Untamed by Glennon Doyle

Untamed is the third memoir from Glennon Doyle and deals primarily with her awakening into living life on her own terms rather than those society has set for her. I haven’t read her other memoirs, in fact I have to admit that I had never even heard of her before reading this book, but I loved Untamed.

In the book we learn that Glennon was unhappily married to the father of her children who has cheated on her multiple times. She knows she is deeply unhappy in the marriage but has been sticking it out because that’s what you do right? Until one day, while at an event promoting her previous memoir, a woman walks into the room, Glennon sees her and thinks ‘There – She – Is’ and then proceeds to stand up and open her arms towards this woman standing across the room who she has never met. She then of course realises what she’s doing and feels immediately mortified at her body’s involuntary reaction to seeing the love of her life for the first time. And that appears to be the start of her new life of non conformity which saw the end of her marriage and a blossoming into something new and altogether more delicious.

This book speaks to me on so many levels. She touches on our innate wildness and how this is tamed. How listening to your own inner knowing and acting on it, rather than the expectations of other, is crucial – even if that shatters life as you know it – because “When a woman finally learns that pleasing the world is impossible, she becomes free to learn how to please herself.”. We see her learn how she let fear hold her back (or even hold her loved ones back) – she comes to the conclusion that ‘We can do hard things’ and that applies to her kids too. She shares her difficulty trying to engage in the race conversation as a white woman. Her inability to maintain a friendship by doing the basics of keeping in touch, responding to texts or answering the phone – she cracks me up with her exclamations about how aggressive it is to just call someone and how a knock on the front door is a possible ‘home invasion’. She touches upon addiction and how over the years she has slowly let go of all her crutches and (in my interpretation) now experiences life in all its rawness – and her world appears to be much, much richer for it. The book also touches on sexual identity, love, privilege, parenting, mental health challenges, gender issues, separation and rebuilding something broken (her relationship with her ex-husband) into something that works much better for everyone. There is just SO much to explore and think about.

One of my favourite quotes from the book…

‘I’ve stopped asking people for directions to where they’ve never been’

Let’s dive a little deeper into a small selection of the things that struck a chord with me.

Taming: The prologue tells us about a trip to the zoo where Glennon and family see a demonstration of how fast a cheetah runs. The cheetah is let out of a cage and chases a dirty pink rabbit toy that leads her to a steak at the end of the run. This scene leads Glennon to reflect on the sad taming and reducing of a beautifully powerful wild creature into a controllable, stuffed animal chasing shadow of it’s real potential. And this got me reflecting on how we as women have been tamed like the cheetah – through centuries of patriarchal control and conditioning. Why does society find a wild, uncontrollable, free spirited woman so dangerous? I believe that deep down many women recognise and long for that innate wildness and power that is a birth right that many women have been denied. And this recognition is what leaves many of us unfulfilled, uncertain and searching for something more in life. We don’t trust ourselves and often we don’t even know it. It’s not our fault – we are conditioned not to trust ourselves. In the book Glennon speaks about how the women who work in her non-profit organisation, Together Rising, can just make decisions based on their inner knowing – and she respects and encourages that. They don’t have to provide facts and evidence to back up their ideas, it’s enough to say ‘I sat with these options for a while, this option felt warm to me’. This is what Glennon calls ‘knowing’ and that’s what she trusts and that’s what she defers to over and over in her own life – her knowing.

Conforming: When speaking to her therapist about wanting to end her marriage, Glennon heart wrenchingly describes how much she hates having sex with her husband – she feels ‘white hot rage’ and so much emotional turmoil during the act. Her therapist listens and then asks ‘Glennon, have you tried just giving blow jobs instead? Many women find blow jobs to be less intimate.’ Oh. My. God. Really? My mouth just fell open with shock when I read this – a trained therapist with ‘6 framed degrees’ suggesting that she should ignore and bury her feelings and give oral sex to a man who has been having sex with other women, in order to stay in a marriage that is making her so unhappy. I’m being dramatic here but I’ll say it anyway – my brain cannot cope with this!

This just reminds me of the age old expectation that women are meant to compromise in order to maintain relationships – but when we look at this closely (or even not closely) what is blindingly obvious is that women are taught to make sacrifices in order to make men’s lives easier. I remember as a young woman (possibly a teenager), I was told by my father that in order to have a happy and harmonious life a woman must always make sacrifices. I was too young and naive to pick this apart at the time and understand why it made me so angry – I mean it was clear that my dad thought he was offering me a pearl of wisdom, that he was trying to guide me for my own benefit. It wasn’t until years later that I realised that when he referred to happiness and harmony – he was only thinking of male happiness and a man’s enjoyment of a harmonious life that is only achieved by a woman circumventing her own desires in favour of his. Needless to say – my dad never told my brother he would need to make sacrifices in order to have a happy marriage with his wife. My dad might be from a different generation but the damaging effects of patriarchal culture and conditioning are still present today, although probably less overt.

Glennon and partner Abby

Selah: Selah is a word from the Hebrew bible that suggests the reader pauses for a moment. Glennon refers to her daughter as the families Selah, encouraging them (through her very nature) to slow down and notice the world at another level. I love the way she learns from her kids – they are corner stones of the family – not to be moulded and defined by the adults but entities in their own right with something valuable to offer. I love this.

Friendship: I have to say, I love her story about how her friendship with Liz Gilbert started – I love Liz anyway so I might be bias here. But Liz’s invitation of friendship was just beautiful and made me think about how I have never actually formally asked anyone to become friends with me – I think I might try it! After all if Liz Gilbert , who already has so many friends can find space in her life to consciously cultivate new friendships, then I’m sure anyone can!

Mental Health: The only part of the book that made me slightly uncomfortable was her strong advise to take meds in order to deal with your mental health issues. I think America is a much more reliant on meds than we are here in the UK – even normal dips in mood caused by grief, stress, job loss etc seems to be dealt with by popping pills rather than accepting it as a phase that needs to be lived through. I’m sure Glennon is speaking here to people who have been diagnosed with a mental health issue that does need to be managed with medication. But I still had a reaction to it – justified or not, it’s purely my own opinion. I find it a little uncomfortable that there was no distinction made between mental health challenges that need meds and those that can be better dealt with using counselling, therapy, nutrition, exercise and other lifestyle changes. Having said that – I’m no expert, I’m just speaking from my own experience of the ups and downs of mind and mood.

Honesty and Self-Reflection: She had the good grace and humility to accept her role in their unhappy marriage – she had wanted to get married when they got pregnant, even though he had suggested not marrying but just raising the child together. What I like here is that Glennon wasn’t trying to make excuses for a cheating husband – they had split up so she had no need for that. But she had the wisdom and kindness of heart to recognise that while he did wrong, he in fact had an inner knowing that they were not right for each other and marriage was not the answer for either of them. But Glennon’s need to conform to societies expectation pushed them into marriage. It would have been easy for her to say, he broke our marriage because he was a cheater. But she didn’t.

While there is more I could explore, I will leave it there so that you have something to discover (and also to try to keep this review to a somewhat readable length!).

In summary, Untamed is a super engaging book that covers a variety of important topics and is told in a down to earth, brave and refreshingly honest voice. A book that deserves a second (or third) reading in order to let the layers of various topics emerge and settle.

If you’ve read the book, let me know what you thought of it.