Untamed

Introduction: The Loss of Our Natural Instincts

Glennon Doyle visited a zoo and watched a cheetah named Tabitha perform. Zookeepers had raised the cheetah with a Labrador retriever to keep her calm and compliant. The cheetah learned to mimic the dog, chasing a toy bunny around a track to earn a steak. Tabitha was a powerful predator acting like a domesticated pet, following a narrow path and settling for rewards that did not match her true nature.

A zookeeper claimed Tabitha was happy because she was safe and had never known the wild. However, Doyle noticed the cheetah pacing the fence and staring at the horizon. This suggested that even though Tabitha was trained to behave, her natural instincts remained intact. Like the cheetah, people often feel restless because they have been socialized to stay within narrow boundaries, ignoring their inner longing for a more meaningful life just to remain safe and accepted.

Ten years old is often the age when society begins to force children into expected roles. For Doyle, this was the moment her inner vitality began to fade. She learned that to be accepted, she had to be quiet, small, and agreeable. She internalized the idea that her own hunger, fury, and natural instincts were shameful secrets that had to be hidden to fit into narrow definitions of womanhood, faith, and family.

This taming process often starts with the stories we are told about our origins and our worth. In a childhood religious class, Doyle was taught that woman was an afterthought created from man, and that the first woman's original sin was wanting more than she was given. This narrative suggests that a woman’s natural desire for knowledge and self-determination is the root of all suffering. When children are fed these ideas, they begin to look outside themselves for permission to exist, eventually forgetting how to listen to their own internal truth.