BOOK SUMMARY 392
Love Warrior
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Summary written by: Brittnei Gaudio
"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."
- Love Warrior, page 111
It’s easy to get wrapped
up in the beautifully raw and emotional memoir Glennon Doyle Melton shares with
her readers, but Love Warrior is so much more. It is an
invitation for all of us to reassess how we handle life’s tragic moments, how
we capture opportunities for deeper self-discovery and how we leverage our
support networks to rise up and onwards. Melton’s compelling ability to be
unapologetically candid makes her story all the more actionable, by proxy she
encourages her readers to feel deeply, project real beauty and be our truest
selves. “Love, Pain, Life: I am not afraid. I was born to do this.”
The
Golden Egg
Journey
of a Warrior
"I see your pain.
It’s real. I feel it too. We can handle it baby. We can do hard things. Because
we are Warriors."- Love Warrior, page 205
Life is meant to be felt.
The emotional spectrum is wide and unhindered, and the trajectory of our story
is influenced by ever changing factors for which we have varying levels of
control. Melton’s story moves from body image challenges, to dependency
challenges, to martial strife and sometimes back again, illustrating that there
are no quick fixes, no promised happy endings, and no human who goes unaffected
by the “tough stuff”. Embracing the Journey of a Warrior means building
resiliency, riding the wave and loving yourself and those most important to you
in a forgiving and unwavering way.
It is tempting to
downplay our pain in favor of a more positive outward facing story or in an
attempt to shield the more innocent from pain that is to come, but a Warrior
would wear the pain, manage the narrative and embrace their ever-changing story
of life long fulfillment.
Gem #1
What
You Know
"I force myself to
translate the unanswerable into an answerable."- Love Warrior, page 140
When crisis or tragedy
strikes, often the most challenging part is that it was unanticipated. Being in
the know and managing the narrative can be a valuable piece of control amongst
the chaos. Melton’s coping skills were inspired by vulnerability and provide
meaningful perspective for her readers. Her mantra was shared as follows:
1.
What you don’t know you’re not suppose to know
yet.
2.
More will be revealed.
3.
Crisis comes from the word meaning to sift.
Let it all fall away and you’ll be left with what matters.
4.
What matters most cannot be taken away.
5.
Just do the next right thing one thing at a
time. That’ll take you all the way home.
Melton builds resilience
slowly but surely, not by taking it one day at a time but rather each tiny step
piece by piece, making it manageable and allowing her to build control over her
own trajectory. Readers can borrow this shared mantra when faced with challenge
and find comfort in the answerable amongst all the unanswerable that crisis may
bring.
Gem #2
Beauty
"Beautiful women
glow. When you are with a beautiful woman you might not notice her hair or skin
or body or clothes, because you’ll be distracted by the way she makes you feel.
She will be so full of beauty that you will see some of it overflow onto you…
because beautiful, wise women know the quickest way to fill up with beauty is
to soak in another human being… The most beautiful women take their time with
other people. They are filling up."- Love Warrior, page 255
Melton shares her
struggles with body image and her identity as a woman throughout the memoir.
She reflects specifically on the challenges of raising empowered little girls
when she herself often struggles with empowerment. She identifies the root of
her issue as the transition from adolescent to adulthood and the challenges of
a changing body and shifting societal expectations. Throughout the memoir it is
as if her power is building, through crisis she discovers a strong identity and
begins to hold fiercely to her new definition of what it means to be a woman
and a Warrior.
While redefining beauty
for herself, to be less dependent on appearance and how others define you, she
is faced with an opportunity to model this for her daughters. When she finds
them discussing the merits of the word ‘sexy’ it opens a larger conversation
over definitions and expectations. Melton explains, “Pretty is another thing
that can be sold. What and who is pretty is also something those people in
boardrooms decide. It’s always changing. So if what you want to be is pretty,
you’ll have to keep changing… What I want to be, girls, is beautiful… Beautiful
is what you are made of.” The challenge of continued self-discovery is
heightened when we are also faced with the lofty responsibility of parenting
and/or role modeling, but Melton’s authenticity and her openness to continual
learning and reflection serves as inspiration for her little women, and her
readers. After all, empowered women empower women.
There are no promised
rainbows at the end of this story. The storm is shared in full and the
vulnerability is felt but at the end of it all, this memoir is a story of
resiliency, strength and beauty. It may not all be outwardly actionable, but it
encourages readers to re-examine how they manage crisis, the narrative they
take from each new challenge, and explores new relationships with control and
beauty.
Embrace the Journey of a
Warrior and explore the power of vulnerability.
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