Oprah's Book Club: "Love Warrior"

Only on “CBS This Morning,” Oprah Winfrey revealed the next selection for her book club: “Love Warrior” by bestselling author Glennon Doyle Melton.

In the memoir, the recovering alcoholic and bulimic recounts her healing journey after discovering her husband’s infidelity. 

“I’m a person who hid from pain for the first half of my life. I was an addict, and that’s what we do. We hide from love and pain because it seems so risky,” Melton said Tuesday on “CBS This Morning. “And so what I’m doing now, what the warrior does, is instead of hiding from pain, she just kind of gets up in the morning and rushes straight towards it.” 

Melton believes people in the power of vulnerability.

“We can be shiny and perfect and admired, or we can be real and honest and vulnerable and loved. But we actually do have to choose. And I just keep choosing this real and vulnerable and honest place, not because you don’t get hurt there – because I do – but because this is the pain that grows us,” Melton said. “There’s pain in both places, and nothing hurts as much as not being known.”

She also said being at the rock bottom is “the best place on earth.” 

“It’s just the beginning of everything. Because life just wants to hold us down until we say… ‘Help.’ And then all of the angels rush to our side,” Melton said. 

Download an excerpt of “Love Warrior” and a reading guide at the bottom of this page. 

About this book

Ten years into her marriage, Glennon Doyle Melton learns a devastating truth that leads her to the brink of divorce. But instead of bolting from the pain or drowning in her grief, she chooses to listen to the still, small voice inside her that urges her to find the gift in this crisis. Melton decides to welcome the pain, to see it through and discover what it has to teach her. 

She is not sure she wants to save her marriage, but she is determined to save herself-a self long ago saddled with beliefs about beauty, sexuality, and a woman’s role in the world. To move forward, she must sit with the feelings of discomfort-a hot loneliness she has been trying to numb all her life. She must develop a new understanding of intimacy, a new relationship with grace, and a new perspective on forgiveness, family, and what it means to be in love. 

On this journey, Melton reconsiders far more than her marriage and discovers what it means to be true to oneself, to claim her true identity as a Love Warrior.

Questions

Part One 

Initially, Melton assumes her marriage began with her wedding. In what ways do we expect weddings to function as beginnings? When do you think a marriage begins? 

By the time she graduates high school, Melton has come to see that there are hidden rules about how to matter as a girl (p. 30 & p.187). Melton later understands how she’s been hurt by the messages our culture sends about what success should look and feel like for a woman. What are those messages? Where do they come from? What “hidden rules” did you follow, or feel pressured to follow, as a child or a teenager? How about now? How has following those rules affected your life? 

When Melton runs out of places to go, she drives toward God (p.52). How does her experience with Mary compare to her conversation with the priest? Why do you think she feels safe in the presence of Mary? How could the priest have been more helpful or supportive? 

At Melton’s first twelve-step meeting, she is relieved to notice that “there are no representatives in this circle,” just “folks who are ready to quit pretending” (p.67). Discuss a time you felt like you had to show up as your representative instead of your true self. How would it have felt to stop pretending? 

After Melton accepts her pregnancy as an invitation to come back to life and Craig proposes, she decides she will be a new person. Have you ever wanted to put your old self into a box and tuck it away? Do you believe it’s possible to be a new person?

For Part Two, Three and suggestions for ways to enhance your book club, download the reader’s guide: 

Read an excerpt of Melton’s book here: 

Check out last month’s Oprah’s Book Club, “The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead.