1장
The Untamed Journey: Finding Your Wild Self in a Caged World
Oprah Winfrey called it "the book of the moment," and Adele credited it with helping her shed "100 pounds of emotional weight." Glennon Doyle's memoir "Untamed" has struck a profound chord with millions of readers since its 2020 release, becoming an instant #1 New York Times bestseller and selling over two million copies in its first year. The book chronicles Doyle's awakening to her authentic self after falling in love with Olympic soccer star Abby Wambach while still married to her husband Craig. But "Untamed" is far more than a love story-it's a radical manifesto for living truthfully in a world that tries to tame us. Through her raw, vulnerable storytelling, Doyle invites readers to question everything they've been conditioned to believe about relationships, religion, parenting, and society. Her message has resonated so deeply that even Reese Witherspoon selected it for her book club, calling it "a wake-up call for women everywhere to listen to that voice inside that says 'you can do this.'"
2장
Caged: How We Learn to Abandon Our Wild Nature
At a zoo, Doyle watches a cheetah named Tabitha perform in a "Cheetah Run," chasing a mechanical bunny for visitors' entertainment. Raised with a Labrador to tame her wild nature, Tabitha receives a steak as reward. But afterward, entering a fenced field, the cheetah's demeanor transforms completely. She begins stalking the perimeter with a regal, slightly frightening presence that makes Doyle's daughter whisper, "Mommy. She turned wild again."
This moment becomes Doyle's awakening metaphor. Like Tabitha, we aren't crazy for feeling trapped in lives that don't fit us-we're just wild creatures in cages.
Doyle traces her own taming back to age ten, when she began internalizing society's rules about acceptable feelings, proper behavior, ideal body type, approved beliefs, and permissible love. The pressure to conform made her sick-she developed bulimia as her secret rebellion. She wasn't mentally ill as she'd been labeled; she was "a caged girl made for wide-open skies."
This taming process starts early. In Catholic class, young Doyle questioned why Eve was blamed for wanting knowledge and was quickly silenced. The message was clear: women's curiosity and hunger for more is the original sin. Even our bathroom products reinforce gender conditioning-her son's toiletries scream commands in bold colors ("ARMOR UP IN MAN SCENT, DROP-KICK DIRT") while her daughters' pink bottles whisper adjectives ("alluring, radiant, gentle"). Our children are being shamed out of their full humanity before they even get dressed.
The socialization continues as we grow. When Doyle offered food to her teenage son and his friends, every boy immediately said "YES!" without hesitation. The girls, however, remained silent, scanning each other's faces first, silently polling for consensus before their appointed spokesperson politely declined. "The boys looked inside themselves for answers. The girls looked outside themselves. We forgot how to know when we learned how to please. This is why we live hungry."
This conditioning creates what Doyle calls "snow globes"-we keep ourselves shaken up with busyness and worry to avoid facing uncomfortable truths at our center. We become distracted from our authentic selves, shaking up our lives to avoid confronting the dragons within-the uncomfortable truths we're afraid to face.
3장
Keys to Freedom: Reclaiming Your Wild Self
After discovering her husband's infidelity, Doyle crafted a redemptive narrative about marriage while feeling hollow inside. She'd taken control of her story, determined to create meaning from chaos. Then she met Abby at a literary dinner in Chicago, and everything changed when she walked through the door. Her platinum-topped hair, trench coat, and confident presence triggered something visceral in Doyle: "There She Is." Their connection was immediate and electric.
What Doyle had thought was fairy-tale magic was actually her authentic self breaking through-the girl she'd locked away at ten, saying: "Here I Am. I'm taking over now." She had lost herself when she learned to please others, burying her true self beneath expectations and cultural mandates. Sobriety became her painstaking resurrection, her return to wild.
Doyle identifies four keys to freedom that help us break out of our cages and reclaim our wild nature:
The first key is to "Feel It All." Six days into sobriety, Doyle confessed at a recovery meeting that she felt awful-wondering if what was wrong with her wasn't the booze but her true self underneath it. A woman told her afterward: "You're not doing life wrong; you're doing it right. Feeling all your feelings is hard, but that's what they're for."
For years, Doyle thought happiness was for feeling and pain was for fixing or numbing. Through eighteen years of recovery, she learned two crucial lessons: she could feel everything and survive, and she could use pain to become. Pain isn't tragic-it's magic, the fuel of revolution. Suffering happens when we avoid pain and miss our becoming.
The second key is to "Be Still and Know." When facing the impossible decision about her husband's infidelity, Doyle realized she'd been seeking everyone's advice but her own. After reading "BE STILL AND KNOW" on a card, she began experimenting with stillness-sitting in her closet for ten minutes daily, just breathing. Eventually, she sank to a deep, quiet place within herself where she discovered a "Knowing"-an inner wisdom that guides with gentle nudges.
This Knowing isn't necessarily God, intuition, or her deepest self-what matters is that she's learned to sink beneath the chaos, feel for that nudge, and follow it without explanation. This is revolutionary: doing the next precise thing without asking permission. The answers are never out there-they're as close as our breath.
The third key is to "Dare to Imagine." Despite being a recovering alcoholic and bulimic at twenty-six, something inside whispered "yes" when Doyle discovered she was pregnant. Years later, at forty, despite having a seemingly perfect Christian family and writing career, she fell in love with Abby. Both times, her imagination showed her truths that contradicted external evidence.
Living by faith means following these inner nudges-not religious dogma, but the "warm liquid gold" pressing inside. Revolution begins when we dare to imagine beyond what exists and create what we feel should be. Women who feel discontent are like Tabitha pacing her cage-they sense life should be more beautiful than it is. This discontent is imagination refusing to give up.
The fourth key is to "Build and Burn." Transformation requires destruction-we must let the old burn to build the new. Once we feel, know, and imagine more for ourselves, we cannot return to our previous state. Though staying with "good enough" might seem safer, it leads to quiet desperation and deathbed regrets.
True rebirth demands death of what was. Doyle has lost identities, beliefs, and relationships that hurt to lose, but these losses cleared space for greater truth. She burned cultural memos that defined selflessness as the pinnacle of womanhood and motherhood as martyrdom. She rejected the notion that family structure must be preserved at all costs. The most beautiful life is rarely the easiest one.
4장
Embracing the Ache: Finding Connection Through Pain
The Ache has been Doyle's constant interrupter since childhood-reminding her that everything ends, keeping her distant and "safe." She numbed it with bulimia and alcohol, becoming half-dead but protected. When she discovered she was pregnant at twenty-five, something deeper than the Ache emerged-a desire to live for this new being she already loved.
She got sober, adopting the mantra "We can do hard things" to survive early sobriety. Ten years later, when simultaneously called to her sister's childbirth and grandmother's deathbed, she finally surrendered to the Ache instead of resisting it. Inside it, she discovered everyone who had ever loved and lost-the "We" she'd been seeking.
The Ache wasn't warning her to leave life but inviting her to stay present through endings. It became her meeting place with humanity, the clubhouse of the brave. Doyle has never been "fine" since getting sober-she's been terrified, angry, depressed, amazed, and overjoyed. She's been alive.
In Paris with her family, Doyle encountered the Mona Lisa's enigmatic half-smile. A stranger explained she was painted after having a new baby following the loss of another child. She refused to smile fully, wanting both her joy and grief visible on her face. She became for Doyle "the patron saint of honest, resolute, fully human women" who refuse to pretend, who insist their whole truth be seen.
This authentic living requires abandoning perfectionism. After quitting her addictions when pregnant with her son Chase, Doyle devoted herself to being "good"-as a wife, mother, Christian, and world-saver. But being "good" left her as exhausted and lost as being "bad" had. Her husband's infidelity became a "jagged gift," forcing her to see that neither path was working. As her friend suggested, we need to move beyond "Now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good" to "Now that we don't have to be good, we can be free."
True bravery isn't feeling afraid and doing it anyway; brave means living from the inside out, honoring your inner Knowing even when it contradicts the crowd. When Doyle's daughter Tish declined ear piercing despite pressure from the piercer to "be brave," she showed true confidence-loyalty to self-by resisting pressure. To be brave is to forsake all others to be true to yourself.
5장
Parenting Untamed: Raising Children Who Know Themselves
When Doyle's daughter Tish was born, she immediately recognized her own temperament in her child. Unlike her easy-going brother who inherited his father's temperament, Tish was born concerned and refused to pretend to be pleasant. When Doyle complained to Craig about her being "untenable" and "incorrigible," she realized: Tish is me.
Instead of forcing her to act happy as Doyle had done to herself, she decided to help her be authentically Tish. Now fourteen, she remains turned inside out, expressing her feelings openly. When upset, they ask if she needs a solution or just needs to feel her emotions for a while.
During the divorce, Tish held them close to the pain, refusing to "get over it" or act happy. She cried herself to sleep nightly, becoming their Joan of Arc, marching them into battle daily. One night, she confessed her fear of losing her mother. Doyle promised she never would, though she knew this was a lie. She used to lie to protect her, thinking her job was keeping her safe rather than letting her become brave.
But when Doyle broke her heart through divorce, she watched her grieve, then rise. Tish learned she's fireproof. Now Doyle wants to promise her something true: "You're never gonna lose you."
Doyle recognizes that the current parenting culture is oppressive. Every generation of parents receives a different memo when leaving the hospital. Her grandmothers': "Take the baby home and let it grow." Her mother's: "Take her home, gather with friends, drink Tab, smoke cigarettes, and lock the kids outside." But our generation's memo is: "This child is your savior. Parenting is your new religion. Never allow anything difficult to happen to your child."
We're told to shield them from every discomfort, ensure they win every competition, and intervene in every conflict. This terrible memo is why we're exhausted and neurotic-and why our kids struggle. People who don't suck have failed, felt pain, and learned from consequences. We've stolen the one thing our children need to become strong: struggle.
Doyle also warns about how technology is stealing our children's inner lives. When her son Chase was little, he'd spend afternoons drawing maps and writing lyrics and poems. Then they gave him a phone at thirteen, and slowly watched him fade away. His bright eyes dulled. He was physically present but mentally elsewhere, hovering among them but longing to be in his phone.
Inside the itchiness of our own boredom is where we discover who we are. By giving our children phones, we steal their boredom-and with it, the writers who will never start writing, artists who will never start doodling, musicians who will never pick up an instrument.
Doyle's family ultimately decided that Chase and Tish would quit social media, using phones only for texting, while their youngest would wait until high school for hers. Our job isn't to keep our children happy-it's to keep them human.
6장
Breaking Gender Cages: Liberating Boys and Girls
Doyle has raised her daughters to be feminists since they were in utero, giving them an internal narrative about womanhood to counter the world's lies. It worked-they question gender norms, lead revolts against "Lady Bruins" jerseys, and embrace their full humanity.
But watching news stories about male violence, she had a revelation: boys are in cages too. We train boys to objectify women, value power above all, and suppress emotions beyond competitiveness and rage. Then we're shocked when they become exactly what we've trained them to be.
We label mercy, tenderness, and empathy as "feminine" to discount these qualities in women and shame them out of men-maintaining an unjust status quo. Doyle realized she hadn't prepared her son to fight for his humanity the way she had her daughters. She hadn't told him he could be quiet, sad, merciful, and vulnerable while still being a boy.
Men are tamed into loneliness. When Craig spent hours with a friend who'd just had a baby, he returned knowing nothing about the baby's name, the family's exhaustion, or his friend's mother's cancer. Doyle wouldn't trade places with him for all the money in the world-it must be so lonely carrying alone what we were meant to carry together.
She doesn't want that for Chase, so during carpools with his friends, she turns down the radio and asks real questions: What was your most embarrassing moment? What's your favorite thing about each friend? Who seems loneliest in your class? How do those active-shooter drills make you feel?
They roll their eyes but start talking, revealing fascinating inner lives. When uncomfortable laughter follows vulnerability, she reminds them: "Life is hard; friends need to be safe places." Our boys are just as human as our girls-they need permission and safe spaces to share their humanity so they don't become adults carrying life alone.
Women are equally poisoned by our culture's standards of manhood and panic when men venture outside their cages, shaming them right back in. We must decide whether we want our partners, brothers, and sons to be strong and alone or free and held. Part of a woman's liberation is freeing the men in her life.
When Tish saw magazine covers displaying thin, blond, scantily-clad women, Doyle didn't distract her but helped her critically examine the messages. Together they noticed how real women in the bookstore differed from these images. Later, Tish created a petition demanding magazines show strong, kind, brave women of all body types and hair colors, insisting "ALL women should be treated EQUALLY."
Doyle can't shield her children from cultural lies about gender, but she can teach them to be critics instead of consumers, to detect lies and get angry rather than swallow them and get sick. When twelve-year-old Doyle saw those images, she thought "That's the truth about women. I will match it." When twelve-year-old Tish sees them, she thinks "That's a lie about women. I will challenge it."
7장
From Heartbreak to Purpose: Finding Your People
When heartbreak rings, answer the door. We often avoid things that break our hearts, but heartbreak is actually our greatest clue to purpose. The thing that breaks your heart is what you were born to help heal.
Doyle met women in Iowa who lost babies to stillbirth or infant death who channeled their grief into lowering stillbirth rates statewide. Their shared pain became their fuel. Heartbreak delivers your purpose, and when you seek others doing that world-healing work, you find your people.
Despair says the world is too big and I am too small; courage says I'll do what I can despite not being able to do everything. When Doyle's sister's husband ended their marriage by email, she collapsed in grief. She moved into Doyle's basement guest room, where Doyle could hear her crying each night. She sat outside her door for hours, holding vigil when she couldn't join her in that lonely place.
A year later, her sister emerged transformed-leaving her corporate law job for Rwanda to help prosecute child sex offenders and return land to widows. Later she returned to marry a man who cherishes her. Grief is a cocoon from which we emerge new.
Doyle has also channeled her own heartbreak into action through Together Rising, her nonprofit that has raised over $20 million for women, families, and children in crisis. After reading about children as young as four months being stripped from their asylum-seeking parents at the border, she was overwhelmed with despair. Abby told their daughter, "She's feeling it all now. She has to feel it all so she can use it."
What if we let ourselves feel it all? What if letting others' pain pierce us is strength, not weakness? Doyle slept twelve hours and woke at 3 AM on fire, setting up a command center in their dining room. Together Rising now serves as a bridge between everyday warriors who refuse to go numb to distant crises and boots-on-the-ground warriors doing life-saving work.
Depression and anxiety aren't feelings but body snatchers that remove Doyle from herself. Depression is a forgetting, an erasing that turns her vibrant colors gray. Anxiety is hovering too high, obsessing over everything to combat her terror about lack of control. She can't be present because she's too afraid of what the next moment will bring.
She's a clinically depressed inspirational speaker and a diagnosed anxious person whose job is convincing people everything's okay. Her five pro tips for those who live too high and too low: 1) Take your damn meds (Jesus loves me, this I know, for he gave me Lexapro), 2) Keep taking your meds even when you feel better, 3) Take notes when you're in the bad place so you can explain it to your doctor later, 4) Know your buttons - identify what takes you out of yourself versus what resets you, and 5) Remember that we mentally ill are the best people - sensitive, passionate, and deep. Our "sickness" is also our superpower.
8장
Creating a New Family: Where Everyone is Both Held and Free
One night after dinner with Abby, Craig, her sister and her husband, Doyle turned to Craig and acknowledged what they both knew eighteen years ago on that porch when she was pregnant: they didn't fit together. He had suggested living separately and co-parenting, but she ignored their Knowing because she had a vision of what family should look like.
"We tried because it was the right thing to do, because we thought we should. Because I thought we should. But right is not real, and should is a cage." Now they're finally trying his idea-being two people who weren't made for each other but make a great team raising kids side by side.
Doyle's wife and ex-husband now play on the same adult soccer team. The kids and she watch from the sidelines, occasionally explaining their family to confused onlookers. When an older woman assumed Craig was remarried to Abby Wambach, Doyle clarified: "I'm married to Abby Wambach." She needed a full minute of silence-old structural ideas burning, a new order being born inside her. Then she smiled and said, "Oh! Wow."
Tish's first word was "Wow" when she saw her first snow. People say "Wow" when they encounter their family because they haven't seen one exactly like it before. They didn't use someone else's blueprint-they create and recreate their family from the inside of each person out, so everyone has room to grow while still belonging. That's what family is to Doyle: where we are both held and free.
Craig's girlfriend braids Doyle's daughters' hair skillfully-something Doyle has never been able to do. When she sees girls with complicated braids, she thinks they look well-mothered. When Craig and his girlfriend drop off the kids, they stand awkwardly in the foyer. Sometimes she pulls the girls close and plays with their hair while Abby squeezes Doyle's hand supportively.
At Thanksgiving, Doyle found herself racing to beat her in the Turkey Trot, leaving her daughter behind just to win. Later, she saw Abby had gathered everyone-her daughters and Craig's girlfriend-to cross the finish line together. At Christmas dinner, her strawberry dessert replaced their traditional apple pie, and everyone agreed it was the best they'd ever had. Someday Doyle will ask her how to braid her daughters' hair.
When conflict arises between Abby and Doyle, they say, "Let's not first-marriage this. Let's second-marriage this." Doyle has always been controlling, partly from fear and partly from believing her ideas are best. In her first marriage, she was the "spiritual director," but she's learned each person has their own plot. With Abby, she tried to control her too, offering endless "good ideas" about what she should do, wear, and eat.
Abby gently rejected her efforts, saying "I see what you're doing there, babe. I love you, but no thank you." For a year, Doyle faked letting her lead while secretly waiting for her approach to fail. Instead, things worked out, they became happier, and their children grew braver and more relaxed. She's learning that control isn't love-maybe love is trusting that others Feel, Know, and Imagine too. Love should be a little scary and out of our control.
9장
Free: Becoming Who You Truly Are
Doyle has always judged harshly parents obsessed with their kids' sports, pitying those who spend weekends and paychecks watching their children kick balls. Her athletic goal for her children was mediocrity-just enough skill to avoid gym class embarrassment.
After her divorce, when ten-year-old Tish began retreating into food and isolation, Doyle wanted to get her therapy. But Abby suggested trying out for an elite travel soccer team instead. Doyle thought this was reckless-Tish wasn't athletic, and these girls had been playing since birth.
When they asked Tish if she wanted to try out, she was shocked but interested. While Doyle was ready with a speech about how "just trying" was enough, Abby looked Tish in the eyes and said confidently, "Yes, I believe you could make it. Somebody's got to make it. Why not you?"
For the next four weeks, Tish, Abby, and Craig practiced relentlessly. Though Tish often came home from runs crying that she couldn't do it, Abby remained steady, even sharing that she too had hated running during her career but did it to be great. Despite the tears, Tish kept asking, "When are we running tomorrow?"
When Abby and Doyle first fell in love, they imagined their future together despite the miles and obstacles between them. They'd describe their vision to each other-sitting on a dock together watching the sunrise with coffee. This image became their "unseen order" guiding them forward. A year later, they made it real-sitting on their own dock at their Gulf home with tea, watching the sunset. When someone commented on how lucky they were, Doyle replied: "We are terribly lucky. It is also true that we imagined this life before it existed and then we each gave up everything for the one-in-a-million chance that we might be able to build it together... The braver I am, the luckier I get."
Women define themselves by who they love and what roles they play-mother, wife, sister, friend, career woman. This keeps the world spinning but leaves us untethered when those roles change. If a woman defines herself as a wife, what happens when her partner leaves? If she's a mother, what happens when the kids leave? If she's a career woman, what if the company folds?
We build sandcastles and try to live inside them, fearing the inevitable tide. Each woman must answer not just "Who do I love?" but "What do I love? What makes me come alive?" We must remember: "I am the builder, not the castle... Building, rebuilding. Playfully. Lightly. Never changing. Always changing."
Doyle stayed on her yoga mat until she knew what she needed to know, just as she stayed in her addictions, marriage, religion, and pain until she knew. The truth of her thirties was about staying-the staying was making her. But the truth of her forties is that she's made. She will no longer stay in any room, conversation, relationship, or institution that requires her to abandon herself.
She trusts her body's truth now, so she won't suffer voluntarily or silently. She'll support those women who must stay to discover what she's discovered, but she'll remember that the doors aren't even locked.
When asked what she is-happy or sad, Christian or heretic, believer or doubter, young or old, good or bad, right or wrong, deep or shallow, brave or weak, shattered or whole, gay or straight, crazy or brilliant, caged or wild-her answer is simple: I am. Like God's response in the holy text: I am. I am.
