Author Glennon Doyle Melton Announces New Love Abby Wambach in Inspiring Blog Post
Glennon Doyle Melton is the founder of Momastery, author of multiple bestsellers, and founder of the nonprofit Together Rising. But perhaps what she is best known for is her unapologetic commitment to telling the truth, the driving principle behind all her writing and work.
And on Sunday, Doyle Melton decided to unapologetically open up yet again, detailing in a lengthy Facebook post that she is now in a relationship with two-time Olympic gold medalist soccer player Abby Wambach.
In August, Doyle Melton announced on her popular blog that she was separating from her husband, Craig. And in her new book, Love Warrior, she details having learned about her husband’s infidelities throughout their marriage, their initial separation, and the work they did together on their marriage in the wake of this revelation to stay together. Yet shortly before the memoir’s publication, the couple decided to once again take time apart. In interviews in September, Doyle Melton said that if she had not written Love Warrior, she would likely not be divorcing — not because the book exposed too much about her family’s private lives but because of the way it forced her to honestly reconcile with herself about what she needed from her marriage.
Which is what makes Doyle Melton’s post about her relationship with Wambach all the more beautiful and affirming.
In it, Doyle Melton writes that Wambach “loves me for all the things I’ve always wanted to be loved for” and shares that after detailing her struggles with understanding what it meant to be in love in her book, she understands it now. “I get it. I am in love.”
Doyle Melton also proactively addresses some of the questions she expects her readers and fans to have. “How is Craig?” she writes, answering this assumed question with, “He’s his beautiful, kind, brave self. He’s dating too — and we are both supportive of each other’s relationships. After I told Craig, the first thing he said was: Holy s***. Is this what all the Indigo Girls has been about? I said, WHOA. I DON’T KNOW … MAYBE?”
“How are the kids?” she continues, answering, “I’ll let them speak for themselves, or not. I can tell you that as usual, we’re walking through this together. They have the love and support of their dad, me, their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, their church, their teachers, their friends’ families — all of whom have fallen as hard for Abby as they have. They’re lucky kids, to be surrounded by so much love. … Our children are loved. So loved. And because of all of that love, they are brave.”
Lastly, Doyle Melton answers how is everyone supposed to feel about this revelation:
“My loves, here is the good news: You are allowed to think and feel WHATEVER YOU NEED OR WANT TO FEEL! Come close — because I need to explain this part well: It has been my job for so long as a leader in this community to care deeply about what you think and feel about me and the way I live my life. I have cared so much, for so long. It has been a great honor. And now it is my job as a leader not to concern myself too deeply about what you think and feel about me — about the way I live my life. That is what I want to model now, because that is what I want for YOU: I want you to grow so comfortable in your own being, your own skin, your own knowing — that you become more interested in your own joy and freedom and integrity than in what others think about you. That you remember that you only live once, that this is not a dress rehearsal and so you must BE who you are. I want you to refuse to betray yourself. Not just for you. For ALL OF US. Because what the world needs — in order to grow, in order to relax, in order to find peace, in order to become brave — is to watch one woman at a time live her truth without asking for permission or offering explanation.”
It is a moving, honest post completely true to Doyle Melton’s no-holds-barred style of emotional truth-telling. What is radical about her announcement of her new relationship, though, isn’t that it comes so soon after the end of her marriage or that it is with another woman (beautifully, sexuality is never addressed in the post, a brilliant move in declining to render same-sex relationships as “other” in any way, by not even calling attention to them) but that in writing about her new relationship, Doyle Melton asks readers to follow her example and simply not care what other people think as they choose to act in ways that are best and most fortifying for themselves. “The most revolutionary thing a woman can do is not explain herself.”
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