Untamed Book Review
“We can do hard things.”
Life is hard. Life is not supposed to be easy, but it can be beautiful. In her third memoir, Glennon Doyle captures the beautiful and harsh realities of life’s obstacles. She shares how even after we reflect on ourselves once or twice, the learning never stops. Untamed follows the narrative of Glennon Doyle’s life from recovering alcoholic to mother of three unique children, and the end of one marriage to the beginning of a new love. Doyle touches on the complexities of parenting each of her kids with different approaches, and the intertwining layers of separated parenting and personal discovery. However, we can challenge the status quo and overcome hard things in life to find more peace and freedom to live our best lives. Untamed is an easy read with true stories that can remind each of us that we are not alone in our experiences.
“Grief shatters. If you let yourself shatter and then you put yourself back together, piece by piece, you wake up one day and realize that you have been completely reassembled.”
Grief like everything else is a process. Loss is an unavoidable part of life but still takes each of us by surprise and can leave us feeling confused with conflicting emotions. When we lose someone, suddenly all at once we also lose every emotion we ever attached with that person. We can’t make any pain go away with one quick solution, but we can work on making it easier day by day. In the process, we might even be able to heal parts of the past that were not available before the loss.
“Our boys are born with great potential for nurturing, caring, loving, and serving. Let’s stop training it out of them.”
Society tells us that males should be strong and assertive, while females are expected to be delicate and quiet. We perpetuate the cycle of preconceived gender roles because it is easier to conform than to take the space to explore our individuality. One ongoing theme that is carried throughout each topic in this book is how society impacts us in so many ways. Through religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender norms, timelines, relationships, and careers. In one way or another, the world has “tamed” us, and what we have learned from others is what keeps us in our cages.
“I don’t know if I call myself a Christian anymore. That label suggests certainty, and I have none.”
In this memoir, Doyle discusses her conflicts with Christianity and God. For her, the values she was raised to believe, did not allow her to follow her inner “knowing.” You might call it a gut feeling or faith, but regardless of the label, Doyle describes how she began to make powerful choices for herself when she started listening to what felt right for her. A lot of that required courage to face unknown outcomes and the consequences of leaving her only known community, but gained more than what she thought was possible.