I explain that he was a coal miner in Pittston, Pennsylvania, and that every morning my great-grandmother packed a lunch pail for him and sent him down into the mines. Thirteen and a half years ago, I found myself on a cold bathroom floor–shaking from a ten-year hangover–staring at a pregnancy test like it was an eviction notice from my life. I just know that I am not beautiful, so anyone who says he loves me is saying it because it's in his contract. It reminded me of a scene in the book of Acts when Peter and John are testifying to a court that wants to kill them and they say, “we cannot but speak of what we have seen and what we have heard. For me this book is nothing special, as there’s no sense of objectivity between the author and the words on the page.

I survive middle school the way a whale might survive a marathon: slowly, painfully, with great effort and conspicuousness. A few years ago, my husband revealed some truths about our marriage that sent me to the second rock bottom of my life and brought LOVE WARRIOR into the world. LOVE WARRIOR is a gorgeous and inspiring tale of how we are born to be warriors: strong, powerful, and brave; able to confront the pain and claim the love that exists for us all. There is them and there is me and I can’t fit into their world and they cannot, should not, go with me into mine.The night is thumping chaos, but my mittened hand is safe inside my mother’s and she guides me forward.

She wrote and she wrote, and now she is sharing her story with all women because it is about self-discovery, love, mind, body, and soul. In medical schools, there’s often a course students can opt to take about having difficult conversations. I can also imagine a roomful of these aforementioned women in a room together somewhere, having paid for one day what I spent on my entire grad school tuition to hear Ms.The reason I want my clients to read Love Warrior is because through the telling of her story, Glennon brings to life what I see as an underlying issue in most of the clients I work with– Although the reason they start working with me varies, there’s often a broken relationship with their emotions, which has resulted in a broken relationship with themselves. One of the gifts of “Love Warrior” is that Glennon Doyle Melton has had those difficult — one might say impossible — conversations again and again. This chronicle of a beautiful, brutal journey speaks to anyone who yearns for deeper, truer relationships and a more abundant, authentic life. It’s about how our ideals of femininity and masculinity can make it impossible for a woman and a man to actually know each other. The process you must go through to “unbecome,” as Glennon describes it, so that you can connect with yourself, is a journey.

You never surfaced, and when you needed to—when you needed oxygen—you left and breathed away from us.

The interesting difference between college and high school is that here the hidden rules are publicly acknowledged. Just when Glennon Doyle Melton was beginning to feel she had it all figured out - three happy children, a doting spouse and a writing career so successful that her first book catapulted to the top of the New York Times best-seller list - her husband revealed his infidelity and she was forced to realise that nothing was as it seemed. My friends and I handle this by agreeing publicly that the girl who accused Joe of rape was drunk, stupid, jealous, and lying. I lie in bed snuggling my corner while the blanket stretches across the room to her bed, where she snuggles her corner. My eyelids were smeared with purple and my cheeks were pink, but I just looked like me wearing my cousin’s makeup.

So for the next twenty years, every time anger or fear or loneliness starting bubbling up, I reached for an easy button. You go on her journey and see in everyday life and circumstances the choices she made to move into herself. But even though I’d finished the book, was overcome with emotion in response to it, and had bought copies to gift to my friends, I still didn’t have a clear answer to that question. Just when Glennon Doyle was beginning to feel she had it all figured out – three happy children, a doting spouse, and a writing career so successful that her first book catapulted to the top of the New York Times bestseller list – her husband revealed his infidelity and she was forced to realize that nothing was as it seemed.We enlisted experts to help us talk to our kids about this and walk us through every possible outcome of making our story public. I also began reading Love Warrior with a high dose of, “here we go again…” I was incredibly skeptical. The highly anticipated memoir by best-selling author Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior tells the story of her journey of self-discovery after the implosion of her marriage.