Untamed

This isn't going to be the best post because I listened to most of this book back in December but I just finished it last month. So I don't really remember a lot about the specific stories but I do know that I really loved them. Glennon Doyle is a great story teller! And she reads the audiobook so it really is like she is telling the stories herself. I love that. I used to be so anti self help books but a few years ago I found a podcast where they would read a book and live it for 2 weeks and then talk about it. So they would give me kind of the cliffs notes on these books but I also really appreciated their takes on it. So even though I don't really listen to that podcast anymore I started reading more of those kind of books. Plus my friend likes them so she recommends a lot to me. In fact it was her copies that I listened to and then read. So we listened to the book on a road trip to St. George and I was sitting there saying "me too" to almost everything she said. And then I found out she was married to Abby Wambach so that made her more real to me. As a soccer player Abby was a queen to me and I'm pretty sure the first professional female soccer player to come out as gay. And she was roasted for it! Like people think she is the first one? It makes no sense. But Glennon is a Christian writer... So there is that too. Christian's can't be gay, God doesn't allow it. But what if he does? What if he really doesn't care? I also don't consider myself Christian so I'm trying to see it from her perspective not mine anyway... But it is the confusion on how God can say I won't let you come home if you can't follow my rules that won't ever change no matter how the world around you changes. People can't have their own thoughts I won't let them! How does that make any sense! But that is what people who claim to be Christian believe. This book is generally about how the world around us try to tame us, put us in a box or cage and constantly tell us what to do and how to be. And we let them. It starts as a child our parents tell us we have to listen to them, we have to be who they want us to be, and we have to believe the same way as them. How many kids have been told "when you're 18 and out of my house you can make your own choices." So from childhood we're taught that it's better to pretend to be someone we aren't than to be who we want to be. But how long can the game last? Previously when women specifically would have the break and think we can have our own thoughts and would then be labeled as crazy or (my favorite) a witch. But what if everyone started breaking out of that cage. Her analogy to say this is when she went to the zoo and they showed this cheetah and how this dog was their friend. The cheetah would follow whatever the dog did and originally she thought it was so cool because who knew you could train a cheetah like that. But then later she saw the cheetah without the dog free to run their own way. And the cheetah looked more free, more itself. It was a total transformation and it looked so much happier away from the dog.