At the start of November, our longtime team member, Brianne Nikula, made the trip up to Prince George to our head office. Due to some long layovers, she decided to pick up a good book to keep herself busy and to help kill some time. This book had been recommended to her by a couple of friends and figured now was a good time to try it out. Even though it was not a book she would put on her top ten, she did enjoy it and thought you likely would or did too!
Don’t forget, you can email tyla.johnson@solutionsstaffing.ca to have a recent book you enjoyed featured!
Summary:
This is how you find yourself.
There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful, hiding our discontent—even from ourselves.
For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There She Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. But she soon realized they had come to her from within. This was her own voice—the one she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions, cultural conditioning, and institutional allegiances. This was the voice of the girl she had been before the world told her who to be. Glennon decided to quit abandoning herself and to instead abandon the world’s expectations of her. She quit being good so she could be free. She quit pleasing and started living.
Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is the story of navigating divorce, forming a new blended family, and discovering that the brokenness or wholeness of a family depends not on its structure but on each member’s ability to bring her full self to the table. And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts so that we become women who can finally look at ourselves and say: There She Is.
Untamed shows us how to be brave. As Glennon insists: The braver we are, the luckier we get.
Brianne’s Thoughts:
At the beginning and the end of the book, I was very engaged – it was hard to even put it down. Even though I was not fully engaged throughout the full book, I still managed to finish it in record timing! If you are someone who likes to learn through examples, this book does provide that and could land in the “self-help” category.
Throughout the memoir, Glennon shares her vulnerability and hardships that have helped her become who she is today while focusing on being our true, authentic self. This is something most women can resonate it. As that is something, especially as women, we should all be doing: speaking our truth, standing in our power, and allowing space for vulnerability and ownership of our choices throughout life.
Glennon touches on different areas including gender inequity, racism, divorce, and parenting struggles. However, she relates all of these items back to her journey to become her authentic self which helps keep a consistent theme. There were many moments where I caught myself giggling through the chapters or even yelling out, “Heck YES!”. The flow of the book is quite effortless, keeping the pages turning. Part of the book that surprised me was that it was also a love story. It was a nice balance between romance and awakening.
I liked the emphasis that, “We can do hard things.” On a personal level, this is applicable to a wide variety of obstacles in life and easy to remember and remind yourself.
In conclusion, as women, we must all find our inner voice that is fierce, where we roar, “I AM A CHEETAH!”
