Warriors

I’m reading “Love Warrior” by Glennon Doyle right now, and I’m fascinated.

I know her story—where it started, and where it leads.

Which beliefs and ideas she wrote about back then still hold true for her today, and which ones she’s learned were never really hers to hold.

I’ve read Untamed, too, so I know the aftermath. I’ve done the Untamed workbook, too, trying to unravel some of her unravelings for myself.

I also listen to Glennon and Sister and Abby on their podcast every Tuesday and Thursday, like it’s my own Pod Squad religion.

So before I even started reading Love Warrior, the chronological facts of her marriage breaking apart, and her finding herself in a strange but beautiful new life, were already part of the osmosis-powered Wikipedia of my brain. But so much of Glennon’s journey in this particular book is new to me in its intimate detail. Its candor. Its messiness. Its soul. In some ways, it’s also not new at all, though. It’s just more vivid. Kind of like I’d read the Cliffs Notes version years ago, or seen the B-list movie adaptation. Only now, in reading the actual book, am I getting to witness all the dazzling and heartbreaking colors in between.

And damn, I wish I’d borne witness to all those colors sooner.

To be honest, I was afraid to.

I was so wholly overwhelmed and inspired by the personal uprising Glennon shared in Untamed that I was afraid to know the full truth behind her painful journey to get there. I only wanted to move passionately forward with her to new discoveries, new explorations, new understandings of herself and the world around her—not tiptoe backwards into a dark, archeological dig to reconstruct the broken remnants of the past.

Of course, it wasn’t that I was afraid of understanding the complex pieces of her past, exactly. I was afraid of understanding mine.

I want to know where all of the light and dark in me comes from. But also, I don’t.

I want to know why I am more connected to my mind than my body. But also, that’s hard.

I want to know what to do next. But also, that’s impossible.

She didn’t know. I don’t know. No one knows.

We’re all just warriors, in the most Pema Chodron sense of the word:

Things falling apart is a kind of testing, and also a kind of healing.

I am always trying so hard to hold things together. Maybe I just need to be ok with letting them fall apart for a little while.