Glennon Doyle’s unique gift of relating the moments of her life in an upbeat remarkable way keeps you turning the pages till the very end like an encouraging sermon on a Sunday morning. “If you are uncomfortable – in deep pain, angry, yearning, confused-you don’t have a problem, you have a life. Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right. You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was ever supposed to be easy.” It’s hard but it’s so worth it.

Our book club picked this book as we were coming out of the pandemic for its optimistic tone.  We were weary of the bad news, the politics and the negative vibe streaming off everything.  Unfortunately, we still zoomed our meeting, which is never the same as being in person.

Some of the members didn’t like the book.  They felt it was too preachy.  Others didn’t like the underlying politics.  But most of us thoroughly enjoyed the book.

As we are all empty nesters now, we have past the stage of parenting children and all their activities.  We are out of the community spotlight – so to speak.  It’s a different stage and we’d love to see what Doyle writes when she’s at our age. We’ve been there and done that. Not all of us have come to the same understandings through our experiences but we are trying to see issues from different points of view. Age is good that way.

During our discussion, some of us talked about the pain/issues we were presently undergoing, and some told stories of past issues.  When you feel comfortable to share its a great way to unload some of that heavy baggage and we all have baggage. After all, book club is always good for sharing and cleansing and some books really inspire good communication. This one did.

Rating: 8.0