We don’t understand why we hurt those we love. They’re still here, and we’re still not saying those things. We wish we’d said all those things while they were still here. We are at war with our bodies, our minds, our souls. We love our children, we long for children, we do not want children. We wonder if what happened to us that night will mean we can never be touched again without fear. We have fallen in love and out of love, and people have fallen in love and out of love with us. We say good-bye to animals, to places, to people we cannot live without. We wish we could do better by our children. We wish our parents had done better by us. We are certain that we were meant for more and that we don’t even deserve what we have. We have unrealized dreams and deep regrets. We feel left out, envious, not good enough, sick, and tired. “we all seem to function in the exact same way: We hurt people, and we are hurt by people. This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.” If we keep passing down the legacy of martyrdom to our daughters, with whom does it end? Which woman ever gets to live? And when does the death sentence begin? At the wedding altar? In the delivery room? Whose delivery room-our children’s or our own? When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. They will believe they have permission to live only as fully as their mothers allowed themselves to live.

Their marriage faced various challenges, including infidelity, which Glennon openly discussed in her writing. Craig and Glennon got married in 2002, welcomed three children together, and divorced in 2016. They will feel obligated to love as well as their mothers loved, after all. Craig Melton is the ex-husband of Glennon Doyle, an American activist, and New York Times bestselling author. Because if we show them that being a martyr is the highest form of love, that is what they will become. What a terrible burden for our daughters to bear-to know that if they choose to become mothers, this will be their fate, too. What a terrible burden for children to bear-to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist.

We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. “Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time.

Author glennon doyle