Have you ever felt confined by your own personal life? As if you’ve formed a life made to please others and ignored your own wants? Glennon Doyle was really conversant with that feeling. Dead-set on turning into the great mother, partner, Christian, as well writer, she’d totally forgotten to question herself, “Is this actually what I want?”
When she became madly in love with a different woman, Doyle was enforced to unlearn all the things she’d been made to believe about living a good life and begin paying attention to her intuition rather. That intuition assisted her to form a new life full of love, family, inspiring work, as well as activism – a life that, for the first time ever, really suit with who she was.
These book chapters talk about exactly how she did it and it will motivate you to hold a mirror up to your own life, letting you recognize places where you don’t feel completely free. Also, they’ll offer you some motivating strategies for becoming untamed, accepting your desires, as well as forming the wildest and most satisfying life you can think of.
Chapter 1 – Glennon Doyle fell in love with a different woman while she was promoting a memoir about her marriage
Have you experienced something that transformed your entire life in the twinkle of an eye? Glennon Doyle definitely has experienced something like that. When she encountered Abby Wambach, an American soccer player, it changed her life upside down.
Doyle was married and she was also a successful Christian writer. She’d never been attracted to a different woman in her life. However, immediately she saw Abby, she was engrossed by a fierce desire that she couldn’t disregard.
Because Doyle is a Christian “mommy blogger” as well as writer, she had a devoted following; millions of women depended on her for genuine counsel on marriage as well as parenting. Also, she was on the verge of publishing a book, titled Love Warrior, that talked about how she and together with her husband had eventually succeeded to heal their marriage despite his several affairs. It painted an image of a great family as well as a brand new harmonious marriage.
But, as a matter of fact, things were not perfect. Doyle’s marriage didn’t have a significant spark. Even though she as well as Craig were good co-parents, she didn’t really feel physically attracted to him and she detested sexual intercourse
Her uncertainty regarding her marriage made Doyle hesitant to promote Love Warrior; however, there was no backing out of it. She was booked to deliver a presentation at a national book conference as a part of her promotional responsibilities. During dinner before that time, a woman unexpectedly came into the room. Doyle couldn’t get her eyes away from. Abby Wambach was the woman that walked in, a retired professional soccer player, who was also present at the conference to launch her own memoir as well.
Immediately she spotted Abby, Doyle heard a clear voice in her head, saying, “There she is.” Abby walked around the room shaking everybody. When Abby came nearer, Doyle got up and wrapped her in a long hug, although they’d never came across each other before. It felt as though her body was reacting to its own wish. Covered in Abby’s arms, she experienced a shock of recognition: it seemed like she’d eventually come home.
Abby and Doyle began having a discussion and got to know they had so many in common. They had intense chemistry, and they couldn’t stop starring at one another. Abby felt as though she’d been shocked with an electric shock when Doyle touched her arm. Abby’s body had been numb for a really long time; however, it had eventually started to come back to life.
Chapter 2 – Doyle suppressed her real nature in order to fit in with a sexist community.
Few years after she came across Abby, Doyle as well as her kids visited the zoo. At the zoo, she sighted a beautiful cheetah degraded to running after fluffy toy animals for the amusement of the watching multitudes. The cheetah was confined to a little cage, her whole wildness stamped out of her.
Doyle sensed a pang of recognition while observing the cheetah. For the majority of her life she, as well, had lost feeling with her untamed nature. She’d distorted herself into smaller and smaller cages to attempt and turn into the great woman that society expected her to be.
When Doyle was still a young kid, she’d been totally unselfconscious – she played easily and went with her instincts. However, when she turned ten, she began internalizing societal teachings about how a “good girl” should appear and act. She began to agree with the idea that she must be pleasing, obedient, and thin as well as beautiful.
Immediately she did, she lost a significant connection with who she actually was. She got anxious, depressed, and ultimately, bulimic. Binging as well as purging was one means of numbing the pain and hiding her feelings. She also drank heavily and took drugs, something she did all through her teenage years and she did that into her early twenties; it dulled her senses to her regular distress as well as anxiety.
However, then, when she became 26 years, she fell pregnant. Staying in the bathroom and holding the pregnancy test, it dawned on her that she’d gotten to a crossroads. If she wished to have the baby, she’d need to change her life totally. She chose to become sober and married the baby’s daddy named Craig. She started out turning into the great mother, wife, and Christian she could be.
Sobriety offered her life back again. However, she was still living her life based on others’ expectations. She hadn’t succeeded to leave the sexist cages she stayed in. She sensed a wildfire burning underneath the surface of her skin; however, she was afraid that accepting it would ruin her as well as her family. Therefore, she repressed that fire for as long as she could suppress it.
When Doyle came across Abby, she understood the animal nature of her body wouldn’t be silenced any longer. It felt as if the cheetah in captivity had caught the smell of the Serengeti. Doyle’s inner ten-year-old, the small girl who lived based on her own desires and believed her own body, was taking control of the show.
Chapter 3 – Doyle had to learn to put her own desires first in order to become a great mother
As individuals in an outdated courtship, Doyle as well as Abby began writing letters back and forth. With every letter they wrote to each other, they became deeper and deeper in love. Although they’d just met each other one time, their connection was unquestionable.
However, how could they be with each other? They stayed on separate coasts and were both married to another person, even though Abby was in the process of separating with her wife. Doyle understood that if she actually wished to be together with Abby, she’d need to separate with her husband; however, the idea of that frightened her. There was no assurance that things between them would work out, and breaking up her family was against all the things Doyle believed about being a great mother. One vital thing cut through her uncertainties: visualizing what she would feel if one of her daughters came to her in the exact dilemma.
Considering her daughters made Doyle realize a vital thing: she’d been making use of her kids to validate remaining in her marriage; however, she would be shattered if one of her daughters were to end up in the same sad circumstance. Unintentionally, she’d been telling them that women must suppress desires as well as their needs and turn into martyrs for their families.
Doyle chose that even though things don’t work well with Abby, she wasn’t ready to be caged in a sad marriage anymore. She’d realized what real love could seem like and she refused to settle for less. Therefore, she sat down and she said to Craig that she had seen another person; she was leaving the marriage. Afterward, they informed their kids, who were surprised and shattered. But, Doyle and Craig assured that, together, they would form a new type of family. Also, Craig spoke lovingly about Abby, clearly stating to the kids that they didn’t need to pick a side. That meeting was the first step toward forming a new, mixed family.
Eventually, Doyle put her wishes first and had been truthful with the persons she loved the most. However, she still needed to deal with openly coming out to the millions of individuals who respected her for her Christian morals and commitment to her marriage.
Chapter 4 – Doyle came out to the public although that implied putting her career at risk.
About to go on a promotional tour for her memoir Love Warrior, Doyle saw herself confronting a difficult choice. She’d made known her divorce from her husband; however, she hadn’t said that she had fallen in love with another woman. Must she keep the truth, or say to her readers what had actually transpired?
Doyle’s publishing team was frightened. Love Warrior had been chosen for Oprah’s book club and was nearly definite to be a best seller. They were sure that saying the truth would ruin Doyle’s career and they advised her to keep it a secret till after the book tour.
However, Doyle was aware that that would feel as though she is lying, and lying wasn’t a choice for her. She had taken a promise of integrity since she got sober. That implied taking accountability for her choices and never intentionally telling a lie. Being on the stage discussing marriage redemption would be a shameless lie.
Lying wouldn’t only go against Doyle’s promise. It would as well be a betrayal of her society. In Doyle’s first memoir known as Carry on Warrior, and on her blog, Momastery, she had been totally truthful and vulnerable with her readers. She would reveal her soul to them, and they would do the same back, sending her intimate letters that talked about every information of their lives. If she is being honest with her readers, she’d betray their trust as well as damage her own credibility.
Therefore, she chose to talk about what was actually happening. Taking a deep breath, she uploaded a picture of her together with Abby on Facebook. She wrote a short caption that says she and Abby had fallen in love and that they would also be forming a new type of family, co-parenting their kids together with Craig.
She logged out and expected the worst to happen. However, the worst never happened. Rather, she was showered with supportive messages. Even though her followers didn’t get her choice, they still supported her.
This extended to her book as well. When the book was published, Love Warrior sold quickly! Opening up certainly didn’t ruin her career. Doyle still promoted her book all across the nation. However, rather than selling a lie about the great marriage, she had deeper as well as more genuine discussions with her readers. She discussed how marriage is difficult and how at times the best means to save your family is to have a divorce.
Chapter 5 – In order to form a new life, Doyle needed to learn to pay attention to her own instinct.
Although going out publicly had been very easy than she’d thought, Doyle still experienced a lot of opposition to her choice. Some notable Christian leaders said that she had left her faith. A lot in her community saw it difficult to understand the reason she was separating from her husband. Most difficult of them all, her mom assumed that the relationship of Doyle’s with Abby was a mistake.
Doyle counted her mom among the individuals who understood her best. Normally, she took her views really seriously. However, at this moment where she had gotten in touch back with her ten-year-old self, she understood how risky it was to be influenced by outside views.
Doyle understood that she needed to form a means to make decisions for herself. However, how? A certain motto – “be still” –motivated her to retreat to a closet in her house daily for ten minutes. In that closest, she would be as silent as possible and only pay attention to herself. At first, it was torture. Doyle felt just like an “input junkie” moving into detox. However, she continued.
Ultimately, she was able to sink down into a really quiet, silent place in herself. A primal intuition stayed there, a thing she would come to refer to as the Knowing. Anytime she felt anxious or unsure about a thing, she could get quiet and access the Knowing; it would offer her a soft push, directing her. Anytime she moved in the path the Knowing recommended, she sensed “warm liquid gold” was flooding her veins.
In reality, the Knowing turned into the personal guide of Doyle’s deep inside herself. Fortified with its wisdom, she dredged up the entire main beliefs that had been imparted in her since her childhood, and questioned herself, “Do I actually believe this? Is it real for me?”
She came to the realization that some of her beliefs were totally out-of-date. For instance, she’d been brought up to think that being worthy implied being busy and productive all the time. This belief influenced her day-day connections – she’d see herself furious when she found Abby resting on the couch during the middle of the day. However, understanding that she no longer really believed that productivity surpassed all let her let go of the frustration anytime it happened.
One time, Doyle had really been desperate for external validation that she even went to Google to ask if she should remain with her husband after he’d cheated on her. However, after reconnecting with her intuition back, she didn’t have to crowdsource her choices any longer.
Chapter 6 – When Doyle made her relationship with God stronger, she lost belief in the church.
The new relationship Doyle has with Abby affected every aspect of her life. It particularly affected how she addressed her religion. Doyle was a well-known member of the Christian society; however, she was now in a relationship with another woman – something a lot of Christians consider to be a huge sin. How could she likely settle those dissimilar identities?
When her kids were at a tender age, Doyle had gone for a church service, one that looked really welcoming – until the pastor stated that being Christian implied believing that homosexuality, as well as abortion, were sins. When she attempted to talk about it with him later on, he cut her off. He claimed that to be truly faithful, Doyle must basically trust that what he stated was the truth. Even before coming out, she had an issue with that tactic. Why must she let a pastor be the middleman between her and God?
Doyle had read the Bible and she was fascinated by the story of Jesus as well as his commitment to social justice. Jesus was pro-immigrant as well as pro-poor. He used his life attempting to uplift societies. Therefore, why have a lot of people read his message into a mania with discriminating against the LGBTQ society and protesting against abortion rights?
When Doyle conducted some research, she found out that these problems only became famous during the 1970s, when a little group of evangelical leaders chose to push a conservative political plan. Nowadays, evangelical voters are very powerful in politics, and also they’re partially in charge of choosing leaders like Donald Trump, who support the anti-gay, anti-abortion agenda.
After some thinking, Doyle chose not to stop referring to herself as a Christian; she still refers to herself one now. According to her, there’s no difference between being a woman as well as being faithful. As a matter of fact, she thinks that her choice to be with Abby has really brought her closer to God. She has faith that God resides in her, in that deep, compassionate Knowing. Part of what made her reconnect with that inner voice is falling in love.
Even though Doyle’s relationship with God has become stronger, she has become more doubtful of organized religion. She won’t blindly agree with any kind of religious teaching that tells her to numb her critical faculties. However, she will continuously be a believer and also keep on fighting to honor the tale of Jesus through her dedication to social justice.
Chapter 7 – Embracing suffering, as well as pain, made Doyle live fully.
When Tish, Doyle’s oldest daughter, wanted to give a soccer team a try, Doyle’s heart sank. Tish gets easily annoyed and sensitive. She’d never been really athletic. Doyle was scared that she would be devastated if she wasn’t selected for the team.
However, Abby was certain that Tish had potential and motivated her to try it out. Again and again, Tish together with Abby experienced an exhausting training routine. Tish complained every time; however, she continued. Ultimately, to everybody’s surprise and happiness, she made it to the soccer team.
In attempting to protect Tish, Doyle had nearly stopped her from taking part in one of the things that make her feel most alive now – the same error that had brought Doyle a lot of pain in her own life.
For 16 years, Doyle had attempted to protect herself from pain for 16 years, numbing her feelings with alcohol and drugs. Remaining numb implied that she never needed to risk losing people since she never became close to them in the first instance. She was really afraid of uneasiness, pain, as well as disappointment that she dulled her whole feelings.
When Doyle became sober, she began facing the fear as well as the pain she’d been numbing with alcohol for several years. She came to a realization that being sad, anxious, or fearful basically implies that you’re alive. She learned a motto she’d noticed on a classroom wall when she worked as a teacher: “We can do hard things.” Rather than running away from pain, she began to allow it to open her up.
When she got tuned to her own pain, she was able to sympathize with the broader world that surrounds her as well. Rather than avoiding social injustice as well as disasters, she made use of despair and heartbreak to galvanize herself as well as others into action.
Together with Doyle’s trusted friends, she established the nonprofit known as Together Rising. The organization raises money to support individuals fighting for transformation all across the globe. They’ve raised more than $20 million in total making use of a grassroots fundraising model, with an average contribution of $25.
Together Rising doesn’t just benefit the people who get funding. Also, it benefits those who donate money and those who volunteer their time as well. They get the opportunity to experience their own power and also notice how much can be achieved when you work together to deal with suffering and pain, instead of turning away from it.
Chapter 8 – In order for Doyle to detox from white supremacy, she needed to challenge her own racism.
When violence, as well as racism against people of color, grew during the wake of Donald Trump’s election, Doyle was inspired to inform her daughters of the civil rights movement. When they examined a picture of a protest that revealed a multitude of black civil rights activists and a single white woman carrying a protest sign, her youngest daughter questioned Doyle if they would have gone for the match. Doyle was close to saying, “Yes, definitely!” when her eldest daughter responded, “No, we don’t march now. What is the reason why we would have marched then?”
Doyle came to the realization that her daughter was correct. She believed in racial equality. However, she didn’t go for the Black Lives Matter marches to fight for it.
The reality was that majority of the time, Doyle didn’t even notice how extremely white supremacy impacted the nation she stayed in. Her news feed showed white people back to her, living their privileged lives mainly untouched by racism. Doyle understood that she could believe in racial equality while still being a racist at the same time. The reason is that racism, just like sexism, isn’t about personal beliefs. It’s basically about what we grow up learning. It’s also in the air we breathe in.
Doyle recalled the number of racist jokes she’d grown up hearing. She recalled the way her family had seen countless evening news showing black folks getting arrested as part of the War on Drugs. They have also watched further black folks getting arrested on TV shows such as Cops. She got to know that she’d brought up on a diet of racist pictures, teaching her to think that black women don’t matter, and also black men are criminals.
Unlearning her racist beliefs was quite as difficult as becoming sober. She needed to detox from the whole means that she had been convinced into trusting in white supremacy. She began reading all the things she could read by writers as well as activists of color. She got to know about police brutality, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the manner in which immigrants are treated in detention centers.
After Doyle read about all the things she could and working together with activists of color, she began voicing out about white supremacy as well as her own involvement in it. Now, she talks about her own experiences of working toward “racial sobriety,” attempting to reveal to other white women a means to do just that.
Chapter 9 – Doyle lost the plot and got the life she wished for.
Just like any good writer, Doyle wished to be able to be in charge of the story of her life. That was partially the reason she’d felt really angry with her husband. When her husband cheated, he’d “fucked up her story” of having the great perfect family. She’d attempted to mend the damage by writing her memoir Love Warrior and she used the story to assert that they were still the great family – nevertheless, they could endure betrayal and appear stronger.
However, if the betrayal of her husband was a plot twist, Abby’s arrival into her life was a narrative disaster. It made Doyle reconsider the tales she’d been saying to herself her entire life, the stories about what it implied to be in a good marriage. For the first time ever, she had no knowledge where her story might head next.
In the absence of a conversant script to force onto reality, she needed to begin making use of the power of her imagination. If all the things in her life had fallen apart, how could she rebuild them? What was the truest, most beautiful picture of marriage and family that she could visualize? What was the wildest, most freeing means of being faithful to God? Imagination gave a tool for forming a new story, looking beyond the moment as well as the status quo, and imagining the universe as it could be.
Doyle’s relationship with Abby met regular opposition; however, Doyle continued imagining that their love was untouchable, and also that they were an island; she imagined a moment when she together with Abby would form a safe and warm home. In the year 2017, Doyle and Abby got married, and since that time, they’ve been building a completely contemporary marriage together – a marriage that is full of love, sex, fun, respect, and adventure. A marriage that continues growing based on their dreams about how it could be.
They’ve formed a family life that’s wealthier than anything Doyle would have been able to think of back then when she was obsessing for a perfect nuclear family. Doyle’s ex-husband stays down the road and visits their house for dinner frequently. Doyle’s ex-husband and Abby play soccer, and all three of them actively parent their kids together.
It hasn’t been easy all the time. All of them have had to work really hard to make their dreams come true. However, now, they’re living their lives by design and not by default. Also, Doyle feels as though she can stop suppressing the fire in her, directing it into her desires instead.
Untamed by Glennon Doyle – Glennon Doyle Melton Book Review
All of us possess a wild, untamed being in us. However, it gets confined when we attempt to please others rather than going after our own wishes. Glennon Doyle’s story reveals to us that for us to get back our freedom, we have to tune in to our intuition and also begin paying attention to our bodies. By challenging the societal principles she’d internalized, Doyle was able to put a stop to living life by default and create the partnership as well as a family that satisfies her most.
Have a mood diary.
At times, when you feel depressed and anxious, it can be difficult to recall what it seems like to feel good and enjoy life. The same applies the opposite way. When you’re happy, those periods when you can’t leave your bed looks like a bad dream. Having a diary as well as jotting down note of how your mood changes can offer you some view and assist you to get assistance for the down periods if you require it.
