April 1, 2020

Glennon Doyle Asks Us to “Feel it All” in ‘Untamed’

The author of our April book pick shares what she’s learned on her journey to becoming Untamed.

Story By: Glennon Doyle

Glennon Doyle Asks Us to “Feel it All” in ‘Untamed’

The author of our April book pick shares what she’s learned on her journey to becoming Untamed. Story By: Glennon Doyle

On my sixth day of sobriety, I went to my fifth recovery meeting. I sat in a cold plastic seat, trembling, trying to keep the coffee from spilling out of my paper cup and my feelings from spilling out of my skin. For sixteen years I had made damn sure that nothing touched me, and suddenly everything in the world was touching me. I was an exposed nerve. Everything hurt.

I was embarrassed to tell anyone how much I hurt, but I decided to try to explain it to the people in that circle. They were the first people I trusted with all of me, because they were the first people I ever heard tell the whole truth. They had shown me their insides so I showed them mine. I said something like “I’m Glennon, and I’ve been sober for six days. I feel awful. I think this awfulness is why I started drinking in the first place. I’m starting to worry that what was wrong with me wasn’t the booze; it was underneath it. It was me. It doesn’t seem like being alive is as hard for other people as it is for me. It just feels like there’s some kind of secret to life I don’t know. Like I’m doing it all wrong. Thanks for listening.”

After the meeting ended, a woman walked over and sat down next to me. She said, “Thanks for sharing. I relate. I just wanted to tell you something that somebody told me in the beginning. It’s okay to feel all of the stuff you’re feeling. You’re just becoming human again. You’re not doing life wrong; you’re doing it right. If there’s any secret you’re missing, it’s that doing it right is just really hard. Feeling all your feelings is hard, but that’s what they’re for. Feelings are for feeling. All of them. Even the hard ones. The secret is that you’re doing it right, and that doing it right hurts sometimes.”

I did not know, before that woman told me, that all feelings were for feeling. I did not know that I was supposed to feel everything. I thought I was supposed to feel happy. I thought that happy was for feeling and that pain was for fixing and numbing and deflecting and hiding and ignoring. I thought that when life got hard, it was because I had gone wrong somewhere. I thought that pain was weakness and that I was supposed to suck it up. But the thing was that the more I sucked it up, the more food and booze I had to suck down.

“Feeling all your feelings is hard, but that’s what they’re for. Feelings are for feeling.”

That day, I began returning to myself—fearful and trembling, pregnant and six days sober, in a church basement with shitty fluorescent lights and terrible coffee—when a kind woman revealed to me that being fully human is not about feeling happy, it’s about feeling everything. From that day forward, I began to practice feeling it all. I began to insist upon my right and responsibility to feel it all, even when taking the time and energy for feeling made me a little less efficient, a little less convenient, a little less pleasant.

In the past eighteen years, I have learned two things about pain.

First: I can feel everything and survive.

What I thought would kill me, didn’t. Every time I said to myself: I can’t take this anymore—I was wrong. The truth was that I could and did take it all—and I kept surviving. Surviving again and again made me less afraid of myself, of other people, of life. I learned that I’d never be free from pain but I could be free from the fear of pain, and that was enough. I finally stopped avoiding fires long enough to let myself burn, and what I learned was that I am like that burning bush: The fire of pain won’t consume me. I can burn and burn and live. I can live on fire. I am fireproof.

Second: I can use pain to become.

I am here to keep becoming truer, more beautiful versions of myself again and again forever. To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution. Whether I like it or not, pain is the fuel of revolution. Everything I need to become the woman I’m meant to be next is inside my feelings of now. Life is alchemy, and emotions are the fire that turns me to gold. I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. If I can sit in the fire of my own feelings, I will keep becoming.

There is no glory except straight through your story.

Pain is not tragic. Pain is magic. Suffering is tragic. Suffering is what happens when we avoid pain and consequently miss our becoming. That is what I can and must avoid: missing my own evolution because I am too afraid to surrender to the process. Having such little faith in myself that I numb or hide or consume my way out of my fiery feelings again and again. So my goal is to stop abandoning myself—and stay. To trust that I’m strong enough to handle the pain that is necessary to the process of becoming. Because what scares me a hell of a lot more than pain is living my entire life and missing my becoming. What scares me more than feeling it all is missing it all.

These days, when pain comes, there are two of me.

There is the me that is miserable and afraid, and there is the me that is curious and excited. That second me is not a masochist, she’s wise. She remembers. She remembers that even though I can’t know what will come next in my life, I always know what comes next in the process. I know that when the pain and the waiting are here, the rising is on its way. I hope the pain will pass soon, but I’ll wait it out because I’ve tested pain enough to trust it. And because who I will become tomorrow is so unforeseeable and specific that I’ll need every bit of today’s lessons to become her.

I keep a note stuck to my bathroom mirror: Feel It All.

It reminds me that although I began to come back to life eighteen years ago, I resurrect myself every day, in every moment that I allow myself to feel and become. It’s my daily reminder to let myself burn to ashes and rise, new.

Hoping your week is filled with coffee and good reads! 📖☕ 

Our August Pick Once Upon a Time in Dollywood by @AshleyJordanWrites is one of those rare books that can lift your spirits and set a positive tone for the week ahead.
✨ From the voice of @ElianaRamage herself, prepare to be swept into the cosmos. To the Moon and Back will leave you star-struck 🌙🔭 Tap the link in bio to grab a copy.
"If you are on the hunt for a book that has heart, ambition and authenticity dripping from its pages, add this one to your TBR immediately."

📷+💬= @thatbookladybythesea
These characters are taking us back! We're HUGE Judy Greer fans. ✨

This week on Bookmarked, the Reese's Book Club Podcast, we welcome the incredible @MissJudyGreer! @DanielleRobay and Judy chat her new Stephen King movie adaptation, @HelloSunshine's The Last Thing He Told Me, and of course, dream bookclubs.

Listen on the @iheartpodcast app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you love to listen, and discover which of Judy’s other iconic characters got the book club invite🎧
GIVEAWAY ✨ We're giving away 5 advance copies of the coveted Gone Before Goodbye by @ReeseWitherspoon and @HarlanCoben. Be the first to dive in!

To ENTER:
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Giveaway ends 9/24/25 at 11:59 PT. (5) winners will be notified by DM from @reesesbookclub. No purchase necessary. U.S. only. See official rules in our link in bio.
To the Moon and Back by @ElianaRamage truly shows us that the stars are in reach! ⭐ Grab this exclusive version, including a letter to YOU, an extra chapter, discussion questions, book club insights, and even a conversation with the author at the link in our bio.
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We teamed up with World of @Hyatt and brought you an unforgettable bookish adventure with upscale accommodations, scenic views, campfire conversations, and more. Grab your book club and prepare for the dreamiest getaway. Head to our link in bio to book your trip now!
Loving this bookish insight from @MissJudyGreer! Books truly meet us where we are, and take us to where we've never been! 💙

This week on Bookmarked, the Reese's Book Club Podcast, we welcome the incomparable @MissJudyGreer! @DanielleRobay and Judy chat all things power of story, female friendships in media, the new Stephen King book-to-screen adaptation, and more!

Listen on the @iHeartPodcast App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you love to listen! 🎧

Photo courtesy of Gregory Russell.
"To the Moon and Back is a story of love, identity, relationships and where they were rooted from, but also the vastness of what awaits us beyond the stars and where we belong within that majesty."

Immerse yourself in the beautiful world of our September pick at our link in bio.

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