Awake

Throughout Awake, Hatmaker candidly portrays the immense grief that accompanied the end of her marriage. Although the memoir charts the author’s recovery, it emphasizes that navigating emotional devastation does not involve a steady upward trajectory. Hatmaker recounts frequent setbacks and unexpected episodes of regression on her journey. She also reflects on the repercussions of marital rupture on her children as they grieved the loss of the stable family unit she aimed to provide for them.

Hatmaker recounts how, at 2:30 am on July 11, 2020, her world collapsed into chaos when she discovered her husband’s infidelity. The early chapters detail the magnitude of her shock at this betrayal after nearly three decades of marriage. Her assertion that her “skin [felt] peeled off; I [was] exposed and raw. I [needed] an emergency room” (27) conveys how the intense physicality of the psychological pain initially felt unsurvivable. Hatmaker portrays divorce as a loss comparable to a death, observing, “It is disorienting to lose a whole person from your ecosystem. One less chair, one less stocking, one less plate, one less cell number in the group chat. I [was] very used to seven; six [felt] small, paltry even” (200).