Emily Howard, Writer

This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been. -Glennon Doyle

It is going to be hard to put into words the effect this book had on me, but I’ll give it a try.

I received Untamed from my awesome daughter, Megan, for Christmas. She bought it for me because it was on my Amazon Christmas wish list (and if you haven’t done this yet, what are you waiting for?? It’s win-win for everyone). I finished reading it in about 3 days. Then I sat staring off into space for the next three, pondering the world and my place in it.

Now granted, this book came at a time when I was already in a period of transition, when my worldview and beliefs were rapidly changing. But the absolute permission this book gave me to chase after my true self was overwhelming. 

The book jacket description begins: “There is a voice of longing inside each of us. We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this?”

If you’ve been reading my writing and posts lately, you may have noticed a theme of “figuring out who I am” and “becoming my true self.” That is the stage of my life I am in right now, and Untamed helped solidify these feelings for me. The theme of the book is letting go of what society expects you to be, finding out who you really are, and being brave enough to live that way: 

“I am here to keep becoming truer, more beautiful versions of myself again and again forever. To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution. Whether I like it or not, pain is the fuel of revolution. Everything I need to become the woman I’m meant to be next is inside my feelings of now. Life is alchemy, and emotions are the fire that turns me to gold. I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. If I can sit in the fire of my own feelings, I will keep becoming.”

I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. Who else is guilty of this? Extinguishing themselves to make others comfortable? Becoming small and wee to keep the people pleased?

One passage in particular, about the sacrifices mothers make for their children, hit me hard. This is a long one, but it’s worth it to include the entire passage:

Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist.

What a terrible burden for children to bear—to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. What a terrible burden for our daughters to bear—to know that if they choose to become mothers, this will be their fate, too. Because if we show them that being a martyr is the highest form of love, that is what they will become. They will feel obligated to love as well as their mothers loved, after all. They will believe they have permission to live only as fully as their mothers allowed themselves to live.

If we keep passing down the legacy of martyrdom to our daughters, with whom does it end? Which woman ever gets to live? And when does the death sentence begin? At the wedding altar? In the delivery room? Whose delivery room—our children’s or our own? When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. This is why Jung suggested: “There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.”

I have never had motherhood described in this way to me. Never. And while of course I love my children and grandchildren with my entire being, and of course I would do anything for them, isn’t one of the most powerful things I could do for them is to set an example that they can be whatever they want to be because that’s what I am modeling for them? To show them instead of just telling them?

This is one of those books that  scared me, quite frankly. Because I agreed with her and felt convicted to go out and live authentically right that second. And while I didn’t do that exactly (I did immediately write a blog post that ruffled a few feathers), it was definitely a catalyst for me. If you choose to read this one, I hope it changes you too.