Untamed

I was very excited about the promise of Untamed. Which was touted as telling the Love Story of Glennon and Abby. First, I am more than half way through this book, and their love story has only been touched upon, very briefly. So that is disappointing. But what really irks me is Glennon's changing narrative. And I understand that Glennon herself has changed a lot in the last decade. That she is evolving. But there were many people who Loved her previous books, who bought in to the message she was selling then. Who felt that those books and words spoke to them on a personal level. And now Glennon totally dismisses those works. At the beginning of one of the chapters in Untamed, she literally pulls a quote from Love Warrior, about how she was born broken and sensitive, and then says "Some Crap I wrote about myself in my previous book". GAH. So for all the people swooning over Untamed, for all you know, in ten years she could be saying this was all crap and some phase she was going through. I just don't trust her as an authentic voice anymore.

To give a light synopsis of my last week: I am a traveling nurse practitioner. I work in urgent care in WV while my home, spouse and family are in Kansas. I stay in a hotel. I battle loneliness, fatigue and homesickness. My anxiety is high due to the current coronavirus.Enter Untamed: the one thing keeping me going during this whole thing. Glennon's words and stories have been a balm for my soul. A battle cry. Permission to feel all my feelings about my current situation and about my life in general. Inspiration to keep going even when I am tired and anxious because nursing is what I'm here for. As G says, "find what your makes your heart ache and follow it".This book made me feel more seen than anything that I have ever heard or read (typing that just gave me shivery dots). To know that there are other canaries out there like Glennon and Tish comforted me so much. The reassurance that there is nothing wrong with me for being an empath and feeling life so deeply was a turning point for me. As the spawn of two English Lit teachers, I am an underliner by nature. I should've just stopped because nearly the entire book is underlined :). I love that it is a collection of essays. Made it so easy to read one or two during a break or before bed at night.Glennon, you are a breath of fresh air in a very scary time. I feel like you have taken the yoke off my shoulders hundreds of times over the course of reading this. Your consistent presence for your people is unmatched. You and Abby and your family are a testament to 'doing hard things', a phrase my best friend and I exchange a lot to keep each other going (I sent her a copy).I will end with this: as G wrote about getting out of the cages that society has put us in, I thought of one of my favorite song lyrics many times. In 'Brave' Sara Bareilles sings "Maybe there's a way out of the cage where you live, maybe one of these days you can let the light in, show me how big your brave is". I feel like these two creative contemporaries are lights in the darkness for us right now. Thank you, G, for this gem.Bottom line: READ IT. Should be required reading for every female in my opinion.

I stopped reading. I respect some people may like it but I don’t find it really insightful or novel. It doesn’t help me make any new connections. If you’re looking for something with more depth try “Women Who Run With the Wolves”

I updated this review as I read...By page 16, I’d already sobbed, laughed, sobbed, reconsidered who I am, how I live my life, and what I’m doing next, and cried again. So much fire lit. This is a masterpiece. Thank the universe (and Glennon) it published now. Lord knows we need this now. It is already one of my top favorite books ever, and I read a lot. Like, a LOT.She talks about learning to access her own inner Knowing, which I had experienced as a miracle a few times in my life before I learned about this from the Guides in one of my other top books, I Am the Word by Paul Selig (and his other books). But this time I got a deeper, more practical grasp and inspiration around how and why to access that deeper knowing every day. She’s right that it only ever tells you just the next step... Kyle Cease talks about that exactly the same way, too.I’m also feeling a revolution inside that I was already opening up to take full force... including the revolutionary wild act of feeling it all. Everything. FEELING pain, letting it burn, guide. She says, “I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. If I can sit in the fire of my own feelings, I will keep becoming.“By page 89, it is 3:41 am, and with my two small children asleep near my bed, I quietly sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, as my heart broke open. As I FELT. I’ve barely cried in years. In decades. I’m usually just trying to disconnect and numb feelings enough to keep going, to fit in, to stay the course, everything is fine. I’m fine.I’m not fine. Our world is no longer fine.p115: my husband called me on video chat (we’re thousands of miles apart right now) and he said, “Whoa, you look different. You’re glowing.”Fire. Burning. Feeling.p133: Turns out cracking open and feeling all the feelings isn’t just pain. Deep, body shaking joy came to our house today. Car, actually. After a difficult to describe very intense session of 5 people all air-planing our take-out lasagna bites to each other in our parked car and absolutely laughing out assess off this afternoon, my six year old says to me tonight right before bed, “It was so, so nice to hear Mama laughing. I’d say it is better than getting a toy.”P... somewhere after p 200 some major personal shifts and awakenings occurred... too personal to convey at this time.P324 I’ve been running from my mother since I left for college. Really since I got a car in high school, and before that when I fell in love with my high school freshman boyfriend, who was also my best friend. I escaped into the safe shelter of his love and caring, laughter and companionship.And now, at 37 years old, it’s time to stop. Because of this book. I can stop, be with it, with her. To let it burn. To face the pain, the triggers, and let the fire engulf me and burn away what was never real. To tell the truth, and face my mother with an open heart.I just moved in with my mom last night. I’m literally quarantined in small house with just the two of us and my two small boys (6 and 3). For the first time in my whole life, I am not afraid.Thank you Glennon. My God... thank you.I’m now going to click the “beginning” button in my kindle and read it all again.I’m a little nervous and excited... the wild way my life is cracking open... I have no idea how, maybe I was really ready... this book has immediately and shockingly changed everything, and given me the map for change with truth, freedom and grace. With love.Yes to the heartbreak. Yes to the pain. Yes to love. Yes to myself and my life untamed, in truth.I am free.*Update 6/30/20I was just reflecting on the lasting ways I have changed since I read this book, and a huge one is being now pretty deeply comfortable being with the full range of my feelings, and also my children’s feelings. From that place, I’m able to help my children feel safe being with and feeling all their very strong emotions and experiences. I can help them let it burn. I can’t protect them from uncomfortable feelings, thank god I don’t need to. I can be present with them as they feel, next to them. I’m here. Feelings are for feeling. We can be curious. We can lean in.*7/17/21 Update, Note to the publisher on the paperback version:After 10 minutes of trying to figure out if Glennon just published a new book, I realized the paperback version of Untamed has a new title: “stop pleasing, start living.” I was really taken aback, and honestly, I got a stomach ache. I assume this is something the publisher insisted on, someone’s idea to market this book. Except it was stunningly perfect before. That addition to the title, to me, makes it suddenly sound like a cheap self-help book, not a masterpiece of world-shattering insight, passion, inspiration, raw honesty and beauty that can stand on its own. It’s a work of art that needs to be free for people to interpret and have whatever breakthrough or opening they personally get from it. Does the Mona Lisa need a tag line to tell you to see her so you’ll stop frowning? This book is a huge, god damned cheetah, and to me that short phase “stop pleasing, start living” shoves it in a small box. Leashes it like a golden retriever, to look like just another lame fix-yourself book on the shelf. Dictates what people should do. Uh… isn’t that kind of the opposite of Glennon’s actual message? Stopping pleasing is NOT what I got from my beloved time with this masterpiece. If some people got that from reading the book, that’s great. But I’m sure that’s only a fraction of the life-altering magic experienced by many readers. Please, publisher, go back to the original cover for the paperback. It was perfect.

Did not enjoy. Do not recommend. Lots of it makes no sense but sounds “inspirational”. Complete drudgery. I’d love to hear you argue this with me because I genuinely do not understand the hype at all.

I really wanted to love this book after friends raved about it. It just didn’t grab me in the same way, I didn’t even finish it. In particular I felt it very geared towards mothers, and motherhood being the thing that saved her, and motherhood being pretty much the be all and end all. It may have got better, but I was so irritated I stopped reading half way through. Great if you are a mother, very exclusive if, for any reason, you are not and might feel sensitive about that. Just not for me.

I have been shivering with anticpation waiting for this book: that angry, authentic, deeply female voice from Love Warrior turned up a notch and set free to roar because she's writing about finding true love. And more of Glennon's gorgeous voice and writing. But, for me, this book does not deliver. The 'keys' format totally dilutes her voice, it's stilted, it ironically does not allow her to really let loose, and there's only a few places where I felt I could hear her true unvarnished and unmanipulated words - and these places are so obvious I'm sure they ring like a bell for other readers too. I can feel them like a vibration in my bones. But, sadly, I think a too-clever editor ruined this incredibly important moment and convinced Glennon she needed the self-help gimmick to give the book structure - for me, all it does it turn the whole thing into a book length, Mom's version of an Instagram 'inspirational' meme feed. I adore Glennon, and Abby, and everything they do on a daily basis to help others by living their totally authentic and brave lives, but this book, for me, didn't capture any of that. I'm sad.

Sorry to say I found this book uninspiring, quite dull, and I simply couldn’t make it to the end. I’m honestly not sure what the fuss is about. I read the hype and was really excited, but it’s not for me at all.

So I have followed Glennon’s journey having first seen her on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday. I enjoyed Love Warrior and in the face of all the life changes she has gone through since then - which I’ve read about online - I was initially unsure whether the book would tell me anything I hadn’t already heard about her story.I was so wrong.Quarter of the way through I was texting my best friend saying “you have to read this”. Several pages later I was like “I’ve not even finished it and I’ve already ordered you your own copy”. I read it cover to cover TWICE in one weekend. The second time with a highlighterWhat is so great about it?- her message for women and how easy it is to get trapped in lives that aren’t REALLY who we are- her message for young girls - and the great story of how Abby coached their daughter through sport that sometimes you have to do hard things that you don’t want to do in order to get to what you DO want- her message for boys that they owe responsibility to their families and to muck in with all the chores at home- her message about online porn and what it does to young people’s brains if they’re not taught healthy messages about sexI could go on. But I won’t. Cos you should hear it from Glennon not me.It made an immediate difference to me. I got up and out and asked for what I wanted in an area of my life. And lo and behold it looks like I’m gonna get itBe untamed.