There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they are falling in.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The final section in Glennon Doyle’s memoir Untamed, “Free” extends Doyle’s examination of freedom. The book begins with a story of a cheetah in a zoo and explores freedom from our cages and freedom to be our true selves throughout the text. In essence, the whole book is about realizing the power and beauty of our wild, untamed, cheetah selves. As I have done for the other sections of Untamed -“Caged,” and “Keys” – I have identified several golden lines in the text. This post is the conversation I would have with Doyle if I could pick up the phone and discuss Untamed.

The Ache is not a flaw. The Ache is our meeting place. It’s the clubhouse of the brave. All the lovers are there. It is where you go alone to meet the world. The Ache is love.

I know exactly what Doyle means by the Ache. I experience the Ache. I connect with people who know what it means to Ache. I suspect Doyle would call The Ache a superpower. I believe it is. Like x-ray vision or teleportation, The Ache allows the unexplainable, the powerful, the magical to happen. When you think about it, The Ache is empathy and compassion and imagination manifest. Those are huge and important concepts that we need more of in our world. I stand proudly alongside all who Ache and seek to make the world a safer place to Ache and heal.

Brave means living from the inside out. Brave means, in every uncertain moment, turning inward, feeling for that Knowing, and speaking it out loud.

I want to be more brave. I want to strengthen my scared-and-do-it-anyway muscles. I want to breathe in fear and breathe out Knowing. I want to speak the Truth in love no matter what. Bravery and courage are super powers, too. Doyle’s understanding of bravery makes sense to me. Bravery is an inside job. It is not showy or ego-driven or prideful. It does not have to yell to be heard. It is the quiet side of Truth. It is the idea that being in the arena matters. It is the quiet part out loud.

So I will commit to showing up with deep humility and doing the best I can. I will keep getting it wrong, which is the closest I can come to getting it right. When I am corrected I will stay open and keep learning. Not because I want to be the wokest woke who ever woke. But because people’s children are dying of racism, and there is no such thing as other people’s children.

This golden line ties directly to bravery for me. Showing up comes from a foundational belief in our interconnectedness as a people and world – what Nelson Mandela describes as ubuntu. As we show up for ourselves, we show up for our world and vice versa. It is that impulse that drives looking up river and seeing why people are falling in, rather than simply saving them from drowning downstream. We are all always upstream. At a time when our children and our planet are dying, we can do no less than show up, be humble, and be brave.

The God memos we get as kids are carved into our hearts.

I received full on, loud and clear, powerful God memos as a kid. I am more grateful than I can explain for the God memos I received. My God memos taught me that God is love. Full stop. My God memos taught me that I am the hands of God in the world. My God memos taught me to be still and know. My God memos taught me to let my little light shine. I understand, and see every day, that damaging God memos exist and drive people away from a God defined as love. I look to my God memos a lot these days. Like a solid house connects to a foundation and to the earth to remain standing. My God memos relieve despair, restore hope, and fire my imagination beyond the easy path of cynicism.

Good art originates not from the desire to show off, but from the desire to show yourself. Good art always come from our desperate desire to breathe, to be seen, to be loved.

Connecting to my creative self has been vital my entire life. When I think about it, writing has always been a salve on my wounds. That started early in my life and has happened often throughout. I have gotten the advice to “write through it” over the years, and that is what I have been doing. Doyle writes about breathing, and seeing, and loving. That is exactly what it feels like to write for me. Somewhere in my understanding of good art is my love of story, and my belief that when we truly know our stories, connection and healing can happen.

Answering the question Who do I love? is not enough. We must live lives of our own. To live a life of her own, each women must also answer: What do I love? What makes me come alive? What is beauty to me, and when do I take time to fill up with it? Who is the soul beneath all of those roles?

I want to end my imaginary conversation with Glennon Doyle about Untamed by accepting the challenge to answer the above questions. I love kindness in all its manifestations. I love poetry with words that slice and let us taste the raw sweetness of life. I love prayer like shoes, as Ruth Forman describes. Prayer that we live in every day that sustains, supports, comforts, and lets us move about our business feeling and sharing love. I come alive when I cut through noise and connect with myself and others. I see beauty everywhere. Truly. My gratitude practice over many years has taught me that. Filling up looks like slowing down and taking it all in, which I do when I remember. Remembering is the soul beneath all our roles. As the cheetah knows. I know.