OMG Digital Magazine OMG Issue 260 25th May 2017 | Página 6

OMG Digital Magazine | 260 | Thursday 25th May 2017 • PAGE 6
SoulFood
Fourteen years ago I sat on a cold, tile bathroom floor
and stared at a positive pregnancy test. My hands
trembled. Even then I knew the pregnancy test was
an eviction notice from the only life I’d ever known—a
life of vomiting after every meal and blacking out on
nightly booze binges. It was a life I despised, but feared
giving up.
My first thought was: I can’t become a mother. I am
broken and alone. I cannot mother another person, all I
do is hurt people.
But then these thoughts followed: What if this eviction
is an invitation? To shed my identity as a drunk and
bulimic? To try on another role: mother? For the first
time, I wanted something more than I wanted to be
numb. I decided to accept the invite to become sober,
and then a mother.
In the years that followed, I kept becoming things. I
became a wife and a mother to two more babies and
a church lady and a writer and an activist. That’s how
I grew up. I kept becoming and becoming until I was
certain that the roles I’d put on were all anyone could
see of me. I kept becoming until I felt covered, hidden,
safe.
Eleven years after that bathroom floor moment, I
had three kids, a solid marriage and a writing career
so promising that my first book about relationships
became a best-seller. Then my husband revealed that
he’d been unfaithful throughout our marriage. As it
turned out, he’d also been hiding behind his role as a
devoted husband.
When I received that news in a therapist’s office, I felt
like a fraud and a fool. I was being evicted from my life
once again. Everything I’d become fell away; I would
no longer be a wife, or the happy mother of carefree
children, or a relationship expert or even an activist.
My activism felt especially ridiculous: Who has any
business trying to heal the world when she can’t even
heal herself? This second eviction felt more brutal than
WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN
IT FEELS LIKE YOUR LIFE IS
FALLING APART
The author of Love Warrior—the latest selection for Oprah’s
Book Club—explains why the people who love us most
sometimes don’t see our real selves.
BY GLENNON DOYLE MELTON
the first because, this time, I loved my identities. Unlike
drunk and bulimic—wife, mother and career woman
felt healthy and beautiful, worthy of pride. I didn’t want
to lose these titles. But even then I knew that life will
never strip us of an identity unless there is a truer one
underneath.
So I surrendered to my own unbecoming.
Many of us spend the first part of our adult lives
becoming—stepping into the roles we take on so that
they come to define our lives. But I’ve learned that we
don’t really grow up until we unbecome. I realize now
that I couldn’t know who I really was until everything I’d
built was taken from me—until I was stripped bare and
forced to figure out who I was underneath it all. I felt like
one of those Russian nesting dolls. Life was trying to get
to the bottom of me.
Ask a woman who she is and she’ll tell you who she
loves, who she serves and what she does. I am a mother,
a wife, a sister, a friend, a career woman. The fact that
we define ourselves by our roles can be an admirable
thing—it’s how we build a life and make a living. But
it’s also precarious. Roles change. Sometimes overnight.
If a woman defines herself as a wife, what happens if
her spouse leaves? If a woman defines herself as a
mother, what happens when the kids go to college?
If I am a career woman, what happens if the company
folds? Placing our identity inside of ever-changing roles
means that who we are can be taken from us. That is
why it’s so easy for women to live in fear instead of at
peace. That is why we cling to our people too tightly,
close our eyes to things we need to look at hard, refuse
to ask questions that need to be asked. We build sand
castles and then try to live inside of them, fearing the
inevitable tide.
Several weeks after receiving the infidelity news, I
packed a bag, left my three children and husband
behind, and drove to a waterfront hotel on the Gulf of
Mexico. I promised myself that I wouldn’t leave until I
discovered one thing I loved—one thing that spoke to
my soul, one thing about me that had nothing to do
with the people I loved or the work that I did. I checked
into my room and fell asleep. I left the sliding glass
doors open and as dawn broke, the sound of the Gulf
waves gently hitting the shore woke me. This sound
spoke directly to my soul—and what I heard was: This.
You need this. This is something you love. There it was.
The ocean. One thing that belonged to me. I realized
that the only way I would survive that second eviction
from my life would be to learn to feed my soul. I would
have to become stronger by getting to know myself
better. I would need to find more things I love.
I want every woman on earth to not only be able to
answer: Who do I love? but also What do I love? What
feeds my soul? What is beauty to me and when do I take
the time to fill up with it? Who is the woman underneath
all these roles? What does she need? I want every
woman to answer those questions now, before the tide
comes. Building sand castles is beautiful. We just can’t
live inside of them. Because the tide rises. That’s what
the tide does.
When it rises for you, remember—you are not the sand
castle. You are the builder. I am not, at the end of the
day, a mother, a wife, a writer, an activist, a friend. I am
a Child of God. That’s who I was when I came into this
world and who I’ll be when I leave it. No one can take
that from me.
People always used to ask me about my husband:
Aren’t you afraid he’ll cheat again? I wasn’t afraid, but
not because I knew what he’d do—or with whom. It was
because I’d fin ally learned that if and when the tide rises
and washes over this new sand castle I’m building, I will
not be swept away. I don’t live there the way I did in
the previous castle. I am the builder this time. And I can
build again and again and again, forever.