Friday, July 29, 2016

Falling Apart in One Piece by Stacy Morrison

     The emotionally charged story of a divorce that brought the surprising gift of grace.
     Just when Stacy Morrison thought everything in her life had come together, her husband of ten years announced that he wanted a divorce. She was left alone with a new house that needed a lot of work, a new baby who needed a lot of attention, and a new job in the high-pressure work of New York magazine publishing.
     Morrison had never been one to believe in fairy tales. As far as she was concerned, happy endings were the product of the kind of ambition and hard work that has propelled her to the top of her profession. But she had always considered her relationship with her husband a safe place in her often stressful life. All of her assumptions about how life works crumbled, though, when she discovered that no amount of will and determination was going to save her marriage.
     For Stacy, the only solution was to keep on living, and to listen-as deeply and openly as possible-to what this experience was teaching her.
     Told with humor and her heart, her honest and intimate account of the stress of being a working mother while trying to make sense of her unraveling marriage offers unexpected lessons of love, forgiveness, and dignity that will resonate with women everywhere.
     Reading this memoir was like going back to day one of going through my divorce. I’m not sure if it was a good idea or a bad idea to read it. The author mentioned how no divorce is the same, but there were so many ways were I felt like I could connect to her, and it felt so good to know I wasn’t the only person to feel the way that I feel, especially that feeling of aloneness. This story isn’t filled with the happy-go-lucky musings you’d expect from the title, considering the author states to be an optimist, frankly that probably would have annoyed me. It is filled with her experiences, the ups and downs, and what she did to get through, or even didn’t get through, the vicious hell that is divorce.
     This book, for me, was a five. It made me feel less alone, when that has been all that I’ve felt for the last six months since getting divorced myself. The author’s story was an amazing one to read, and it gave me the hope to keep pushing forward, even if I’m still crying over this every week five years from now; even if I’m still questioning myself every day. One day I’ll be enough for me, like she found that she was, and one week I might not need twenty tissues to sop up the mess that is my life. That’s what this book did for me, that is the hope that it gave me: That while I’m not okay now, there’s a good chance I will be one day, I just have to keep looking forward, and it was a well written book to boot. If that’s not worth five stars, I’m not sure what is.

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