Untamed by Glennon Doyle

Untamed by Glennon Doyle is a bestselling memoir about self-trust, boundaries, and reclaiming identity—charting Doyle’s sobriety, the end of her marriage, falling in love with Abby Wambach, and rebuilding family on her own terms. Blending feminist insight with candid storytelling, Untamed tackles motherhood, faith, sexuality, and people-pleasing, offering a sharp blueprint for living authentically. Ideal for readers of contemporary memoir, women’s empowerment, and personal growth narratives.

About Untamed

Untamed traces Glennon Doyle’s move from worldly compliance to self-trust. The memoir follows her journey to sobriety, the end of her marriage, her falling in love with Abby Wambach, and the work of rebuilding family life without the inherited scripts of church or culture. Each chapter reads like a compact essay that ties a lived scene to a clear decision about how to tell the truth, set a boundary, and act from integrity.

The book identifies the forces that confine women. Doyle uses the image of a caged cheetah to show how praise for being agreeable and selfless trains people to accept small lives. She maps the quiet bargains that create those cages and the daily choices that undo them.

Freedom, in this account, comes from listening to what Doyle calls the knowing. The practice is simple and disciplined. Get still. Ask the real question. Choose the path that aligns with a steady inner yes, even when it costs approval. The result is a memoir that treats authenticity as work done in ordinary rooms and measured by action, not applause.

---

Key Takeaways

Embrace Your True Self

Glennon Doyle anchors Untamed in a single line that has become a rallying cry. “I was a goddamn cheetah.” The image names what domestication hides. Most of us learned early to trade instinct for approval and to accept small rooms as a form of safety. The work begins when you notice which rules you follow that hollow you out. Question the beliefs that do not match what your body knows to be true. Name the parts of yourself that feel most alive, even when they sit outside family scripts or cultural norms. The process can feel awkward and loud. It is also the path to a life arranged around integrity rather than performance. Reclaiming that wildness does not mean chaos. It means daily choices that honor the self you keep trying to quiet.

Feel It All

Doyle’s instruction is simple and difficult. Feelings are for feeling. All of them. Even the hard ones. Numbing might offer brief relief, but it freezes growth. Sitting with grief, anger, envy, and fear teaches what you value and what needs to change. That practice builds resilience and emotional literacy. Pain becomes information rather than a verdict. Joy becomes steadier because it does not depend on pretending. When you allow the full range of emotion, you meet life with clearer judgment and more humane boundaries. The result is not constant comfort. It is a durable self that can face what comes and choose well.

Trust Your Inner Knowing

Be still and know. Untamed treats intuition as a skill that strengthens with practice. Create quiet space each day and let the noise drop. Ask one plain question and wait for the answer that arrives without panic or spin. Learn the feel of fear in the body and learn the steadier feel of a true yes or no. Keep a small record of decisions made from that steadier place and the outcomes that followed. Act on what you hear even when it unsettles routines or disappoints others. Over time the signal grows clearer, confidence deepens, and choices line up with values you can stand behind.

Dare to Imagine

Imagination begins the work of change. Doyle urges readers to picture a life arranged around integrity and to treat that picture as a draft, not a fantasy. Name the limits you have accepted and test them. See the relationship, the home, the work, and the community you want, and write down one next step that moves in that direction. Use image and language to think through obstacles before they arrive. A practiced imagination shifts what feels possible and invites action that matches desire. Personal vision turns outward as well, since a life built on honest choices has a way of widening options for others.

---

Why Read Untamed

The book delivers a clear argument for self-acceptance and honest living. Doyle’s chapters show how to replace approval seeking with integrity, how to name a boundary, and how to keep it when pressure rises. Readers come away with language and practices that make authenticity feel actionable rather than abstract.

Many readers recognize their own lives in Doyle’s account. She writes about identity, motherhood, partnership, faith, and work with a precision that captures the tug between caretaking and selfhood. The scenes are ordinary and specific, which is why they carry weight for anyone who has felt boxed in by expectation.

The book offers workable insights into personal change. Doyle models stillness, inquiry, and decisive choice, a sequence that helps readers test what freedom might look like in daily life. The result is a memoir that invites reflection and leaves the reader with tools to build a life aligned with an inner yes.

---

About Glennon Doyle

Glennon Doyle is a bestselling writer, activist, and the founder of Together Rising, a nonprofit that funds rapid-response aid for families and communities in crisis. She built a large readership through her memoirs, including Untamed, Love Warrior, and Carry On, Warrior, books that explore self-trust, recovery, marriage, parenting, and the hard work of rebuilding a life with integrity. Her prose is candid and closely observed, often drawing on her history with addiction and the long arc of sobriety. People magazine once called her the “patron saint of female empowerment,” a label earned through plainspoken essays, live events, and sustained philanthropy. She hosts the podcast We Can Do Hard Things, where she and guests examine boundaries, mental health, friendship, and love with the same clarity found in her books. Doyle lives in California with her wife, Abby Wambach, and their three children.

---

More Books by Glennon Doyle