Glennon Doyle - Untamed

I am so amazed that I forget to raise my hand.

“Wait. Adam gave birth to Eve ? But don’t people come from women’s bodies? Shouldn’t boys be called woman? Shouldn’t all people be called woman?”

My teacher says, “Raise your hand, Glennon.”

I raise my hand. She motions for me to put it back down. The boy sitting to my left rolls his eyes at me.

Our teacher goes on.

“Adam and Eve were happy, and everything stayed perfect for a while.

“But then God said there was one tree they couldn’t eat from: the Tree of Knowledge. Even though it was the only thing that Eve wasn’t allowed to want, she wanted an apple from that tree anyway. So one day, she got hungry, picked the apple off the tree, and took a bite. Then she tricked Adam into taking a bite, too. As soon as Adam bit into the apple, Eve and Adam felt shame for the first time and tried to hide from God. But God sees everything, so God knew. God banished Adam and Eve from the garden. Then He cursed them and their future children, and for the first time, suffering existed on the earth. 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.”

That was some careful accounting. I had no further questions.

My husband and I began working with a therapist after he admitted that he had been sleeping with other women. Now we save up our problems throughout the week and take them to her on Tuesday evenings. When friends ask me if she’s any good, I say, “I guess so. I mean, we’re still married.”

Today I’ve asked to see her alone. I’m tired and jittery because I spent all night silently rehearsing how to tell her what I’m about to tell her.

I sit quietly in my chair, hands folded in my lap. She sits upright in the chair across from me. She wears a crisp white pantsuit, sensible heels, no makeup. A wooden bookshelf crowded with textbooks and framed degrees climbs the wall behind her like a bean stalk. Her pen is poised above a leather notebook in her lap, ready to pin me down in black and white. I remind myself: Speak calmly and confidently, Glennon, like a grown-up.

“I have something important to tell you. I’ve fallen in love. I am wildly in love. Her name is Abby.”

My therapist’s mouth falls open, just enough for me to notice it. She says nothing for an eternal moment. Then she breathes very deeply and says, “Okay.”

She pauses, starts again. “Glennon, you know that whatever this is—it’s not real. These feelings are not real. Whatever future you’re imagining here: That’s not real, either. This is nothing but a dangerous distraction. It won’t end well. It has to stop.”

I start to say, “You don’t understand. This is different.” But then I think about all the people who have sat in this chair and insisted: This is different.

If she won’t let me have Abby, I need to make my case, at least, for never again having my husband.

“I cannot sleep with him again,” I say. “You know how hard I’ve tried. Sometimes I think I’ve forgiven. But then he climbs on top of me, and I hate him again. It’s been years and I don’t want to be difficult, so I close my eyes and try to float away until it’s over. But then I accidentally land back inside my body, and what I land in is white-hot fiery rage. It’s like: I try to go dead inside but there is always a little life left in me, and that life makes sex unbearable. I can’t be alive during sex, but I can’t get dead enough, either, so there’s no solution. I just—I don’t want to do it anymore.”

I am furious that tears come, but they do. I am begging now. Mercy, please.

Two women. One white suit. Six framed degrees. One open notebook. One pen, poised.

Then: “Glennon, have you tried just giving him blow jobs instead? Many women find blow jobs to be less intimate.”

I have a son and two daughters, until they tell me otherwise.

My children believe that the shower is a magical portal of ideas.

My youngest recently said to me, “Mom, it’s like I don’t have any ideas all day, but when I get in the shower my brain is full of cool stuff. I think it’s the water or something.”

“Could be the water,” I said. “Or it could be that the shower’s the only place you’re not plugged in—so you can hear your own thoughts in there.”

She looked at me and said, “Huh?”

“That thing that happens to you in the shower, babe. It’s called thinking. It’s something folks did before Google. Thinking is like…it’s like googling your own brain.”

“Oh,” she said. “Cool.”

That same child steals my expensive shampoo once a week, so the other day I stomped to the bathroom she shares with her teenage brother and sister to steal it back. I opened the shower curtain and noticed the twelve empty bottles littering the tub’s edge. All the bottles on the right side were red, white, and blue. All the bottles on the left side were pink and purple.

I picked up a red bottle from what was clearly my son’s side. It was tall, rectangular, bulky. It yelled at me in bold red, white, and blue letters:

3X BIGGER,

DOESN’T ROB YOU OF YOUR DIGNITY,

ARMOR UP IN MAN SCENT,

DROP-KICK DIRT, THEN SLAM ODOR WITH A FOLDING CHAIR.

I thought: What the hell? Is my son taking a shower or preparing for war in here?

I picked up one of the girls’ slim, metallic, pink bottles. Instead of barking marching orders at me, that bottle, in cursive, flowy font, whispered disconnected adjectives: alluring, radiant, gentle, pure, illuminating, enticing, touchable, light, creamy. Not a verb to be found. Nothing to do here, just a list of things to be.

I looked around for a moment to ensure that the shower was not, in fact, a magic portal that had somehow transported me back in time. Nope. 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. Our sons and daughters are still being shamed out of their full humanity before they even get dressed in the morning.

Our children are too vast to fit themselves inside these rigid, mass-produced bottles. But they’ll lose themselves trying.

Several years ago, my daughter Tish’s teacher called and said that there was a “situation” at school. During a discussion about wildlife, she’d mentioned to the class that polar bears were losing their homes and food sources because of the melting ice caps. She showed the students a photo of a dying polar bear as an example of the many effects of global warming.

The rest of the kindergarteners thought that this was sad information but not sad enough to keep them from, you know, soldiering on to recess. Not Tish. The teacher reported to me that when the lesson ended and the other kids popped off the carpet to run outside, Tish remained seated, alone, mouth wide open, stunned into paralysis, her little shocked face asking:

“WHAT? Did you just say the polar bears are dying ? Because the Earth is melting ? The same Earth that we live on? Did you just drop that little tidbit of terror ON US AT CIRCLE TIME ?”

Tish eventually made it outside, but was unable to participate in recess that day. The other kids tried to get her off the bench to play four square with them, but she remained close to her teacher, wide-eyed, asking, “Do the grown-ups know about this? What are they going to do? Are other animals in trouble, too? Where is that hungry polar bear’s mom?”