the help of a local designer, I brought it to life.

Because my wedding dress was already bright and eye-catching, and I had to wear some traditional jewelry, I didn’t want to draw too much attention to my face by applying heavy makeup. The idea was simple: keep it minimal.

I took about half an hour to get ready, including putting on my dress, applying my makeup and curling my hair while sipping a glass of wine. The end result was absolutely divine — I was so relieved I’d pulled it off. 

In the end, I just had to trust the process and believe in myself. (Okay, and spend hours and hours watching makeup tutorials to learn the right techniques.) When I saw my wedding photos , I was delighted to see that I looked like myself and not some porcelain-doll version of me. I looked natural and in my element. That was all I wanted.

If you’re considering doing your own makeup for your wedding, I have some tips. First, does the thought of doing your own makeup on your special day intrigue you, or does it sound stressful? If it sounds stressful, hire someone.

If you decide to do it yourself, do your research. Scroll through Pinterest and Instagram, watch YouTube and pick the look you want to achieve. Just remember to be realistic about your makeup skills. 

Go through your makeup bag and see what you have and what you need to buy. I recommend buying only premium-quality products because, in my experience, they’re worth the price. (And, it’s your wedding!) 

And, of course: practice! There could be a few hits and misses, and it might take multiple experiments to learn what you need to do to get the right look.

Most importantly, take your time and enjoy! On your big day, don’t rush through the process. I know wedding days can be overwhelming, but it’s important for you to remember that it’s your day, and you should enjoy it.

Remember, if you’re happy, smiling and stress-free, it will show in all your photos. The wedding day glow is real, not just because of highlighter, although I totally recommend it.

Shweta Sengar , a journalist based in India, boasts over a decade of extensive writing on women empowerment, culture and lifestyle. She is presently authoring her debut book. In her leisure, she enjoys the company of her three adopted Indie dogs.

Why I’m happy to be my husband’s second wife

I got a psychic reading 3 months after losing my dad. How it helped me heal

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

My fiancé is 17 years older than me and I’m sick of the age-gap conversation

Author Jo Piazza: How a 100-year-old family murder mystery inspired my new novel

I’m going boysober for a month. Here’s what that means and why I’m doing it

I fell in love. Then I found out he was a celebrity

I went viral for being childless and happy at 37, and it was terrifying

I took my fiancé wedding dress shopping — and he hated everything

I asked my fiancé to surprise me with our honeymoon destination. Here's how it went

• CBSE Class 10th
• CBSE Class 12th
• UP Board 10th
• UP Board 12th
• Bihar Board 10th
• Bihar Board 12th
• Top Schools in India
• Top Schools in Delhi
• Top Schools in Mumbai
• Top Schools in Chennai
• Top Schools in Hyderabad
• Top Schools in Kolkata
• Top Schools in Pune
• Top Schools in Bangalore

Products & Resources

• JEE Main Knockout April
• Free Sample Papers
• Free Ebooks
• NCERT Notes
• NCERT Syllabus
• NCERT Books
• RD Sharma Solutions
• Navodaya Vidyalaya Admission 2024-25
• NCERT Solutions
• NCERT Solutions for Class 12
• NCERT Solutions for Class 11
• NCERT solutions for Class 10
• NCERT solutions for Class 9
• NCERT solutions for Class 8
• NCERT Solutions for Class 7
• JEE Main 2024
• MHT CET 2024
• JEE Advanced 2024
• BITSAT 2024
• View All Engineering Exams
• Colleges Accepting B.Tech Applications
• Top Engineering Colleges in India
• Engineering Colleges in India
• Engineering Colleges in Tamil Nadu
• Engineering Colleges Accepting JEE Main
• Top IITs in India
• Top NITs in India
• Top IIITs in India
• JEE Main College Predictor
• JEE Main Rank Predictor
• MHT CET College Predictor
• AP EAMCET College Predictor
• GATE College Predictor
• KCET College Predictor
• JEE Advanced College Predictor
• View All College Predictors
• JEE Main Question Paper
• JEE Main Cutoff
• JEE Main Answer Key
• JEE Main Result
• Download E-Books and Sample Papers
• Compare Colleges
• B.Tech College Applications
• JEE Advanced Registration
• MAH MBA CET Exam
• View All Management Exams

Colleges & Courses

• MBA College Admissions
• MBA Colleges in India
• Top IIMs Colleges in India
• Top Online MBA Colleges in India
• MBA Colleges Accepting XAT Score
• BBA Colleges in India
• XAT College Predictor 2024
• SNAP College Predictor
• NMAT College Predictor
• MAT College Predictor 2024
• CMAT College Predictor 2024
• CAT Percentile Predictor 2023
• CAT 2023 College Predictor
• CMAT 2024 Registration
• TS ICET 2024 Registration
• CMAT Exam Date 2024
• MAH MBA CET Cutoff 2024
• Download Helpful Ebooks
• List of Popular Branches
• QnA - Get answers to your doubts
• IIM Fees Structure
• AIIMS Nursing
• Top Medical Colleges in India
• Top Medical Colleges in India accepting NEET Score
• Medical Colleges accepting NEET
• List of Medical Colleges in India
• List of AIIMS Colleges In India
• Medical Colleges in Maharashtra
• Medical Colleges in India Accepting NEET PG
• NEET College Predictor
• NEET PG College Predictor
• NEET MDS College Predictor
• DNB CET College Predictor
• DNB PDCET College Predictor
• NEET Application Form 2024
• NEET PG Application Form 2024
• NEET Cut off
• NEET Online Preparation
• Download Helpful E-books
• LSAT India 2024
• Colleges Accepting Admissions
• Top Law Colleges in India
• Law College Accepting CLAT Score
• List of Law Colleges in India
• Top Law Colleges in Delhi
• Top Law Collages in Indore
• Top Law Colleges in Chandigarh
• Top Law Collages in Lucknow

Predictors & E-Books

• CLAT College Predictor
• MHCET Law ( 5 Year L.L.B) College Predictor
• AILET College Predictor
• Sample Papers
• Compare Law Collages
• Careers360 Youtube Channel
• CLAT Syllabus 2025
• CLAT Previous Year Question Paper
• AIBE 18 Result 2023
• NID DAT Exam
• Pearl Academy Exam

Animation Courses

• Animation Courses in India
• Animation Courses in Bangalore
• Animation Courses in Mumbai
• Animation Courses in Pune
• Animation Courses in Chennai
• Animation Courses in Hyderabad
• Design Colleges in India
• Fashion Design Colleges in Bangalore
• Fashion Design Colleges in Mumbai
• Fashion Design Colleges in Pune
• Fashion Design Colleges in Delhi
• Fashion Design Colleges in Hyderabad
• Fashion Design Colleges in India
• Top Design Colleges in India
• Free Design E-books
• List of Branches
• Careers360 Youtube channel
• NIFT College Predictor
• UCEED College Predictor
• NID DAT College Predictor
• IPU CET BJMC
• JMI Mass Communication Entrance Exam
• IIMC Entrance Exam
• Media & Journalism colleges in Delhi
• Media & Journalism colleges in Bangalore
• Media & Journalism colleges in Mumbai
• List of Media & Journalism Colleges in India
• CA Intermediate
• CA Foundation
• CS Executive
• CS Professional
• Difference between CA and CS
• Difference between CA and CMA
• CA Full form
• CMA Full form
• CS Full form
• CA Salary In India

Top Courses & Careers

• Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com)
• Master of Commerce (M.Com)
• Company Secretary
• Cost Accountant
• Charted Accountant
• Credit Manager
• Financial Advisor
• Top Commerce Colleges in India
• Top Government Commerce Colleges in India
• Top Private Commerce Colleges in India
• Top M.Com Colleges in Mumbai
• Top B.Com Colleges in India
• IT Colleges in Tamil Nadu
• IT Colleges in Uttar Pradesh
• MCA Colleges in India
• BCA Colleges in India

Quick Links

• Information Technology Courses
• Programming Courses
• Web Development Courses
• Data Analytics Courses
• Big Data Analytics Courses
• RUHS Pharmacy Admission Test
• Top Pharmacy Colleges in India
• Pharmacy Colleges in Pune
• Pharmacy Colleges in Mumbai
• Colleges Accepting GPAT Score
• Pharmacy Colleges in Lucknow
• List of Pharmacy Colleges in Nagpur
• GPAT Result
• GPAT 2024 Admit Card
• GPAT Question Papers
• NCHMCT JEE 2024
• Mah BHMCT CET
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Delhi
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Hyderabad
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Mumbai
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Tamil Nadu
• Top Hotel Management Colleges in Maharashtra
• B.Sc Hotel Management
• Hotel Management
• Diploma in Hotel Management and Catering Technology

Diploma Colleges

• Top Diploma Colleges in Maharashtra
• UPSC IAS 2024
• SSC CGL 2024
• IBPS RRB 2024
• Previous Year Sample Papers
• Free Competition E-books
• Sarkari Result
• QnA- Get your doubts answered
• UPSC Previous Year Sample Papers
• CTET Previous Year Sample Papers
• SBI Clerk Previous Year Sample Papers
• NDA Previous Year Sample Papers

Upcoming Events

• NDA Application Form 2024
• UPSC IAS Application Form 2024
• CDS Application Form 2024
• CTET Admit card 2024
• HP TET Result 2023
• SSC GD Constable Admit Card 2024
• UPTET Notification 2024
• SBI Clerk Result 2024

Other Exams

• SSC CHSL 2024
• UP PCS 2024
• UGC NET 2024
• RRB NTPC 2024
• IBPS PO 2024
• IBPS Clerk 2024
• IBPS SO 2024
• Top University in USA
• Top University in Canada
• Top University in Ireland
• Top Universities in UK
• Top Universities in Australia
• Best MBA Colleges in Abroad
• Business Management Studies Colleges

Top Countries

• Study in USA
• Study in UK
• Study in Canada
• Study in Australia
• Study in Ireland
• Study in Germany
• Study in China
• Study in Europe

Student Visas

• Student Visa Canada
• Student Visa UK
• Student Visa USA
• Student Visa Australia
• Student Visa Germany
• Student Visa New Zealand
• Student Visa Ireland
• CUET PG 2024
• IGNOU B.Ed Admission 2024
• DU Admission 2024
• UP B.Ed JEE 2024
• LPU NEST 2024
• IIT JAM 2024
• IGNOU Online Admission 2024
• Universities in India
• Top Universities in India 2024
• Top Colleges in India
• Top Universities in Uttar Pradesh 2024
• Top Universities in Bihar
• Top Universities in Madhya Pradesh 2024
• Top Universities in Tamil Nadu 2024
• Central Universities in India
• CUET Exam City Intimation Slip 2024
• IGNOU Date Sheet
• CUET Mock Test 2024
• CUET Admit card 2024
• CUET PG Syllabus 2024
• CUET Participating Universities 2024
• CUET Previous Year Question Paper
• CUET Syllabus 2024 for Science Students
• E-Books and Sample Papers
• CUET Exam Pattern 2024
• CUET Exam Date 2024
• CUET Syllabus 2024
• IGNOU Exam Form 2024
• IGNOU Result
• CUET Courses List 2024

Engineering Preparation

• Knockout JEE Main 2024
• Test Series JEE Main 2024
• JEE Main 2024 Rank Booster

Medical Preparation

• Knockout NEET 2024
• Test Series NEET 2024
• Rank Booster NEET 2024

Online Courses

• JEE Main One Month Course
• NEET One Month Course
• IBSAT Free Mock Tests
• IIT JEE Foundation Course
• Knockout BITSAT 2024
• Career Guidance Tool

Top Streams

• IT & Software Certification Courses
• Engineering and Architecture Certification Courses
• Programming And Development Certification Courses
• Business and Management Certification Courses
• Marketing Certification Courses
• Health and Fitness Certification Courses
• Design Certification Courses

Specializations

• Digital Marketing Certification Courses
• Cyber Security Certification Courses
• Artificial Intelligence Certification Courses
• Business Analytics Certification Courses
• Data Science Certification Courses
• Cloud Computing Certification Courses
• Machine Learning Certification Courses
• View All Certification Courses
• UG Degree Courses
• PG Degree Courses
• Short Term Courses
• Free Courses
• Online Degrees and Diplomas
• Compare Courses

Top Providers

• Coursera Courses
• Udemy Courses
• Edx Courses
• Swayam Courses
• upGrad Courses
• Simplilearn Courses
• Great Learning Courses

Access premium articles, webinars, resources to make the best decisions for career, course, exams, scholarships, study abroad and much more with

Plan, Prepare & Make the Best Career Choices

The Best Day of My Life Essay

Essay on The Best Day of My Life - Life is full of events - both good and bad. Some things will be forgotten over time, and some will stay in your heart forever. Here are 100, 200 and 500 word essays on The Best Day Of My Life

Our life is full of many days and events. One day is happy, full of goodness and joy that brings joy to our hearts and stays firmly in our hearts forever. The memories of the gleeful days remain present in the heart and spirit. With each passing day, we make memories that make our life beautiful. These are the memories of what has been and will be more. Here are some sample essays on “The Best Day Of My Life”.

100 Words Essay on The Best Day of My Life

200 words essay on the best day of my life, 500 words essay on the best day of my life.

The best day of my life is my 16th birthday. It is a day I will never forget in my life. I consider it till now my best birthday. All my relatives and friends were present at my birthday party. The best part of the party was my grandmother was present there. For the last time, she prepared all the food items I loved eating. It is even more special as it was the last day that I spent with her, after which she passed away. I spent the most time with her and she also enjoyed herself a lot with me for the last time in her life. This birthday is even more special as it was my last birthday with my grandmother.

The best day of my life was when I went on a school outing with my friends. We ate delicious food and enjoyed the day to the fullest.

I woke up at 6 am and got ready for school. My mother dropped me to school. From there we went to a science park by bus. During the entire journey we danced, sang, played games, and did many more fun activities. We ate snacks and played games with our teacher also. When we arrived we visited the science city and enjoyed every bit of it.

Besides the science park, it was a water park, so we quickly changed our clothes and jumped into the pool. We enjoyed ourselves in the pool, and we kept on playing for an hour. After that, we took a bath and changed clothes. We had rice and chicken for our lunch. We loved the food. After the food, we returned by bus. During the whole bus journey, we sang and danced.

This day is memorable as I could spend it with my friends. The day was a day to be remembered. We had so much fun together. Everything is worth remembering from the beginning to the end of the journey.

Life is full of events - both good and bad. Some things will be forgotten over time, and some will stay in your heart forever. Life is full of surprises and shocks, good and bad news, and unexpected turns. Fortune can benefit some people in life, and help them to reach the pinnacle of glory and happiness.

The Best Day of My Life

Recently I received the best gift from my dad. Since childhood, I always wanted a dog, and recently he had brought me one. I was studying in my room, dad entered my room with a labrador in his hands. I jumped from my bed with happiness. I also started crying as I could not believe my eyes. My mom and dad were always against having a dog. But he brought it, and made it the best day of my life.

Significance of My Best Day

I still remember myself bursting into tears and happiness at the same time. That night I held Bruno the whole time. The next moment I saw myself buying stuff for the dog. I bought food, clothes, toys, and many more things which would make him happy. That night I held him tight and slept beside him. I could not sleep the whole night due to the excitement.

I looked at him throughout the entire night with utmost happiness and surprise. That day was the best day of my life as I got my best friend. A best friend who would never leave me. A best friend who will always be there for me whenever I need him.A best friend who will make me the happiest. A friend who will love me to the fullest. That dog gave me the ultimate happiness and, this is how the day became the best day of my life. I named the dog Bruno.

I am always looking for him whenever I come back from school. He always jumps, licks me, and wags his tail after seeing me. My friends come along with me to play with him. Bruno also became their friend.

What I Love about My Dog

The thing that I love about Bruno the most is that he can gel well with people. My sister was not that comfortable with dogs. But Bruno made her fall in love with him. They are now the best of friends. He would jump in happiness whenever he saw him. She would also run toward him and would pick him up. She feeds him food and always brings toys and treats for him. She loves her to the fullest and, at the same time he loves her to the fullest. This is how Bruno became everyone's favourite.

Every person has some happy days and some bad days in their life. Both help people learn different things from these different experiences. But the happy days are worth remembering. They help you cheer on your days of sadness and bring back all the memories that are worth cherishing. The best day has a great impact on our life.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

• Construction
• Entertainment
• Manufacturing
• Information Technology

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. 

Applications for Admissions are open.

Aakash iACST Scholarship Test 2024

Get up to 90% scholarship on NEET, JEE & Foundation courses

JEE Main Important Chemistry formulas

As per latest 2024 syllabus. Chemistry formulas, equations, & laws of class 11 & 12th chapters

ALLEN NEET Coaching

Ace your NEET preparation with ALLEN Online Programs

SAT® | CollegeBoard

Registeration closing on 19th Apr for SAT® | One Test-Many Universities | 90% discount on registrations fee | Free Practice | Multiple Attempts | no penalty for guessing

TOEFL ® Registrations 2024

Thinking of Studying Abroad? Think the TOEFL® test. Register now & Save 10% on English Proficiency Tests with Gift Cards

PTE Exam 2024 Registrations

Register now for PTE & Save 5% on English Proficiency Tests with Gift Cards

Everything about Education

Latest updates, Exclusive Content, Webinars and more.

Download Careers360 App's

Regular exam updates, QnA, Predictors, College Applications & E-books now on your Mobile

Cetifications

We Appeared in