Untamed

“She’d say, ‘Something’s off about my life. I feel restless and frustrated. I have this hunch that everything was supposed to be more beautiful than this. I imagine fenceless, wide-open savannas. I want to run and hunt and kill. I want to sleep under an ink-black silent sky filled with stars. It’s all so real I can taste it.’” 

Doyle imagines a conversation with Tabitha where Tabitha shares her innermost frustrations with the contained life she leads. Doyle forges a connection between Tabitha and herself and all women who are left frustrated and dissatisfied with the lives they lead. In this imagined conversation, Doyle sees the potential for a more beautiful life than the contained and restricted one inhabited by Tabitha and most women. 

“You are a goddamn cheetah.” 

This is Doyle’s reply to her imagined conversation with Tabitha. However, Doyle is also speaking metaphorically when she says “cheetah.” She speaks not only to Tabitha, who actually is a cheetah, but to all women, including herself. Doyle repeats this mantra throughout her memoir in moments of self-doubt as a reminder of her powerful potential. 

“I wanted to be a good girl, so I tried to control myself. I chose a personality, a body, a faith, and a sexuality so tiny I had to hold my breath to fit myself inside.” 

Doyle relates the consequences of society’s conditioning. She lists the ways this conditioning affected her life’s choices and how she attempted to fit into society’s narrow understanding of who she was as a person. The restricted nature of these conditions represent the lack of freedom experienced by Doyle throughout the majority of her life. 

“Over time, I slowly walked away from my cages. I slowly built a new marriage, a new faith, a new worldview, a new purpose, a new family, and a new identity by design and not by default. From my imagination instead of indoctrination. From my wild instead of from my training.” 

Doyle offers her success story at the beginning of her memoir. She shares her own tale of empowerment and gives the reader a glimpse into the success and happiness that she has created for herself. Doyle accounts this happiness to her own choices free from the influence of the conditioning she endured from the age of ten. 

“This is why we still suffer today, because Eve’s original sin is inside of all of us. That sin is wanting to know more than we are supposed to know, wanting more instead of being grateful for what we have, and doing what we want to do instead of what we should do.” 

The story of Eve’s dangerous curiosity represents the indoctrination Doyle undergoes from a young age. She experiences this conditioning at the significant age of ten. This shapes her future experiences with religious faith, and her reimagining of faith as individual in the aftermath of her new self-discovery. 

“There I was, in the twenty-first century, when boys are still being taught that real men are big, bold, violent, invulnerable, disgusted by femininity, and responsible for conquering women and the world. When girls are still being taught that real women must be quiet, pretty, small, passive, and desirable so they’ll be worthy of being conquered. Here we all are.” 

Doyle observes the bath products she finds in her children’s bathroom. She discusses the deliberate messages sent through the marketing and packaging of these items. Doyle documents the pervasiveness of this messaging and its hidden yet powerful influence on the lives of young boys and girls.

“The opposite of sensitive is not brave. It’s not brave to refuse to pay attention, to refuse to notice, to refuse to feel and know and imagine. The opposite of sensitive is insensitive, and that’s no badge of honor.” 

Doyle discusses Tish’s obsession in kindergarten with saving the polar bears from extinction. After unsuccessfully attempting to deter Tish from this obsession, Doyle recognizes the power in Tish’s sensitivity. Tish’s commitment to witnessing the injustices in the world inspire Doyle and later influence her growth as a philanthropist and activist. 

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

Doyle expresses the significance of those who are sensitive like Tish. She acknowledges the power of her own sensitivity and sees its potential to open the door to healing. Through her memoir, Doyle learns to heal and face emotions she once avoided in order to grow deeper self-knowledge. 

“I rigged an election trying to be Golden. I spent sixteen years with my head in a toilet trying to be light. I drank myself numb for a decade, trying to be pleasant. I’ve giggled at and slept with assholes, trying to be touchable. I’ve held my tongue so hard I tasted blood, trying to be gentle. I’ve spent thousands on potions and poisons, trying to be youthful. I have denied myself for decades, trying to be pure.” 

Doyle highlights the effects of societal gender roles on her own life. She confronts the ways in which she silenced and suppressed herself to meet the impossible expectations of society. This realization of society’s influence over her own life allows Doyle to finally break free from this narrative.

“We’re like snow globes: we spend all of our time, energy, words, and money creating a flurry, trying not to know, making sure that the snow doesn’t settle so we never have to face the fiery truth inside us – solid and unmoving.” 

Doyle compares women to snow globes with dragons inside of them. The dragons signify the fiery truth hidden inside women who fear how their lives will be destroyed if they admit their discontent. The “flurry” created by the shaking of the snow globes represents the attempts to keep busy to avoid having to face the truth of what they really want.

“The voice I finally heard that day was my own – the girl I’d locked away at ten years old, the girl I was before the world told me who to be – and she said: Here I Am. I’m taking over now.”

Doyle reflects on the significance of the day she first met Abby in Chicago and how she immediately recognized Abby’s importance in her life. Abby awakens a dormant independence within her that allows her to claim, “Here I Am.” Doyle does not expect Abby to save her, but through meeting Abby, an undeniable power within herself is unlocked. 

“I was wild until I was tamed by shame. Until I started hiding and numbing my feelings for fear of being too much. Until I started deferring to others’ advice instead of trusting my own intuition. Until I became convinced that my imagination was ridiculous and my desires were selfish. Until I surrendered myself to the cages of others’ expectations, cultural mandates, and institutional allegiances. Until I buried who I was in order to become what I should be. I lost myself when I learned how to please.” 

Doyle explains the source of her taming and explicitly names shame and others’ expectations as the cause of her buried intuition. She compares the expectations of others to cages. Under the influence of society, she describes herself as buried and lost, which expresses the loss of vitality and passion that filled her life before the age of ten. 

“I finally stopped avoiding fires long enough to let myself burn, and what I learned was that I am like that burning bush: The fire of pain won’t consume me. I can burn and burn and live. I can live on fire. I am fireproof.” 

Now sober, Doyle understands the significance of feeling pain. She compares pain to fire and details how she can survive this pain through a resilience and trust in herself that she has built over the years. Doyle no longer numbs herself with alcohol and drugs; she can now use her own power to withstand that which is painful and uncomfortable. 

“To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution. Whether I like it or not, pain is the fuel of revolution.”

Doyle acknowledges the power of pain to transform and revolutionize one’s life. She now views life as a constant state of growth and development, which allows her to find hope in the future. She grows increasingly committed to change and can endure criticism while maintaining a clear sense of self. 

“If what I’ve found in the deep is just my self – if what I’ve learned is not to commune with God but how to commune with myself – if who I have learned to trust is not God but myself – and if, for the rest of my life, no matter how lost I get, I know exactly where and how to find myself again – well, then. That is certainly enough of a miracle for me.”

Doyle discusses the power of building a practice of Knowing separate from the external forces of religion. Through her moments of stillness, Doyle builds a relationship with herself that serves as a constant guide and touchstone. Despite the upheaval and turbulence that life brings, Doyle finds peace and hope in her trust within herself. 

“Every life is an unprecedented experiment. This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been. There is no map. We are all pioneers.”

Doyle compares life to a new adventure into uncharted territory. She compares humans to pioneers whose lives serve as experiments with no known outcomes. This view illustrates Doyle’s belief in life’s one constant: self-knowledge. 

“We are here to fully introduce ourselves, to impose ourselves and ideas and thoughts and dreams onto the world, leaving it changed forever by who we are and what we bring forth from our depths. So we cannot contort ourselves to fit into the visible order. We must unleash ourselves and watch the world reorder itself in front of our eyes.” 

Doyle expresses her belief in human potential to change the world. She views true change as emerging from a break from society’s expectations and an embrace of one’s wildness. Doyle exhibits this belief in her own life as she becomes an activist who seeks to influence the world through unprecedented, new paths. 

“I am a human being, meant to be in perpetual becoming. If I am living bravely, my entire life will become a million deaths and rebirths.” 

Doyle shares her definition of humanity as a state of constant evolution. She sees this evolution as emerging from the choice to live bravely outside of society’s expectations. Death represents for Doyle a new opportunity for reinvention and rebirth.

“Here is the ‘We’ that I recognized in Josie’s sign. Inside the Ache is the ‘We.’ We can do hard things, like be alive and love deep and lose it all, because we do these hard things alongside everyone who has ever walked the Earth with her eyes, arms, and heart wide open.” 

Doyle says goodbye to her dying grandmother and begins to feel the Ache of depression that she has experienced since she was ten years old. She recalls her mantra of “We can do hard things.” Rather than turn to alcohol and drugs to cope with the grief, Doyle demonstrates growth as she allows herself to feel the Ache of her grandmother’s loss and continue to live. 

“Rebellion is as much of a cage as obedience is. They both mean living in reaction to someone else’s way instead of forging your own. Freedom is not being for or against an ideal, but creating your own existence from scratch.” 

Doyle recalls how she tortured herself into adhering to society’s expectations of a perfect woman in her twenties and how she rebelled against this in her thirties. Now in her forties, Doyle sees true freedom in constructing a new identity separate from the ideals perpetuated by society. 

“What women want is good. What women want is beautiful. And what women want is dangerous, but not to women. Not to the common good. What women want is a threat to the injustice of the status quo.” 

Doyle believes in the power of women to change the world and to enact real change. She defines the status quo as the forces that limit the freedoms of women. By recognizing the ways in which society profits from the restriction of women, Doyle works to empower women to break free from these limitations.

“What if love is not the process of disappearing for the beloved but of emerging for the beloved? What if a mother’s responsibility is teaching her children that love does not lock the lover away but frees her? What if a responsible mother is not one who shows her children how to slowly die but how to stay wildly alive until the day she dies? What if the call of motherhood is not to be a martyr to be a model?”

As Doyle contemplates her choice to stay in an unhappy marriage, she reflects on the ways in which mothers distance themselves from their own desires and needs in order to serve as martyrs for their children. Doyle looks at herself in a mirror and sees the effects of this martyrdom on herself and on women in general. This moment marks a great shift in Doyle’s life as she chooses to leave her marriage and pursue a relationship with Abby in order to serve as a better model for her children. 

“I am as ancient as the earth I’m planted in and as new as my tiniest bloom. I am my own Touch Tree: strong, singular, alive. Still growing. I have everything I need, beneath me, above me, inside me. I am never gonna lose me.” 

By describing herself as her own Touch Tree, Doyle demonstrates the growth she’s achieved on her journey of self-discovery. By documenting her navigation through depression, addiction, bulimia, the memoir documents Doyle’s journey towards total self-acceptance and trust in herself.