Miracle Week!

Apr 302012
 

 

 

This week shall heretofore be named: Miracle Week.

The theme of the incoming emails in my inbox this past month has been: G : I need a miracle. There are marriages crumbling, children suffering, homes foreclosing, parents dying, addicts spiraling, hearts breaking.

It’s bad. It can get really, really bad out there. Life is hard- NOT because you aren’t doing it right, just because it’s HARD. Whenever I write that, people say “No- that’s so negative- it’s all about perspective. Life is beautiful.” And that always makes me wonder for a bit. I wonder if they’re right, that maybe life isn’t hard, that maybe I’m just experiencing it too hard. But I always come to the conclusion that – Nope, I’m right. Life’s hard. Not just hard, downright impossible, BRUTAL sometimes. And they’re right, it’s beautiful, too. No denying that. And/Both.

So at Momastery, many of us have accepted the truth that life is BRUTIFUL.

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL was a GREAT movie and a nice bumper sticker, but it doesn’t ring COMPLETEY TRUE to me. Sort of like the “Life is Good” shirts. I mean, I like those shirts. Love them, actually. But I won’t wear mine lately, just in case I run into my friend Anna, who just lost her precious and only son Jack in a freak drowning accident near her backyard. Life is not always good and it is not always beautiful. Life is just NOT OKAY sometimes. But it sure is knock-you-out-gorgeous sometimes, too.

Life is Brutiful. And/Both. That’s the thing. In every moment, things are both awful and good. Our children are healthy, but our friend’s children are not. We got a big promotion at work, but our beloved father is sick and not getting better. We feel blessed to stay home with our kids, but we really want to run away from home sometimes. We feel blessed to work and have good child care, but we miss our kids and feel guilty some days. We have beautiful homes, enough food on the table, and decent health care- but most folks don’t. We have healthy bodies, but we’re ten pound overweight. We have thin bodies, but they won’t work right.

And everybody’s always telling us to BE GRATEFUL BE GRATEFUL BE GRATEFUL and there is something to that. But for me, gratitude comes in moments, all encompassing, out of time moments- Kairos moments- and as a general knowing in the back of my head and heart. Gratitude is not always front and center for me.  And I don’t want to be bossed or guilt-ed into gratitude. Life is beautiful, and there is much for which to be grateful. But life is also tough. The big things are tough –  like I’m sick, and I’m not getting better, and the little things are tough, like – WHY IS THIS PLAYDOH SO FREAKING HARD TO OPEN? The big and the little stuff get me down. And that’s okay. No need to be grateful all the time. Really, it’s okay to notice the brutal. We can feel it, sit with it, and allow ourselves to acknowledge it. It won’t swallow us up forever, if we let ourselves go there, we’ll eventually see the beautiful again. We don’t have to feel grateful all the time, even if we’re living pretty sweet lives in comparison to the rest of the world. Pain is pain, and we all get the privilege of feeling it.

Anyway, my problem with all the pain my Monks share is that I can’t make miracles happen for them. This drives me an itty bit NUTS, as you might imagine. But I CAN use this blog to prove that miracles are possible. That they happen everyday. That there is reason to hope.

 

Kay- If you have a second today: Please reread this essay. Fourteen. It’s important. Don’t cheat and skip ahead.

 

Okay, are you back? Hello, Lovie.

 

So…. I’m at the zoo with the fam last week (one million mom points, done for the month) and I get an email. The email is from Mary Margaret. She has found my blog. She writes the following:

glennon.

 imagine my surprise to be reading the huffington post last week (while my husband was out of town and my son fast asleep in his crib) to stumble upon a blog written by someone named glennon. hmm, this reminded me of my old buddy, also named glennon, and caused me to do a quick google search of glennon doyle. i found your blog. i read your bio. i looked at your photos. i realized that this beautiful and accomplished mom had to be the same sad (but still amazingly fun), confused, teenager i came to adore as my roommate at dominion hospital so many years ago. your accomplishments, family and writing would be inspiring if i did not know you, but are even more so because our paths crossed back in the day. i am sure you get a million and one emails and mine is no different. you may not even remember me and that is fine, but i wanted to tell you that your candor, honesty and genuineness are clearly the real deal. thanks for giving me a new blog to check out and for reminding me that we have come a long way!

 love.

m

 

And I started crying right there in the reptile house.  I wrote back immediately and said, I’m here. I’m here. My heart stopped when I saw your name. Are you okay?

And she wrote back a few looooooong minutes later:

 

i am sorry i started an email conversation with you and then abandoned ship. i had to head out to a yoga class i was about to be late to. i live all the way across the country in washington state. just about 15 miles from seattle (where i used to live pre-child). i am healthy. i am married. my son is beautiful. XO.

 

 

She is healthy. She is married. Her son is beautiful. Please tell me- What are the chances? Sick little girls get better. Not all of them, but many do. In our eating disorder unit, 100 percent of us got healthy –  me and Mary Margaret. That end result was totally against the odds. No one in his right mind would have bet on it- certainly not our doctors- and so I call this a MIRACLE.

 

If you’d like to leave a miracle here, or on the facebook page sometime this week, take the time to do it, please. TRUST ME- there are people reading this who need reasons to hope. And they come here to find those reasons – to read stories to hold in their hearts as they walk tall through their bruitful days.

I LOVE YOU,  MONKS.

Back tomorrow- it’s Miracle Week, folks!!!!

 

LOVE,

G

 

 

 

 Posted by Glennon at 8:44 am  214 Responses »

Keep Playing

Apr 132012
 

 

 

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking.

Like many in our generation, most of my knowledge about that tragedy comes from the Leo and Kate movie. I’ve only seen it once because I don’t think I could take it again, but I truly loved it.

The movie Titanic was brutiful because it was about Who People Become When Their Ship is Sinking. Literally, in this case, but I think it worked beautifully symbolically, too. It was brutiful to watch how people acted in the face of death. How some gave up their lifeboats for strangers, how some kept their cool and others went mad, to note the last words a father chose for his little girl as he passed her to a stranger  –“be good.” How some bribed officials to take seats reserved for children, how some officials pocketed the bribes and how others didn’t. How some couples held tight to each other in bed, dying together, while the water rose all around them.

Do you remember how often Jack said Rose’s name?  Every time he spoke to her, he said her name. Sometimes twice in one sentence, “Rose, come this way, Rose.” I think that was one of the ways the film makers were able to convince us that Jack and Rose were so deeply in love after only hours. Because they said each other’s names so often, and with such tenderness and precision, as if it was the most important word they’d ever uttered. Fresh on their lips each time. Jack. Rose. I was thinking about that this morning.  People love to hear the sound of their own names. Names are a really precious part of a person. I suspect that the more someone uses our name, the more fond we become of her.

My favorite real life person from the Titanic was Wallace Hartley. I loved his character in the movie, and the way he handled himself in the face of chaos and horror is etched into my heart as Truth.

Hartley was a passionate and dedicated musician. It was his job to lead the small orchestra that serenaded the rich passengers on the Titanic. When Wallace Hartley understood that the ship was sinking, that there weren’t enough life boats, that most men- including himself and his quartet- would die, he simply instructed his musicians to keep playing.

Imagine it. Thousands of screaming, panicking people running, pushing, knocking each other down, water rising, surrounded by nothing but the pitch black of the ocean and the pitch black of the sky. He was a smart man.  Hartley knew it was over and so he said – we will keep playing. So each musician put on a life jacket, and they played. I imagine there must have been some people, maybe children, who thought – it must be okay, because someone is still playing music.

Continuing to do the work that one is called to do in the face of fear is so brutiful. To keep showing up, to keep making music when your ship is sinking. To add something – to offer something right up to the end. That’s the ultimate act of hope. We cannot control the fate of the ship, but we can control our response. Wallace Hartley did, and that’s why we still remember his name.

If your ship is sinking – Keep Playing.

Keep Playing.

 

Love,

G

 

 Posted by Glennon at 2:52 pm  119 Responses »

And Here We Are

Apr 112012
 

 

 

Here it is, precious Monkees.

 

Below is the press release that went out to the AP at noon today.

 

I have been too embarrassed to ask my agents or publishers or Sister exactly what the AP is. I know that it stands for Associated Press, and I gather that it must be some sort of group or wire or building or machine into which news comes and then goes.  Goes where exactly?? I do not know. Places. Fancy places where fancy announcements are made.

 

Momastery  is the most important place to break this news, though. To you, the folks who believed in this love experiment strongly enough to come back each day and to do the hard work of creating community. I am so grateful. I’m really, really grateful to you.

You should know that Scribner is the place we were meant to land. They are a wise, inspired, majestic bunch. Also, Scribner’s list of authors is breathtaking. I hate to drop names but only a little, so how about Jeannette Walls, Geneen Roth, Stephen King, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway to start? Heard of them? I’ve heard that Hemingway started as a mommy blogger, too.

 

This morning my friend Courtney said, “Thank you for helping me navigate this brutiful world. It’s much better living alongside a pack of Monkees than alone.”  THAT’S what this day is about.  Life together is better than life alone.

 

Thank you, Monkees. Thank you, World.  I am going to do my best to make us proud.

 

GLENNON DOYLE MELTON

WRITER AND FOUNDER OF

THE POPULAR ONLINE COMMUNITY FOR WOMEN

MOMASTERY.COM

TO BE PUBLISHED BY SCRIBNER

        

NEW YORK, April 11, 2012—Following a highly competitive, ten-publisher auction, Scribner has acquired the first book by Glennon Doyle Melton, the writer and personality behind the highly popular website Momastery.com, where thousands of women gather daily.  To be titled Carry On, Warrior, the book will feature new material and some of Melton’s most beloved essays on faith, family, marriage, motherhood, addiction, and recovery. The announcement was made today by Susan Moldow, Executive Vice President and Publisher of Scribner. Carry On, Warrior is scheduled for publication in spring 2013 with a simultaneous audio release by Simon & Schuster Audio.

“I’m ecstatic to have found in Scribner the perfect home for all present and future Monkees,” said Glennon Doyle Melton. “Our dream is that Carry On, Warrior will weave Momastery’s messages of hope, forgiveness, humor, and redemption into pages that will be cherished and passed on from one Life Warrior to another.”

“We are thrilled to be publishing Glennon Doyle Melton,” said Susan Moldow. “Her uniquely affecting, honest, and humorous voice is a standout among women writing about motherhood, marriage, and life today as evidenced by the significant community of women already following her online.”

Momastery.com attracted national attention when the author’s essay, “Don’t Carpe Diem,” was featured on the Huffington Post in January 2012, resulting in more than 500,000 shares. Fans have since flocked to the site where she chronicles episodes in her own life and the universal experience of women. Many fans of Momastery, referring to themselves as “Monkees,” have started meet-up groups nationwide to foster connection within their communities and have donated tens of thousands of dollars to families in need through Melton’s not-for-profit, Monkee See-Monkee Do.

Whitney Frick, Editor at Scribner, who will edit the book, acquired North American rights from literary agents Sally Wofford-Girand of Brick House Literary Agents and Trena Keating of Keating Literary who co-represented the project.

Scribner is an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., a part of CBS Corporation. Simon & Schuster is a global leader in the field of general interest publishing, dedicated to providing the best in fiction and nonfiction for consumers of all ages, across all printed, electronic, and audio formats.  Its divisions include Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing, Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, Simon & Schuster Audio, Simon & Schuster Digital, and international companies in Australia, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom.  For more information visit our website at www.simonandschuster.com.

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“Every time I’m out with my kids-this seems to happen: An older woman stops us, puts her hand over her heart and says something like, “Oh, enjoy every moment. This time goes by so fast.” Everywhere I go, someone is telling me to seize the moment, raise my awareness, behappy, enjoy every second, etc, etc, etc.  I know that this message is right and good. But, this CARPE DIEM message makes me paranoid and panicky. Especially during this phase of my life-while I’m raising young kids.  I can’t even carpe fifteen minutes in a row, so a whole diem is out of the question.”

-from the essay “Don’t Carpe Diem” by Glennon Doyle Melton

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 Posted by Glennon at 2:10 pm  235 Responses »
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