Melissa Etheridge Describes New Memoir as an ‘Ode to Love’

Melissa Etheridge, who has spent the last three decades boldly revealing her life in her songs and in the press, will continue telling her life story this summer in Talking to My Angels, a new memoir due out Sept. 5. The book will pick up where her 2001 memoir, The Truth Is …: My Life in Love and Music, left off.

The first part of Etheridge’s life, chronicled in The Truth Is, included the bestselling albums Yes I Am and Your Little Secret, as well as her coming out as lesbian and intrigues surrounding the children that she and her then-partner, filmmaker Julie Cypher, had. (The couple revealed to Rolling Stone in 2000 that the biological father of both daughter Bailey and son Beckett was David Crosby.)

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Since then, Etheridge began a relationship with actress Tammy Lynn Michaels, Michaels gave birth to fraternal twins via an anonymous sperm donor, and Etheridge has survived breast cancer. She and Michaels separated, battled for the custody of their children, and Etheridge found love again, marrying actress Linda Wallem. She’s also recorded 11 albums since the publication of The Truth Is and won an Oscar for “I Need to Wake Up,” featured in An Inconvenient Truth. In 2020, tragedy struck when Etheridge revealed that her son Beckett had died at age 21 after a battle with opioid addiction.

“Ultimately, this book is an ode to love,” Etheridge said of Talking to My Angels in a statement. “It’s a testament to vanquishing fear and learning to embrace all of what life brings us, an unvarnished reflection on the many threads of my life.”

According to her publisher, in the book Etheridge discusses the sad events in her life and how they became “a catalyst for growth.” She released her most recent album, One Way Out, in 2021.

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