Glennon Doyle's Memoirs
Last month, I drove hundreds of miles on several trips between Montana and Idaho. While these state touch one another, they include a lot of wide-open country, much of which is wild and “out of service” on cellular. It is easy to drive seven, eight, nine hours between destinations. The morning that I was to drive from Missoula to Boise, I had coffee a long-time friend who mentioned Glennon Doyle’s memoir to me in that you-know-what-I-mean sort of way. I nodded but said, “Glennon? Doyle?” My friend couldn’t believe that I was unfamiliar with Doyle’s works and urged me to check them out. Knowing I had an eight-hour sola road trip ahead of me, I quickly searched my library’s available audiobooks and checked out Love Warrior (2013). I placed her more recent memoir, Untamed (2020), on hold. The later was the book my friend referenced after all. We had coffee over a barrage of anecdotes and revelations quintessential, it seems, to each time old friends attempt to catch up after months without seeing or talking to one another. I then climbed into a rental car and headed southwest toward Idaho. Over the next few weeks I would listen to audiobooks of both these memoirs, read by Doyle herself, as I drove across the American West. Love Warrior and Untamed bridge memoir and feminist cultural critique; Doyle’s stories are shockingly personal and embody the essence of what it is to face shame and embrace both vulnerability and the radical shifts that life sometimes throws our way.
That day after coffee, as I drove along rivers, through mountain passes and vast forests, Doyle’s Love Warrior kept me company. I found myself emersed in Doyle’s coming-of-age story in Love Warrior as she struggled to come of age and embrace the cookie cutter nuclear family she stumbled into. Due to issues of self-image and addiction, Doyle did not come of age with planning and intention; rather, she barely survived. Love Warrior opens with a prelude. It is the scene of Doyle’s wedding. While it is her big day, a shadow of doubt lays over the backyard ceremony. Then she begins to tell her story from the very beginning. Part one follows her coming of age, and falling apart. Doyle reveals early in the memoir that by age ten she had embraced the binge and purge of bulimia. Her adolescence and early adulthood brim over with themes of addiction, self-loathing, and little hope. Part one ends in that same wedding ceremony with which Doyle opens the book. Part two then, is the story of her early married life and the days of mothering young children. In the middle of part two, Doyle’s marriage begins to unravel and she is faced with the difficult work of determining how/if her marriage is salvageable. In other words, she finally does the work of discovering who she is. In part one, Doyle reveals her young descent into bulimia and alcoholism, as well as her path to sobriety and healthier body image. In part two, she tells the story of the crisis in her marriage, and her faith, as she attempts to answer the big question: do I stay or do I go? Ultimately, she realizes that she cannot make any decisions about her marriage until she has done difficult work on herself. Love Warrior exudes with Doyle’s fresh voice. She is real. She is vulnerable. She is like so many of us: a woman trapped between her own passions and desires, and the false narratives she has accepted as Truth from society, religion, and ourselves. Love Warrior blends self help (a la Brené Brown) with an honest and raw memoir.
I felt ambivalent about the conclusion of Love Warrior; a reflection, I’m sure, of Doyle’s own tone as she wraps up that book. So when her more recent memoir Untamed became available on audiobook, I quickly borrowed it and dove in. And, wow, between the publication of Love Warrior and Untamed Doyle’s personal life took a serious plot twist. One I did not see coming. As I listened to the opening chapters of the book, I felt relief. I appreciated this Doyle much more than the demure one of Love Warrior. But I am sure that the decisions she made between Love Warrior and Untamed alienated her from much of her fan base, particularly those from traditional Christian communities. Doyle continues to explore her own life in Untamed, particularly her second marriage and all that it includes. But much of her experience in Untamed is that of a mother raising adolescent children. She shifts some of the gaze, in Untamed, to the ways we raise our sons and daughters. She digs into the implicit messages society sends children about how they should or should not behave based on their gender. While Love Warrior was certainly a feminist read, Doyle takes her feminism to unapologetic ends in Untamed. Finally, in Untamed, Doyle sees what she wants in her personal life, and she embraces it fully. Life no longer just happens to her; she lives it with intention. She at long last recognizes that she deserves to be her wild, beautiful self. And she is.
Doyle’s books raise myriad contemporary issues about love (romantic, parental, and self), addiction, choice, and survival. Both Love Warrior and Untamed repeat certain catch phrases—like, “we can do hard things” and “being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right”—that I find myself repeating. These books are intimate and exposed; as a result, they are inspiring and at times deeply moving. Fans of self-improvement style memoirs, feminist cultural critique, and/or Brené Brown’s work will, no doubt, enjoy Love Warrior and Untamed.
Bibliography:
Doyle, Glennon. Love Warrior. Flatiron Books: 2016.
----. Untamed. The Dial Press: 2020.
