Review of Untamed by Glennon Doyle

At first I thought this book was almost a blog made book, as I know that Glennon has kept up a longstanding and beloved blog. But that's not right. The pacing and the structure in the book is excellent. Her prose writing style is poetic and chapters feel like prose poems. I love the titles and how the title is additive to the whole chapter.

Glennon mixes personal narrative with mini sermons. She is a preacher and her message is powerful. This is her third memoir and who better to explore and explain (and explode) the way we live through story, than someone who literally makes her living writing her own story. Stories direct our lives toward happiness or rightness or safety. And as much as we would all like to step out into a blank room--a “non-construct”--to examine our story and make changes, this is not a luxury offered to flesh and blood human beings. We are always changing the tire while flying down the mountain taking a turn and narrowly avoiding a baby goat. Insert “story” for “tire” here. 

I loved her chapter “boys” in the middle of the book. Ready to raise her daughters in patriarchy she wanted them to have an alternative narrative - “You are a human being, and your birthright is to remain fully human. So you get to be everything: loud quiet bold smart careful impulsive creative joyful big angry curious ravenous ambitious. You are allowed to take up space on this earth with your feelings, your ideas, your body.” Beautiful. So important. Preach Glennon!

But in the chapter she writes about she failed to realize “Boys are in cages, too.” She says she forgot to tell him “You can be quiet, sad, merciful, small, vulnerable, loving and kind out there in the world. You can be unsure of yourself and still be a boy.” By exploring these larger narratives and how we automatically slot into them, she opens up new possibilities for the reader. 

In her chapter “questions” she talks about the “wild, mysterious forces inside and between human beings that we have never been able to understand. Forces like faith. Like love. Like sexuality.” She says in order to deal with all the wildness and mystery we poured them into glasses, containers. But these glasses are not faith, love and sexuality and sometimes they will no longer do, the wild mystery must break free. I am reminded of theologian Sarah Coakley “true trinitarian orthodoxy … flourishes more naturally at the boundaries of ‘established’ forms of Christianity than under its protective guardianship. For the political or ecclesiastical taming of the Spirit always comes at a cost.” 

Untamed is pleading to stop letting the status quo narratives crush us. To find your way into listening to yourself, a deep listening. In these pages she explores not just following desire and her heart, but also the dangers and distractions that must be overcome. She explores lessons and realizations: controlling as love; faux-dying at martyr mountain; or coping through chemicals. The message is an exploration of the tension of learning past these surface desires born out of fear and loneliness and sadness but ultimately listening to your deep internal knowing. 

Have you ever come across this idea: Men are wild and brutal and it is women who lead them to civilization who bring about manners and politeness and get men to stop punching each other in the mouth and stealing and killing. I have come across it from time to time in a variety of places. Once I read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and Moby Dick by Mellville at the same time. They both explore the brutality of entirely male worlds. 

But here is the problem and why I bring this up. This narrative is out there floating around. So men are brought up being told they are wild and if anything, in need of checking the wildness, properly checking it. Whether its Wolf of Wall Street or Full Metal Jacket, men do whatever they feel whenever they want and so they need duty and norms to contain their wildness. And women are supposed to be the example, the ones who sit at the front of the class bringing apples to the teacher. They are never supposed to think of themselves, but only of the larger society and their role to bend it to nice civility. 

Glennon knows, regardless of whether there is any truth to this male/female narrative, it is often employed to sideline women’s voice and actions. It is a way of praising someone for staying in their lane and out of the way. At one point when Glennon is telling about Together Rising and their work at the border she says that if women come out of their cages, we will stop putting children in cages. AMEN.

Personally, I struggle to listen to myself. There is a tension between living for others and living for yourself. You need both. People like me, Jason Campbell, because of who I am. I am who I am because I follow that weird inner voice ME. And yes, I also give to my big family and to my friends and to people I work with and people I go to church with. It is always both. ME is both something constantly touched and directed and fed by others and ME is who only I can decide/choose/follow/be. Glennon is a powerful preacher of finding and listening to ME and so her book is important.