Choosing Grow Through Marriage by Meagan Frank (Book Review)

Hi Everybody:

I am so pleased (giddy actually) to share with you that my friend Meagan Frank’s book, Choosing to Grow: Through Marriage has recently been published! She and I are both working with the fabulous Linda Boulanger at Treasureline Publishing (umm…okay I am still in need of “working” as Meagan’s book is actually DONE )…anyway….

Choosing to Grow Through Marriage is about the 8-year recovery of Meagan’s own breaking marriage.  Her journey includes 25 titles, 173 questionnaires and 70 women who saved her from walking away (interestingly, the women she spoke to were from all walks of life – happily married, divorced, never married  - anyone touched by marriage (which is just about anyone)).

Meagan was moved to write this book when she realized she had hit a catastrophic nadir in her life: five moves in six years, two babies under the age of two and a husband who worked 90 hours a week, left her feeling isolated and depressed. As Meagan says,”I almost made a disastrous decision and realized I had to do something significant to move forward in our marriage. I chose to research my way out….it took us four years to work on our marriage, get my identity back, and move past the darkness.”

And how does Meagan feel now that her story and her life’s work is in the public domain? Says Meagan, “I am nervous about setting it out there in the world, but I know the story will help people. If I found one resonating thing during my research it was that modern women are struggling with the way modern marriage is redefining itself. It is an ongoing conversation, and we are all navigating the new roles of mother and wife without a blueprint from our mothers.

One day I realized I didn’t want to be married anymore. Our relationship wasn’t the fun, ideal, romantic version I had created in my head, and all I wanted was to get in my car and drive far away from the life that had consumed me. Expressionless, I stood holding my nine-month-old baby as I watched our three-year-old tear apart the toys…again. No husband in sight and no light at the end of the exhausting reality. If this was marriage…I was starting to think I had promised more than I could deliver.

Eight years later, on the back side of an incredible journey, I can confidently proclaim I believe wholeheartedly in those vows of marriage. Our life isn’t always fun, ideal or romantic, but it is truly the only life I want to lead. I didn’t come to this conclusion standing still, however. Once I got my feet moving from where I felt stalled, I found strength, beauty, and joy in the most surprising places. Those discoveries came on the heels of my decision to grow. It was a choice to work through it…it was a choice to learn what I could about myself and our marriage…it was a choice to be open to changing my behavior first. Choosing to Grow: Through Marriage is the story of how I got here. It is not a fix-all manual, but it is a real account of the possibilities. We all have the capacity for change and growth…we just have to choose to do it.”

If you like this book, you’ll want be on the lookout for Meagan’s next creative projects:  Choosing to Grow: Through Youth Sports and Choosing to Grow: Through Motherhood. Meagan is planning her  book tour – and I have my fingers crossed that Chicago will be on the list!

About Megan Frank:

A 1997 graduate of Colorado College, Meagan was a high school English teacher for three years. Her son was born in 2000, her first daughter in 2002, and her second daughter in 2005. In those five child-bearing years, she was a stay-at-home mom who wrote a number of blog and magazine articles. In fall of 2003, she started research for Choosing to Grow: Through Marriage. The project included interviewing nearly 70 women, reading through a slew of articles and books and collecting 173 questionnaires. As a complement to the research, she also wrote for and maintained a website about the project. In fall of 2005, she was hired as a reporter for The Dunn County News in Menomonie, Wisconsin and for five months she did a variety of writing projects for the paper. Meagan wrote features, opinion pieces and news articles. Miscellaneous writing adventures include: winning third place in a writing contest for The Colorado College Alumni magazine, writing her grandfather’s war story in a published book about World War II, writing a feature article for the 2006 summer edition of the Chippewa Valley Business Report, and writing regularly for two blogs: one for fun called What the Blog is Going on Around Here? and another called Choosing to Grow: Through Marriage. She currently lives in Woodbury, Minnesota with her husband Paul and their three children; Nate, Haley and Kiana.

 

Thanks Meagan for sharing your story with us!

Swati

Tags: choosing to grow through marriage, Marriage, meagan frank