To Thine Own Self Be True is a podcast where I give my own personal experience of the book “Untamed” by Glennon Doyle .
This book is both a memoir and a wake up call for us all the listen and trust our inner “Knowing”
To Thine Own Self Be True
This reveals that when we stop abandoning ourselves and instead abandon the world’s expectations of us, we become who can finally look at ourselves and recognize. It is for men and women. It is for parents and their children.
My Favorite Story in the Book
My favorite chapter is called “ears”. I share this on the podcast. It is the story of taking her two daughters to the mall to get their ears pierced.
Her youngest daughter , Amma, went first and she wanted both ears pierced at the same time. Amma squinted her eyes and flexed all her muscles and just “went for it”. Everyone said she was so brave!
Her oldest daughter, Tish, watched her sister get earlobes that looked like swollen grape tomatoes and then decided she changed her mind and was not ready to have her ears pierced.
Well, the response she got from the ear piercer was “Oh, c’mon! You can do it! Be brave! Look how brave your little sister was!”
Tish felt ashamed.
Glennon then shares with us, the readers, that perhaps brave does not mean what we have been saying it means. We tell our children that being brave is about feeling the fear and doing it anyway. But is it?
To Thine Own Self Be true
After the story comes the life lesson.
What is brave?
Brave means
- living life from the inside out.
- in uncertain moments, turning within, feel for the “Knowing” and saying it out loud.
- sometimes letting the crowd know you are a coward.
- sometimes letting everyone down but yourself.
- trusting our own voice more than the voices of others.
- honoring yourself when the crowd is pressuring you not to.
- standing strong in what you feel and know.
- being loyal to yourself.
The Bridge to the Imagination
I also loved how Glennon explains that we are “bilingual”.
Our native language is the language of the imagination, yet we are trained in the language of what she called indoctrination.
The language of indoctrination has words like should, shouldn’t, right and wrong and good and bad. It tends to be defensive and shallow.
The language of the imagination is curious, awed, wide eyed, open armed and deep.
A Huge Thank You
As a woman, mother, wife, parent, friend, wellness seeker, spiritual seeker and so much more… I am grateful that I found a book I can share and have meaningful conversations about life and expectations and being brave.
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