Who were you before the world told you who to be? When women learn to please they forget who they are. Part inspiration, part memoir Untamed explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet the expectations of the world, and instead dare to listen to and trust in the voice deep inside us.
There is a voice of longing inside each woman. 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 realised 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 stop abandoning herself and to instead abandon the world’s expectations of her. She stopped being good so she could be free. She stopped pleasing and started living.
Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanising 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 also the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honour our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts.
