Untamed
I started reading Glennon Doyle’s work years ago, mostly on her blog Momastery. My feelings have always been mixed–I sometimes just found her writing a little too much. What I always appreciated was her relentless insistence that "we can do hard things." Like Marie Forleo’s mantra of "everything is figureoutable," I–and many other women–find these simple phrases bolstering.
With Untamed, her writing, to me, felt more focused and certain than I’ve read before. It’s a memoir of sorts, but also a treatise for overwhelmed women who are trying to be and do everything they’re told they should. She implores women to discover themselves, to trust their own knowing, and build lives that feel true. All messages we’ve heard before, but Doyle’s writing hits hard:
"…discontent is the nagging of the imagination. Discontent is evidence that your imagination has not given up on you. It is still pressing, swelling, trying to get your attention by whispering: “Not this."
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Publisher’s Description
In her most revealing and powerful book yet, the beloved activist, speaker, and author of the bestselling sensations Love Warrior and Carry On, Warrior explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet the expectations of the world, and start trusting the voice deep within us. “Untamed will liberate women–emotionally, spiritually, and physically. I believe Glennon was born to write this book, just this way, at just this moment in history. It is phenomenal.”–Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of City of Girls and Eat Pray Love This is how you find yourself. There is a voice of longing inside every woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good mothers, daughters, partners, employees, citizens, and friends. We believe all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives, relationships, and world, and wonder: Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful. We hide our simmering discontent–even from ourselves. Until we reach our boiling point. Four years ago, Glennon Doyle–bestselling Oprah-endorsed author, renowned activist and humanitarian, wife and mother of three–was speaking at a conference when a woman entered the room. Glennon looked at her 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. Soon she realized that they came to her from within. Glennon was finally hearing her own voice–the voice that had been silenced by decades of cultural conditioning, numbing addictions, and institutional allegiances. This was the voice of the girl Glennon had been before the world told her who to be. She vowed to never again abandon herself. She decided to build a life of her own–one based on her individual desire, intuition, and imagination. She would reclaim her true, untamed self. Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both a memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It offers a piercing, electrifying examination of the restrictive expectations women are issued from birth; shows how hustling to meet those expectations leaves women feeling dissatisfied and lost; and reveals that when we quit abandoning ourselves and instead abandon the world’s expectations of us, we become women who can finally look at ourselves and recognize: There She Is. Untamed shows us how to be brave. As Glennon insists: The braver we are, the luckier we get.