TALKING TO MY ANGELS, a memoir by Melissa Etheridge
As a certified ghostwriter specializing in women’s memoirs, each evening, I spend my final hour or so reading another delectable memoir. I especially love those narrative arcs where the author reflects on the trials and tribulations of motherhood. TALKING TO MY ANGELS by Melissa Etheridge is the raw, heartfelt, revelatory story I will share with you now. The mother in me was in tears.
The Process of Mothering
For Etheridge, raising four kids as a Grammy and Oscar award-winning rocker and trailblazing LGBTQAI icon is joyous, yet incredibly challenging. Here, she shares about her son Beckett’s descent into opioid addiction. In 2020, Beckett died of an overdose at age 21, and Etheridge torturously reveals her process to forgive herself for his death and focus on his presence inside her. Any mother who has struggled with raising a child with mental health issues or addiction recovery will feel seen and held.
A Spiritual Awakening
The spiritual seeker in you will feel seen and held, as well. Etheridge begins with her “awakening” from eating pot-laced cookies. More than just getting high, she experiences a life-altering epiphany that reveals that “love is within us and all around us” and that, maybe, she doesn’t have to try so hard. While her career blossoms fairly easily—a dream come true—she faces many challenges over the years that provide opportunities to put this singular spiritual experience into practice.
Living in the public eye
Along with the joy that fame brings, Etheridge faces breast cancer, endures two humiliating and contentious break ups, comes out as gay, and lives through the devastating falling-apart and death of her son, Beckett all in the public eye. it isn’t easy.
Yet all of the loss, heartache, guilt, shame, and devastating grief is but an invitation to put the truth she experienced through the cannabis years before—“the importance of connecting with one’s spiritual being”—into practice. By doing so, she finds the courage to carry on. She shares the teachings of the French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “I am a spiritual being having a human experience.”
She also provides her practical elaboration of Don Miguel Ruiz’s popular “four agreements,” the last of which she says should form the heart of anyone’s life practices: “Just do your best, always.”
Darkness and uncertainty lead us to forgiveness and love.
In TALKING TO MY ANGELS, Etheridge takes us into her inner life as a gay woman, a singer-songwriter, a mother, and a survivor. With openness and humility, she shares how pain and suffering serve as a catalyst for her growth, how life has shown her about the value of family, music, love, and life in the face of death. She is as raw, vulnerable, and electrifying on these pages as are her songs.
She shares experiences that, sewn together, teach us about success and survival, our humanity and spirituality. She equally shares about the part of herself she was running from and, once she lets it go, the powerful part that takes its place. She exemplifies that to live as our best selves and experience life fully, we must open to and embrace our spiritual selves day by day by day.
TALKING TO MY ANGELS makes the memoir genre something to revere.
PS: If you like audiobooks, hers is an exclusive musical experience, read and performed by Melissa. It features live, stripped-down performances of many of Melissa’s songs, including the one that inspired the book title, Talking to My Angel; along with never-before performed songs including Here Comes the Pain.
Live with spirit.
Find peace in the chaos.
Lean into the joy.
Like Etheridge if you are a woman wo has risen aboive life’s challenges, and are ready to turn your journey into a captivating memoir, let’s talk.
