Untamed

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

(Format used for this read: Print–hardback)

I have put off writing this review for DAYSSSS now.

Mostly because the stress and anxiety of election day (that has turned into ELECTION FREAKIN WEEK) chaos has completely overtaken my ability to achieve any kind of task WHAT SO EVER.

Especially sitting down for longer than a few minutes AND writing out thoughts that have been tumbling around in my mess of a brain.

As I type right now, there are *still* no results…and the chaos is nowhere NEAR over. I fear it is just beginning in some ways….

I ain’t even trying to get into that right now.

Another reason I have put off this review is that this book had me DEEP into some life assessing, dismantling BS that I WAS NOT EXPECTING.

I mean SERIOUS HEAVY shit, yall.

Did NOT think that would happen while reading this book…because I *thought* this book was just mostly Glennon’s story of HER pivotal mid life self assessment, discoveries and changes….and it is…

But the book also speaks into *other* people’s stories as well…. and also dives into our society’s own jacked up patriarchal narrative and the lies it has fed to women…. that we in turn molded into self defining and damaging truths.

WHEW.

It was A LOT, yall.

Here is the official summary for you:

“There is a voice of longing inside each of us. We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful, hiding our discontent–even from ourselves.

For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There She Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. But she soon realized they had come to her from within. This was her own voice–the one she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions, cultural conditioning, and institutional allegiances. This was the voice of the girl she had been before the world told her who to be. Glennon decided to quit abandoning herself and to instead abandon the world’s expectations of her. She quit being good so she could be free. She quit pleasing and started living.

Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is the story of navigating divorce, forming a newly blended family, and discovering that the brokenness or wholeness of a family depends not on its structure but on each member’s ability to bring her full self to the table. And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts so that we become women who can finally look at OURSELVES and say: There She Is.”

Because this book had me processing bunches of layers…like LEVELS and ENTIRE STAIRCASES TO EXTRA FLOORS…

Plus we are living in this extremely tense time right now…..

I don’t think I will get as wordy as I usually do in my other reviews.

Sorry, yall.

Like I said, I have put this review off for DAYS because I had to marinate on it all so much.

I’m only gonna touch on a smidge of it…because to be real I’m still sorting thru the shit it brought to the surface for me.

I was texting with a good friend who also has read this book and we processed together a bit.

Her and I both have followed Glennon and read her work for a few years now.. and I said to her “Glennon either has me rolling my eyes….or drying them.”

Some of what she writes is just too “self helpy” for me ….and some of what she writes is hella white lady problematic….

but then….

Some of what she writes just hits so deep down in my self I get hella disoriented and straight up SHOOK.

I DID roll my eyes in some chapters no lie…

but mostly my eyes were tearing up…and some chapters, they teared up for HOURS after I finished reading them.

Since I have read Glennon’s work before, I will say (and my friend agrees) that this book is quite different than her other books.

I can tell she is much more at peace now….much more ALIVE.

And while she has been on quite a journey of self discovery/rediscovery, I didn’t feel like this book as a whole was some “how to” guide on following HER exact way to YOUR own journey.

She just tells her story….and she tells OTHER people’s stories….and she writes about what helped her, what helped them, and what also hurt her and hurt them.

You may find connection in some pieces of the stories….you may not.

But I did.

Glennon speaks a lot about the things that society tells us our role as women is and should be….not just in our American culture but also in church culture as well.

I did not realize how much of it I had bought into at a self damaging price….and I DID NOT EVEN REALIZE IT.

I’ve always identified myself as a strong, independent women like my entire life…

BUT

Deep down, I realized SO MUCH of many decisions I have made –from the clothes I have worn, to the way I style my hair, to the jobs I have held, to the responsibilities I have assumed– I have done because men in some way, shape or form have told me that is what I was “supposed” to do….and I desperately wanted their approval and acceptance.

WTF, yall. 😒

But that’s what social conditioning does, doesn’t it.

It just sneaks all up in there into your subconscious, messes around with your wiring in your brain and tricks you into thinking you are doing things for yourself and your own “right” reasons….when really that ain’t it AT ALL.

The things you are doing has nothing to do with what YOU want or what defines YOU….it is what has been TOLD to you.

In this book, Glennon kind of jumps around…each chapter it’s own little piece of her story or someone elses….and I want to share with yall one of the chapters that dug on into me BIG TIME.

This excerpt is from the chapter entitled “Erikas”. In this part, Glennon is sharing her college friend’s story:

“Erika returned to our dorm each day and recovered her business boredom by painting. She graduated with a business degree, then fell in love with a fantastic guy and worked in a corporate office to put him through medical school. Next, the babies came, and she quit her job to stay home and care for them. All the while, she heard a voice nagging her to start painting again. One day, she told me she planned to honor that longing–to honor herself—by enrolling in art school. I heard fizz and fire in her voice for the first time in a decade.

So I answered the phone in celebration of Erika’s commitment and said ‘Hey! How is school going?’

She was quiet for a moment and then said, ‘Oh that. That was silly. Brett is so busy, and the kids need me. Art school just seemed so selfish after awhile.’

Why do women find it honorable to dismiss ourselves?

Why do we decide that denying our longing is the responsible thing to do?

Why do we believe that what will thrill and fulfill us will hurt our people?

Why do we mistrust ourselves so completely?

Here’s why: Because our culture was built upon and benefits from the control of women. The way power justifies controlling a group is by conditioning the masses to believe that the group cannot be trusted. So the campaign to convince us to mistrust women begins early and comes from everywhere.

When we are little girls, our families, teachers, and peers insist that our loud voices, bold opinions, and strong feelings are ‘too much’ and unladylike, so we learn to not trust our personalities.

Childhood stories promise us that girls who dare to leave the path or explore get attacked by big bad wolves and pricked by deadly spindles, so we learn to not trust our curiosity.

The beauty industry convinces us that our thighs, frizz, skin, fingernails, lips, eyelashes, leg hair and wrinkles are repulsive and must be covered and manipulated, so we learn not to trust the bodies we live in.

Diet culture promises us that controlling our appetite is the key to our worthiness, so we learn to not trust our own hunger.

Politicians insist that our judgement about our bodies and futures cannot be trusted, so our own reproductive systems must be controlled by lawmakers we don’t know in places we’ve never been.

The legal system proves to us again and again that even our own memories and experiences will not be trusted. If twenty women come forward and say ‘He did it’ and he says ‘No I didn’t’ they will believe him while discounting and maligning us every damn time.

And religion, sweet Jesus. The lesson of Adam and Eve–the first formative story I was told about God and a woman–was this: When a woman wants more, she defies God, betrays her partner, curses her family, and destroys the world.

We weren’t born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgement, experience, or ambition. Instead, we lock away our true selves. Women who are best at this disappearing act earn the highest praise: She is so selfless.

Can you imagine? The epitome of womanhood is to lose one’s self completely.

That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture. Because a very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves.”

There is SO.MUCH. for me in those paragraphs.

LAWD.

The stay at home mom thing.

The not trusting my personality thing.

The beauty industry thing.

ALL OF THE THINGS.

So. Much. To. Process.

And yall I ain’t got the energy to even BEGIN to do that right here.

But I will tell you that I am deconstructing a bunch of MESS related to ALL OF IT.

One more piece of processing that happened while reading this book was listening to Glennon’s story of finding love with a woman after being in a marriage with a man for many years.

I can not relate to this on a personal level…BUT I have someone in my life close to me that has a VERY similar story to hers.

So while reading Glennon’s story…..hearing her describe how she shut down pieces of herself for so long and questioned who she was for years on end…I kept thinking of this person and their own story.

Did they also feel the despair she felt?

Did they also feel the loneliness she felt?

Did they also feel the fear and doubt and judgement she felt?

This gave me a whole new perspective on the journey they may have had to walk down to get to where they are today….and it broke my heart while at the same time filled me with such joy knowing that they are also now FINALLY able to experience their full selves for the FIRST TIME EVER IN LIFE….and are also experiencing a level of PEACE that they may never had or thought was possible before. ❤

So final thoughts on this book…..

Eye rolling parts? Yes.

But soul touching, make you really think about things parts? Also yes.

I will also say this…I turn 40 in just a FEW FRIGGIN DAYS, yall.

So I’m kinda at this point in my life of reassessing, reacquainting, and rediscovering myself…..

Call it a mid life crisis if you want….

But I think I’m gonna call it a mid life AWAKENING.

This book was pretty helpful in the current season I’m living out, I can’t lie about that.

I really do have MANY more things to say about it….but I think my brain energy is spent today….

I am also ready for a second glass of wine….and I’m turning CNN back on to see what’s up in our nation 😬

So I’ll stop here.

I think many of yall would like and appreciate this book….and I also think many of yall would take a hard pass on it.

If you DO decide to read and you have some parts that hit you hard like it did me, let me know and we can process together…..

Probably over wine 😄