Book Review: ‘Untamed’, Glennon Doyle

I started reading ‘Untamed’ off the back of listening to Brene Brown’s podcast, ‘Unlocking Us‘. I am only half way through the book and already, it’s so good, I have to tell you about it. Everything about the book is ‘untamed’ – the chapter titles, format, writing style, cover, options, and the mirror it holds up to your own life. Glennon breaks down her life into cages and keys – those things that keep us trapped, and those things we discover in order set ourselves free.

“I was just a caged girl made for wide-open skies. I wasn’t crazy. I was a goddam cheetah”

Doyle gets you right from the prologue with the introduction of Tabitha the cheetah. An animal in the zoo, trained by a black labrador to spend her day running after a fluffy pink rabbit tied to a Land Rover for the pleasure of others. Whilst all along, buried deep inside her is her natural wild instincts which tell her that she is in fact wild and untamed. I was so mind blown by the parallels Tabitha’s story had with my own that I read it out loud to my partner, covered in chills in the discovery of my own lifetime of taming. I was hooked!

From eating disorders, sexual orientation, addiction, marriage, parenthood, work, feminism, divorce and recovery – this book will hold a mirror up to every part of your life you thought you had sorted, you were in control of or thought you had decided for yourself. It will remind you that you most likely didn’t. You were molded, taught, controlled and tamed into thinking, acting, loving, grieving, and feeling the way you do by a series of cages. To paraphrase Oprah, its ‘a-ha’ moment after ‘a-ha’ moment! Some cages are more obvious than others so if nothing else this will force you to take a honest look at your life and discover what has kept you caged.

But then it gets better. You discover how to break out of them. Doyle takes you through a whirlwind tour of realisation in which she picks the lock of each cage in turn with ‘keys’ to freedom. Watch out for how she brings to life the moment she falls in love with her wife, Abbey. After years of marriage, infidelity, a divorce and 3 children, Glennon gives into pure, unadulterated, passionate, unwavering desire with her wife. The electricity between them during their first meeting will flow with each turn og the page, into your fingers, surge up your arms and land in your heart, igniting it with a sense of desire, love and unapologetic joy. I defy anyone not to examine the great loves of their life during this chapter, sit back and think if you ever missed out on an untamed love because you too were caged.

“We forgot how to know when we learned how to please”

Despite not being a mother myself, I can’t help but be in awe of the attention Glennon pays to her children in this book. It is a model of how I hope to parent my own children one day but also makes me mourn the parental style I wish I had. She empowers them to believe that bravery does not always come in the form of someone willing to take on the world and dive straight in, it can manifest in the ‘knowing’ to stand back and take stock, go against what everyone else expects of you, calculating the risk, listening to yourself and saying ‘No, that’s not for me.’ She forces them to examine and disrupt their own taming early on so it does not fester into unhappiness later down the line. In the opening statement to the chapter “Directions” we find the statement – “I have 2 daughters and a son. Until they tell me otherwise” – cementing what later turns out to be an astonishing template by which to parent children in this jungle we call life.

This book is for anyone who finds themself wanting more from life, questioning their place or thinking “there must be more out there for me than this”. For anyone who is sick of pleasing others and ready to start pleasing themselves. For those who are ready to re-examine and evaluate their life and especially for those that don’t think they need to. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Become untamed and remember – you’re a goddamn cheetah!