Wednesday 18 August 2021

Audiobook: Untamed, Glennon Doyle


When I read reviews of this book, they were all incredibly positive. Personally I struggled to get through it. I just didn’t really resonate with it. Perhaps it's because the author constantly reminds us that she is gay and married. But, I do appreciate and respect that that is her journey. I had the choice to not listen to it; but I had downloaded it and didn't want to feel that I had wasted a credit. 

At times it did feel a bit like a sermon, but then there would be an interesting or funny part, which would get me to continue listening.

I think Glennon Doyle and I are about the same age, this is exactly how I also feel about phone calls: 

I will never understand why people insist upon calling my cell phone. It's such an aggressive action to take: calling someone.

Some of the other bits and pieces that I made notes about:

Our minds are excuse makers; our imagination story tellers.

“When women lose themselves, the world loses its way. We do not need more selfless women. What we need right now is more women who have detoxed themselves.  What we need right now is more women who are full of themselves. A woman who is full of only herself no longer internalizes the world's memos and expectations. A woman who is full of herself knows and trusts herself enough to say and do what must be done, and lets the rest burn.

Glennon describes a decision-making process where she tries to feel each option instead of weighing them in her mind. Whichever option feels warm and pleasant is the one that she picks, ignoring the one that feels cold.

I had never heard this quote from Archbishop Desmond Tutu before, and I really like it:

“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.” Desmond Tutu

One last one from Glennon: "Life is brutal. But it's also beautiful. It’s brutiful.