If you cringe when people start telling painfully honest truths — if their honesty and their rawness makes you want to change topics, STAT — Glennon Doyle Melton’s latest book, Love Warrior, isn’t for you. But you should probably read it more than anyone.

The Momastery blogger has never shied away from getting vulnerable, bearing her scars — and the lessons learned from them — for the world to see, and in this memoir, she chronicles what happened after publishing her best-selling first book, Carry On, Warrior, when her husband told her he’d been cheating on her, and she found herself at a crossroads: Could she ever trust him — or any man — again? What would this mean for her kids? Her sense of family? Security? Love?

To the outside world, it looked like she’d had it all figured out, which is exactly how things appeared when she battled bulimia and alcoholism earlier in life, and when she became the “cool girl,” in college, getting invited to all the best parties, dating the hottest guys. It was because she had learned to send her “representative” into the world, she writes, creating a persona who could put on a brave face and handle everything when she couldn’t. And day by day, living that lie ate away at her, eroding her sense of self, leaving her feeling empty. Binge eating and drinking became sources of control — nobody could hurt her if she doled out the pain first, by over-indulging — and to the rest of the world, she adopted a glossy veneer of being The Cool Girl Who Doesn’t Care.

She sums it up pretty wonderfully with this quote:

We can choose to be perfect and admired, or real and loved. We must decide.

Acting ‘perfect’ is just that — an act. It’s a safe move, especially considering how much emphasis is put on being likeable in our society, but it’s also lonely. It means stifling your true thoughts and feelings, and never really letting anyone in. It’s tempting, but hollow.

Throughout the book, Doyle Melton shares what it means to stop sending her representative out into the world, and how she had to stop relying on food, booze and other things to numb herself from the pain she was feeling. Life is painful, but buffering yourself from it won’t make existing any more enjoyable.

 

Love Warrior is now available in bookstores and on Amazon.