Fighting the Good Fight

What happened when Glennon Doyle Melton got knocked down by some devastating news? Instead of giving up, she rose up. That makes her a Love Warrior—and it’s why her new memoir is Oprah’s latest book club pick.

- Glennon Doyle Melton

BEING HUMAN, we are all alike in at least this respect: On any given day, we’re just trying to do the best we can. Too often we forget that and don’t forgive ourselves for our mistakes, or forgive others for their betrayals, large or small. And we think we’re alone in our pain. For months I’d been hearing from friends and colleagues about Glennon Doyle Melton— how she was a truth teller, someone who had helped countless people through her online community, Momastery, and in her work with Together Rising, the nonprofit she founded to serve people who need help getting through hard times. SuperSoulers like Elizabeth Gilbert, Brené Brown, and Rob Bell were using words like epic to describe her work. I was eager to find out what all the fuss was about, so I settled in with an advance copy of Love Warrior, Glennon’s second book. Immediately, I was struck by her candor. It was as if I’d been given access to a friend’s intimate journal.

Glennon hit rock bottom 14 years ago—or so she thought. She was so hung over, she couldn’t pick herself up off the bathroom floor. Suspecting alcohol wasn’t the only reason for her nausea, she took a pregnancy test. It was positive. Only a few months earlier, she’d had an abortion. She was still seeing the same guy, Craig, though they hadn’t thought of the relationship as serious. But that day, Glennon felt something shift inside her. “What happens next,” she writes of that moment, “does not feel like a decision, but a discovery.... I will have this baby.”