Category: Memoir

Glennon Doyle is a writer, activist, and speaker. She came to public attention through her first memoir about recovery from bulimia and alcoholism. She has described herself as a professional truth teller. Her specific gift is the ability to name experiences precisely and without euphemism. Most people feel these experiences but do not say them. That gift is the primary value of this book.

The book moves between intimate personal narrative and direct address to the reader. It is Doyle own story. It is also a diagnostic framework for a specific kind of suffering. It addresses people who have become expert at being what others need. They lose access to what they themselves need, feel, or want. The audience skewed heavily female. The underlying dynamic it describes is not gender specific.

The book origin story demonstrates its thesis. Doyle was in a stable marriage with three children. She fell in love unexpectedly and undeniably with soccer player Abby Wambach. The book accounts for what she did with that knowledge. It traces the process of choosing the true thing over the approved thing. It details the specific cost and the specific liberation that followed