Untamed

by Glennon Doyle

There is no glory except straight through your story.

I have learned that if I want to rise, I have to sink first.

I have to search for and depend upon the voice of inner wisdom instead of voices of outer approval. This saves me from living someone else’s life.

How can we begin to live from our imagination instead of our indoctrination?

Destruction is essential to construction. If we want to build the new, we must be willing to let the old burn.

But good enough is what makes people drink too much and snark too much and become bitter and sick and live in quiet desperation

We are alive only to the degree to which we are willing to be annihilated.

Our next life will always cost us this one. If we are truly alive, we are constantly losing who we just were, what we just built, what we just believed, what we just knew to be true.

If I am living bravely, my entire life will become a million deaths and rebirths.

The Ache is our meeting place.

“And now that we don’t have to be good, we can be free.”

Can you imagine? The epitome of womanhood is to lose one’s self completely. That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture. Because a very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves.

I have everything I need, beneath me, above me, inside me. I am never gonna lose me.

Imagination is the shortest distance between two people, two cultures, two ideologies, two experiences.

Explaining is fear preparing its case, and we are not on trial.

I can’t convince my parents that we’re okay by talking incessantly about how okay we are. I think the only way to convince anybody you are okay is just to go about being okay and let them witness it.

The miracle of grace is that you can give what you have never gotten. You do not get your capacity for love from your parents. They are not your source. Your source is God. You are your own source.

nothing unearths what we really believe faster than examining what pisses us off.

Because when I looked at Abby relaxing, my anger was almost a bitter yearning. Must be nice. Must be nice to rest in the middle of the damn day. Must be nice to feel worthy of the space you take up on the earth without hustling to earn it every minute. Must be nice to rest and still feel worthy. I want to be able to rest and still feel worthy, too.

Hard work is important. So are play and nonproductivity. My worth is tied not to my productivity but to my existence. I am worthy of rest.

The thing that breaks your heart is the very thing you were born to help heal.

Grief is a lonely basement guest room. No one, not even your sister, can join you there.

Depression and anxiety are not feelings. Feelings return me to myself. Depression and anxiety are body snatchers that suck me out of myself so that I appear to be there but I’m really gone.

Writing is clawing the ground when I’m sinking too low, and obsessing is clawing the ground when I’m hovering too high.