Carry On, Warrior: Share your Brutiful life like Glennon Doyle Melton

 

carry on meltonGlennon Doyle Melton shares her messy beautiful life in her book, “Carry On, Warrior.”

When she discovered she was pregnant, in her own words she was “a hopeless bulimic, alcoholic, drug addict who was about to become a mother.” She changed her life for her future child and became a warrior for love.

There are parts of the book that really inspired me and I want to share several of them with you. I hope you will choose to listen to Melton and “if, anywhere in your soul, you feel the desire to write, please write. Write as a gift to yourself and others. Everyone has a story to tell. Writing is not about creating tidy paragraphs that sound lovely or choosing the “right” words.” Consider sharing your story in my We Said Go Travel Writing Award about freedom.

Many times people tell me that they do not know how to write or they do not write well enough. When they share honestly, it is always good enough. As Melton says, we are all “broken and imperfectly perfect.” Take a risk and tell your truth. From Melton, “Life is equal parts brutal and beautiful. And/Both. Life is brutiful. Like stars in a dark sky. Sharing life’s brutiful is what makes us feel less alone and afraid.”

Personally, I have been working on learning to accept imperfection in myself, be patient with myself and forgive myself. My friends have been telling me that people are messy! Melton says: “My heart opened to the world’s beauty and brutality. I looked closely at humanity and all of its brokenness and decided to forgive it and myself. Since brokenness is the way of folks, the only way to live peacefully is to forgive everyone constantly, including yourself.” I want to take in her words and move forward with my life and my path in joy and in peace. I often wonder how much of my story to share and appreciate her willingness to be open. Melton says: “It’s just about noticing who you are and noticing life and sharing what you notice. When you write your truth, it is a love offering to the world because it helps us feel braver and less alone.”

glennon doyle meltonMore quotes from Melton’s book:

*It is not my job to fill myself. It’s just my job to notice my emptiness and find graceful ways to live as a broken, unfilled human—and maybe to help myself and others feel a teeny bit better.

*Here’s my hunch: nobody’s secure, and nobody feels like she completely belongs. Those insecurities are just job hazards of being human. But some people dance anyway, and those people have more fun. On my deathbed, I’m not going to wish I had danced like JLo; I’m just going to wish I had danced more.

*Now we know that in order for love to be real and true and good, you need to have had your heart shattered. We know now that a broken heart is not the end of the world, but a beginning.

*Forgiveness and grace are like oxygen: we can’t offer it to others unless we put our masks on first. We have to put our grace masks on and breathe in deep.

*Brave is a decision. It is a decision that compassion is more important than fear, than fitting in, than following the crowd.

*Sometimes we make the mistake of assuming that the things we’re good at are common to everyone. We don’t recognize that our gifts are unique and therefore worth offering.

*I think one of the keys to happiness is accepting that I am never going to be perfectly happy. Life is uncomfortable.

*There has never been anything wrong with you—not one day in your life. You are exactly who you were meant to be, right now, as you are. You are not to be ashamed. You punish yourself, but you have no reason to be punished.

*Three simple rules: Show Up, Be Brave, and Be Kind.

*All of us have experienced great loss and great joy. All of us want to feel peace and joy and to have a sense that we belong somewhere.

*People who have decided to quit making marriage and parenting and friendship and life harder by pretending they aren’t hard. People who just show up, as they are—messy and beautiful—for themselves and for each other.

*We love each other—not because we are all the same, but because we are all so different. We don’t want to change each other—we just want to take a deep breath, stop acting, and enjoy each other. The real each other.

Other inspirational quotes shared in Melton’s book:

*Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it. —Robert Fulghum

*And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. —Anais Nin

*As Maya Angelou says. “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”

*Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. —Howard Thurman

*From Easter service: Even the bush that looks withered and brittle and lifeless can bloom, if given enough time, enough tending, enough love. A new season will come. There is always hope. What looks like the end might just be the beginning.

Lisa Ellen Niver

Lisa Niver is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 102 countries on six continents. This University of Pennsylvania graduate sailed across the seas for seven years with Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean, and Renaissance Cruises and spent three years backpacking across Asia. Discover her articles in publications from AARP: The Magazine and AAA Explorer to WIRED and Wharton Magazine, as well as her site WeSaidGoTravel. On her award nominated global podcast, Make Your Own Map, Niver has interviewed Deepak Chopra, Olympic medalists, and numerous bestselling authors, and as a journalist has been invited to both the Oscars and the United Nations. For her print and digital stories as well as her television segments, she has been awarded three Southern California Journalism Awards and two National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards and been a finalist twenty-two times. Named a #3 travel influencer for 2023, Niver talks travel on broadcast television at KTLA TV Los Angeles, her YouTube channel with over 2 million views, and in her memoir, Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty.

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