For the first year of our marriage, I assumed that this was just a fresh, exciting challenge. I assumed that my job was to find new ways to approach her. Here is an actual conversation with my sister during my first year of marriage in response to the problem of Abby’s continuing to insist that she was the boss of herself:
ME: Okay, I hear you, but what if I actually know my idea is better for her than her idea is for her? Should I just pretend to think her idea is good? Should I just smile and let her try her idea so we can get to mine when hers doesn’t work so well? How long will I have to carry on with this time-wasting charade?
SISTER: My God. Okay. If that’s how you have to think of it, Glennon, then yes, try that. Try to fake it till you make it.
So that is what I did. I just smiled and faked it. I let her lead, but only because it was my undercover leadership strategy. I decided that we would try things her way for a while, until we both saw the light together. For a solid year, we were spontaneous when I preferred a plan. We were trusting of people when I was skeptical. We took big risks even when I had already calculated that the odds were against us. We let the kids try things I was sure they’d fail at and then resent us for forever.
We lived, for a while, as if life were less precarious than it is, as if people were better than they are, as if our kids were tougher than I believed them to be, and as if “things generally work themselves out.” It was reckless and ridiculous and irresponsible. Things do not work themselves out. I work things out. I WORK THEM OUT, and if I don’t there is no working out at all. There is just chaos.
I took lots of deep breaths and started a daily yoga practice to deal with my anxiety, and I waited for things to fall apart so I could save us.
I kept waiting.
Damned if “things” didn’t generally just keep working out. Damned if I didn’t start feeling happier. Damned if our children didn’t become braver, kinder, more relaxed. Damned if our life didn’t get more beautiful. It was annoying as hell, honestly.
I really think that it is possible that Abby has good ideas.
I am beginning to unlearn what I used to believe about control and love. Now I think that maybe control is not love. I think that control might actually be the opposite of love, because control leaves no room for trust—and maybe love without trust is not love at all. I am beginning to play with the idea that love is trusting that other people Feel, Know, and Imagine, too. Maybe love is respecting what your people feel, trusting that they know, and believing that they have their own unseen order for their lives pressing through their own skin.
Maybe my role with the people I love is not imagining the truest, most beautiful life for them and then pushing them toward it. Maybe I’m just supposed to ask what they feel and know and imagine. And then, no matter how different their unseen order is from mine, ask what I can do to support their vision.
Trusting people is terrifying. Maybe if love is not a little scary and out of our control, then it is not love at all.
It is wild to let others be wild.
One night after dinner, Abby, Craig, my sister, her husband John, and I sat around the kitchen table for hours. Music played in the background, the kids chased Honey around the family room, and all of us sipped tea or wine and laughed until it hurt.
I pulled Honey into my lap, turned toward Craig, and said, “I want to tell you something.”
Everyone at the table fell quiet.
“Do you remember that day, eighteen years ago, when we sat side by side on my front porch—me nauseous from morning sickness and you nauseous from shock—trying to decide what to do?
“Do you remember how you broke the silence?
“You said, ‘I’ve been thinking. What if we don’t get married? What if we just live separately and raise the baby side by side?’
“You knew.
“A week before I found out I was pregnant, my friend Christy asked me how it was going with you. I said, ‘We have to break up. We can’t connect. Not physically, not emotionally. It’s just not there.’
“I knew.
“But I had this idea—a vision of what a family should look like, what you should want, who you should become. My imagination became a dangerous thing when we let it eclipse our Knowing.
“We were so young and afraid back then. We hadn’t yet learned that Knowing never goes away. It just stays there inside, solid and unmoving. It just waits as long as it takes for the snow to settle.
“I am sorry that I ignored our Knowing. We didn’t fit together. We tried, because it was the right thing to do, because we thought we should. Because I thought we should. But right is not real, and should is a cage. What’s wild is what is.
“Our Knowing was right all along. What is lasted. Because here we are: trying your idea. Being two people who were not made for each other but who are a hell of a team at raising kids side by side.
“I hope that whatever you do next is born from you and not imposed on you. I hope the rest of your life is your idea. For what it’s worth, I hope you trust yourself. You know what you know. You have good ideas, Craig.”
My wife and ex-husband play on the same adult league soccer team on Wednesday nights. After dinner, we pack up the car with chairs and snacks, and the kids and I sit on the sidelines and watch their dad and their bonus mom work together to score goals.
A few weeks ago, the kids and I were sitting on the sidelines and an older couple sat down next to us. The woman pointed toward my girls and asked, “Are those your daughters?”
“They are,” I said.
“Is their dad out there playing?”
“Yes, he is. That’s him.” I pointed to Craig.
“Where do you all live?”
“We live right here in Naples, but separately. He and I are divorced now.”
“Wow, it’s wonderful that you still come watch him play!”
“Yes, we love watching him play. Also, the girls’ mom is playing. We come to watch her, too.”
The woman looked confused. She said, “Oh! I thought you were their mom.”
I said, “I am! That’s their other mom.”
I pointed to Abby. The woman looked closely. “Good Lord,” she said. “That woman looks exactly like Abby Wambach.”
“That woman is Abby Wambach,” I said.
She said, “Wow! Your ex-husband is remarried to Abby Wambach?”
“Close! I’m married to Abby Wambach.”
It took her a minute. A full minute of quiet. Selah. Old structural ideas burning, a new order of things being born inside her.
Then she smiled.
“Oh! Wow,” she said.
* * *
Tish’s first word was “Wow.” On an early-December morning in Virginia, I pulled her out of her crib and walked her over to the nursery window. I lifted the shade, and we both saw that the backyard was covered in white. It was her first snow. Tish’s eyes got big, she reached out her hand to touch the cold window, and she said, “Wow.”
* * *
When people encounter our family, their eyes get big and they say “Wow”—in one tone or another—because they haven’t seen a family exactly like ours before. Our family is specific, because we are specific people. We did not use a blueprint created by someone else and then struggle to fit each of us inside. We create and re-create our family again and again—from the inside of each one of us—out. We will continue to do that forever, so each of us will always have room to grow and grow and still belong. That is what family is to me: where we are both held and free.
Eight years ago, I found myself in a therapist’s office asking for strategies to cope with betrayal-induced rage. The therapist said, “Your anxiety is controlling you, which means that you are lost in your head. You don’t know what you want. You are so disconnected. You need to remember how to get back into your body somehow.
”
She then suggested that I go to yoga. The next morning, on my way to the studio, I wonder: Why did I leave my body to live in this dangerous mind of mine? I sit on my mat in a ninety-degree room and immediately remember why.
As soon as I get still, the snow settles, and I sink into my body. I start to feel itchy and agitated and annoyed. This is why I left! Because I am shame and fear wrapped in skin. I don’t even want to visit my body, much less reside here. But now I’m stuck: The perimeter of the yoga mat is my entire world. The other women are silent. There is nothing on the walls to read. There is no escape. Where’s my phone? There’s the door. I could go. I would not have to explain.
The instructor walks in, and I ignore her to continue plotting my escape, until she says, “Be still and know.” That phrase again. I so desperately want to know. Whatever it is that I am missing, whatever it is that other people know, whatever it is that helps them cope and lets them just live: I want to know it.
So I stayed on that goddamn mat until I knew.
Just like I stayed in my addictions until I knew.
Just like I stayed in my marriage until I knew.
Just like I stayed in my religion until I knew.
Just like I stayed in my pain and shame until I knew.
And now I know.
* * *
I’m sitting on my couch between two friends, sipping coffee. My dog’s asleep in my friend Saskia’s lap. We’re all listening to Ashley tell her story about staying in the hot yoga room until it made her sick. After she says, “I mean, the door wasn’t even locked,” the room falls quiet. Ashley has said something important. Saskia rubs the dog’s head. Karyn squints her eyes. I think this:
The truth of my thirties was: Stay on your mat, Glennon. The staying is making you.
The truth of my forties is: I’m made.
I will not stay, not ever again—in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself. When my body tells me the truth, I’ll believe it. I trust myself now, so I will no longer suffer voluntarily or silently or for long. I’ll look at those women to my left and right who must stay, because it’s that time for them, because they have to know what love and God and freedom are not before they can know what love and God and freedom are. Because they want to know. Because they are warriors. I’ll send them every bit of my strength and solidarity to help them through this part. And then I’ll pick up my mat and slowly, deliberately, lightly walk out.
Because I have just remembered that the sun is shining, the breeze is cool, and these doors, they’re not even locked.
In my favorite holy text, there is a poem about a group of people desperate to understand and define God.
They ask: What are you?
God says: I am.
They say: You are…what?
God says: I am.
What are you, Glennon?Are you happy?
Are you sad?
Are you Christian?
Are you a heretic?
Are you a believer?
Are you a doubter?
Are you young?
Are you old?
Are you good?
Are you bad?
Are you dark?
Are you light?
Are you right?
Are you wrong?
Are you deep?
Are you shallow?
Are you brave?
Are you weak?
Are you shattered?
Are you whole?
Are you wise?
Are you foolish?
Are you sick?
Are you healed?
Are you lost?
Are you found?
Are you gay?
Are you straight?
Are you crazy?
Are you brilliant?
Are you caged?
Are you wild?
Are you human?
Are you alive?
Are you sure?
I am.
I am.
I am.
For every woman resurrecting herself.
For the girls who will never be buried.
Mostly, for Tish.
The reason this book exists (the reason I exist) is because of the people listed here who, each day, breathe my art—and me—into existence:
ABBY: If you’re a bird, I’m a bird.
CHASE: You Are Our Family’s Knowing.
TISH: You Are Our Family’s Feeling.
AMMA: You Are Our Family’s Imagination.
CRAIG: For loving our children so masterfully, for trusting me to make art about our new family, for your humor, forgiveness, and relentless goodness.
MOM, DAD: For the patient courage that helped me find and keep myself and the love of my life. For trusting me as I learned to trust myself. I vow to give your grandchildren the same gift you give me: to live both held and free.
AMANDA: The great luck of my life is to call the kindest, bravest, most brilliant person on Earth Sister. Everything good in my life is born from that original luck. My sobriety, my family, my career, my activism, my joy, and peace: It’s all because you walk in front and beside and behind me. I am because of you.
ALLISON: Your artistic genius is woven into every word written in here and spoken out there. All of it is ours. Thank you for directing so much of your talent, dedication, loyalty, and friendship my way. You are pure Gold.
DYNNA: Thank you for your brain and your heart, for your steadfast devotion to our mission and sisterhood, and for sending us to the moon.
LIZ B: Countless women and children’s lives are changed because you see them, believe them, and work so relentlessly for them. I have never known someone to use her One Life with more beauty and impact than you use yours. Thank you for being Together Rising’s heartbeat.
OUR TOGETHER RISING VOLUNTEERS AND WARRIORS: Katherine, Gloria, Jessica, Tamara, Karen, Nicol, Natalie, Meghan, Erin, Christine, Ashley, Lori, Kristin, Rhonda, Amanda, Meredith, and Grace—for tirelessly forging that bridge between heartbreak and action. And to Kristen B, Marie F, and Liz G—for investing your exquisite trust in our work.
WHITNEY FRICK: For being the champion, advocate, and ambassador of my work for a decade. For believing when the ideas are invisible, and for tirelessly working to help them become real.
MARGARET RILEY KING: For your tenacity, vision, humor, wisdom, and friendship.
JENNIFER RUDOLPH WALSH: For trusting in our unseen order until it became a nationwide dance party.
KATY NISHIMOTO: For your love and loyalty, and for being the quiet genius behind so many true and beautiful things.
UNCLE KEITH.
EVERYONE AT THE DIAL PRESS AND RANDOM HOUSE: For devoting your talent and passion so fully to Untamed, especially Gina Centrello, Avideh Bashirrad, Debbie Aroff, Michelle Jasmine, Sharon Propson, Rose Fox, Robert Siek, Christopher Brand, and the late legendary Susan Kamil. And to Scott Sherratt, for making our audiobook magic. I am elated to be on this team with all of you.
LIZ G: For being the Patron Saint of Untamed, a goddamn cheetah, and a believer in magic and freedom and women and me.
KARYN, JESSICA, ASHLEY: For calling me friend even though I don’t leave home or text back.
KAT, EMMA: For showing me what it looks like to never become tamed in the first place.
Here’s to The Untamed:
May we know them.
May we raise them.
May we love them.
May we read them.
May we elect them.
May we be them.
ALSO BY GLENNON DOYLE
Carry On, Warrior
Love Warrior
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Glennon Doyle
is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Love Warrior, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, as well as the New York Times bestseller Carry On, Warrior. An activist, speaker, and thought leader, she is also the founder and president of Together Rising, an all-women-led nonprofit organization that has revolutionized grassroots philanthropy—raising over $20 million for women, families, and children in crisis, with a most frequent donation of just $25. Glennon was named among OWN Network’s SuperSoul 100 inaugural group as one of 100 “awakened leaders who are using their voices and talent to elevate humanity.” She lives in Florida with her wife and three children.
GlennonDoyle.com
Instagram: @glennondoyle
Twitter: @glennondoyle
Facebook.com/glennondoyle
ABOUT TOGETHER RISING
Founded in 2012 by Glennon Doyle, Together Rising exists to transform our collective heartbreak into effective action. Whether it’s pulling children out of the sea outside the refugee camps in Greece, providing a single mother access to breast cancer treatment, or reuniting families separated at the U.S. border—Together Rising identifies what is breaking the hearts of givers and then connects givers’ generosity with the people and organizations who are effectively addressing each critical need.
Together Rising has raised over $20 million for people in need with a most frequent donation of $25, proving that small gifts can change the world in revolutionary ways.
Because a few devoted benefactors directly cover all administrative costs, 100 percent of what Together Rising receives from every personal donation goes directly to an individual, family, or crisis. Please consider joining Together Rising’s Team Love with a monthly tax-deductible donation of $5, $10, or $25. These donations enable Together Rising to act quickly to deploy life-saving funds in times of crisis.
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