Untamed

by Glennon Doyle

I have a son and two daughters, until they tell me otherwise.

I picked up one of the girls’ slim, metallic, pink bottles. Instead of barking marching orders at me, that bottle, in cursive, flowy font, whispered disconnected adjectives: alluring, radiant, gentle, pure, illuminating, enticing, touchable, light, creamy. Not a verb to be found. Nothing to do here, just a list of things to be.

Ah. You were Golden. Golden is decided early, and it sticks, somehow, even when we are grown and know so much better, so much more. Once Golden, always Golden.

I told myself: Maybe in a different life. Isn’t that interesting? As if I had more than one.

First: I can feel everything and survive.

Second: I can use pain to become.

BE STILL AND KNOW. I’d read that verse many times before, but it struck me freshly this time. It didn’t say “Poll your friends and know” or “Read books by experts and know” or “Scour the internet and know.” It suggested a different approach to knowing: Just. Stop.

I understand now that no one else in the world knows what I should do.

HOW TO KNOW: Moment of uncertainty arises. Breathe, turn inward, sink. Feel around for the Knowing. Do the next thing it nudges you toward. Let it stand. (Don’t explain.) Repeat forever. (For the rest of your life: Continue to shorten the gap between the Knowing and the doing.)

There is a life meant for you that is truer than the one you’re living. But in order to have it, you will have to forge it yourself. You will have to create on the outside what you are imagining on the inside. Only you can bring it forth. And it will cost you everything.

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.” “Not this” is a very important stage. But knowing what we do not want is not the same as knowing what we do want.

But at first it’s very scary. Because once we feel, know, and dare to imagine more for ourselves, we cannot unfeel, unknow, or unimagine. There is no going back. We are launched into the abyss—the space between the not-true-enough life we’re living and the truer one that exists only inside us. So we say, “Maybe it’s safer to just stay here. Even if it’s not true enough, maybe it’s good enough.” But good enough is what makes people drink too much and snark too much and become bitter and sick and live in quiet desperation until they lie on their deathbed and wonder: What kind of life/relationship/family/world might I have created if I’d been braver?

Holding on to what is no longer true enough is not safe; it’s the riskiest move because it is the certain death of everything that was meant to be.

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.

What I lose is always what is no longer true enough so that I can take full hold of what is.

Selfless women make for an efficient society but not a beautiful, true, or just one.

A broken family is a family in which any member must break herself into pieces to fit in. A whole family is one in which each member can bring her full self to the table knowing that she will always be both held and free.

Rebellion is as much of a cage as obedience is. They both mean living in reaction to someone else’s way instead of forging your own. Freedom is not being for or against an ideal, but creating your own existence from scratch.

We are certain that we were meant for more and that we don’t even deserve what we have.

I was talking to a dear friend around that time. She said, “G, remember that amazing Steinbeck quote? ‘And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.’ I’ve kept it on my desk for years. I looked at it last night and thought: I’m tired of being good. I’m so tired. “Let’s change it to: “And now that we don’t have to be good, we can be free.”

I said, “It will never work out.” She said, “Maybe not. Maybe she’s just an Abby-shaped door inviting you to leave what’s not true enough anymore.” I said, “It will ruin Craig.” She said, “There is no such thing as one-way liberation, honey.” I said, “Can you imagine the havoc this would wreak on my parents, on my friends, on my career?” She said, “Yes, everyone you love would be uncomfortable for a long while, maybe. What is better: uncomfortable truth or comfortable lies? Every truth is a kindness, even if it makes others uncomfortable. Every untruth is an unkindness, even if it makes others comfortable.”

Why do women find it honorable to dismiss ourselves? Why do we decide that denying our longing is the responsible thing to do? Why do we believe that what will thrill and fulfill us will hurt our people? Why do we mistrust ourselves so completely?

For a long while I pretended not to know that even though I had only one life, I was spending it inside a lonely marriage. When the Knowing threatened to rise, I’d shove it back down. There was no point in admitting I knew what I knew, because I would never do what the Knowing would require me to do.

I am staying in this marriage for my little girl. But would I want this marriage for my little girl?

When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.

I can’t unknow what I know, and I can’t unbecome who I am now. So I’m leaving—not just because I love you but because I love this version of me. The one that woke up when we met.

Selah is found in the Hebrew Bible seventy-four times. Scholars believe that when it appears in the text, it is a direction to the reader to stop reading and be still for a moment, because the previous idea is important enough to consider deeply.

Selah is the holy silence when the recipient of transformational words, music, and sketchily acquired information from radiology receptionists pauses long enough to be changed forever. Selah is the nothingness just before the big bang of a woman exploding into a new universe.

“But for now,” I told her, “you are a bucket of sea. That’s why you feel so big and so small.”

People who do not suck are people who have been hurt, so they have empathy for others who are hurt. People who do not suck are those who have learned from their own mistakes by dealing with the consequences. People who do not suck are people who have learned how to win with humility and how to lose with dignity.

In my thirties, I learned that there is a type of pain in life that I want to feel. It’s the inevitable, excruciating, necessary pain of losing beautiful things: trust, dreams, health, animals, relationships, people. This kind of pain is the price of love, the cost of living a brave, openhearted life—and I’ll pay it. There is another kind of pain that comes not from losing beautiful things but from never even trying for them.

The point of this story was never that This One is more God than the rest. The point is that if we can find good in those we’ve been trained to see as bad, if we can find worth in those we’ve been conditioned to see as worthless, if we can find ourselves in those we’ve been indoctrinated to see as other, then we become unable to hurt them.

Having the courage to dismiss what insults your soul is a matter of life or death.

Good art originates not from the desire to show off but from the desire to show yourself.

Art makes us less lonely because it always comes from the desperate center of the artist—and each of our centers is desperate. That’s why good art is such a relief.

If you want to get jaded and numb, watch the news. If you want to stay human, read letters. When trying to understand humanity, seek out firsthand accounts.

There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in. —Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Every philanthropist, if she is paying attention, eventually becomes an activist. If we do not, we risk becoming codependent with power—saving the system’s victims while the system collects the profits, then pats us on the head for our service. We become injustice’s foot soldiers.

When I got sober, I learned that hard feelings are doorbells that interrupt me, send me into a panic, and then leave me with an exciting package. Sobriety is a decision to stop numbing and blaming away hard feelings and to start answering the door. So when I quit drinking, I began allowing my feelings to disturb me. This was scary, because I had always assumed that my feelings were so big and powerful that they would stay forever and eventually kill me. But my hard feelings did not stay forever, and they did not kill me. Instead, they came and went, and afterward I was left with something I didn’t have before. That something was self-knowledge.

Once again, I could see him as a good man with whom I’d like to be friends. I felt real forgiveness. That was because for the first time in years, I felt safe. I’d restored my own boundaries. I’d begun to trust myself, because I’d become a woman who refuses to abandon herself to keep false peace.

Forgiveness does not mean access. We can give the other person the gift of forgiveness and ourselves the gift of safety and freedom at the very same time. When both people become unafraid and unpunished, that is a good good-bye.

A boundary is the edge of one of our root beliefs about ourselves and the world.

Anger rings our bell and delivers one of our root beliefs. This is good information, but the next part is more than informative, it’s transformational: All of the beliefs that anger delivers come with a return label. There is a sticker on the package that says, “Here is one of your root beliefs! Would you like to keep, return, or exchange this one?”

As though the point of life is to not be moved. That’s not the point. When we let ourselves be moved, we discover what moves us. Heartbreak is not something to be avoided; it’s something to pursue. Heartbreak is one of the greatest clues of our lives.

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. Other people can still see me, but no one can feel me anymore—including me. For me, the tragedy of mental illness is not that I’m sad but that I’m not anything. Mental illness makes me miss my own life.

When one lives in a state of constant vigilance, if something actually goes wrong: Forget about it. Full panic. Fifteen to a hundred in two seconds flat. Kids two minutes late? Everyone is dead. Sister doesn’t text me back within thirty seconds? Definitely dead. Dog coughs? Almost dead.

“Easy” buttons take us to fake heaven. Fake heaven always turns out to be hell.

Answering the question Who do I love? is not enough. We must live lives of our own. To live a life of her own, each woman must also answer: What do I love? What makes me come alive? What is beauty to me, and when do I take the time to fill up with it? Who is the soul beneath all of these roles?