and life you love.

Now, if you’ve ever hit rock bottom in your relationships or in your life and wondered

if you had the strength to come back and make it to the other side, this episode is for

you.

Glennon Doyle Melton is a New York Times bestselling author, activist, and creator of the wildly

popular online community, Momastery.

She’s also the founder of Together Rising, a nonprofit that has raised over 4 million

dollars for women and children in crisis.

In her highly anticipated memoir, Love Warrior, Glennon tells the story of her journey of

self discovery after the implosion of her marriage.

Glennon.

Marie.

Oh my God, I’m so excited.

I’m so happy you’re here.

So first of all, congratulations.

You guys, Love Warrior, this is amazing.

I could not put your book down.

I was so excited every single night to come home and read it.

And I had it on my bedside table.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

So let’s start with your story and this concept of brutifal, which I know is core

to your brand.

What does that mean?

Brutifal, ok.

So, well, I guess the first time I figured brutifal out was when I was 10 years old.

So I just kind of was a super sensitive kid and I remember looking out at life and being

like, “Woah, this is like… yikes, like, this is hard and scary and there’s too much

pain here,” and so I decided to drop out of life into addiction, so I became bulimic

when I was 10 years old.

And I think addiction is really just like a hiding place.

Right?

Where sensitive people go to hide from love and pain.

Right?

Or from beauty and the brutality of being human.

So I hid there for a long time and as addictions do, bulimia morphed into alcoholism which

morphed into all the other things.

And it wasn’t until I was 25 years old and sitting on a cold bathroom floor staring at

a positive pregnancy test just shaking from terror and withdrawal and I was so unfit to

be a mother.

You know?

I’d been lost to addiction for 15 years at that point and I just remember thinking

there could not be a worse candidate for motherhood than me on the floor shaking.

And still something about that invitation just…

I’m sorry, about that pregnancy test just read as an invitation to come back to life.

And I remember looking at the… at the little positive sign and thinking, “Oh, I get it.

Like, if I want something this beautiful, if I want to be a mother, then I also have

to take all the brutal stuff.”

Like, if I’m gonna claim the beautiful parts of life then that means I have to show up.

Right?

Like, vulnerable.

I have to show up like without the booze, without the drugs, without all of the crutches

I’ve used.

If I want to be a mother I have to just show up sober as me and that means I’m gonna

have to take all the pain too.

Right, so that’s when I figured out that you can’t have one or the other.

Like, you can’t have the beautiful parts of life and not have the brutal parts of life.

You know, you can’t do what we try to do, which is selectively numb.

Right?

I’ll just numb the pain away, I’ll just make the valleys not so bad.

And you get none of the mountaintops.

Right?

So that’s when I figured life is not either/or.

You know, like, a fully human life is and both.

It’s so brutally hard and it’s also so freaking beautiful.

And the beautiful is just a little teeny bit more powerful than the brutal.

Right?

And that little teeny bit just makes it all worth it.

So one of the main messages in your book is the power of rock bottoms in our lives.

What was the big rock bottom for you that really catapulted the idea to want to write

this book?

Rock bottom is just a second home to me, Marie.

So… so I had my first rock bottom, which was the bathroom floor pregnancy test eviction

from my life as a drunken and bulimic.

Right?

That’s what a rock bottom is to me, it’s like an eviction from your life.

You know, it’s whatever happens that… there’s a before and after.

You know?

So whether it’s like it’s a diagnosis or it’s an announcement that you… of…

in a marriage.

It’s whatever it is that divides your life into before and after.

So… so the first one was the bathroom floor and the pregnancy test and then the second

one after that first one I got married and had the baby and had 2 more babies and became

this, like… a grown up vertical person that I was just amazed.

Like, an upstanding citizen.

I had got a library card.

Amazing.

Yeah, which was still so terrifying when I think about it.

So I was just kind of going along with life and I started…

I became a writer and I was kind of out there.

I was like… like kind of a relationships expert.

Well, that’s what Amazon said.

So if Amazon says it it’s true, right?

It’s true.

Oh my…

I didn't know that.

So that was really the kind of, the framing of your blog in the beginning.

Right.

Which I never said.

Like, I’ve never said…

I always said I don't know what the hell I’m doing.

Right?

But that’s what Amazon said.

So… but that made it more awkward when, and terrifying when, I was in therapy with

Craig I guess about 10 years into our marriage and Craig revealed to me, I was clueless about

this, but he revealed to me that he had been unfaithful to me our entire marriage.

So in less of a relationship way and more of like a serial one night stand kind of way.

So anyway, that is… that was a big, huge rock bottom for me because it was the most

painful day of my life, I think.

Which is saying a lot.

Because the first time… because I felt evicted from my life again, but the first time when

I was evicted from my life I was a disaster.

Right?

Like, I was a drunk and I was a bulimic and I was on drugs.

So even I was like, “Good call,” like, solid eviction.

You know, like, my life sucks.

So I’ll just take this invitation to become something else.

A good person.

Right, right, right.

Right.

But this second time I was like I’m everything I’ve ever wanted to be now.

Right?

Like I’m sober and I’m sane-ish and I’m happy-ish and I’m a mom and I’m a friend

and I’m a career woman and now?

And I’m a relationships expert.

So how the hell am I going to be that anymore?

Like, I didn't even know my own relationship, you know?

So I just felt like… and I think it’s great, I think because women, we define ourselves

so much by our roles.

Yes.

Right?

So we don't even know who we are at a soul level, we just… we grew up by becoming things.

Right?

I got sober and I’m like, “Oh, I just become stuff.”

Like, I’ve got to become a mom and become a… so when all that stuff gets taken away

from you and you don't know who you are on a soul level, I was paralyzed.

Like, I didn't…

I did not know what to do with myself in the morning.

Like, I didn't know.

If I’m not a mom, if I’m not… you know, my kids fell apart, all of it.

And this was like 2 weeks before my first book came out, so then I had to hit the road

and…

Put the smile on.

Right.

Was that extraordinarily difficult?

Like, that internal struggle of knowing that you’d produced this one piece of work and

you wanted to see it out in the world and feeling inside like everything has just crumbled.

Yeah.

Yes, but here’s the good news, when you’ve been to rock bottom before you also know the

power of it.

Ok?

So the thing about rock bottom is… and pain and being evicted from your life, is that

you live in the emotional spot of it and the emotional spot of it tells you, well, everything’s

over and this is the darkest time in my life and nothing is ever going to be good again.

But then you have this wise side of yourself that’s been there before and knows that

rock bottom, what it really is is a crisis.

Ok?

So we all want to avoid crisis, but what crisis literally means is to sift.

Ok, so like a child who goes to the beach and lifts up the sand and watches all the

sand fall away hoping that there’s treasure left over.

Yeah.

So that's what crisis does.

It sweeps into our life and it forces us to hold up our life and let everything fall away

that we thought we needed so that we can find out what’s left over.

Right?

Like, what can never be… and that’s why… that’s why people who have been to rock

bottom are the people who are wise and kind and brave and able to laugh at the days to

come because these are the people who know that the way this life is designed is that

the only things you need are the very things that can never be taken from you.