Untamed

Part 1 is a series of vignettes that introduce Doyle’s pursuit of her freedom and empowerment. Doyle’s story begins with her engagement to her future wife Abby. She recalls the morning of Abby’s proposal, which takes places after Abby receives the blessing of Doyle’s parents. Abby shares the details of the conversation with Doyle and describes how, “My mother’s lip quivered with fear and courage as she said, ‘Abby. I have not seen my daughter this alive since she was ten years old’” (4). Doyle meditates on her mother’s statement and asks herself, “Where did my spark go at ten? How had I lost myself?” (4). 

Doyle remarks on the pivotal age of ten in a child’s life and how “ten is where we learn how to be good girls and real boys. Ten is where children begin to hide who they are in order to become what the world expects them to be. Right around ten is where we begin to internalize our formal taming” (4). Doyle recollects the conditioning she personally experienced at the age of ten, which, ultimately, led to her struggles with bulimia. Desiring to be a “good girl,” Doyle expresses how “bulimia was where I exhaled. It was where I refused to comply, indulged my hunger, and expressed my fury” (5). Doyle details how it was only after meeting Abby at the age of forty that “I remembered my wild” (5). Through their relationship, Doyle began reflecting on her life’s choices and asked herself a series of questions that examined “my faith, my friendships, my work, my sexuality, my entire life” (6). This introspection resulted in Doyle’s successful journey towards greater personal freedom and empowerment. Documenting this journey, Doyle declares, “What follows are stories about how I got caged – and how I got free” (6).

Doyle recalls attending a CCD class at ten years old at her local Catholic church. The CCD instructor tells the story of Adam and Eve and the origin of the term woman. The instructor informs Doyle and her classmates that women are called women, “Because women came from the womb of man. Womb-man” (8). Confused, a young Doyle questions the logic of the instructor’s claim and is silenced. The instructor recounts the original sin and its foundation in Eve’s inability to quell her curiosity and remain content. Struck by the instructor’s teaching, Doyle “had no further questions” (8).

Doyle flashes forward to moments near the end of her marriage where she attends couples’ therapy with her husband who has been unfaithful. During a solo session requested by Doyle, she shares with her female therapist that she has fallen in love with Abby. Astounded, her therapist warns Doyle that, “‘This is nothing but a dangerous distraction. It won’t end well. It has to stop’” (10). Assured in her own internal understanding that “this is different” and filled with rage after her husband’s multiple betrayals, Doyle attempts to convince her therapist that she can no longer be intimate with her husband. Her therapist insists that Doyle try oral sex instead since, “‘Many women find blow jobs to be less intimate” (10).

In the next vignette, Doyle goes to her children’s bathroom and notices the differences between the shower products used by her son and her daughters. “Tall, rectangular, bulky,” her son’s products feature bold font with aggressive language demanding its user to “ARMOR UP IN MAN SCENT” and “DROP-KICK DIRT” (12). In contrast, her daughters’ products, “in cursive, flowy font, whispered disconnected adjectives: alluring, radiant, gentle, pure, illuminating, enticing, touchable, light, creamy” (12). Doyle remarks that these antiquated gender roles still present in the twenty-first century result in children “still being shamed out of their full humanity before they even get dressed in the morning” (12).

Doyle recounts an experience with her daughter Tish years earlier. After learning about the effects of global warming on the world’s polar bear population, Tish, only a kindergartener, becomes so distressed that she obsesses over helping the polar bears for the next month. A frustrated Doyle admits that she unsuccessfully lies to Tish about the recovery of the melting ice caps to subdue her daughter’s obsession. However, Doyle eventually comes to realize that “Tish is sensitive, and that is her superpower” (15). Doyle reflects on the importance of those like Tish who “are able to hear things others don’t hear and see things others don’t see and feel things others don’t feel” (15). Doyle sees some of herself within Tish, admires Tish’s ability to “slow the world down,” and commits “to be wise enough to stop with her, ask her what she feels, and listen to what she knows” (16).

Doyle flashes back to her senior year of high school and muses on popularity. She refers to the popular crowd as “the Golden Ones” and relates her own position on the outermost periphery of the revered inner circle (18). Despite her deep insecurities, teenage Doyle convinces herself that, “What matters is how others feel about me. So I act like someone who feels Golden” (18). This leads to Doyle rigging the ballots for homecoming court to secure her own place on the court. Years later, Doyle confesses that despite her openness in sharing her experiences with addiction, sex, infidelity, and depression, she has only divulged the truth of her high school voter fraud to her wife Abby. Doyle contemplates the desperation that led her to cheat and the ways in which this desperation to be liked infiltrated every aspect of her life.

Doyle remembers the indecision that crippled her in the wake of her husband’s infidelity. She tries to decide whether to leave her husband through research and the opinions of others. Doyle witnesses this same indecision in the female friends of her teenage son Chase. While her son and his male friends act with complete assurance, the girls struggle even to decide whether they are hungry. Doyle notes how “the boys looked inside themselves. The girls looked outside themselves” (24). Doyle further reflects on this abandonment of self within women when she tells a story about her friend Ashley, who subjects herself to suffering through a hot yoga class despite her intense physical discomfort. After falling physically ill because of the class, Ashley asks herself, “What is wrong with me? Why did I stay and suffer? The door wasn’t even locked” (26).

Doyle describes a snow globe given to her as a child by her grandmother. The snow globe features “a red dragon with sparkly scales, bright green eyes, and fiery wings” (27). Doyle is both amazed by and afraid of the dragon’s power. Doyle compares women to the snow globe she once cherished as a child complete with an inner dragon of “the fiery truth inside us – solid and unmoving” (28). She recounts the story of her friend Megan, a recovering alcoholic, who marries a man she never wanted to marry and relapses with the misguided hope that “the drunker she became, the more distance she felt from the dragon inside her” (28). Doyle lists the uncomfortable truths that women avoid confronting, including “The relationship is over. The wine is winning. The pills aren’t for back pain anymore. He’s never coming back” (28). Doyle documents her realization of her own dragon or fiery truth “that I find women infinitely more compelling and attractive than men” (29).

Part 1 concludes with Doyle meeting her future wife Abby Wambach while attending a book conference in Chicago. Doyle travels to Chicago to promote her new memoir titled Love Warrior, which documents “the dramatic destruction and painstaking reconstruction” of her life after her husband’s infidelity (31). Nervous about the impending release of her book, Doyle reflects on her first memoir, which detailed her successful journey through addiction and an eating disorder. After her first book’s publication, her husband confessed his long-standing infidelity and Doyle remembers “feeling the rage of a writer with a broken plot” (32). In reaction to this loss of control over her success story, Doyle wrote Love Warrior. Despite the survival of her marriage, Doyle admits that “home is still a foxhole with me and Craig left staring at each other, wondering: What now? What did we win?” (33). On the plane to Chicago, Doyle attempts to suppress her fears of telling “a story I’m not sure I believe” (34).

Doyle, an introvert, anxiously attends an impromptu dinner with nine other authors whose books are about to be published. She sees Abby for the first time and instantly feels how “my whole being says: There She Is” (35). Eventually, Abby and Doyle separate from the crowd and talk privately. Abby shares her recent struggles following her DUI and breakup. Doyle offers Abby advice and encourages her to write about her real experiences. At the end of the evening, an acquaintance of Abby’s approaches Doyle and tells her that, “‘I just, I really feel like she needs you in her life somehow’” (29). Doyle confesses to her friend Dynna as she leaves for the evening that “I felt like Abby and I had some kind of connection” (39).