Ep. 102 - How to be a model, not a martyr with Glennon Doyle

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I can’t tell you how excited I was to have this conversation. When I first started Motherkind, I wrote out a list of dream guests and today’s guest was right at the very top of that list. This week, we welcome the incredible Glennon Doyle to the podcast.

If you don’t already know Glennon, she is the author of two New York Times best-sellers, her latest book, ‘Untamed’, which this conversation focuses on and ‘Love Warrior’, which was also named as an Oprah’s Book Club choice. If you haven’t read them, I highly recommend getting yourself a copy.  

Glennon is also the founder of a charity called Together Rising, an all-woman led non-profit organisation that has revolutionised grassroots philanthropy. Glennon has raised over $25 million for women, families and children in crisis. She's also doing some amazing work to support families who find themselves in difficulty through this period of coronavirus.

We had a really honest conversation – I definitely shared some things with Glennon which I haven’t shared with anyone else before, apart from perhaps my therapist! What I took away from this conversation is that your mission as a parent is to live a life true to yourself. When we can break free from the training and conditioning that so many of us have had and then model that to our children, we can show them what a life well-lived really looks like.  

I hope you enjoy this week’s episode. I’d love to hear what you think - as always, we continue the conversation over on Instagram so do hop over and let us know what you thought.

You can download a transcript of this week’s episode here.

Key takeaways from this week’s episode:

The Impact of Untamed:

• Untamed has become popular even to people who do not like self-help books. (5:09)

• Unlike other self-therapy books, Untamed talks about the significance of returning to yourself and not improving yourself. (5:54)

 

Returning to Yourself versus Improving Yourself:

• Improving ourselves has played a massive part in making us feel overwhelmed and exhausted. It separates us from our true selves. (6:12)

• Chasing what the world wants us to be is what makes us lost. (07:41)

• Women live in a world where they have to be grateful for what they have. (8:08)

The Cheetah Run Metaphor and The Gaslighting of Women:

• Glennon brought her kids to the zoo to see Tabitha, who was born in captivity, do the famous cheetah run. (8:52)

• Like Tabitha, women feel lost and purposeless because they have been chasing what society tells them to even though they can feel that they deserve more. (11:11)

• The gaslighting of Tabitha is similar to the universal gaslighting of women. (14:08)

• The world associates women with the terms hysterical, crazy, and emotional. Societal norms have conditioned women to stop trusting themselves. (14:38)

• The cost of choosing the world over ourselves is abandoning our true selves. (17:45)

The Danger That Comes With Easy Buttons:

• Like a Staples commercial, people press a red button within themselves whenever they start to feel uncomfortable. (18:52)

• Society teaches us to worship happiness and gratitude. When people have hard feelings, they think that there is something wrong with them. (19:43)

• Easy buttons come in the form of food, alcohol, drugs, and many more. (20:11)

• When we hit these easy buttons, we tend to miss out on our transformation. (20:49)

• Parents who distract their children from pain teach their kids to hit these easy buttons. (23:13)

The Significance of Looking Within Ourselves for Answers:

• People, women in particular, look outside of themselves for answers. (23:32)

• Little girls are trained to believe that women gather permission and approval first before they say or act on something. (27:46)

• You can reverse the process and look within yourself in moments of uncertainty. (28:14)

You Don’t Have to Be A Martyr to Be A Good Mother:

• Many mothers think the only way to become a good mum is by putting their children's needs before theirs. However, that is not the case. (30:29)

• Every child wants their mother to be free. People raised by martyr mothers can grow up feeling guilty. (31:50)

• Burying your dreams and emotions and calling it love can be quite damaging to your children. (33:32)

How Can You Free Yourself?

• The first step is admitting that you feel discontent and longing. (34:38)

• Sitting with yourself is scary because the stillness in your head is the truth. But you must overcome this discomfort to free yourself. (37:03)

Finding Faith:

• Religion teaches you that faith is about trusting a being that you cannot see instead of yourself. (42:06)

• Glennon views faith as something inside of her. She emphasises its significance to re-establishing your cut phone line with your true inner self. (43:32)

How Glennon Views the Impact of Untamed:

• With Untamed, Glennon's main goal was to write a collection of all her moments of clarity. (45:18)

• According to Glennon, Untamed is the best she can do. She did her best, and she is grateful for that. (46:39)

• She only can judge success when she shows up and does the best she can, and Glennon did that through Untamed. (49:30)

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Untamed by Glennon Doyle

• Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle

• Together Rising

• FREEBIES! Find out how you can take control of your life, reconnect to you, and more! Download '10 Ways to Reconnect to You' and our weekly and monthly check-in on Motherkind.co.

• Are you ready to find freedom from guilt? Let me help you find Freedom from Perfectionism if you are a mother who has ever felt not quite enough.

About Glennon

Glennon Doyle is a New York Times best-selling author known for her books Untamed and Love Warrior. In 2016, her book, Love Warrior, was chosen as a selection for Oprah's Book Club. She is also an activist and public speaker who encourages women to speak up for themselves.

Glennon uses her website, Momastery, as a platform to share her insights and help women find themselves. She also established a non-profit organisation known as Together Rising that has revolutionised grassroots philanthropy.

To learn more about Glennon and her work, head over to her website. You can also reach out to her on Instagram.