Untamed

Eight years ago, I found myself in a therapist’s office asking for strategies to cope with betrayal-induced rage. The therapist said, “Your anxiety is controlling you, which means that you are lost in your head. You don’t know what you want. You are so disconnected. You need to remember how to get back into your body somehow.”

She then suggested that I go to yoga. The next morning, on my way to the studio, I wonder: Why did I leave my body to live in this dangerous mind of mine? I sit on my mat in a ninety-degree room and immediately remember why.

As soon as I get still, the snow settles, and I sink into my body. I start to feel itchy and agitated and annoyed. This is why I left! Because I am shame and fear wrapped in skin. I don’t even want to visit my body, much less reside here. But now I’m stuck: The perimeter of the yoga mat is my entire world. The other women are silent. There is nothing on the walls to read. There is no escape. Where’s my phone? There’s the door. I could go. I would not have to explain.

The instructor walks in, and I ignore her to continue plotting my escape, until she says, “Be still and know.” That phrase again. I so desperately want to know. Whatever it is that I am missing, whatever it is that other people know, whatever it is that helps them cope and lets them just live: I want to know it.

So I stayed on that goddamn mat until I knew.

Just like I stayed in my addictions until I knew.

Just like I stayed in my marriage until I knew.

Just like I stayed in my religion until I knew.

Just like I stayed in my pain and shame until I knew.

And now I know.

I’m sitting on my couch between two friends, sipping coffee. My dog’s asleep in my friend Saskia’s lap. We’re all listening to Ashley tell her story about staying in the hot yoga room until it made her sick. After she says, “I mean, the door wasn’t even locked,” the room falls quiet. Ashley has said something important. Saskia rubs the dog’s head. Karyn squints her eyes. I think this:

The truth of my thirties was: Stay on your mat, Glennon. The staying is making you.

The truth of my forties is: I’m made.

I will not stay, not ever again—in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself. When my body tells me the truth, I’ll believe it. I trust myself now, so I will no longer suffer voluntarily or silently or for long. I’ll look at those women to my left and right who must stay, because it’s that time for them, because they have to know what love and God and freedom are not before they can know what love and God and freedom are. Because they want to know. Because they are warriors. I’ll send them every bit of my strength and solidarity to help them through this part. And then I’ll pick up my mat and slowly, deliberately, lightly walk out.

Because I have just remembered that the sun is shining, the breeze is cool, and these doors, they’re not even locked.