Glennon Doyle hates giving advice. Nor does she want to be referred to as a self-help guru or any other woo-woo spiritual title. The author of best-selling memoirs including āUntamedā says she just wants to help others find the freedom she found āuntamingā herself.
āThatās how we all got in this mess in the first place, by following somebody elseās idea of what we should be,ā she said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. āWeāre now following Glennonās ideas? Thatās the opposite of what Iām trying to do.ā
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When Doyle āblew upā her life, as she calls it, divorcing her husband and father of their three children to marry Olympic gold medal soccer star Abby Wambach, she hit a nerve with millions. The Christian mommy blogger detailed her fears of rejection, of disappointing the church and her parents, and of losing the life she thought she was supposed to live in order to live the life she wanted.
āIt was the most alive Iād ever been,ā the 45-year-old Doyle said.
Her unburdening has also helped her tap into the zeitgeist of overburdened women from all walks of life. People magazine hailed her as the āpatron saint of female empowerment." āUntamedā was Audibleās most-listened-to audiobook in 2020. Oprah, Adele, Kelly Clarkson and other celebrities have called her work life-changing.
Doyle extended the conversation to podcasting in May, launching āWe Can Do Hard Things,ā which was No. 1 on Apple's list of top new shows.
Still, women frequently approached her on her exercise walks, messaged her on social media, and pulled her aside at events, asking the same question.
āPeople would ask, āOK, thatās great that you got yourself untamed,'ā she said. 'Thatās great that you were able to do that. How do I do that'?"
So Doyle recently released a companion journal to āUntamed.ā She wanted to call it āThe Experiment,ā emphasizing that no blueprint exists and no one has the answers for someone elseās life, but publishers scrapped it.
āGet Untamed: The Journal" has the tagline āHow to quit pleasing and start living,ā which has become an anthem among her fans. āI have stopped asking people for directions to places they've never been. There is no map. We are all pioneers,ā she writes.
Before āUntamedā dropped in March 2020, amid the early unknowns of COVID-19, her initial reaction was to wait and release it later.
But the forced time out proved fertile ground for her message of stillness, of tuning out the noise and listening to yourself, āyour knowing,ā she calls it.
āBeing still is the hardest thing in the whole world," she says.
"The truth is in the stillness, the stuff we havenāt resolved yet is in the stillness, the conversations we are avoiding is in the stillness, all of our trauma is in the stillness,ā she said. āWe live in a culture that tells us we canāt live in stillness.ā
Doyle says she numbed out for years, using food and alcohol to cope with an unhappy marriage and strict evangelical upbringing, trying to do all the right things, being a good church wife, teacher and mother. She buried her desires, thinking she was sacrificing for her children, until she realized she was living a life she wouldn't want for her own daughter.
āMommy martrydom," she said, can be a heavy burden to pass on to children.
āWeāre teaching them love is self-denial, love is burying yourself and then moping about it,ā she said. āItās having a mom who will not allow herself to live. If thereās anything āUntamedā is doing, I hope itās showing that martyrdom motherhood is not a badge of honor.ā
Among her unconventional self-revelations embraced by exhausted women: Itās OK to quit or take a nap. She rarely replies to texts. Divorce isnāt always bad. Sometimes, losing everything is actually the step to freeing yourself.
Doyle hopes the pandemic and journal will encourage others to do some uncomfortable self-examination.
āSome of us found our peace for the first time. I have never been more comfortable in my own skin," she recently said on her podcast.
āThe constant going out in front of other human beings, the constant being out in all of these social situations... that was constantly jarring to me.ā
Despite her successes, Doyle says her life is messy like everyone's, filled with fights, tears and self-doubts.
She tries to meditate for 20 minutes daily, saying it helps ātake the edge off,ā or go for a walk to work out her thoughts. But she admits without shame that she only does it about half the time because working, mothering and wife-ing gets hectic.
So what about those days when she canāt get it all done?
āIām really over beating myself up over everything.ā
Instead, she calls quitting a spiritual practice.
āI wake up in the morning and I look forward to quitting,ā she said in a recent podcast, adding that might be zoning out with TV and eating comforting carbs.
āIf I didnāt quit every single day, I wouldn't start again.ā