Strayed is really exceptional at communicating effectively with empathy and speaking from a place of honesty, and you learn a lot about why that is through this. This is great at illustrating what differentiates her as a writer from essentially anyone else. I can’t think of another author who can organize her thoughts like this and communicate them as succinctly. She speaks a lot about radical empathy and this is one of the rare times I’d actually apply it. Because she doesn’t simply set out to make feel better, she applies critical thinking with a delivery that is genuinely kind.

I really liked how many queer aspects came up to this too. Sage must have had a very wide range of letters to be able to cherry pick these out. Like most fantastic pieces of writing, this is able to touch on a deeply human, universal experience. I can’t imagine anyone finding something to connect with.

I will say that the introduction and other pieces about this probably don’t need to be there and were more padding than anything else. The letters and responses speak for themselves, there’s really no reason to add so much added context from multiple people (in the audiobook version).