Hi! Welcome back to Bri Books. Once again, Happy Women’s History Month. I’m so excited about this episode. Today’s guest is JoiMarie McKenzie, author of “The Engagement Game” (OUT TODAY!) When she’s not busy writing up epic lifestyle and entertainment stories at ABCNews.com, she found the time to WRITE an AMAZING first book—and a memoir no less. In this episode, JoiMarie shares how and why she wrote her first book (a memoir), what she hopes readers to take away from it. She also shares for the first time publically her bout with depression after a relationship went south, and how she learned to be compassionate towards herself, and how a little piece of insight from singer Jill Scott got her through. I know this episode will be really interesting and informative, especially for readers who are navigating relationships with significant others, and ultimately the most important relationship of all—your relationship with yourself. Enjoy! If you’re feeling this episode, consider leaving a review.

• 4:16 – How “The Engagement Game” is like “The Odyssey”—each experience teaches something that’s useful and applicable later down the line.
• 4:40 – How JoiMarie is fighting to take consumerism out of celebrating engagements and marriage.
• 10:28 – JoiMarie on shame if an engagement goes awry: “I feel like oftentimes when things don’t work out or go our way or relationships or jobs or friendships end, we are kind of warded off into a hall of shame. Where we shouldn’t be. And I think it’s amazing how shame makes us hide.”
• 11:15 – Would JoiMarie’s character in “The Engagement Game” even be HAPPY if life had turned out how she wanted, and how JoiMarie “avoided her divorce.”
• 13:30 – JoiMarie defines “covenant spouse,” a phrase that revolutionized how I see partnership and dating: “I found out that a husband is defined in relationship his wife. But a ‘covenant spouse’ is defined by his relationship with God. It’s essentially having God at the center of your relationship. And when my godfather prayed that prayer for me, I decided that’s what I wanted.”  
• 15:55 – On the significance of being 28 years old, “the first time in life where everything seems to being going right.”
• 17:42 – On “the Saturn Return”
• 21:00 – On cultivating self-compassion, slowly.
• 23:10 – On how dating and faith influenced JoiMarie’s approach to depression
• 25:00 – JoiMarie on the disconnect between therapy and black communities of faith: “I think it is a cultural thing, but I think more so that we’re so not educated enough or comfy enough talking about it, and so you have to get to that point where it’s ok I can’t go to my home girl she doesn’t have the answers.”
• 25:51 – what interview have you done that was most informative when it comes to helping you write the book?
• 26:00 – The one interview with Jill Scott that helped JoiMarie get clear on what she wanted from love and life.
• What JoiMarie is reading: Lots of feminist theory, so tweet and Instagram her your picks with #bribooks!