My Selection — Untamed
By Glennon Doyle
In 2020, I went through a serious memoir kick. Glennon Doyle’s Untamed was no exception to this trend. A girlfriend of mine had recommended it, and once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down.
Doyle has written several memoir-style books and first gained popularity with her blog Momastery. Since then, she has become one of the most successful memoir writers in the last decade reaching the New York Times bestseller list multiple times and Oprah’s Book Club.
Her work in Untamed is centered around the theme of becoming free. Learning self-love and dropping all expectations that society has built for you to focus on you and what you want. She begins with an analogy of a cheetah at a zoo.
The cheetah performs for hundreds of eyes, conditioned to follow orders and do what the zookeeper wants it to do. The cheetah was born in captivity and has no concept of being wild. The cheetah is deprived of being who it truly wants to be. This analogy lays out the message of being an “untamed” and “free” version of yourself.
Doyle brings a raw perspective and her voice permeates each page. You feel what she feels. I love author’s that have this capability. It engages the reader, but also makes the content more relatable to the reader.
She eloquently discusses personal hardships such as her battle with bulimia, drinking, her crumbling marriage, her own mental health and freeing herself from herself.
These quotes are a selected few that touched me throughout the book and I hope they resonate deeply with you as well:
“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.”
“What the world needs is more women who have quit fearing themselves and started trusting themselves What the world needs is masses of women who are entirely out of control.”
“I’ll abandon everyone else’s expectations of me before I’ll abandon myself. I’ll disappoint everyone else before I’ll disappoint myself. I’ll forsake all others before I’ll forsake myself. Me and myself: We are till death do us part.”
“I will not stay, not ever again — in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself.”
“We can do hard things.”
While simple, the messages behind her words struck me deeply. One of the main topics in her book was her marital problems with her husband. She later found love with a woman Abby Wombach, a global soccer icon, two-time Olympic gold medalist, FIFA world cup champion, and outspoken activist for equality and inclusion.
Doyle’s journey finding love with a woman, which she had never done before, was all too relatable for me. Doyle felt an instant connection with Wombach and couldn’t ignore it after meeting her once. She ended her marriage over these feelings.
The way Doyle innocently and carefully navigated her love with Wombach touched me in an intimate way. This last year I cam out as queer and have always been intimidated by women, but have wanted to explore those options. Doyle’s journey affirmed that I have nothing to fear and that I have time. She had been married, had three kids, and never had a relationship with a woman. I thought, “wow! That is so inspiring!”
The way Doyle openly discusses sexuality, freeing herself, owning her identity, feminism, self-love, and being a life-long learner is motivating. She captures human emotion by embracing the positive and negative. When we hinder ourselves from feeling everything, are we truly feeling? If we censor ourselves to be how society expects us to be, will we be happy with that?
Her words have encouraged me to continue to be myself. Embrace myself. Accept myself. And most of all, to live my life untamed.
