“Untamed” is one of those books that I tried not to read. It was ubiquitous. Prominent in book stores. Popping up in social media posts, with rave reviews about how it transformed the reader. In conversations overhead in cafes. And then my stepson Amos and his partner Kristen bought it for me for Christmas.
Kristen was so excited to gift it, she had read it herself and told me it made her think of me.
Reading the cover – “Untamed – stop pleasing and start living” – I was like: really? I’m not sure this is for me….
Bruised ego and vulnerability aside, I set it on my night stand and resolved to read it over the Summer.
When I read I make notes in my book journal, so I can reflect on my learnings throughout the year, rather than going back to the book itself. This review comes directly from my there. This is about how the book touched me, my “Aha!” moments and key take-aways that I’m working on integrating into my mindset and my journey.
I asked Kristen if she might do the same and she courageously and generously agreed.
Here are our stories of “Untamed” by Glennon Doyle.
Reflections by Bel Smith
I was instantly captivated reading the dedication at the beginning of the book:
For every woman resurrecting herself. For the girls who will never be buried
I knew then, that this was the right time to be reading this book, that there was something I needed to be taught, and that I was ready to listen.
I was ready to shorten the gap between knowing stuff and doing stuff, to bolster my belief in the unseen order of things (which most people know as faith).
Be still and know. Feel around for the knowing. Do the next thing it nudges you toward.
Glennon Doyle
This immediately made this book for me about a deeper self discovery, an undoing of habitual thinking and shrinking away from a bigger role in life that I was aching to play.
I’ve read A LOT about fear. Fear of not good enough, fear of trusting in myself and that deeper knowing. That fear has shut my mouth and dampened my spirit, and “Untamed” inspired me to come instead from a place of love.
What the world needs is more women who have quit fearing themselves… masses of women who are entirely out of control
Glennon Doyle
The work begins with forgiveness – starting with you and radiating out to your inner circle, the most loved family and friends and then beyond to peers and acquaintances (current and historic). I made a big, long list of forgiveness for myself and other people.
“Untamed” hit me between the eyes when it talked about being a treasure hunt parent, not an expectations parent and inspired me to get to know my children more deeply, as who they already are and NOT as I expect them to be. Or as I expect other people expect that children of mine might be. This was so freeing, except that on reflection I shouldn’t need a book to give me permission to simply celebrate my children as they are, rather than in spite of who they are and how they show up. And brave parenting is listening to that knowing, ours and our children’s, and trusting it, rather than fighting it to make our family fit a common mold.
My biggest “Aha” moment came when reading about the true beauty of life. We need to let go of the lie that life promises to be easy. We make ourselves believe that lie when we compare ourselves to others and how well they seem to be doing. We reinforce that lie when we berate ourselves that we should be doing better, or that we should be satisfied with what is easy, so long as we’re not ruffling any feathers and everyone else around us is happy. So I’m working on living my truest, most beautiful life in its biggest, messiest, most honest way. For me, that’s how I’m stopping pleasing to start living.
Reflections by Kristen Olson
I see Glennon Doyle’s “Untamed” as being a loud testament to the idea that it is not our job to belittle ourselves in order for others to feel bigger. She makes it abundantly clear that we are capable of challenging and overcoming harmful beliefs that have caused us to feel small.
“Playing dumb, weak and silly is a disservice to yourself and to me and to the world. Every time you pretend to be less than you are, you steal permission from other women to exist fully. Don’t mistake modesty for humility. Modesty is a giggly lie. An act. A mask. A fake game. We have no time for it.”
Glennon Doyle
Glennon confronts and dismantles many of the harmful links between ‘diet culture’ and our sense of worthiness. She writes, “Diet culture promises us that controlling our appetite is the key to our worthiness, so we learn to not trust our own hunger.” Her contrast between disempowerment and dieting is powerful. There is no quicker way to abandon yourself than to talk yourself out of a natural function, but yet we so often do. The fact that dieting has even become a culture, we can see that there has been a widespread internalised need for restriction, self-minimisation and need-dismissal in order to make others feel comfortable.
Whether it’s with hunger, emotions or opinions, when we manipulate our approach to
them in order to receive validation, we drift further away from our ability to know how to take care of ourselves. Our path to success and happiness is paved with our ability to listen to our own needs. This can’t be done when we neglect our hunger, as it is devastatingly harmful to our intuition.
Reading Untamed infuriated me. Her words revealed painful, self-destructive ideas that lived in me that had solidified into poisonous beliefs about myself. The fury that came from reading this book now burns like passion, as it awakened a deep desire to abandon any part of myself that believed it was not worthy of care.
She returns to the themes of ‘humility’ and our attempts to be ‘humble’, and how we’ve disguised being modest and having reduced self-importance as being praised as being a good thing. Instead, Glennon offers reframed ways of looking at humility. “The word humility derives from the Latin word humilitas which means ‘of the earth’. To be humble is to be grounded in knowing who you are. It implies the responsibility to become what you were meant to become – to grow, to reach, to fully bloom as high and strong and
grand as you were created to. It is not honourable for a tree to wilt and shrink and disappear. It is not honourable for a [person] to, either.”
I love her redirection of humility, introducing it as if it were a means of building and becoming, rather than shrinking and reducing. Every part of “Untamed” invited me to treat myself as if I were expansive and blooming, not someone to be edited down and shrunk to become bite-sized for the digestion of others.
You can read more about “Untamed” and Glennon Doyle here
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