Hands down…one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life! 

This book is a complete game changer. I mean, I loved Glennon before this, but now I absolutely adore her! This book is about unlearning all the things in your life that you have been told to believe, to find yourself and move forward to create the life you knew was out there…but haven’t yet discovered. 

The beginning of the book starts with the MOST INCREDIBLE chapter titled CHEETAH. It tells the story of Glennon  being at the zoo with her daughter, Amma. She tells how the zoo was showcasing Tabitha the Cheetah and showing off her skills. The zoo member remarked about how Tabitha grew up alongside a Labrador Retriever named Minnie. The worker made a comment about how Minnie helped to tame Tabitha. The story continued showcasing a race and how fast Tabitha could run. At the very end of the race Glennon watches as Tabitha catches a scent in the air, and in her wildness stops and her demeanor changes. The comment from the zoo worker is that “Tabitha was raised here. She’s never seen the wild. She doesn’t know any different. This is a good life for Tabitha. She’s much safer here than she would be out in the wild.” 

The entire point is that Tabitha is a wild animal. Those are her instincts. Glennon relates it to as a society where women are told that their life is “good enough”. That they shouldn’t long for something else, that they should settle. She begins by telling women everywhere that not only is that not true…that you should never settle…but that you are the goddamn cheetah. 

“I SHOULD BE GRATEFUL. I HAVE A GOOD ENOUGH LIFE HERE. IT’S CRAZY TO LONG FOR WHAT DOESN’T EVEN EXIST”. 

These are the feelings you are allowed to express.

This is how a woman should act.

This is the body you must strive for.

These are the things you will believe.

These are the people you can love.

Those are the people you should fear.

This is the kind of life you are supposed to want. 

The underlying message is: MAKE YOURSELF FIT. EVENTUALLY YOU WILL FORGET YOU’RE CAGED. 

We need to question ‘Who was I before I became who the world told me to be?

Boys are still being taught that real men are big, bold, violent, invulnerable, disgusted by femininity, and responsible for conquering women and the world. 

Girls are still being taught that real women must be quiet, pretty, small, passive, and desirable so they’ll be worthy of being conquered. 

I found so many passages to be so profound. Below are some of my absolute favorites .

What matters is not what is real, but what I can convince OTHERS is real. What matters is not how I feel inside, but how I appear to feel on the outside. 

Glennon recounts a story of her friend Megan who was set to get married and was questioning it and felt like “there were so many people she would have disappointed if she had called it off”. So she said ‘I DO’ while her insides said ‘I Don’t” and she spent the next decade trying not to know what she knew; that she had betrayed herself and that her life would not really begin until she stopped betraying herself. 

So many times as women we believe “I’ll take this shit that I’ve been handed and I’ll spin it into gold”. 

WHEN A WOMAN FINALLY LEARNS THAT PLEASING THE WORLD IS IMPOSSIBLE, SHE BECOMES FREE TO LEARN HOW TO PLEASE HERSELF. 

I understand now that no one else in the world knows what I should do. No one has ever lived or will ever live this life I am attempting to live, with my gifts and challenges and past and people. Every life is an unprecedented experiment. This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been. 

Each of us was born to bring forth something that has never existed: a way of being, a family, an idea, art, a community- something brand new. We are here to fully introduce ourselves, to impose ourselves and ideas and thoughts and dreams onto the world, leaving it changed forever by who we are and what we bring forth from our depths. 

As women we are stalking the periphery of our lives, feeling discontent. The imagination is still pressing, swelling, trying to get your attention by whispering ‘NOT THIS’. 

If we want to know who we were meant to be before the world told us who to be-

If we want to know where we were meant to go before we were put in our place-

If we want to taste freedom instead of control-

Then we must relearn our soul’s native tongue. We are all bilingual. We speak the language of indoctrination, but our native tongue is the language of imagination. 

WHAT IS THE TRUEST, MOST BEAUTIFUL STORY ABOUT YOUR LIFE YOU CAN IMAGINE?

Destruction is essential to construction. If we want to build the new, we must be willing to let the old  burn. 

Once we feel, know, and dare to imagine more for ourselves, we cannot unfeel, unknow, or unimagine. There is no going back. We are launched into the abyss- the space between the not-true-enough life we’re living and the truer one that exists only inside us. So we say “MAYBE IT’S SAFER TO JUST STAY HERE. EVEN IF IT’S NOT TRUE ENOUGH, MAYBE IT’S GOOD ENOUGH”. But ‘good enough’ is what makes people drink too much and snark too much and become bitter and sick and live in quiet desperation until they lie on their deathbed and wonder: What kind of life/relationship/family/world might I have createad if I’d been braver?” 

I thought those memos were universal Truth, so I abandoned myself to honor them without even unearthing and examining them. I realized these memos had never been truth at all! I quit abandoning myself to honor those memos. I BEGAN TO LIVE AS A WOMAN WHO NEVER GOT THE WORLD’S MEMOS. 

“I burned the memo that defined selflessness as the pinnacle of womanhood, but first I forgave myself for believing that lie for so long. I had abandoned myself out of love. They’d convinced me that the best way for a woman to love her partner, family, and community was to lose herself in service to them. In my desire to be of service, I did myself and the world a great disservice. I’ve seen what happens out in the world and inside our relationships when women stay numb, obedient, quiet, and small. Selfless women make for an efficient society but not a beautiful, true, or just one. When women lose themselves, the world loses its way. We do not need more selfless women. What we need right now is more women who have detoxed themselves so completely from the world’s expectations that they are full of nothing but themselves. What we need are women who are full of themselves. A woman who is full of herself knows and trusts herself enough to say and do what must be done. She lets the rest burn.”

 

A family’s wholeness or brokenness has little to do with its structure. A broken family is a family in which any member must break herself into pieces to fit in. A whole family is one in which each member can bring her full self to the table knowing that she will always be both held and free. 

 

Faith is not a public allegiance to a set of outer beliefs, but a private surrender to the inner knowing. 

She trusted her own voice more than she trusted the voices of others. Brave is not asking the crowd what is brave. Brave is deciding for oneself. 

What you know to do might be the opposite of what others are telling you to do. 

I guess women have to almost die before we give ourselves permission to live how we want. 

The epitome of womanhood is to lose one’s self completely. That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture. Because a very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves. 

I don’t give a rat’s ass how much respect you earn for yourself out in the world if you are not showing respect to the people inside your home.

THIS IS THE BEST DAMN CONVO BETWEEN GLENNON AND HER DAUGHTER, TISH. I WISH I HAD LEARNED THIS NUGGET OF INFORMATION WHEN I WAS YOUNGER!

TISH: Chase wants me to join the same club he joined in middle school. I don’t want to.

Me: So don’t.

TISH: But I don’t want to disappoint him.

Me: Listen. Every time you’re given a choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappoint that someone else. Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself. 

TISH: Even you?

Me: Especially me. 

On our island is only us and love. None of it could touch us. It’s not the cruel criticism from folks who hate us that scares us away from our Knowing; it’s the quiet concern of those who love us. 

This is our last conversation about your fear for us. I love you so much. Go figure it out, Mama. When you are ready to come to our island with nothing but wild acceptance and joy and celebration for our true, beautiful family, we’ll lower the drawbridge for you. But not one second sooner. 

A woman becomes a responsible parent when she stops being an obedient daughter. When she finally understands that she is creating something different from what her parents created. When she begins to build her island not to their specifications but to hers. 

Your parents had their turn to build their island. YOUR TURN TO BUILD YOURS. 

You deserved to have the love of your mother delivered to you. You deserved to be soaked through to the bone with her love every day and every night. The miracle of grace is that you can give what you have never gotten. Your source is God. People will like me or not, but being liked is not my One Thing: integrity is. So I must live and tell my truth. Folks will come around or quit coming around. Either way: lovely. I’m willing to lose anything that requires me to hide any part of myself. 

Suddenly I was able to imagine a truer, more beautiful existence for myself than the one I was living. 

The truth is that it matters not at all what you think of my life- but it matters supremely what you think of your own. 

You are not here to waste your time deciding whether my life is true and beautiful enough for you. You are here to decide if your life, relationships, and world are true and beautiful enough for YOU. And if they are not and you dare to admit they are not, you must decide if you have the guts, the right- perhaps even the duty-to burn to the ground that which is not true and beautiful enough and get started building what is. 

I was responsible for telling the truth but not for anyone’s reaction to it. 

God’s ways are not our ways. You must not lean on your own understanding. You seem to have a good heart; but the heart is fickle. Faith is about trusting. 

Do not think. Do not feel. Do not know. Mistrust your own heart and mind, and trust us. That is faith. 

He wanted me to believe that trusting him was trusting God. But he was not my connection to God. My heart and mind were my connections to God. If i shut those down, I’d be trusting the men who led this church instead of trusting God. I’d be relying on their understanding. 

The thing that gets me thinking and questioning most deeply is a leader who warns me not to think or question. I won’t passively outsource my faith and my children’s faith to others. I am a mother, and I have responsibilities. To all children, not just my own. When hate or division is being spread in our religious institutions, we have 3 choices:

1. Remain quiet, which means we agree.
2. Loudly challenge power, and work like hell to make change.
3. Take our families and leave. 

But there is no more silently disagreeing while poison is being pumped from pulpits and seeping beneath our children’s skin. 

Whether it’s a sliver of envy lasting an hour or a canyon of grief lasts 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. 

Going off meds because you feel better is like standing in a torrential rainstorm holding a trusty umbrella that is keeping you toasty and dry and thinking: Wow. I’m so dry. It’s probably time to get rid of this silly umbrella. 

It seems easier for the world to love a suffering woman than it is for the world to love a joyful, confident woman. 

First reaction: Who the hell does she think she is?

Second reaction: She knows she’s a goddamn cheetah. Halle-fucking-lujah. 

I think we are only bitter about other people’s joy in direct proportion to our commitment to keep joy from ourselves. 

I am much more afraid that she will stay and love our kids (About Craig’s new girlfriend). 

I ask what can I do to support their vision. 

We hadn’t yet learned that Knowing never goes away. It just waits as long as it takes for the snow to settle. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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