When I chose Strayed for my name, I wasn’t looking at the word’s negative connotations. I was aware at that time in my life that I’d really lost my way, that I’d gone off the path. But the other definitions of that word ‘strayed’ are very powerful too, you know? A stray is somebody who makes, or has to make, his or her own way in the world. A stray is someone who lives without the essential mother and the essential father, which is how I lived. So I was embracing that word, that name, for all of its darkness and all of its light, and I hoped I would keep growing and living into the name, sort of embodying it in my life, you know…It’s like my heritage. I feel it is my real name.
Cheryl Strayed
The Voracious Bibliophile 