What’s it about:

A memoir by my favourite human, Glennon Doyle, which looks at her journey after her marriage implodes – while also covering motherhood, addictions, and the tenderness and strength needed to weather the world.

What Lynn learned:

• The world does not need to send overt messages to girls that they are valued for being pretty and obedient – we absorb these messages since being small.

• Mental hospitals can feel safe because you can stop smiling and being everything that you think the world wants you to be. There people are overtly hurting, even if you cannot see their pain. The permission to be sad is something the world denies us.

• Most of us have two selves – our real self and the ‘representative’ we send out into the world to be admired. It’s terrifying knowing that you are not truly your representative and the world does not know you.

• Writing (especially in a closet) can be seen as a form of ‘purging’ and truth telling that can set your soul free. (but also sometimes we need permission to not make content or art out of our emotions and actually feel them and live them’.

• Sometimes trying to fix the pain and control it is the worst thing for healing – ‘’Maybe for now the only right decision is to stop making decisions’….I’m tryin t fx my pain with certainty as if I am one right choice away from relief. I’m stuck in anxiety quicksand: The harder I try to climb out, the lower I sink’ – p. 144

Fave quotes:

• ‘We know what the world wants from us. We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be.’ P. 11

• ‘I’m not a mess but a deeply feeling person in a messy world. I explain that now, when someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, ‘For the same reason I laugh so often–because I’m paying attention.’ I tell them that we can choose to be perfect and admired or to be real and loved. We must decide.’

• ‘People who are hurting don’t need Avoiders, Protectors, or Fixers. What we need are patient, loving witness. People to sit quietly and hold space for us. People to stand in helpful vigil to our pain.’

• ‘I have met myself and I am going to care for her fiercely.’

• ‘It’s ok to feel too much and know too little.’

• ‘I landed in addiction partly because of my wiring and partly because of the world’s wiring…addictions are safe little deadly hiding places where sensitive people retreat from love and pain.’ P. 225

Why relevant right now:

This sums up the emotional world of human existence – the pain, the love, the fight, the strength we need.

Interest factor: 5/5

Coffee table cred: 4/5

Ignorance of external world while reading: 4/5

Book cover design: 2/5

Help the existential crisis: 5/5