Love Warrior

   This book was waiting for me at the library and I didn't recognize the title.  Then I saw the stamp saying that it is a 2016 selection for Oprah's book club.  I put many books on hold and forget why.  This book was on hold for a long time!
   I immediately disliked the cover and considered passing up on it.  Covers really affect me and the red, black and white colours with the 'warrior' title did not interest me. 
   However, I trust Oprah to choose good books and I have read many of her choices.

On to the book:
Glennon Doyle Melton, the author of this memoir, is an enigma to me.  From the age of ten she struggled with body issues and identity.  She became anorexic, alcoholic, and overly sexual.
Why?
Her childhood seemed magical.  But at such an early age, she had severe struggles.
Her life was more difficult than I can imagine and I expected that something terrible must have happened to her as a child.  I am left with this question: Why do some people have such a difficult life?

 Here is Glennon's explanation:
"For twenty years, I was lost to bulimia and alcoholism and bad love and drugs.  I suffered.  My family suffered.  I had a relatively magical childhood, which added an extra layer of guilt to my pain and confusion.  Glennon-why are you all jacked up when you have no excuse to be jacked up?
My best guess is that I was born with an extra dose of sensitivity to love and pain.  I didn't want to walk through the battlefield of life naked.  So when I was ten years old, I made up my own little world called addiction and I hid there for decades. I felt safe.  No one could touch me."


  This book certainly was very detailed and I can never understand how someone writes every detail of their personal life for all to see, and then goes to the supermarket or sits in church.
  Glennon finally found her way out of the pain through extensive counselling, yoga, breathing workshops, and God.  She researched the Biblical word 'helpmate' and rather than believing that women are made to be helpers, she decided that they are warriors, thus the cover and title.
  Some readers found the book self-indulgent.  Others just felt it was terribly raw.