Untamed Book Summary - Untamed Book explained in key points

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Untamed summary

Name: Untamed
Rating: 3.8 (210 reviews)
Author: Glennon Doyle

Glennon Doyle

Stop Pleasing, Start Living

3.8 (210 ratings)

26 mins

Brief summary

Untamed by Glennon Doyle is an inspiring memoir that encourages women to break free from societal expectations and embrace their authentic selves.

Topics

Inspiration Memoirs Love

Table of Contents

Untamed
Summary of 10 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 10

What's in it for me? Become inspired to free yourself and live life on your own terms.

Have you ever felt encaged by your own life? Like you've built a life designed to please other people and neglected your own desires? Glennon Doyle was very familiar with that feeling. Dead-set on becoming the perfect mother, partner, Christian, and writer, she'd completely forgotten to ask herself, “Is this really what I want?”

When she fell madly in love with another woman, Doyle was forced to unlearn everything she'd been programmed to believe about living a good life and start listening to her intuition instead. That intuition helped her build a new life full of love, family, inspiring work, and activism – a life that, for the first time, truly fit with who she was.

These blinks detail just how she did it and will empower you to hold a mirror up to your own life, allowing you to identify places where you don’t feel fully free. They’ll also give you some inspiring strategies for becoming untamed, embracing your desires, and designing the wildest and most fulfilling life you can imagine.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

why embracing her sexuality brought Glennon Doyle closer to God;
how she was able to start detoxing from her racist beliefs; and
why getting pregnant saved her life.

While promoting a memoir about her marriage, Glennon Doyle fell in love with another woman.

Have you ever had an experience that changed your whole life in the blink of an eye? Glennon Doyle certainly has. When she met American soccer player Abby Wambach, it turned her life upside down.

Doyle was a married woman and a successful Christian writer. She’d never been attracted to another woman before. But as soon as she laid eyes on Abby, she was gripped by a fierce longing that she couldn't ignore.

Doyle repressed her true nature to fit in with a sexist society.

A couple of years after she met Abby, Doyle and her children took a trip to the zoo. There, she saw a beautiful cheetah reduced to chasing after fluffy toy animals for the entertainment of the watching crowds. The cheetah was restricted to a small cage, all her wildness stamped out of her.

Watching her, Doyle felt a pang of recognition. For most of her life she, too, had lost touch with her untamed nature. She'd contorted herself into smaller and smaller cages to try and become the perfect woman that society expected her to be.

To become a good mother, Doyle had to learn to put her own needs first.

Like people in an old-fashioned courtship, Doyle and Abby started writing letters back and forth. With each letter they exchanged, they fell deeper and deeper in love. Even though they’d only met once, their connection was undeniable.

But how could they be together? They lived on opposite coasts and were both married to other people, although Abby was in the process of splitting up with her wife. Doyle knew that if she really wanted to be with Abby, she’d have to leave her husband, but the prospect terrified her. There was no guarantee that things would work out, and breaking up her family went against everything Doyle believed about being a good mother. One important thing cut through her doubts: imagining how she’d feel if one of her daughters came to her in the same predicament.

Doyle came out to the world even though it meant risking her career.

About to embark on a promotional tour for Love Warrior, Doyle found herself facing a tough decision. She'd publicized her separation from her husband, but hadn’t mentioned that she’d fallen in love with a woman. Should she hide the truth, or tell her readers what had really happened?

Her publishing team was panicking. Love Warrior had been selected for Oprah’s book club and was almost guaranteed to be a best seller. They were certain that revealing the truth would derail Doyle’s career and counseled her to keep things under wraps until after the tour.

To build a new life, Doyle had to learn to listen to her own intuition.

While coming out publicly had been easier than she'd expected, Doyle still faced lots of opposition to her decision. Some prominent Christian leaders claimed that she had abandoned her faith. Many in her community found it hard to understand why she was leaving her husband. Hardest of all, her mom believed that Doyle’s relationship with Abby was a mistake.

Doyle counted her mother among the people who knew her best. Ordinarily, she took her opinions very seriously. But now that she'd gotten back in touch with her ten-year-old self, she knew how dangerous it was to be swayed by outside opinions.

Doyle lost faith in the church when she strengthened her relationship with God.

Doyle’s new relationship with Abby affected all areas of her life. It especially affected how she approached her religion. Doyle was an established member of the Christian community, but now she was in a relationship with a woman – something that many Christians believe to be an enormous sin. How could she possibly reconcile those different identities?

When her children were young, Doyle had attended a church service, one that seemed very welcoming – until the pastor proclaimed that being Christian meant believing that homosexuality and abortion were sins. When she tried to discuss it with him afterward, he shut her down. To be really faithful, he argued, Doyle should simply trust that what he said was the truth. Even before coming out, she had a problem with that approach. Why should she allow a pastor to be a middleman between her and God?

Accepting pain and suffering allowed Doyle to live fully.

When Doyle's eldest daughter, Tish, wanted to try out for a soccer team, Doyle’s heart sank. Tish was sensitive and easily upset. She’d never been particularly athletic. Doyle feared that she would be crushed if she didn't make the team.

But Abby was convinced that Tish had potential and encouraged her to give it a try. Day after day, Tish and Abby went through a grueling training regimen together. Tish grumbled all the time, but she kept at it. Eventually, she made it onto the soccer team, to everyone's surprise and delight.

To detox from white supremacy, Doyle had to confront her own racism.

When racism and violence against people of color increased in the wake of Donald Trump’s election, Doyle was motivated to teach her daughters about the civil rights movement. When they studied a photo of a protest that showed a crowd of black civil rights activists and a lone white woman holding a protest sign, her youngest daughter asked if they would have gone to the march. Doyle was about to say, “Yes, of course!” when her older daughter replied, “No, we don't march now. Why would we have marched then?”

Doyle realized that her daughter was right. She believed in racial equality. But she didn't show up to Black Lives Matter marches to fight for it.

Doyle lost the plot and gained the life of her dreams.

Like any good writer, Doyle wanted to be able to control the narrative of her life. That was partly why she'd felt so furious with her husband. When he cheated, he'd “fucked up her story” of having the perfect family. By writing her memoir Love Warrior, she’d tried to repair the damage and use the story to affirm that they were still the perfect family – after all, they could survive betrayal and emerge stronger.

But if her husband's betrayal was a plot twist, Abby's arrival in her life was a narrative catastrophe. It forced Doyle to reconsider the stories she’d been telling herself her whole life, ones about what it meant to be in a good marriage. For the first time, she had no idea where her story might go next.

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What is Untamed about?

Untamed (2020) is a story of unexpected love. In it, Glennon Doyle reveals how falling in love with Abby Wambach completely derailed all her plans for her life – but allowed her to become fully herself. Doyle had spent her life repressing her true spirit, trying to please other people, and be the perfect wife and mother. But, eventually, she learned to tune into her deepest desires and start building a life around who she truly is.

Untamed Review

Untamed (2020) is a powerful call to self-discovery and personal growth. This memoir stands out for its:

Raw and honest account of the author's journey to self-acceptance and empowerment.
Exploration of universal themes such as love, relationships, and societal expectations.
Encouragement for readers to challenge norms and live authentically.
Embrace your true self and find inspiration in Glennon Doyle's compelling story with Untamed.

Best quote from Untamed

If you are uncomfortable – in deep pain, angry, yearning, confused – you dont have a problem, you have a life.

—Glennon Doyle

Who should read Untamed?

Restless women who suspect their lives are smaller than their ambitions
Romantics who can’t resist a story about sparks at first sight
Spiritual seekers interested in a social-justice-centered approach to Christianity

About the Author

Glennon Doyle is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoirs Love Warrior and Carry On, Warrior. She is also the founder and president of Together Rising, an entirely women-led nonprofit organization that has raised over $20 million to support women, families, and children in crisis. Doyle is a tireless activist and has created a thriving online community through her Momastery blog and social media channels.

Categories with Untamed

Motivation & Inspiration Biography & Memoir

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