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.
