Being ourselves and being alive

God we can get put to death in this world in all kinds of ways.. now that I am coming alive fully in my body and soul I feel how it was to be so shut down in so many ways.. Yesterday Glennon Doyle’s second book Untamed arrived by post and every single page of it is speaking to me..If you don’t know, her first book Love Warrior told the story of her recovery from addiction as well as her struggle in her marriage with her husband’s sexual dishonesty and was a gripping read for the insights it gave into how shame shuts a life down and leads us towards addiction.

In the second book Glennon explains through a deeply personal narrative, how a lot of what she was living had to change as she began to wake up to who she really was, how she truly felt deep inside and the kind of life she really wanted to live.

Untamed is a plea to overcome conditioning and to learn to turn within for answers, validation and a sense of being truly in touch with our deeper selves.. especially for women. So many of us are conditioned to ‘be nice’, look outside of ourselves, take care of others and so often suppress deep inside our own longings, wants, needs and desires.. In the world also just so many of us are taught take cues from others or adapt to social mores and sanctions.

Just reading of her experience is waking me up to things and I love as an addict in recovery how she speaks for facing and going through pain to get to the other side instead of avoiding and/or numbing our pain and true feelings, many of which we seem to have had to override, or ignore in order to get by and cope with a world that so often seems hostile to us being our true selves and having our genuine feelings..However the book it is also reminding me of ways I have been out of touch with myself and not brave, too at times….or shut down by others when I was just trying to speak for authenticity.

A lot of Glennon’s insights dovetail with what Brene Brown writes about in terms of shame… I have not finished the book yet but I love to recommend books that help people to be more of themselves, so felt the need to do this post today…looking forward to a gentle relaxed day today and to getting further into her story…