Mama Love

My book club has an amazing track record of picking out interesting books we often haven't heard of or think of reading. The 6 of us core members rotate choosing books each month so the group reads 2 of our choices per year. Mostly fiction, we occasionally have a good nonfiction title, too.

Such was the case for October and The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing, where New York Times bestselling author Lara Love Hardin's memoir recounts her slide from soccer mom to opioid addict to jailhouse shot caller and her unlikely comeback as a highly successful ghostwriter.

If you haven't heard of it this year, here's the synopsis:

No one expects the police to knock on the door of the million-dollar two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady secret: she is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors’ credit cards.

Lara is convicted of 32 felonies and becomes inmate S32179. She finds that jail is a class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and Lord of the Flies. Furniture is made from tampon boxes, and Snickers bars are currency. But Lara quickly learns the rules and brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she climbs the social ladder and acquires the nickname “Mama Love,” showing that jailhouse politics aren’t that different from the PTA meetings she used to attend.

When she’s released, she reinvents herself as a ghostwriter. Now, she’s legally co-opting other people’s identities and getting to meet Oprah, meditate with the Dalai Lama, and have dinner with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the shadow of her past follows her. Shame is a poison worse than heroin—there is no way to detox. Lara must learn how to forgive herself and others, navigate life as a felon on probation, and prove to herself that she is more good than bad, among other essential lessons.

The Many Lives of Mama Love is a heartbreaking and tender journey from shame to redemption, despite a system that makes it almost impossible for us to move beyond the worst thing we have ever done.

It was as good and interesting as it sounds. We all gave it a 5 out of 5 rating! I listened to the audiobook so I got to hear it in her own words and voice. That always adds impact for me. 

It's actually a story many of us can identify with – sans the heroin and Oprah meet-up. I mean we've all done something in our lives we are ashamed of or, if not, someone has made us feel ashamed about. Or worthless. 

In her 15-minute Ted Talk called Thieves of Hope, Lara talks about how good people who make a bad decision often carry that shame with them for the rest of their lives. Unless they find hope. Hope and shame cannot coexist. If you have shame, you can't have hope. And vice versa. That's why shame is the thief of hope.

If you can relate, you know it's not always easy to let go of the past and move on. No matter the scale of how "bad" or "stupid" you think you were. Most of our lives we aren't fighting the people who are shaming us, we're fighting ourselves and our inability to forgive ourselves for mistakes or poor judgment.

Throw in a fragile self-esteem and it's chaos.

As I shared with the club tonight (over an always delicious meal at El Mezcal), the way I personally combat it is practicing gratitude. If you thank God every night for your blessings that day, you'll start to see the big picture of your life in terms of what you have, not what you don't have – and certainly not what you've done. 

Thanks for reading my Robyn Talk. Isn't it great to start the week in a positive frame of mind? We've got this!