Best Of Glennon Doyle's "Untamed"

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from Untamed by Glennon Doyle.

The culture depends on the sensitivity of a few, because nothing can be healed if it's not sensed first.

p.15

My faith has nothing to do with religion anymore. To me, living by faith is allowing the swelling and pressing inside me to direct my outward words and decisions. Because to me, God is not a being outside of me: God is the fire, the nudge, the warm liquid gold swelling and pressing inside me.

p.64

We are all bilingual. We speak the language of indoctrination, but our native tongue is the language of imagination.

When we use the language of indoctrination-with its should and shouldn’t, right and wrong, good and bad—we are activating our minds. That's not what we re going for here. Because our minds are polluted by our training. In order to get beyond our training, we need to activate our imaginations. Our minds are excuse makers; our imaginations are storytellers. So instead of asking ourselves what's right or wrong, we must ask ourselves:

What is true and beautiful?

p.68

Then, when she was ready to move from Not this to This instead, she dared to call upon her imagination to tell her the story she was born to tell with her life. She dreamed up what it would look like to have her specific version of truth and beauty come to life. She looked for the blueprint she'd been born with, the one shed forgotten existed. She unearthed her unseen order: her original plan.

p.70

I quit spending my life trying to control myself and began to trust myself. We only control what we don't trust. We can either control our selves or love our selves, but we can't do both. Love is the opposite of control. Love demands trust.

p.116

The moment after we don't know what to do with ourselves is the moment we find ourselves. Right after itchy boredom is self-discovery. But we have to hang in there long enough without bailing.

p.158

I don't give a rat's ass how much respect you earn for yourself out in the world if you are not showing respect to the people inside your home. If you don't get that right, nothing you do out there will matter much."

p.167

He was brave enough to be honest; you be brave enough to handle it. Life is hard; friends need to be safe places for each other."

p.169

Desperate people often ask me, "How? How did you get sober? What did your family do?"

They tried everything, and none of it had anything to do with my recovery. All the love in the world cannot move a boulder, because the Removal is not between the impeded and the ones who love her. The Removal is strictly between the impeded one and her God.

p.196

The miracle of grace is that you can give what you have never gotten.

You do not get your capacity for love from your parents.

They are not your source. Your source is God. You are your own source.

p.197

This way of life requires living in integrity: ensuring that my inner self and outer self are integrated. Integrity means having only one self. Dividing into two selves the shown self and the hidden self—that is brokenness, so I do whatever it takes to stay whole. I do not adjust myself to please the world. I am myself wherever I am, and I let the world adjust.

p.199

Judgment is just another cage we live in so we don't have to feel, know, and imagine. Judgment is self-abandonment. You are not here to waste your time deciding whether my life is true and beautiful enough for you. You are here to decide if your life, relationships, and world are true and beautiful enough for you.

p.201

Unasked questions become prejudices.

p.222

But letting old structures burn can feel uncomfortable and disorienting. Rumbling freedom is scary because at first it feels like chaos. Pronouns and bathrooms and girls taking girls to prom, oh my! But "progress" is just perpetually undoing our no-longer-true-enough systems in order to create new ones that more closely fit people as they really are. People aren't changing, after all. It's just that for the first time, there's enough freedom for people to stop changing who they are. Progress is the acknowledgment of what is and what has always been.

Progress is always a returning.

p.224

Our willingness to be confused, open, and kind will save lives.

Maybe courage is not just refusing to be afraid of ourselves but refusing to be afraid of others, too.

p.225

Everybody owes it to herself, to her people, to the world, to examine what she's been taught to believe, especially if she's going to choose beliefs that condemn others. She has to ask herself questions like "Who benefits from me believing this?"

p.241

As I practiced allowing my hard feelings to come and stay as long as they needed to, I got to know myself. The reward for enduring hard feelings was finding my potential, my purpose, and my people. I am so grateful. I can't imagine a greater tragedy than remaining forever unknown to myself. That would be the ultimate self-abandonment. So I have become unafraid of my own feelings. Now when hard feelings ring the bell, I put on my big-girl pants and answer the door.

p.261

If we cannot forgive and move on, perhaps we need to move on first, and forgiveness will follow.

Forgiveness does not mean access. We can give the other person the gift of forgiveness and ourselves the gift of safety and freedom at the very same time.

p.263

When we restore the boundary that was violated, we honour ourselves. When we know ourselves and honour ourselves, we live with integrity, peace, and power-understanding that we are the kind of woman who will be wise and brave enough to care for herself.

p.264

Anger delivers our boundaries to us. Our boundaries deliver our beliefs to us. Our beliefs determine how we experience the world. So even though it can be scary, we'd be wise to answer the door.

p.267

Heartbreak delivers your purpose. If you are brave enough to accept that delivery and seek out the people doing that particular world-changing work, you find your people. There is no bond like the bond that is forged among people who are united in the same world-healing work.

Despair says, "The heartbreak is too overwhelming. I am too sad and too small, and the world is too big. I cannot do it all, so I will do nothing."

Courage says, "I will not let the fact that I cannot do everything keep me from doing what I can."

We all want purpose and connection.

Tell me what breaks your heart, and I'll point you toward both.

p.269

Playing dumb, weak, and silly is a disservice to yourself and to me and to the world. Every time you pretend to be less than you are, you steal permission from other women to exist fully.

Don't mistake modesty for humility. Modesty is a giggly lie.

An act. A mask. A fake game. We have no time for it.

p.286