For weeks during the fall, my mom raved to me about this new book she was reading by Glennon Doyle. My mom said she “just gets to the point” and “is so authentically herself.” During a time filled with so much uncertainty, not only in the world but also in my personal life, this sounded like a book worth picking up. I always appreciate my mom’s book and podcast recommendations—many centered around self-reflection and growth—but have also found a tendency to put her suggestions on the back burner.
On my way home after visiting the Santa Clara area this fall, I picked up Untamed by Doyle at a bookstore in the San Francisco airport. I began reading the book as I waited for my plane to board, and I don’t think I put it down until I landed in Boston. Before I knew it, I was doing the same thing my mother was doing, going on and on about the revelations I was having from this book, but this time it was to my friends.
This self-reflective memoir is built on the premise of women being “tamed” in the patriarchal world we live in. Doyle begins by telling the story of seeing a cheetah at the zoo with her two children and wife. However, like all animals at the zoo, the cheetah was caged in, unable to roam freely in the wild.
Doyle bounces from story to story in her own life and describes the ways her own wild was tamed. To her, the wild inside of us references our most authentic self. She dives into the rabbit hole women are thrown into, emphasizing that it begins after age 10, when we are told to forgo our wild and conform to a false idea of how women should be: obedient, apologetic, gracious and content.
Her claims about the causes of female discontentment, how destruction is essential to construction and the importance of trusting what is already inside of you, echo inside of me.
Thinking back to my own development, I think of when I was tamed. Was it being forced to do friendship bracelets on the pavement during third-grade recess because the soccer game was implied to be “boys only”? Was it being catcalled and not saying anything back while roaming the halls my freshman year of high school? Was it constantly weighing myself throughout high school to make sure I fit the same clothes all my friends wore? Was it being told, and believing, that a guy’s pleasure (in all aspects) was more important than my own? Was it growing up in a society with racist institutions all around me with people blatantly ignoring the flaws of these systems? When was it?
It was every time I did not feel equal, valued, capable or enough just as I am. It was every time I suppressed my emotions to keep a smile on my face. It was every time I felt objectified by a boy, but never spoke up. It was every time I witnessed racial injustice but did not speak up. It was every time I trusted something that was chosen for me, not by me. It was every time I had wild inside of me to release, but never believed I could.
Talking about her divorce from her ex-husband, Glennon wrote, “We didn’t fit together. We tried, because it was the right thing to do, because we thought we should. Because I thought we should. But right is not real, and should is a cage. What’s wild is what is.”
Her words made me think long and hard about what I have done because I felt it was right or because I felt like I should. When I kept playing competitive sports for seasons beyond when I stopped loving them. When I took an economics class because I thought I should be a successful businesswoman. When I do not speak up for justice because I am afraid of judgment. When my preconditioned beliefs tell me what I should do, and I do not tap into my wild to know what is already inside of me. When my preconditioned beliefs fog me from remembering that we are all cheetahs and that we all have wild in us.
She puts it all out there as my mom claimed. And, for any woman, I believe it would be impossible to walk away from reading this book without your soul screaming: when have I been tamed? Why? And what do I do now?