Cheryl Strayed's mother

9 of 21
Forty-nine days later, Cheryl's mother lost her fight to cancer. While her brother and sister could barely bring themselves to be around their mother, Cheryl threw herself into her care. "My husband, Paul, did everything he could to make me feel less alone. He was still the kind and tender man I'd fallen for a few years before," she writes. "Once my mother started dying, something inside of me was dead to Paul, no matter what he did or said."