Untamed

 

Summary (from the publisher): Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is the story of navigating divorce, forming a new blended family, and discovering that the brokenness or wholeness of a family depends not on its structure but on each member’s ability to bring her full self to the table. And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts so that we become women who can finally look at ourselves and say: There She Is.

Review: This memoir is an insightful thought piece on what it means to follow your own path, how to navigate divorce, and how to rebuild family while still following your truth. Glenn0n Doyle was a married mother of three, struggling to move on in the wake of her husband's infidelity when she unexpectedly fell in love with a woman. In ending her marriage and choosing to honor her self, she confronted the impact that societal expectations have had on her life and contributed to her physical and mental health concerns. In choosing  a path that allowed her to be a happy and fulfilled mother rather than an angry wife, Glennon sets herself free. 

The beauty of this memoir is in its short, punchy chapters. Not necessarily told in chronological order, each chapter shares a particular anecdote or experience and Glennon's thoughts on their impact on her life. In its chapters, she reveals the mistakes she made and how she has spent the last years of her life trying to correct them by listening to her gut or as she calls it "the knowing" and by recognizing that being a human is hard and at times going through difficult things is an unfortunate truth. 

I love Glennon Doyle's reckless willingness to have hard conversations and do hard things. She deliberately denies her urge to shy away from difficult topics and has worked hard to live a life ruled by being true to herself. She loves hard and fiercely and I admire her earnestness and exuberance for her life and those she loves. She is shockingly frank about her life including details about her ex-husband's infidelity and her sex life with her wife that make me wonder what her family, and in particular her children, think about this book.

My one complaint is that at times this book felt like it was striving for quotable moments on every page. She writes in a splashy big way that would lend itself well to an Instagram caption rather than a deep, contemplative explanation of her feelings and experiences. On the other hand, this could be a positive too; there's a lot of great punch lines in this book's pages. It just felt at times that the author was more focused on pithy lines than telling her story. For example, her advice to her child: "Listen. 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" (173). Or this line about her marriage: "I love how our life together is one eternal conversation that we put on pause only to sleep" (228). Similarly, this book reads as an impassioned conversation with the author, urging her readers to summon the courage and the energy to live wildly and boldly. She has certainly achieved that goal. 

Stars: 3.5