Untamed Memoir



Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call for all women. It encourages women to uncover the voice of longing that is inside them. Untamed outlines how society tells us we are supposed to be good and to fit our gender roles. However, the only way we can genuinely be happy is by starting to live rather than please. This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Untamed (memoir) article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.: Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.; Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes ( ).; New to Wikipedia? Ask questions, get answers.

  • “This treasure of a book... a wake-up call for the wild in me.”

    — Tracee Ellis Ross

  • “This book will shake your brain and make your soul scream. Read it. Live it. Practice it.”

    — Adele

  • “Phenomenal.”

    — Kerry Washington

  • “Packed with incredible insight about what it means to be a woman today.”

    — Reese Witherspoon

  • “This book has rocked me. It will help you love yourself... it will remind you that you are a goddamn cheetah.”

    — Debra Messing

  • “An anthem for women today. It speaks to so many female truths. I haven’t stopped talking about this book since I read it. I’ll never stop because IT’S PERFECT.”

    — Kristen Bell

  • “If you are looking for inspiration on how to get more honest with yourself than ever thought possible... read this book.”

    — Cleo Wade

  • “It’s like she’s speaking to my soul. . . I LOVE THIS BOOK.”

    — Camila Cabello

  • “This book is crucial for everyone to read... Glennon Doyle always delivers.”

    — Chelsea Handler

  • “Every woman should read these words.”

    — Elaine Welteroth

  • “UNMISSABLE.”

    — Emma Watson

  • “Required, necessary reading.”

    — Mandy Moore

  • Untamed. The next great guidance from an extraordinary woman. Devouring this gospel of truth.”

    — Sara Bareilles

  • “Glennon Doyle’s Untamed is changing my life.”

    — Lana Condor

  • Untamed will liberate women – emotionally, spiritually, and physically... It’s phenomenal.”

    — Elizabeth Gilbert

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Untamed by Glennon Doyle
Genre: Nonfiction
Length: 352 pages
Audiobook Length: 8 hours and 22 minutes
First Published: March 10, 2020

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Book Review: Untamed by Glennon Doyle

Doyle

Glennon Doyle’s first novel is Love Warrior (#1 New York Times bestseller), which was an Oprah’s Book Club selections, as well as the second New York Times bestseller Carry On, Warrior.

Glennon Doyle is an activist and speaker and the founder and president of Together Rising. Today she lives in Florida with her wife and three children from her previous marriage. Her latest book, Untamed, which is a memoir, was published on March 10, 2020.

Glennon Doyle is a brilliant moving writer who inspires all women who read and listen to her. She spent the last ten years writing and speaking about feminism, about women trusting themselves and believing in themselves and helping one another.

Untamed is the most powerful memoir yet of the activist, speaker, bestselling author Glennon Doyle. It teaches us to trust the voice deep within us and listen to our bodies.

In Untamed, Glennon Doyle writes about all her struggles that she encountered in her marriage with her ex-husband, how she met the women of her dreams at a book event and how her life changed for the better since then. This memoir reveals how she overcame her husband’s infidelities, dealt with divorce, and how she fell in love again and remarried to Olympic star Abby Wambach.

The memoir, Untamed by Glennon Doyle, really gets your attention from its first pages. Doyle writes about a wild animal’s story, a cheetah held in captivity to keep her wild nature under control. You’ll get to discover that even though that cheetah never knew the wild (she was born in captivity), she would behave as she knew it. Doyle uses this anecdote to shows that we humans are too held in captivity by society. When we aren’t free to express ourselves the way we want to, then we’re being held in an invisible cage. Society wants to impose rules of behavior on us that we don’t like, just to fit in some category.

If you’re not allowed to do the things you want to do because someone (father, mother, society) is stopping you, then you’re under their control, therefore, you’re not free.

The book’s structure is wild, and also how it unfolds, it feels untamed.

Glennon Doyle’s story about that tamed cheetah teaches us that we, as women, can be tamed to forget our wild. We are trained to chase some norms that society imposes on us. We are taught to believe about what makes a good girl, what makes a good wife, a good mother, a successful woman, but not how to live our lives in order to be happy.

How many times did you hear someone saying to you to be quiet, be small, be pleasing, be nice, be modest, be humble?

These are how society uses to tame girls, to control their vivacious nature, their freedom, and their wild to keep them small. This only happens for girls, but for boys, things stay different. They are taught to be big, bold, violent, bad, and responsible for conquering women and the world. So all these things put a lot of pressure on both genders forcing women and men to fit in rigid mass-produced cages.

Untamed

Untamed by Glennon Doyle is not about becoming better; it is about returning to who you are as you always were before all that self-improvement (correction of your behavior) began. Self-improvement can be tricky. It can tame you and put you in a cage that will bring you a lot of frustration because it will not let you express yourself freely.

Don’t live your life to please other people. No matter what you’ll do, there will always be someone that will criticize you. Get free of those expectations and ideals that society imposes on you. Live your life the way you always wanted. When you unlearn to live your life by those toxic boundaries, you’ll be free and happy.

Glennon Doyle says that she is finally the girl she was before the world told her who to be.

In her book, Doyle confesses that all her teenage period and womanhood, she was that someone the world told her to be. But after she met Abby Wambach, she rediscovered her true self, who she really is. Abby remembered her about her wild. Glennon admits that she genuinely loves and wants someone beyond what she’d been trained to love and desire. Abby brought her happiness back.

Glennon Doyle says (but in other words) that you cannot be a feminist until you learn to say no to the things you’ve been taught to do. Until you begin to trust your inner voice and go with it even though the world tries to stop you from doing what you want.

You really need to know what you want and if it really helps you. You cannot say that you want to sit on your sofa and drink a bottle of wine every night; maybe you should think of why you want to drink so much wine in the first place; what’s the need that’s driving you to consume it. Maybe there is a problem you must solve and not avoid. Therefore, you need to dig at a deeper level to see what you want.

Untamed Book Glennon Doyle

From Untamed, we learn that sexuality, religion, and social norms only want to tame us and keep us caged. They tell us how to live our lives in order to please other people and how to be happy in their terms, not ours.

We must stop being controlled or control other people’s lives.

There is a lot of pressure on women, and we wonder why they are still unfulfilled, why they are always tired and not happy. They say that women must have a perfect body or perfect skin and act in a certain way. But never to live their lives the way it makes them happy. Doyle insists on this happiness because when a woman or a man is happy, they can bring joy to the people around them.

Untamed by Glennon Doyle empowers women all around the world and advises them to live their life to its fullest. It encourages them to reject the status quo and follow their intuition. Also, it encourages women to embrace their anger, their pain, and all their feelings. Anger will give them the power to make a change.

To divorce or not to divorce?

Glennon Doyle’s decision to divorce was tough, like for any mother in this situation. You cannot separate your children from their father without making them suffer. Glennon divorced her husband, not because he was a bad father, but because she couldn’t be herself in that marriage. She acted in the way people taught her to act. She did what she was supposed to do, but not what she wanted to do. Glennon put everybody before her. So the only right and best thing she could do for herself was to end that unsatisfying marriage.

Indeed, she reconsidered her decision many times because she wanted her kids not to suffer. But she knew that she couldn’t stay in that marriage anymore for the sake of somebody else. When you choose to remain in an unhappy marriage for your children, they will notice your unhappiness and frustrations, and they will feel guilty. Yes, you’ll break their heart at first, but they will eventually understand. You cannot teach your children how to be happy when you don’t know how to be happy.

You must have the gut to stop letting society to run your life.

“I chose a personality, a body, a faith, and a sexuality so tiny I had to hold my breath to fit myself inside. Then I promptly became very sick.”

Another worthy this to mention is that Glennon Doyle became bulimic when she was ten. She was too much of anything for her age. So she spent her next 25 years in a “cage” trying to protect herself from her muchness. Also, she often drank and got high because she didn’t know that she could be happier without blindly following those social norms.

Instead of asking yourself what is the right thing to do, ask yourself, which is the truest, most beautiful scenario for your life that you can imagine?

Some people are afraid to dream or to think of a beautiful future. Only after they start to think of an answer to the question above, they find the best solution to their impasse. Their guidance lies in that answer, not in some cultural construction ideas.

Glennon says that the world needs women who are full of themselves, who trust themselves enough to do what they think is right and feels real for themselves and their families. When you do what others tell you to do, trying to please them, you forget who you are.

Are mothersto be martyrs?

Glennon Doyle New Book

Mothers are taught to show their love by martyring themselves for their children. They are trained to keep putting their needs and lives so far below everyone that they slowly become invisible. We need to understand that this is a burden for our children. They will know that their mothers stop living because of them.

Mothers are models!

Untamed Book Discussion Questions

Every woman should be able to enjoy her life and to live it fully, so her children follow her example.

Glennon Doyle also says that we should listen to our children more. They can communicate to us some problems we don’t see or care for as adults. We, as adults, don’t panic as much anymore because we’re used to things.

Live your life the way you think it will bring you peace. No one is capable enough to tell how to behave, what to wear, or what to say, or which tone to use.

Untamed Book Club Questions

To sum it all up, Untamed by Glennon Doyle empowers every woman to say: I am who I want to be, not who you want me to be. This book is beautifully written and professionally edited. I rate it 5 out of 5 stars. I recommend it to all the women who feel they lost their true selves and need to rediscover it.

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