Untamed

I am a sensitive, introverted woman, which means that I love humanity but actual human beings are tricky for me. I love people but not in person. For example, I would die for you but not, like…meet you for coffee. I became a writer so I could stay at home alone in my pajamas, reading and writing about the importance of human connection and community. It is an almost perfect existence. Except that every so often, while I’m thinking my thoughts, writing my words, living in my favorite spot—which is deep inside my own head—something stunning happens: A sirenlike noise tears through my home. I freeze.

It takes me a solid minute to understand: The siren is the doorbell. A person is ringing my doorbell. I run out of my office to find my children also stunned, frozen, and waiting for direction about how to respond to this imminent home invasion. We stare at each other, count bodies, and collectively cycle through the five stages of doorbell grief:

Denial: This cannot be happening. ALL OF THE PEOPLE ALLOWED TO BE IN THIS HOUSE ARE ALREADY IN THIS HOUSE. Maybe it was the TV. IS THE TV ON?

Anger: WHO DOES THIS? WHAT KIND OF BOUNDARYLESS AGGRESSOR RINGS SOMEONE’S DOORBELL IN BROAD DAYLIGHT?

Bargaining: Don’t move, don’t breathe—maybe they’ll go away.

Depression: Why? Why us? Why anyone? Why is life so hard?

Acceptance: Damnit to hell. You—the little one—we volunteer you. Put on some pants, act normal, and answer the door.

It’s dramatic, but the door always gets answered. If the kids aren’t home, I’ll even answer it myself. Is this because I remember that adulting requires door answering? Of course not. I answer the door because of the sliver of hope in my heart that if I open the door, there might be a package waiting for me. A package!

When I got sober, I learned that hard feelings are doorbells that interrupt me, send me into a panic, and then leave me with an exciting package. Sobriety is a decision to stop numbing and blaming away hard feelings and to start answering the door. So when I quit drinking, I began allowing my feelings to disturb me. This was scary, because I had always assumed that my feelings were so big and powerful that they would stay forever and eventually kill me. But my hard feelings did not stay forever, and they did not kill me. Instead, they came and went, and afterward I was left with something I didn’t have before. That something was self-knowledge.

Hard feelings rang my bell and then left me with a package filled with brand-spanking-new information about myself. This new information was always exactly what I needed to know about myself to take the next step in my life with confidence and creativity. It turned out that what I needed most was inside the one place I’d been running from my entire life: pain. Everything I needed to know next was inside the discomfort of now.

As I practiced allowing my hard feelings to come and stay as long as they needed to, I got to know myself. The reward for enduring hard feelings was finding my potential, my purpose, and my people. I am so grateful. I can’t imagine a greater tragedy than remaining forever unknown to myself. That would be the ultimate self-abandonment. So I have become unafraid of my own feelings. Now when hard feelings ring the bell, I put on my big-girl pants and answer the door.

anger

For years after I found out about my ex-husband’s infidelity, I was deeply angry.

He did everything that could be asked of a person who has hurt someone. He apologized profusely, began therapy, and was unwaveringly patient. I did all the right things, too. I went to therapy, prayed, committed myself to trying to forgive. Sometimes when I watched him with the children, my anger would fade and I’d feel relieved and hopeful for our future. But every time I tried to make myself physically or emotionally vulnerable to him, rage would flood my body. I’d lash out at him and then shut down and retreat back into myself. This pattern was exhausting and depressing for both of us, but I didn’t know what to do other than wait for forgiveness to eventually be bestowed upon me by the heavens as a reward for my steadfast suffering. I assumed that forgiveness was a matter of time.

One evening, Craig and I were sitting on opposite sides of our family room couch. He was happily watching TV while I silently fumed at him. Somehow I was able to lift my perspective and look down at both of us. There I was, fired up with fury, and there Craig was, undisturbed and utterly unaware that I was miserable. All the fire was in me. None in him. I thought: How can this anger be about him? He can’t even feel it. Suddenly I felt possessive and protective of my own anger. I thought: This is happening inside my body. If this anger is in me, I am going to assume it is for me. I decided to stop being ashamed and afraid of my anger, to stop being ashamed and afraid of myself.

From that moment on, whenever anger arose, I practiced staying open and curious. I sat with it. I let it be. My anger and I hung out and listened to each other. I asked my anger questions like “What are you trying to tell me? Not about him, but about me?” I started paying close attention to patterns in my body, because my body often clarifies for me what my mind is too convoluted and hopeful to accept. Bodies won’t lie, even when we beg them to. I noticed that anger flooded my body whenever I opened myself up to Craig emotionally or physically. My anger lifted completely when I watched him with the children. Before I started paying close attention, I thought this meant that I was flip-flopping. But over time I began to understand that my anger wasn’t arbitrary, it was incredibly specific. My anger was repeating, “Glennon: For you, familial intimacy with Craig is safe. Physical and emotional intimacy are not.”

I knew this. My body knew this. And I had been ignoring what I knew. That is why I was so angry: I was angry at myself. Craig was the one who had strayed, yes, but I was the one who decided, day after day, to stay married, vulnerable, and angry. I was ignoring what I knew, and I was punishing him for forcing me to know it. There was nothing he could do to change what I knew. Maybe the question was no longer “How could he have done this to me?” but “How can I keep doing this to myself?” Maybe instead of forever repeating, “How could he have abandoned me?” I needed to ask, “Why do I keep abandoning myself?”

Eventually I decided to stop abandoning myself—which meant honoring my anger. I didn’t need to prove to anyone else whether leaving was right or wrong. I didn’t need to justify my anger anymore. What I needed to do was forgive the father of my children. I was able to do that as soon as I divorced him.

After the divorce mediation, Craig and I stood side by side in an elevator, watching the floor numbers light up one at a time while we descended. I looked over at Craig, and for the first time in years, I felt true empathy, tenderness, and warmth toward him. Once again, I could see him as a good man with whom I’d like to be friends. I felt real forgiveness. That was because for the first time in years, I felt safe. I’d restored my own boundaries. I’d begun to trust myself, because I’d become a woman who refuses to abandon herself to keep false peace.

I have friends who did find safety and lasting forgiveness inside their marriages after infidelity. What comes after betrayal cannot be striving, contorting, or suffering to honor an arbitrary idea of right or wrong. What comes next must be an honoring of self. We must disregard the should out there and face what is real in here. If constant anger is what is real in here, we must address it—both for ourselves and for the other. Because it is not kind to keep those we can’t forgive close to us and punish them forever. If we cannot forgive and move on, perhaps we need to move on first, and forgiveness will follow. Forgiveness does not mean access. We can give the other person the gift of forgiveness and ourselves the gift of safety and freedom at the very same time. When both people become unafraid and unpunished, that is a good good-bye. Relief from anger is not something that is bestowed upon us; it often must be forged by us.

Anger delivers important information about where one of our boundaries has been crossed. When we answer the door and accept that delivery, we begin to know ourselves better. When we restore the boundary that was violated, we honor ourselves. When we know ourselves and honor ourselves, we live with integrity, peace, and power—understanding that we are the kind of woman who will be wise and brave enough to care for herself. Good stuff.

And there’s more. Even better stuff comes when we go deeper. When we say, “Okay. I understand that this is my boundary.” But what is a boundary anyway?

A boundary is the edge of one of our root beliefs about ourselves and the world.

We are like computers, and our beliefs are the software with which we’re programmed. Often our beliefs are programmed into us without our knowledge by our culture, community, religion, and family. Even though we don’t choose those subconscious programs, they run our lives. They control our decisions, perspectives, feelings, and interactions, so they determine our destiny. What we believe, we become. There is nothing more important than unearthing what we really believe to be true about ourselves and our world—and nothing unearths what we really believe faster than examining what pisses us off.

My anger at my ex-husband was a relentless doorbell trying to alert me that a major boundary of mine had been crossed. My boundary was the edge of this root belief of mine: The most important values in a marriage are honesty, loyalty, and faithfulness, and when those are gone, I am no longer safe.

That belief of mine was neither right nor wrong. Beliefs have nothing to do with objective universal morality and everything to do with each person’s specific, personal one. In this case, I decided to accept and keep this root belief about marriage and loyalty because it served me, made me feel safe, and felt true to me. I accepted that delivery and brought it right into my second marriage.

But sometimes my anger delivers to my door a root belief that I don’t want to keep.

Abby works hard and rests hard. Often in the middle of a weekday, she will lie down on our couch and watch zombie shows. When she does this, I get clenched and tight. I get agitated, then angry, because she is relaxing at me. I start tidying loudly and aggressively in the couch’s vicinity. She hears my violent tidying and asks, “What’s wrong?” I say, “Nothing” with a tone that suggests “Something.” This dance plays out again and again: Abby relaxing on the couch and me getting angry about it and Abby getting angry that I’m getting angry.

We talk this out, again and again. You have not seen talking until you’ve seen the incessant talking of two married women who are introspective spiritual seekers and also sober so they have nothing else to do. We adore each other. We never want to hurt each other. We want to understand each other and ourselves, so we really want to get to the bottom of things. So we talk, and we talk, and we always seem to arrive at this conclusion: Abby is a grown woman, and she is the boss of herself. Glennon should stop feeling angry about Abby’s decisions.

I always agree with this conclusion. My mind does, at least. But how do I get this memo to my body? What do I do with should? Should never helps me because I am dealing with what is. Layering a judgment on top of a feeling doesn’t change the feeling. How do I not become angry? How do I not become…activated?

One day I walked into our family room and saw Abby jump off the couch and begin straightening pillows, trying to look busy and productive for my sake. I stopped in my tracks and stared at her while a memory from childhood floated into my mind. When I was young, if I was at home relaxing on the couch and I heard my parents’ car pull up in the driveway, I’d panic, jump off the couch, and try to look busy before they opened the door. Exactly like I’d just seen Abby do.

That’s when I stopped looking at Abby and thinking: What is my anger telling me about her? And started asking: What is my anger telling me about me? My anger was delivering a package with one of my root beliefs in it—a belief that was programmed into me during childhood: Resting is laziness, and laziness is disrespect. Worthiness and goodness are earned with hustle.

When Abby rested right in front of me—outside family-designated and approved resting times—she was challenging that root belief. She was activating it, unearthing it, bringing it into the light where I could see it. But unlike my root belief about honesty and fidelity, I didn’t like this one. It didn’t feel true to me. Because when I looked at Abby relaxing, my anger was almost a bitter yearning.

Must be nice.

Must be nice to rest in the middle of the damn day.

Must be nice to feel worthy of the space you take up on the earth without hustling to earn it every minute.

Must be nice to rest and still feel worthy.

I want to be able to rest and still feel worthy, too.

I didn’t want to change Abby. I wanted to change my belief about worthiness.

Anger rings our bell and delivers one of our root beliefs. This is good information, but the next part is more than informative, it’s transformational: All of the beliefs that anger delivers come with a return label.

There is a sticker on the package that says, “Here is one of your root beliefs! Would you like to keep, return, or exchange this one?”

I looked hard at the root belief about worthiness that my anger at Abby had delivered to me. I thought: No. I don’t want to keep this one. It was inherited by me, not created by me. I have outgrown it. It is no longer my truest, most beautiful belief about worthiness. I know better than this belief. It’s harsh, and it’s hurting me and my marriage. I don’t want to pass this one down to my kids. But I don’t want to return it, either. I want to exchange it for this amended one:

Hard work is important. So are play and nonproductivity. My worth is tied not to my productivity but to my existence. I am worthy of rest.

Changing my root belief about worthiness has changed my life. I sleep a little bit later. I schedule in time for reading and walks and yoga, and sometimes (on the weekend), I even watch a TV show in the middle of the day. It’s heavenly. It’s also an ongoing process: Still, when I see Abby relaxing, my knee-jerk reaction is annoyance. But then I check myself. I think: Why am I activated here? Oh, yes, that old belief. Oh, wait, never mind. I’ve exchanged that one. And when Abby asks, “What’s wrong?” I can say, “Nothing, honey,” and mean it, mostly.

Anger delivers our boundaries to us. Our boundaries deliver our beliefs to us. Our beliefs determine how we experience the world. So even though it can be scary, we’d be wise to answer the door.

heartbreak

After a decade of listening to women, I’m convinced that our deepest fears are:

Living without ever finding our purpose

Dying without ever finding true belonging

Again and again women ask me, “How do I find my purpose? How do I find my people?”

My best advice: When heartbreak rings, answer the door.

This is what it sounds like to refuse to answer the door:

I wish I could learn more about that injustice…I wish I could visit that sick friend…I wish I could get involved with that cause…I wish I could read that article…I wish I could show up for that family…but I can’t bear to because it’ll break my heart.

It’s like we really believe that our hearts were meant to be kept hidden away, bubble-wrapped, and under lockdown. As though the point of life is to not be moved. That’s not the point. When we let ourselves be moved, we discover what moves us. Heartbreak is not something to be avoided; it’s something to pursue. Heartbreak is one of the greatest clues of our lives.

The magic of heartbreak is that each person’s doorbell rings in response to something specific. What rings your bell? Is it racial injustice? Bullying? Animal cruelty? Hunger? War? The environment? Kids with cancer? What is it that affects you so deeply that whenever you encounter it, you feel the need to look away? Look there. Where is the pain in the world that you just cannot stand? Stand there. The thing that breaks your heart is the very thing you were born to help heal. Every world changer’s work begins with a broken heart.

I met a group of women in Iowa who’d each lost a baby to stillbirth or early infant death. They formed a sisterhood, and together, through education and other kinds of support, they’ve contributed to lowering the stillbirth rate in their state so significantly that doctors are scratching their heads in disbelief and gratitude. Instead of withdrawing or disconnecting from their suffering, they ran straight toward it. Their shared pain became their bond and their fuel. Now, together, they are saving others from the very heartbreak that brought them together.

Heartbreak delivers your purpose. If you are brave enough to accept that delivery and seek out the people doing that particular world-changing work, you find your people. There is no bond like the bond that is forged among people who are united in the same world-healing work.

Despair says, “The heartbreak is too overwhelming. I am too sad and too small, and the world is too big. I cannot do it all, so I will do nothing.”

Courage says, “I will not let the fact that I cannot do everything keep me from doing what I can.”

We all want purpose and connection.

Tell me what breaks your heart, and I’ll point you toward both.

grief

Fourteen years ago, I was sitting in my sister’s bedroom in the home she shared with her then husband. Tish, just a few months old, lay in her car seat on the hardwood floor, sucking on her fingers and gurgling. Sister and I were quiet. She and her husband were struggling in their marriage, and it was all quite confusing and difficult.

While we sat there, her phone pinged and she looked down at it. Then she dropped the phone and slid from her chair to the floor. I grabbed the phone from the floor and saw that her husband had just emailed that their marriage was over. I looked away from the phone and down at my sister, who appeared lifeless, like whatever had been keeping her alive and afloat had gone, like the leftovers of a deflated balloon. Then she began to wail. I have known my sister since moments after she took her first breath, and I had never heard her make a noise like this. Her wail was animalistic, and it made me feel afraid. I touched her, but there was no response. The three of us were in that room together, but we were not together anymore. The pain had taken my sister to a place all her own. Tish was completely still, her eyes wide and watery, stunned by the volume and intensity of the wailing. I remember wondering how a baby exposed to this much raw pain, this early, would be formed by it.

In the coming year, while the rest of the world carried on, my sister, Tish, and I became a small army trying to push together through the muck of grief. Sometimes I think that first year shaped Tish’s depth and tenderness. She still becomes still, wide-eyed, and watery in the presence of another person’s pain.

My sister moved out of the home she had painstakingly created for her future family and into a small guest room in my basement. I wanted to decorate it, to make it nice for her, but she resisted. She did not want to make a home inside my basement, inside her grief. She wanted to make it clear that she was just visiting this place. The only thing she hung on the wall was a small blue cross I gave her with the inscription “For I know the plans I have for you. Plans to give you hope and a future.”

Every evening she’d come home from work, eat dinner with us, and do her best to smile and play with the kids. Then she’d walk downstairs to her room for the night. One evening, I followed her downstairs and stood outside her door. As I prepared to knock, I heard her crying softly. That is when I realized that where she was, I could not go. Grief is a lonely basement guest room. No one, not even your sister, can join you there.

So I sat down on the floor with my back against her bedroom door. I used all I had, my body and my presence, to hold vigil, to guard her process, to place myself between her and anything else that might disturb or hurt her. I stayed there for hours. I came back to her door for that nightly vigil for a very long time.

A year later, my sister left that room and walked up the stairs and out the front door of our home. Soon after, she left her job as a corporate lawyer and moved to Rwanda to help prosecute child sex offenders and return land stolen from widows. I watched her go with fear and awe. Then I watched her return to marry a man who cherishes her, with whom she’d build her true and beautiful family.

Sometimes, in the years that followed, I’d walk downstairs, stare at the door to that basement guest room, and think: It’s like that small, dark room was a cocoon. All that time she was in there undergoing a complete metamorphosis.

Grief is a cocoon from which we emerge new.

Last year Liz’s beloved partner became very sick and started dying. I was far away, so each day I would send her messages that said, “I am sitting outside your door.”

One day, my mom called and asked, “How is Liz?”

I thought for a moment about how to answer. I realized I couldn’t because she’d asked me the wrong question.

I said, “Mama, I think the question is not ‘How is Liz?’ The question is ‘Who is Liz? Who will she be when she emerges from this grief?’ ”

Grief shatters.

If you let yourself shatter and then you put yourself back together, piece by piece, you wake up one day and realize that you have been completely reassembled. You are whole again, and strong, but you are suddenly a new shape, a new size. The change that happens to people who really sit in their pain—whether it’s a sliver of envy lasting an hour or a canyon of grief lasting decades—it’s revolutionary. When that kind of transformation happens, it becomes impossible to fit into your old conversations or relationships or patterns or thoughts or life anymore. You are like a snake trying to fit back into old, dead skin or a butterfly trying to crawl back into its cocoon. You look around and see everything freshly, with the new eyes you have earned for yourself. There is no going back.

Perhaps the only thing that makes grief any easier is to surrender completely to it. To resist trying to hold on to a single part of ourselves that existed before the doorbell rang. Sometimes to live again, we have to let ourselves die completely. We have to let ourselves become completely, utterly, new.

When grief rings: Surrender. There is nothing else to do. The delivery is utter transformation.