"Love Warrior": A Memoir of Rock Bottom, Redemption, Infidelities and Finding Your Spirit

Meet Basil, our new "office pug." He didn't quite understand the concept of sitting with a book, but he'll get the hang of it.  

"So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn't sit for even one, that's the journey of the warrior." - Pema Chodron "When Things Fall Apart"

Avid readers of Glennon Doyle Melton's blog "Momastary" already know the ending to the story of Glennon and her husband Craig's marriage.  In Melton's latest book "Love Warrior: A Memoir" (selected as Oprah's most recent Book Club pick), she delves into her painful past to make sense of the devastation of her marriage.

I don't want to spoil too much about this book because it's worth a read.  Melton has legions of devoted fans that may have gotten hooked on her truth waterfalls from her popular blog or from her other New York Times Bestselling book "Carry On, Warrior." Melton has a way of connecting with her readers.  She's an Amy Schumer Trainwreck meets Brene Brown's power of vulnerability meets Gloria Steinham.  She's not afraid to write the whole ugly truth and she's not afraid to own her story of pain and renewal.  She's a highly sought after speaker, and her TedTalk is one of my favorite of all time.  I like that she is real and unfiltered.  That she writes like a friend telling another friend about her pain and occasionally her joy.

Unlike the collection of essays about parenting in "Carry On, Warrior" that had a charming, playful parenting bent, "Love Warrior" is serious business starting with Melton's slide into bulimia and alcoholism.  As a young girl, she finds bulimia in attempt to keep herself small and beautiful.  Even after a stint in a mental hospital, she never shakes the habit of binging and purging.  In high school and college she turns to alcohol to numb herself from intimate relationships.  It's easier to be numb than to feel deeply.

When she meets Craig with his dashing smile and his charm and good looks, she can't believe he is truly interested in her.  Their relationship is anything but simple.  After she gets pregnant and he takes her to an abortion clinic, she leaves her alone to recover while he goes out for the evening with his friends.  The second time she gets pregnant by him and she finds herself at rock bottom on the bathroom floor, she decides that she will have the baby with or without him and that she will turn her life around with or without him.

He decides to stay and marry her.  She decides that the can stay and that she will marry him.

That should be their happy ending, but when you have two people - one that only communicates and feels with his body (Craig) and one that only communicates and feels with her head (Glennon), there are bound to be issues, especially when both of them have addictions and secrets and sordid pasts, but only one of them has chosen to be real about them.

What follows after the discovery of Craig's secrets is a story of how love can pull us together and tear us apart.  How marriage can be lonely and hopeful all at the same time.  How you can marry someone and be with them for years, but never really know them and when you do get to know them how you may not want "for better or for worse" with the person you thought you married.  It's a story about finding yourself at rock bottom but finding a way back to who you were truly meant to be.

I loved so much of this book especially that Glennon has a way of writing that speaks to her reader's soul.  There were also parts of the book that felt a bit sermonized for me.  You need to be okay with all of her God and Spirit talk to fully appreciate her journey.  At times the dialogue is so stilted that it was painful.  I can only imagine that those real life conversations were just as hard between her and her husband as they tread the delicate path of finding true intimacy with each other after almost losing each other and the family unit that they built.

As she tries to heal from her brokenness Glennon finds yoga as a way to get present in her body again.  She finds God as a way to reconnect with her spirit.  She learns to breathe.  She learns that she is a warrior - a love warrior.

The first 75% of the book had me completely hooked, but at times the long sermonizing and repetition of the second half of the book felt like too much.  It's not that I think she is wallowing in her misery (because she's definitely had a hard go of it and she has so much to teach the rest of us), but I wish there could be some joy from time to time.  Yes, the story is one of hope and overcoming incredible sadness to try to reconnect with yourself and your marriage, and so that entails a bunch of questioning without a bunch of answering.  I get it.

If you are like me, by the end of this book, you are rooting for both sides of the marriage - Glennon and Craig.  You hope for them individually and hope for them together. Avid readers of Glennon's  blog, "Momastary" already know what becomes of their marriage, but I'll save that for you to find out.

"The Last Summer of the Camperdowns": Something is Missing

I fell for it again!

For some reason, even though none of the books I have ever read from Oprah's "Best Books to Read for the Summer" have ever been a book I've loved, I am suckered into believing that I will eventually find one that I actually do love.

It's my fault as well that I am drawn in by covers of books that look summery, and that I have yet to find a perfect book for the summer of 2015.  Canadian writer, Elizabeth Kelly's book "The Last Summer of the Camperdowns" is not the summer book I have been waiting for.

Touted by The Washington Post as a Notable Fiction Book of 2013 and by Cosmopolitan Magazine as one of the 22 Best Books For Women by Women in 2013, "The Last Summer of the Camperdowns" and described as "an uproarious coming-of age story brimming with old money, young love, and astonishing family secrets" made it sound like a promising summer read to me.

It tells the story of 12 year old Riddle Camperdown and her two eccentric parents in the summer of 1972 in the privileged area of Wellfleet, Massachusetts.  Her mother, Greer, is an ex-movie star who still possesses jaw dropping beauty and a cutting personality.  Her father, Camp, is running for office and trying to protect his image at the same time he is trying to toughen up his daughter. The other main character in this book is their neighbor, Gin, whose love of his horses trumps his love for anything else. It is on Gin's horse stables that Riddle witnesses what she believes to be a crime perpetrated by Gin's horse hand, Gula, whose creepy presence brings to mind gothic horror, but seems a little misplaced in this mostly realistic fiction book.

The story that unfolds brings to light the lies that Riddle's parents keep, suspicions about past secrets, long ago love, and a crush that Riddle develops on a boy that is not just too old for her but also the son of her mother's ex-love.

There is scandal and intrigue, and parts of this book were enjoyable, but overall, I felt disappointed by the needless complicated plot.  Even more than that one of the characters seem to care much at all about what is important (a 15 year old boy is missing for crying out loud) but they care a great deal about it's important at all (appearances).

Uproarious? I'm confused by this description of this book.  It wasn't really funny at all.  I think that Greer's acidic dialogue was supposed to be funny, but I mostly found her flippant response to everyone including her daughter irritating.  I think maybe that was the most confusing part of all for me about this book - was it supposed to be funny? Thought-provoking? A statement about rich people and their carelessness? I couldn't tell and the style was hard to digest.  Kelly over describes much in this novel which sometimes made me lose the plot.  For example Riddle describes a failed conversation with her mom in this way: "She turned her back on me and took up with Gin in her brittle way - the uninflected chilliness, the precision of evisceration, her aloof sociability.  she was a late frost and I could feel my toes curling." It's pretty and all, but it doesn't fit with the choppy story line.

I did enjoy the parts about long kept secrets.  In one of the few honest conversations that Riddle has with her mother after many of the truths start spilling out, Greer tells her "Sometimes I think we only imagine ourselves.  The rest we conduct in secret.  It's hard sometimes, coming face-to-face with your truer nature - the part you conceal even from yourself."

It's that truer nature that eluded me in this book.  I wasn't sure what it wanted to be or what I was supposed to get out of reading it, and mostly it just made me feel empty and glad when I got to the end.

I'll still be searching for that perfect summer read, so if you have suggestions, let me know (unless it's an Oprah suggestion).

'The Invention of Wings': The story of sisters, mothers and freedom

I admit it.
I like Oprah.

I didn't know that was such an odd thing until I started reading Oprah's latest Oprah 2.0 book selection 'The Invention of Wings' by Sue Monk Kidd, but apparently over the years of her television metamorphosis from queen of talk to queen of everything she garnered some vehement critics.  My very wonderful, yoga friend Sarah loves to read, but after I told her I was reading Oprah's latest book selection, her face scrunched tight and she said, "I purposely try to avoid anything she reads or suggests.  Oprah bugs me."

Huh?
I guess I missed that chapter in pop culture.  I do know that when I moved back to the United States after living in London for a year, I cried the first time I watched Oprah.  I missed her show that much.  I can't say I am still a devotee or that I've paid much attention to what's she's been up to since her talk show ended years ago, but I am not adverse to her reading material even if the bulk of it tends to be a bit depressing.

I can see why Oprah selected Sue Monk Kidd's third novel which follows the dual narrative of Sarah Grimke and her handmaid, Handful (a.k.a. Hetty).  The story opens in the early 1800s on Sarah's eleventh birthday when her mother surprises her with her very own slave (Handful, age 10) as her main gift.  Sarah who already shows tendencies of going against the grain of the southern way of life refuses to except a person as a gift even if her present has a nice blue bow tied around her neck.

The beginning of the story captured me as it intertwined the lives of two worlds - the world of the privileged white plantation owner's disobedient and headstrong daughter and the world of the oppressed and abused slaves who lived to escape punishment and retribution from their owners.  Handful and Sarah's friendship grows and Sarah even teaches Handful to read, even though to do so is against the law.  Sarah suffers her own abuse from her family in the form of a stifling of her spiritedness.  She developed a stammer when she was only four years old after seeing one of their slaves whipped, but she also develops something even more dangerous and horrible - an incurable desire to be a lawyer which was unheard of for women in the early 1800s.  Even worse still, she has compassion for her handmaid and treats her as equal as she can.

The narrative also shares Handful's devotion to her deviant, seamstress mother, Charlotte who refuses to be enslaved even though she is a slave.  She tells Handful that their owners may have their bodies, but they can never enslave their minds.  Charlotte plays a sharp contrast to Sarah's mother who the slaves call Missus, a sharp speaking, angry, merciless woman who believes in punishment and tradition.

The story spans decades and follows Sarah's growth into one of the most notorious abolitionists and pioneers of the women's rights.  As Sarah moves North, Handful's life becomes tangled in proposed slave revolts, a bout at the deplorable work house (which is where slaves were punished severely for disobedience), and a longing for her mother who disappears one day.

I loved parts of this book, and other parts felt a bit thin and underdeveloped.  I appreciated the entire story and it's significance after reading the Author's Note and discovering that Sarah Grimke and her sister Angelina were indeed real women who rallied for anti-slavery much to the dismay of men and especially Southerners.  They were ahead of their time for the suffragist movement, but they influenced other great women who fought for the cause.  Sue Monk Kidd wove together pieces of history and developed the storyline of Handful based on a document that showed the Sarah did indeed receive a handmaid as a gift for her mother, but records indicated the handmaid died of an illness in her teenage years.

By bringing history to life and giving Handful the wings she needed to expand the storyline of hope and freedom, Kidd shows the same writing prowess she displayed in 'The Secret Life of Bees.' 'The Invention of Wings' isn't merely about coming of age as 'The Secret Life of Bees,' but it shows how an entire country gained the courage to rally for human rights of all because of the courage of a few brave souls who knew change was needed even if it wasn't the popular thing to do.  These revolutionaries stood up for those who were unable to stand up for themselves, and the entire country benefited from the bravery of people like the Grimke sisters.

This book is another important reminder of our past as a country.  We have come so far, but we still have work to do for equality.  As much as Oprah might bug some people, I am glad she continually challenges society to take a step back, contemplate our history and consider where are we now. As Sue Monk Kidd says in her Author’s Note at the end of the book, “History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.” That’s why we read these sad stories that Oprah picks and why she continually chooses them for her audiences.