Becoming Untamed
Do you ever find yourself feeling a little bit uneasy thinking, "Wasn't life supposed to be more beautiful than this?" Is there an unsettling feeling you carry around with you reflecting that notion, but you can't really put words to it?
For me, it can manifest itself as guilt. Uneasy guilt. Life was supposed to be more beautiful than this, and I'm doing everything wrong. But... what if it's not 100% me that's doing it all wrong?
The answer is yes - life was supposed to be more beautiful. We live in a broken world, with people who think they were born broken - or don't know what could be so they accept what is, and something just doesn't feel right.
This is not to contradict my message of accepting "what is" and living our lives. This is different.
Acceptance is important. We have to accept what is. There's a beautiful phrase "Once you can accept yourself just as you are, then you can change." This is an important concept. We also can't change difficult circumstances. We need to accept in order to move forward. This is separate.
Chronically existing in a feeling where you wonder what's wrong all the time is something that deserves attention, because the uneasiness doesn't go away when circumstances become less trying. I'm talking about a constant feeling that has been present ever since you became self aware for the first time.
I'm talking about all this time we are spending alone self reflecting on everything that we can't stand about ourselves. Going over conversations or interactions that make us want to disappear over and over again. How we wish we were a different way. How there are relationships we could have but we just aren't _____ enough. We just aren't enough to be liked by that boy/girl as a partner, or as a friend. We aren't enough to go after our dreams or have a conversation or do well on something that we know we want or need to do but we don't believe that we can succeed. How much we hate our appearance and how we would be likable - or worthy - if something about it was different. How we want to speak but we don't think our voice is valuable. We don't trust ourselves so we aren't confident enough to open our mouths, even to give input on a trivial matter. We feel guilty for trying to trust ourselves because we think we're probably wrong. We think we got a D on something we end up getting an A on because we don't trust the hard work we put in and we put ourselves down all the time. We are SO. SELF. DEPRICATIVE.
How awful must that moment have been when we first became self aware, and got lost? And began hiding from our true selves - and hiding from God out of shame? What a devastating time that so insidiously invaded our lives that we didn't even know it.
If we want that more beautiful life, we must accept what was meant to be, and begin undoing the damage the world has done to us by creating who we are again.
Here is a powerful message I want you to sit with and let sink in.
“Why do women find it honorable to dismiss ourselves? Why do we decide that denying our longing is the responsible thing to do? Why do we believe that what will thrill and fulfill us will hurt our people? Why do we mistrust ourselves so completely? Here's why: because our culture was built upon and benefits from the control of women. The way power justifies controlling a group is by conditioning the masses to believe that the group cannot be trusted. So the campaign to convince us to mistrust women begins early and comes from everywhere. When we are little girls, our families, teachers, peers insist that our loud voices, our bold opinions, and strong feelings are 'too much' and unladylike, so we learn to not trust our personalities. Childhood stories promise us that girls who dare to leave the path or explore get attacked by big bad wolves and pricked by deadly spindles, so we learn to not trust our curiosity. The beauty industry convinces us that our size, frizz, fingernails, lips, eyelashes, leg hair, and wrinkles are repulsive and must be covered and manipulated, so we learn to not trust the bodies we live in. Diet culture promises us that controlling our appetite is the key to our worthiness, so we learn to not trust our own hunger...the legal system proves to us again and again that even our own memories and experiences will not be trusted. If 20 women come forward and say 'he did it,' and he says 'no, I didn't,' they will believe him while discounting and maligning us every [darn] time...we weren't born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition. Instead, we lock away our true selves...A very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves...I spent 30 years covering and injecting my face with potions and poison trying to fix my skin. Then I quit. And my skin was good. For 20 years, I was attached to a hair dryer and straightener trying to tame my curls. Then I quit. And my hair was good. I've binged and purged and dieted for decades trying to control my body. When I quit, my body became what it was always meant to become. And it was good, too. I numbed myself with food and booze trying to control my anger. When I quit, I learned that my anger never meant that there was something wrong with me. It meant that there was something wrong. Out there. Something I might have the power to change. I stopped being a quiet peacekeeper and started being a loud peacemaker. My anger was good. I had been deceived. The only thing that was ever wrong with me was my belief that there was something wrong with me. I quit spending my life trying to control myself and began to trust myself. We only control what we don't trust. We can either control ourselves or love ourselves, but we can't do both. Love is the opposite of control. Love demands trust...what the world needs is more women who have quit fearing themselves and started trusting themselves. What the world needs is masses of women who are entirely out of control."
-Untamed, Glennon Doyle, 115-117.
Unapologetically.
This is rich, and deep. One thing that strikes me about this passage is how she keeps mentioning something about herself that she had been trying to change, and when she stopped trying to manipulate it, she realized that "it was good." When I read that part for the first time, I felt like I was reading my Bible. This exact exclamation was made at the very beginning of time, when God made creation as He intended it to be. "And he saw that it was good." From the day we are born. The way we are made, in God's own image of himself, "is good." In His words.
So, the guilt about who I am is not coming from God. He made me just as I am and was well pleased. So if the most important one to please thinks I'm good, then there's a problem and I'm definitely listening to the wrong voices.
My uneasiness and guilt come from two places:
1. When I don't connect with the one who made me, and I forget that I'm loved, and I have a reason to have peace because there is a more beautiful, more true future coming when earth goes away. I don't have him reminding me that what he created in me was good, so I stop trusting myself and his voice inside telling me that - I start listening to and getting caught up in outside voices. The world voices. Not focusing on God's truth, or my truth (which are one in the same).
And
2. The guilt I have about who I am as a person. And if I trace the guilt back to its roots - there is absolutely nothing wrong with me. What's wrong is what the world has shaped me into thinking about myself. I feel guilty for eating. I feel guilty for having fat on my body. I feel guilty for being outspoken. I feel guilty for thinking about myself. I feel guilty for wearing fitted clothes and I feel guilty for not wearing them. I feel guilty for my presence. I feel guilty for invalidated trauma I can't move past. I feel guilty for all of my mental illnesses. I feel guilty for my feelings. I feel guilty I can't suck it up. I feel guilty for all the support I need. I feel guilty for taking people’s time. I feel guilty for all of my past and for my future I haven't even lived yet. I feel guilty for not being more "feminine." What is inherently wrong with any of these things? Nothing. I have past mistakes that plague me- but those have been forgiven - and I've let them shape me and help me grow. I've made amends where I can and that's that. If I don't live in God's grace, I will never move forward in my life. I have to believe that the decision I made to follow God almost 8 years ago continues to cover my mistakes. He died once for ALL - all people and all sins, and that was that. The rest of all of this guilt comes from a society that tells us there is only one way for a woman to be, and I'm not that. And I've let it tell me that I'm wrong because that's not what I am. The name "Kyra" means ladylike, if anyone was wondering. And guys - I just don't meet the world's standards for whatever that means. But I don't want to feel guilty every second about my existence. Where I can improve, I want to improve. Right now, I want to erase everything I believed that I "should" be, and create my more beautiful life by just loving who I am. That way I can help women and young girls do the same. That's a more beautiful world.
I remember the first time I ever acknowledged liking who I was, and it's a memory that literally replays itself in a golden light whenever I conjure it up in my brain. It was so pure, so beautiful, it makes me cry to think about. I was sitting in a chair early in the morning at a residential treatment facility for my eating disorder - and a thought occurred to me. For context - I had not been myself for a very long time. My weight had been dangerously low, my vitals life threatening, my brain had the cognitive function of a young child, and I was very much a stranger to myself and those who knew me. I was scared all of the time and lashed out often. It felt like a demon would speak for me sometimes and it was pretty creepy. After months of medical stabilization and finally starting to eat enough where my brain was nourished and I started functioning as a human - my personality slowly began returning to me. It snuck up on me with such stealth that I didn't even have time to plan for it. I couldn't manipulate it, I wasn't ready. It just happened. I was myself. I was laughing, I was leading our "inventory" meetings, I was coming up with original jokes of the day for breakfast to help distract us from our meals, I was leaving cards and notes to encourage people, connecting with other young women in indescribable ways building impenetrable bonds, crying with them, empathizing, understanding, not trying to change anything, just being with. And also being funny - not trying, just being. I would pull harmless pranks on no one in particular or go outside the rules in silly ways just to lighten the mood. No matter what I did there, how hurt I was and how much pain I was in, I was laughing. Not in a creepy way, in an understanding way. In a way that just felt like I was being completely real. It was the most I've ever felt like myself in my entire life. It was the most I've ever liked myself in my entire life. I remember thinking - if this is who I actually am, I genuinely like this person.
I was wild. Nothing particularly special, but untamed and free. Not hiding or changing or molding or trying. Just being.
I hold onto that memory with my life. It gives me hope. There is a person inside of me, pure and untamed, unmanipulated, a person I like and want to be. Myself in my purest form. I didn't get a chance to taint her. I was locked up and away from the world and she snuck right up on me. I think about it and think "Wow, that's who I was. I liked her. Is that who I really am? Someone I would like in real life?" I remember when that happened a few years ago that it was the first time since early childhood I felt like I belonged. Not necessarily anywhere, just that I belonged somewhere. I was welcome. I was allowed to be in the world.
Not everyone gets to meet themselves for the first time again. I was lucky enough to. But I know you are inside of you somewhere. And hey, I lost myself again too since then. Of course I left the facility and was re-tamed into believing I had to be something different, that who I am is wrong, and that I should feel guilty for who I am.
But I'm only lost when I'm looking in the wrong place. You're not going to find your car keys if you lost them inside your house, and then you spend all day looking in the backyard. Stop looking outside of yourself, when yourself has always been inside. People and the world don't have the answers. God has the answers. God made us inherently who we are. I have God inside of me. And I am inside of me. That is the only place to look. So, how can you be true to yourself, and find the more beautiful life you've been internally longing for in quiet desperation? Let the guilt go, and go find that girl.
