The White Thumb

My take on “Keys” In Glennon Doyle’s book Untamed

I am currently reading Glennon’s book Untamed. This is a book I have been wanting to read for about a year now after discovering her podcast “We can do hard things” with her awesome wife Abby and sister Amanda. This podcast helped me get through 2023, a year of self discovery. Every podcast took me in a new direction. All of them were so relatable in many ways and it just made me feel, well, human. It has provided me with so many resources I am forever grateful. So when she mentioned her own most recent book I was like, oh yes I need this. Well, a couple of weeks ago after a year of therapy and listening to her podcast I went and purchased it. I am in the middle of reading it and once again everything is extremely relatable. So here I am reading it last night and the chapter “Keys” resinated with me to the point where it compelled me to write about it and how it relates to me and maybe you!

In this chapter she writes about finding herself, her inner fire! Originally living her whole life by what society, her upbringing, and basically what other people expected. Just like me, a people pleaser, doing what I thought other people would see as valuable or “good”. This can look like finding the “right” partner, the “right” job, the “right” title, the “right” lifestyle for everyone else except yourself. In the moment you feel proud of yourself because this is what the world congratulates you on. Deep down though there’s this feeling in your gut that is hard to recognize until those things that made other people proud of you, or so you thought, are gone or just not serving you anymore. Initially this feeling for me is in my stomach. It feels like bad stress or like I took on too much when really what it is, is I am doing something that is not for me. In the past I haven’t recognized this until I am able to look back on the experience. A lot of times for you to be able to recognize this, something shifts in your life to reveal your true self. This can take a minute to realize but it happens! Just like a volcano, you appear to be calm, but underneath there is raging lava that can burst unpredictably at any moment in time. This can be when you leave a relationship, leave a job, or in Glennon’s case seeing her future wife Abby for the first time.

Realization. That is what it is! It’s exciting to the point of bursting, but it is also entangled with a little fear, and questioning. Is this what I have been looking for? YES! It is! Although I had been working on myself all of 2023, this realization didn’t come to me until a few months after I left my job. It took me that long to get past the fear of not bringing in a paycheck and contributing to my family. It took me that long because of my fear of what others may think. It took me that long to understand that my husband loved and supported me for being me and not what I did for a living. It took me that long to realize I am a creative and ambitious person without a corporate job. I have heard men in my life (not family) but acquaintances throw around the word lazy A LOT and that when looking for a woman they want someone who is ambitious and some of them legitimately said like a VP of a company or a pro athlete. While I do agree those are incredible accomplishments, I knew that is NOT me. Unfortunately I tend to listen to other peoples opinions more than my own and those were the expectations I had put on myself because that is what people I knew considered to be ambitious and not lazy. Now I think, oh BB, there is so much more to life than that! You are exceptional in so many ways, you do not need to be the VP of some company or a professional athlete in order to be valuable. Ultimately those two amazing accomplishments come at a cost just like anything else and those are not things I’m willing to sacrifice. One of them being lack of time to slow down and enjoy the people I love as often as I want to. You are wonderful, smart, and have many talents including EXCEPTIONAL people skills, and that is NOT something that can be taught and its also something you can’t buy.

So, I eliminated my job from my life. Over the past 6 months I have discovered more about myself than I have in my entire life. Hindsight, these things have always been there and I have always understood that part of myself, but I didn’t start working with them or acknowledging them until I took my job, and what other people thought, out of the picture! These things I am speaking of are my love for people, life, nature, and art. I am a creative. The funny thing is, is the people who I REALLY want in my life are still here and new ones are coming, but the people who I maybe don’t see eye to eye with are no longer around! How awesome is that! That is the best and is what we all need! You may go through some moments of grief for who you once were or who you used to surround yourself with but you’ll be a new and improved version of yourself without them and the things that once served you. This happens throughout the evolution of a lifetime, so it’s definitely not the first or the last time I will be evolving. We aren’t going to appeal to all people and that is totally okay. How boring of a world would it be if that were the case. I personally enjoy and celebrate peoples differences. I think it is wonderful!

Now, some of you are might be thinking well I can’t quit my job, and I can’t afford therapy. I get that. So I have often thought about what would I have done without the support system that I have. To be honest I am unsure. I do know I would have done some research on how to help myself which may have lead me to finding a job as a server, bartender, or going to back to doing hair for a while. I would have absolutely still left my corporate job because it just got to the point where I had to acknowledge it wasn’t for me. Then maybe I would have found someone who was more affordable than a therapist that could guide me in a new direction. Like a life coach, which is why I am working towards becoming one. Hopefully it would have lead me in a similar direction to where I am now. Even if it took me in a slightly different direction, I can confidently say, that is the path that would have been meant for me under those circumstances. I 100% believe that. Albeit that would have been a more challenging road, I know myself enough to know I would have figured it out, just in a different way. I always have and always will trust myself in making the right decisions even though it coincides with fear of the unknown.

As Glennon said, “Then I built a life of my own. I resurrected the very parts of myself I was trained to mistrust, hide, and abandon in order to keep others comfortable.

My emotions

My Intuition

My Imagination

My Courage

Those are the keys to freedom

Those are who we are

Will we be brave enough to unlock ourselves?

Will we be brave enough to set ourselves free?

Will we finally step out of our cages and say to ourselves, to our people, and to the world: Here I am.“

I mean…. #life am I right!?

Love,

-BB