Untamed

by Glennon Doyle

She cried herself to sleep every night for a very long time. She was our Joan of Arc, marching us straight into battle, day in and day out.

Back when I believed a mother was supposed to be her daughter’s hero instead of allowing her daughter to become her own hero.

She is a little girl who no longer has to avoid the fires of life, because she has learned that she is fireproof.

Here’s the promise and hope I have for Tish, for myself, for all of us: “Good night, baby. You’re never gonna lose you.”

My superpower is empathy, which means that I am often unable to distinguish between what is happening to other people and what is happening to me. So, when my wife walks into the family room, she finds me curled up in a ball beneath a blanket, slowly dying from malnutrition and thirst.

“Okay, babe. Remember what we talked about. How reality TV works is: If you are seeing it here, there has to be a camera crew there. Which means there’s also likely a protein bar available. He is definitely going to be okay, honey.”

I am grateful for this reminder, as it allows me to come out from under my blanket and watch the rest of the show with some boundaries. Boundaries are just what I need in order to take in the lesson Fraudulent Survivorman is about to teach me.

A Touch Tree is one recognizable, strong, large tree that becomes the lost one’s home base. She can adventure out into the woods as long as she returns to her Touch Tree—again and again. This perpetual returning will keep her from getting too far gone.

I am my own tree. So I return to myself and reinhabit myself. As I do, I feel my chin rise and my body straighten.

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

I’m all by myself in here. In my body. I’m just…lonely or something.

I’m all alone in here. It’s scary.”

I fear that one day she will finally get still and that stillness will be so full of scalding regret that it will be impossible to stay.

I cannot imagine that there has ever been a more overparented and underprotected generation. New memo: Here is your baby. Love her at home, at the polls, in the streets. Let everything happen to her. Be near.

I find myself worrying most that when we hand our children phones we steal their boredom from them. As a result, we are raising a generation of writers who will never start writing, artists who will never start doodling, chefs who will never make a mess of the kitchen, athletes who will never kick a ball against a wall, musicians who will never pick up their aunt’s guitar and start strumming.

It took me two more years to remember that fear of being different is a terrible reason for a parent to avoid doing what her child needs her to do.

Girls born into a patriarchal society become either shrewd or sick. It’s one or the other.

You are allowed to take up space on this earth with your feelings, your ideas, your body. You do not need to shrink. You do not need to hide any part of yourself, ever.

Our boys are born with great potential for nurturing, caring, loving, and serving. Let’s stop training it out of them.

It must be so lonely to be a man. It must be so difficult to carry by yourself all the things we were meant to help each other carry.

Since women are equally poisoned by our culture’s standards of manhood, we panic when men venture out of their cages.

Every time you’re given a choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappoint that someone else. Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.

We don’t have to have answers for our children; we just have to be brave enough to trek into the woods and ask tough questions with them. We can do hard things.

What if we let ourselves feel it all? What if we decided that it is strength—not weakness—to let other people’s pain pierce us?