One morning, I called my friend Martha and began telling her all the reasons I could not leave my marriage. Then I began sharing all the reasons I could not stay in my marriage. I kept talking, talking, talking, weighing every angle, arguing myself into corners and then around and around in circles.

Eventually she said, “Glennon, stop. You are in your head. The answers you need this time aren’t in there. They’re in your body. Try dropping into your body. Right now on the phone. Drop lower.”

This was becoming a theme in my life, all this sinking and dropping.

She asked, “You in there yet?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Okay, now consider both decisions. Inhabit yourself and feel. Does saying good-bye to Abby feel warm to you?”

“No. That feels cold, actually. It feels icy. It makes me feel like I’ll die of cold.”

“Now consider being with Abby. How does that feel?”

“It feels warm. Soft. Spacious.”

“Okay, Glennon. Your body is nature, and nature is pure. I know that’s hard for you to accept because you have been at war with your body for so long. You think your body is bad, but it is not. It’s wise. Your body will tell you things your mind will talk you out of. Your body is telling you what direction life is in. Try trusting it. Turn away from what feels cold. Go toward what feels warm.”

Now when I sense danger, I believe the cold and leave. When I sense joy, I believe the warm and stay.

These days, in business meetings, when I request an explanation for a decision someone has made, the women on my team know that I’m not looking for justifications, judgments, or opinions. I’m looking for Knowing. So the decision maker will say, “I did the research and sat with these options for a while. This option felt warm to me. The alternative felt cold.” That will be the end of the discussion. I trust women who trust themselves.

For a long while I pretended not to know that even though I had only one life, I was spending it inside a lonely marriage.

When the Knowing threatened to rise, I’d shove it back down. There was no point in admitting I knew what I knew, because I would never do what the Knowing would require me to do. I would never leave my children’s father. I’d just pretend not to know forever. I was a mother, and I had responsibilities.

In middle school we learned about parenting by caring for an egg. In order to pass the unit, we had to return the uncracked egg to the teacher at the end of the week. Those who left their egg home in the dark all week fared best; some of their eggs went rotten, but that didn’t matter as long as they remained uncracked.

I parented Tish like she was an egg. I’d say, “She is so sensitive, so fragile.” I worried about her and counted that as love. I protected her and counted that as mothering. I’d have kept her at home in the dark forever if I could have. She and I were living in a story I had written, and I was the hero. I would never let her crack, and I would pass parenting.

I am drinking coffee on Tish’s bed, watching her get ready for school. She is brushing her yards of Rapunzel hair.

I watch her look at herself in the mirror and then back at me. She says, “My hair is too babyish. Can I cut it like yours?”

I look at the two of us in that mirror. Right there in front of me, I can finally see that Tish is not an egg. She is a girl, becoming a woman.

Every time she looks at me, she is seeing herself, too. And she is asking:

Tish asks, “Will you put my hair up in a pony, Mom?”

I walk into the bathroom, find a ponytail holder, come back, and stand behind her. I have pulled her hair up a thousand times, but all of a sudden, she’s too tall. I can’t even see the top of her head. She has grown at least an inch overnight. When she was a baby, every day felt like a year. Now every morning, another inch.

I look at Tish and I think:

I am staying in this marriage for my little girl.

But would I want this marriage for my little girl?

When Craig and I moved to our home in Naples, we bought a gigantic silver mirror that we found on clearance. We never got around to hanging it. We just leaned it against our bedroom wall and hoped the leaning looked purposeful and artsy.

The day my therapist insisted that my feelings weren’t real, I decided to say good-bye to Abby and remain in my marriage. She was the expert, and she was right. Good mothers don’t break their children’s hearts in order to follow their own.

I sat on my bedroom carpet cross-legged, looking directly into my own eyes in that mirror.

It’s important to take a good look at yourself every once in a while. Not the way you look at yourself while you’re getting dressed or putting on makeup. Not the way you look at your thighs or sunspots or chin hairs. Not that way. I mean you need to look dead into your own eyes—at your real self. You need to make sure there are no lies there. You need to make sure the eyes in the mirror are the eyes of a woman you respect.

As I looked deep into my own eyes, the woman in the mirror and I had a reckoning.

I asked myself: Is the decision to continue abandoning yourself really what your children need from you?

Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist.

What a terrible burden for children to bear—to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. What a terrible burden for our daughters to bear—to know that if they choose to become mothers, this will be their fate, too. Because if we show them that being a martyr is the highest form of love, that is what they will become. They will feel obligated to love as well as their mothers loved, after all. They will believe they have permission to live only as fully as their mothers allowed themselves to live.

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. This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.

What if love is not the process of disappearing for the beloved but of emerging for the beloved? What if a mother’s responsibility is teaching her children that love does not lock the lover away but frees her? What if a responsible mother is not one who shows her children how to slowly die but how to stay wildly alive until the day she dies? What if the call of motherhood is not to be a martyr but to be a model?

Right there, on the floor, I looked deep into my own eyes. I let the Knowing rise and stay.

My children do not need me to save them.

My children need to watch me save myself.

I’d quit using my children as an excuse to not be brave and start seeing them as my reason to be brave. I would leave their father and I would claim friendship-and-fire love, or I would be alone. But I would never again be alone in a relationship and pretend that was love. I would never again settle for a relationship or life less beautiful than the one I’d want for my child.

I’d divorce Craig. Because I am a mother. And I have responsibilities.

I stood up off the carpet and called Abby. We had not seen each other since the night we met in Chicago.

I said, “I’m in love with you. I’m leaving Craig. I’m telling him today.”

She said, “Glennon. Oh my God. I am so in love with you. I’m so happy right now. And I’m so afraid for you. Are you sure you’re ready to do this? We’ve never even touched.”

I said, “I know. But I’m not leaving just because of you. I’m leaving because now that I know this kind of love exists, I can’t pretend it doesn’t anymore. I can’t unknow what I know, and I can’t unbecome who I am now. So I’m leaving—not just because I love you but because I love this version of me. The one that woke up when we met. I have to either leave him or myself. I’m going to leave him. Now that I know this, I have to tell him that I know. I don’t owe Craig the rest of my life, but I do owe him my honesty. It’ll be hard, but it’ll finally be the right kind of hard.”

That afternoon I sat down with Craig and I said—with tenderness but without apology—that I was leaving. I said, “Our marriage is complete. We have been the healing partners we were meant to be for each other. Our marriage has been a great success. And now it’s done. I’m in love with Abby. As soon as I knew, I needed you to know, too.”

He was very quiet, and after a long while he said, “Three years ago, you gave me more grace than I deserved. Now I’m going to return it to you. I want you to be happy.”

We didn’t stay in that place. The next few months were a roller coaster. But we kept coming back to: Grace for you. Grace for me.

Later, when he was ready, we sat down to tell the kids. I’ve hurt many people I love in my life, but that was the worst of it. I looked directly into my babies’ terrified faces and said, “I am about to break your hearts. Over time we will rebuild our hearts, and they will be bigger and stronger. But for now, it’s just going to hurt. Sometimes we have to do hard things because they are true things. Your dad and I want you to live the truth of who you are even when it’s hard and scary and painful. I am about to show you how that’s done.”

They cried. The news changed them, right there on that couch. I saw it happen. We held one another while we let so much burn. Craig told them, “It’s going to be okay. Abby is a good woman. We are going to be a new kind of family, but we are still going to be a beautiful family.”

He gave our children permission to love Abby, which was the greatest gift he’s ever given me. Maybe the greatest gift anyone has ever given me.

We told our families.

We told our friends.

All of that happened within two weeks.

Forty years, five months, and two weeks.

I learned how to be desirable very young. I learned how to match myself to the women on television. I learned how to highlight my hair, curl my eyelashes, wear jeans that made my ass look right, and stay thin by any means necessary. I knew how to become a billboard for myself, and after a boy had chosen me, I knew what to do next. I knew what kind of panties to be wearing and how to arch my back just so and how to make the right noises at the right time. I knew what sounds and moves would make him desire me even more and make him think I desired him. Sex was a stage and I was the player.

I knew how to be desired.

I did not know desire.

I knew how to be wanted.

I did not know want.

Until I met her.

After I told Craig our marriage was over, Abby flew to LA to be honored at an awards show. She was receiving an Icon Award from ESPN to celebrate her soccer career and retirement. It was an ending for her. I wanted to be there, as her beginning. “I’m coming,” I said.

We had not seen each other since the night we’d first met. We had never been alone together. We had never touched, except for the moment I’d grabbed her arm and quickly recoiled to stop the electricity. In the past month, we’d both let our lives burn for the chance to be together. More to the point, we set our lives on fire for the chance to become the women we were born to be.

The morning of my flight, I woke while it was still dark and prepared two bags: one to check and the other to carry on. In my carry-on, I packed makeup, a hair straightener, heels, and a white dress. I drove to the airport, suspended between an old version of myself and one I didn’t know yet. When the plane took off, I tried to read. Then I tried to watch television, but I couldn’t focus on either one. One thought was on a loop in my mind: You will be alone with Abby in a matter of hours, and you have never even kissed a girl before. I remember being especially afraid of the eye contact. I had never made eye contact while being intimate. I’d once told Abby that, and she had been shocked and sad. At the end of that conversation, she had said, “If we ever get to touch each other, please know that I will not let your eyes look away from mine.” I did not know if I was capable.

Halfway through the flight, I pulled my bag out from under my seat and walked to the airplane bathroom. I took off my sweatpants and sweatshirt, pulled on my dress and heels, applied my makeup, and straightened my hair. When I sat back down, the woman next to me looked over and asked, “If I go in that bathroom, will that happen to me?”

As the plane landed at LAX, my first thought was: Oh my God, we are finally in the same city. I took a cab to the hotel. When the cab pulled up, I texted, “I’m here.” Abby typed back, “Room 1140.” I put the phone away. I got into the elevator, pressed the buttons, then stepped out onto floor 11. I walked through the hallway and stopped in front of her room. There was a note taped to the door that said, “Come in.”

I breathed deep, fussed with my hair, shot a quick prayer up: Please be here with us.

I knocked softly and then opened the door.

Abby was leaning against the desk across the room with one leg propped up on a chair, barefoot. She was wearing a charcoal T-shirt, sky-blue jeans, and a necklace that looked like dog tags.

My first thought: There she is. That’s my person.

She’d later tell me that her first thought had been: There she is. That’s my wife.

She smiled. It was not a casual smile. It was a smile that said: There you are and here we are, finally. She stood up and walked toward me. I let the door shut behind me, my bags still out in the hallway. She wrapped her arms around me. We melted, my head into her chest, her heart beating through her T-shirt onto my skin. She was shaking and I was shaking, and we both, for a long while, stood there and breathed each other in and held each other and shook together.

Then she pulled away and looked into my eyes. That was the moment we locked.

Then

The kiss.

The wall.

The bed.

White dress on the floor.

Naked, unafraid.

The original plan.

On Earth as it is in heaven.

I never looked away from her. Not once.

The longer we’ve been together, the more naked and unafraid I’ve become. I don’t act anymore. I just want.