Untamed

by Glennon Doyle

  Being bad had almost killed me. But so had being good.

  I was talking to a dear friend around that time. She said, “G, remember that amazing Steinbeck quote? ‘And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.’ I’ve kept it on my desk for years. I looked at it last night and thought: I’m tired of being good. I’m so tired.

  “Let’s change it to:

  “And now that we don’t have to be good, we can be free.”

  A few years ago, Alicia Keys announced to the world that she was done wearing makeup. She said, “I don’t want to cover up anymore. Not my face, not my mind, not my soul, not my thoughts, not my dreams, not my struggles…Nothing.”

  That’s it, I thought.

  A while later, I read an interview with Adam Levine. He said that while they were filming a show together, he poked his head into Alicia Keys’s dressing room. She had her back to him, and she was leaning into the mirror, putting on lipstick.

  He smiled and said, “Oh! I thought Alicia doesn’t wear makeup.”

  She turned around, looked at him, lipstick in her hand.

  She said, “I do what the fuck I want.”

  That’s it.

  My daughters are different. I raised Tish while I was still trying to be a good parent, but then I got tired. By the time Amma exited the birth canal, I just handed her an iPad and wished the child godspeed on her journey. One way to describe Amma is independent. Another is on her own. This parenting approach (retreat?) has served her well. She wears what she wants and says what she wants, and mostly she does what she wants. She has created herself, and she is a glorious invention with which she is well pleased.

  Recently we were sitting around the kitchen table, and Tish mentioned her need to train more if she ever hoped to be great at soccer. We asked Amma if she felt the same way. Amma took a bite of her pizza and said, “Nah. I’m already great.” She is twelve. Maybe eleven, actually. I have three children, and their ages change every single year. All I know is they are in the phase that comes after crawling but before college. Somewhere in that sweet spot.

  Years ago, when I was in the thick of deciding whether I wanted to save or end my marriage, the girls began begging to get their ears pierced. I was grateful for the distraction, so I said yes. I took them to the mall, and when we arrived at the piercing kiosk, Amma ran ahead of me, leaped into the piercing chair, and announced to the surprised twentysomething piercer, “Let’s do this.” When I finally caught up, the piercer turned to me and said, “Are you her mother?”

  “I am trying to be,” I said.

  “Okay, do you want me to pierce her ears one at a time or both at the same time?”

  Amma said, “Both. Do it! Let’s GO!” Then she squinted her eyes, gritted her teeth, and flexed all her muscles, like a tiny Hulk. As they pierced her, I saw a couple of tears that she wiped away immediately. I looked at Amma and thought: She is so awesome. She is also six years from a felony. She jumped down from the chair, buzzing with adrenaline.

  The women working at the kiosk laughed and said, “Wow! She is so brave!”

  Tish stood next to me, taking all of it in. She motioned for me to lean down closer. She whispered, “Actually, Mom, I changed my mind. I don’t want to get my ears pierced today.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  She looked over at Amma’s earlobes: swollen grape tomatoes.

  Amma said, “C’mon, Tish! You only live once!”

  Tish said, “Why does everyone say that when they’re about to do dangerous things? How about ‘You only live once, so don’t get dead early’?”

  Then she looked back at me and said, “I’m sure.”

  The piercer turned to Tish and said, “Your turn, honey.”

  I waited for Tish to speak. She said, “No, thank you. I’m not ready today.”

  The piercer said, “Oh, c’mon! You can do it! Be brave! Look how brave your little sister was!”

  Tish looked at me, and I squeezed her hand as we walked away. She felt a little ashamed, and I felt a lot annoyed.

  I don’t think brave means what we’ve been saying it means.

  We tell our children that brave means feeling afraid and doing it anyway, but is this the definition we want them to carry as they grow older?

  When she is seventeen, headed out in a car driven by her teenage buddy, saying she’s going to the movies but actually going to that kegger down the street, imagine calling to her, “Bye, babe! Be brave tonight! What I mean by that is: If you’re in a scary situation, and you feel afraid to do what your friends are encouraging you to do—I want you to ignore that fear and do it anyway! Just plow right through that gut instinct of yours!”

  No. That is not the understanding of brave I want my children to have. I do not want my children to become people who abandon themselves to please the crowd.

  Brave does not mean feeling afraid and doing it anyway.

  Brave means living from the inside out. Brave means, in every uncertain moment, turning inward, feeling for the Knowing, and speaking it out loud.

  Since the Knowing is specific, personal, and ever changing, so is brave. Whether you are brave or not cannot be judged by people on the outside. Sometimes being brave requires letting the crowd think you’re a coward. Sometimes being brave means letting everyone down but yourself. Amma’s brave is often: loud and go for it. Tish’s brave is often: quiet and wait for it. They are both brave girls, because each is true to herself. They are not divided between what they feel and know on the inside and what they say and do on the outside. Their selves are integrated. They have integrity.

  Tish showed tremendous bravery that day because keeping her integrity required her to resist the pressure of the crowd. She trusted her own voice more than she trusted the voices of others. Brave is not asking the crowd what is brave. Brave is deciding for oneself.

  On the way home from the mall I said, “Tish, I know that lady made you feel unbrave today. People have different ideas about what’s brave. You did the brave thing, because the brave thing is doing what your Knowing tells you to do. You don’t ask others what’s brave, you feel and know what’s brave. What you know to do might be the opposite of what others are telling you to do. It takes special bravery to honor yourself when the crowd is pressuring you not to. It’s easier just to give in. You didn’t give in to the crowd today. You stood strong in what you felt and knew. To me, that’s the greatest bravery. That’s true confidence, which means loyalty to self. That’s what you move through the world with, Tish: confidence. Regardless of what others are calling ‘brave’ at the moment: You stay loyal to yourself.

  “If you keep living with confidence, the rest of your life will unfold exactly as it is meant to. It won’t always be comfortable. Some will recognize your brave; others won’t. Some will understand and like you; others won’t. But the way others respond to your confidence is not your business. Your business is to stay loyal to you. That way, you will always know that those who do like and love you are really your people. You’ll never be forced to hide or act in order to keep people if you don’t hide or act to get them.”

  To be brave is to forsake all others to be true to yourself.

  That is the vow of a confident girl.

  I met Liz at an airport. We were speaking at the same event somewhere out west. I flew all night to get there and then found myself in a small terminal, standing outside a circle made up of other speakers waiting to be picked up and delivered to the event. I hate how people stand in circles. I wish we’d all agree to stand around in horseshoes, with room available for awkward outsiders to join.

  A woman walked over from baggage claim and stood next to me. I smiled and stayed quiet, which is my strategy for making it through. She smiled back, but her smile was different from mine. My smile says: Hello, I am warm, polite, and unavailable. I smile like a period. Liz smiles slowl
y and openly, like a question mark.

  “Hi. I’m Liz.”

  “I know,” I said. “I adore your work. I’m Glennon.”

  “Oh my gosh! I know you. I adore your work, too. Where are you from?”

  “I live in Naples, Florida.”

  “What’s it like to live there?”

  “It’s slow. It’s a retirement city. I’d say the average age in my neighborhood is eighty. The cool thing is that most of my friends are turning forty and worried about starting to look old. Not me. I feel fantastic. Like a spring chicken. I go to the gym, look around at all the grandparents, and think ‘Actually, I don’t need to work out after all. I look amazing.’ It’s all perspective, right? I tell my friends to skip the Botox and just move to Naples.”

  Liz says, “Wonderful. How did you end up there?”

  “I got neurological Lyme disease a few years ago. My entire body shut down, and I was in bed for two years and popping fifty pills a day. I went to stay in my friend’s place in Naples, and I felt so much better. I moved there temporarily, and I was able to ditch the pills, so I just stayed. I’ve always known I wanted to live by the beach. I guess women have to almost die before we give ourselves permission to live how we want.”

  Liz put her hand on my arm and said, “Wait. Wow. That last thing you said—about having to almost die—can you say that again?”

  I said, “I don’t think so. I’m a little nervous. I have no idea what I just said.”

  She smiled and said, “I like you.”

  “I like you, too.”

  The next night, along with everyone else at the convention, I went to see Liz speak. I got to the event early and claimed a seat in the front but off to the side—close enough to see her clearly but not close enough for her to see me clearly. She was standing behind the podium wearing a black shirt with a high white collar, and she reminded me of a priest at a pulpit. When she started speaking, I found myself holding my breath. She spoke with gentleness and authority. A man in the front row kept talking to the woman beside him, and Liz paused midsentence, turned to him, and asked him to stop talking. He did. Something about the way she spoke, the way she carried herself, made my heart beat quicker than usual. She seemed certain, steady, free, relaxed. She was not complying and she was not rebelling. She was creating something new. She was original. I wanted to ask “Can you say all of that again?”

  The next night, all the speakers attended a fancy banquet in a ski lodge at the top of a mountain. Snow was flurrying outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, and people were flurrying inside, trying to figure out where to stand and who was important enough to talk to.

  I saw Liz in a corner across the room, surrounded. My general policy is to honor people I admire by leaving them alone. I didn’t that night. I walked over to her, and when she saw me she smiled like another beginning. I drew closer, joined the huddle. The entire circle was pressing Liz with questions and requests for advice like she was a vending machine. I wanted to step on their toes.

  After a while, the host of the event walked over and said to Liz, “It’s time to take our seats for dinner. May I lead you to your table?”

  Liz pointed to me and asked, “Can I sit with my friend?”

  The woman looked nervous, then apologetic. “I’m sorry. We’ve promised the donors that you’d sit with them.”

  “Okay,” she said. She looked forlorn. She squeezed my arm and said, “I’ll miss you.”

  During the dinner I thought about how much I liked Liz and how sad it was that we wouldn’t actually be able to be friends. Attempting to be her friend would be like intentionally writing a bad check. I am not a good friend. I have never been capable of or willing to commit to the maintenance that the rules of friendship dictate. I cannot remember birthdays. I do not want to meet for coffee. I will not host the baby shower. I won’t text back because it’s an eternal game of Ping-Pong, the texting. It never ends. I inevitably disappoint friends, so after enough of that, I decided I would stop trying. I don’t want to live in constant debt. This is okay with me. I have a sister and children and a dog. One cannot have it all.

  A few weeks after the event, Liz sent me an email saying she thought we should try friendship. She sent along this poem:

  I honor your gods,

  I drink at your well,

  I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place.

  I have no cherished outcomes,

  I will not negotiate by withholding,

  I am not subject to disappointment.

  She offered a new friendship memo: that for us there would be no arbitrary rules, obligations, or expectations. We would not owe each other anything other than admiration, respect, love—and that was all done already. We became friends.

  A while later, I invited Liz to come stay with me. It was shortly after I’d met Abby, and I was walking through my days stunned. I was deeply in love for the first time in my life, and I had told no one except my sister about any of it. Liz and I stayed up late that first night, talking about everything but my desperate heart and aching body and muddled mind.

  The next morning, my alarm rang at 5:30, which didn’t matter because I didn’t sleep anymore. I rolled over and tiptoed to the kitchen so I wouldn’t wake Liz upstairs. I took my coffee outside and stood in my backyard. It was still dark and cold, but the pink-tinged horizon hinted at the coming sun. I stood there, stared at the sky, and, as I’d done each day since I’d met Abby, I thought: Help, please.

  In that moment, I was reminded of a story about a woman who had become stranded on top of an icy mountain. She frantically prayed that God would rescue her before she froze to death. She called to the heavens, “If you exist, God, send help!”

  A little while later, a helicopter circled above and dropped a ladder.

  “No,” the woman said. “Go away! I’m waiting for God!”

  Then a park ranger walked by and asked, “Need some help, sister?”

  “No! Go away! I’m waiting for God!”

  The woman froze to death. She showed up at the gates of heaven—pissed—and demanded, “WHY, GOD? Why did you let me die?”

  God said, “Honey. I sent a helicopter. I sent a park ranger. What the hell were you waiting for?”

  I thought: I am freezing to death while Liz Freakin’ Gilbert, a friend I admire, trust, and love—who happens to also be a world-renowned spiritual teacher—is asleep upstairs. Maybe Liz is my park ranger.

  When she woke up, Liz found me at the bottom of the stairs in my pajamas, teary, desperate, humbled.

  I said, “I need you.”

  She said, “Okay, Honeyhead.”

  We sat down on my couch, and I spilled it all. I told her about how Abby and I had met, how we’d spent the past weeks falling deeper in love through emails, how our letters felt like blood transfusions. Each one I read and wrote pumped fresh life through my veins. I told her how ridiculous and impossible it all was. It was thrilling and terrifying to hear the words fall out of my mouth, like I was crossing some point of no return. I was expecting her to be shocked. She was not shocked. Her eyes were sparkly, lovingly amused, soft, smiling. She looked relieved somehow.

  I said, “It will never work out.”

  She said, “Maybe not. Maybe she’s just an Abby-shaped door inviting you to leave what’s not true enough anymore.”

  I said, “It will ruin Craig.”

  She said, “There is no such thing as one-way liberation, honey.”

  I said, “Can you imagine the havoc this would wreak on my parents, on my friends, on my career?”

  She said, “Yes, everyone you love would be uncomfortable for a long while, maybe. What is better: uncomfortable truth or comfortable lies? Every truth is a kindness, even if it makes others uncomfortable. Every untruth is an unkindness, even if it makes others comfortable.”

 
I said, “I barely know her.”

  She said, “But you do know yourself.”

  I said, “What if I leave for her and this isn’t even real?”

  She looked at me. She did not say anything.

  We sat together in the quiet. She held my hand, lightly, lovingly.

  I said, “I am real. What I feel and want and know. That’s all real.”

  “Yes,” Liz said. “You are real.”

  It is a blessing to know a free woman. Sometimes she will stop by and hold up a mirror for you. She will help you remember who you are.

  Recently, my friend Erika called my cell phone. I will never understand why people insist upon calling my cell phone. It’s such an aggressive action to take: calling someone. Each time my phone rings, I have a heart attack like my pocket’s on fire and a tiny siren is going off.

  I’d also like to take this opportunity to address texting. Texting = Better Than Calling. Unless.

  Unless you are one of those people who doles out texts like IOUs. Unless you believe that whenever you feel like it, you can just poke at me, ping me, jump into my day like Hiiiiii and feel so entitled to a response that the next time I see you, you will arrange your face in an injured manner and say quietly, “Hey. You doing okay? I just never heard back…” At this moment, I have 183 unread texts. Texts are not the boss of me, and neither is anybody who texts me. I have decided, once and for all, that just because someone texts me does not obligate me to respond. If I believed differently, I’d walk around all day feeling anxious and indebted, responding instead of creating. Now that we’ve established why I have no friends, let’s return to Erika.

  Erika and I went to college together. She was a born artist, but studied business because her mother was a corporate executive and wanted Erika to become one, too. Erika resented every minute she spent in those business classes. It’s nearly impossible to blaze one’s own path while following in someone else’s footsteps.