One thing that Lidia and I have often discussed,” Strayed says, “is how women like us have been interpreted and essentially colonized on the page. And by women like us I mean women who were and are bold or rule-breaking when it comes to things like sex or drugs or desire or even how we make our art.

Our culture still hasn’t evolved terribly far beyond the good girl/bad girl dichotomy. It’s more comfortable for many to think we are one or the other. But Lidia and I are both, just like most humans are. We’re all both good and bad, fucked up and totally sound, full of remorse and entirely unapologetic. One thing I think Lidia and I are doing when we show you how our lives are now, how it is that we’ve built these whole, happy, even traditional-seeming families, is that we’re saying we’re not sullied by what came before.

In fact, we are made by it. And our lives are not something that’s behind us, but something that’s a part of us. We are healed now, but we are still the complicated and hungry girls we were before.