Carry On, Warrior by Glennon Doyle
- Sep 22
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 22
Carry On, Warrior by Glennon Doyle is a bestselling essay collection about sobriety, motherhood, marriage, faith, and honest living that grew from her Momastery writing and vaulted to the New York Times list. Doyle mixes candor and humor to chart recovery from bulimia and alcohol use, the strain and repair of a marriage, and the daily practice of truth-telling, boundary-setting, and community-building. Readers who seek contemporary memoir, women’s empowerment, personal growth, and relatable stories of parenting and partnership will find practical insight and steady encouragement.
About Carry On, Warrior
Glennon Doyle gathers her most read essays along with new work to tell a story of stumbling and repair. The pieces move through early addiction, the choice to get sober, and the work of raising children while rebuilding a life that can hold honesty. Scenes unfold in kitchens, church basements, minivans, and school parking lots, which keeps the wisdom grounded in ordinary rooms and days.
The voice is plainspoken and alert to humor. A viral essay like “Don’t Carpe Diem” sits beside quieter pieces about shame, body image, friendship, and faith. Together, they form a map for readers who seek language for boundaries, tools for navigating difficult conversations, and a model of connection that prioritizes presence over performance.
Why Read Carry On, Warrior
Readers meet a voice that refuses to be varnished. Doyle names fear, shame, and hunger with clarity and then shows choices made on ordinary days that move a life toward integrity. The book provides language for setting boundaries, tools for navigating difficult conversations, and a model of repair that acknowledges and addresses grief. It speaks to anyone who has felt trapped inside roles and who wants a practical account of how to step out of them.
Key Takeaways
Addiction Is Hiding. Recovery Is Waking Up.
Glennon Doyle describes addiction as a bunker built to survive ordinary life. Food, alcohol, pills, and chaotic relationships stood in for safety and control, a way to quiet shame and awkwardness. The strategy worked until it did not. After two decades of numbing and spirals of emptiness, she reached crisis while unwed, addicted, and pregnant. She prayed, decided to quit everything, and entered sobriety at twenty six. The shift felt less like triumph and more like thaw. Pain returned first, then sensation, then choice. Recovery became the slow work of feeling again and building a life that could hold honesty. Marriage, motherhood, and writing followed, not as rewards, but as structures strong enough to carry a self no longer hiding.
Truth Telling Creates Connection
Doyle learned that performance isolates and that confession gathers. A polished facade kept friends at arm’s length and turned community into an audience. She tested another approach with a new friend named Tess. She named addiction, an arrest, a struggling marriage, and postpartum depression, and waited for recoil. Tess answered with her own truths. The room changed. The exchange proved a pattern. Weakness invites company in a way that boasting never can. When traditional volunteer roles closed because of her past, Doyle chose a public practice of honesty. She wrote the messy version of events so that readers might like their insides more. That work became a vocation and not a stunt. The result was a connection built on reality rather than an image.
Marriage Is Hard, Holy Work
Love required translation in her house. Different family blueprints produced different expectations, and early scenes made the point. A birthday passed without the gesture she imagined. Mind reading failed. Clear requests replaced resentment. Then the real tests arrived. Recovery strained the partnership. Money tightened. Intimacy faltered. Betrayal shattered trust. The couple separated, entered therapy, and faced a choice to quit or rebuild. They chose a do over with terms that valued truth over peacekeeping. The work demanded confession, boundaries, forgiveness, and daily effort. Intimacy began to mean knowing and being known rather than performing the role of spouse. The lesson was plain. Marriage is not effortless. It is sustained by deliberate care and by a willingness to repair what breaks.
About Glennon Doyle
Glennon Doyle is a bestselling writer, activist, and the founder of Together Rising, a nonprofit that funds rapid-response aid for families and communities in crisis. She built a large readership through her memoirs, including Untamed, Love Warrior, and Carry On, Warrior, books that explore self-trust, recovery, marriage, parenting, and the hard work of rebuilding a life with integrity. Her prose is candid and closely observed, often drawing on her history with addiction and the long arc of sobriety. People magazine once called her the “patron saint of female empowerment,” a label earned through plainspoken essays, live events, and sustained philanthropy. She hosts the podcast We Can Do Hard Things, where she and guests examine boundaries, mental health, friendship, and love with the same clarity found in her books. Doyle lives in California with her wife, Abby Wambach, and their three children.
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