This month's self help book was Untamed by Glennon Doyle, it is a combination self help and biography so it was going to be a nice easy finish for the year checking two boxes with one book. Except I picked up the Barbra Streisand biography (not an easy finish, holy cow it was long) so I didn't need the two in one, but I already had it on the TBR pile so it still became the book.
Now...
I did not read her two other books. I haven't read her blogs. I don't listen to her podcast. I was aware of her when she ran Momestry (I think I'm spelling that right?) and I was, of course, even more aware of her when CHRISTIAN MOM BLOGGER LEAVES HUSBAND FOR ABBY WAMBACH was all over our feeds. I still wasn't interested in her. Except to be slightly disgusted at the, of course the Christian mom pushing for that "traditional" thing was a closeted lesbian. Of course she was. And then there was one little blurb that made me roll my eyes way back into my head, and it was that she didn't think of herself as queer it was just Abby, not women in general. Okay, fine, I mean, that is a way of describing yourself, I don't have a preference for gender, I have a preference for people. But it came across as more that she couldn't bear being called a lesbian. Even though, according to her and I didn't go research it, she was a progressive Christian so wasn't anti LGBTQ+, just was just really traditional.
So you can see she's not a natural choice for me.
But...
During the Women's World Cup this year she was really active on Threads and not a lot of people were active on Threads at that point. And she was posting these little "pulled from life" comments about trying to learn about soccer and falling in love with soccer over the tournament. Then there was a post about Abby learning Taylor Swift songs so when they took their daughters to the concert it would become a great family core memory for them. Seeing both of them singing and dancing along with them. I thought it was sweet and I thought okay, I'll give her new book a try.
AND...
It wasn't my thing. Not really. She talked about being an addict and a bulimic, which I guess she does in all of her writing, and I get it, those things shape you. She talked about her first marriage faltering when she found out about his infidelity. Which I guess her whole second book was about rebuilding their marriage after finding out about his infidelity. And then she talked about leaving him for Abby, after meeting Abby once. They met briefly at a book conference. They started talking via email. The second time they physically saw each other they slept together and made plans to live together forever. Which is the most lesbian thing that ever lesbianed, but okay, Glennon you aren't.
Though she does reinvent her story in this book to always sort of kind of knowing there was something missing and fighting against it a little but then again maybe not maybe it was just Abby and...
And that's fine. I get it. Being raised religious and not conforming to what you are taught is really hard and takes a lot to get your head wrapped around.
But it wasn't just that. It was really repetitive and derivative. Like any great nuggets of advice that were in there were recycled from other people. Like she was doing a book report on a Brene Brown book. Though she was rephrasing and adding extra sentences like a kid copying their term paper from wikipedia..
And then the final straw for me...back to the whole reason why I decided to read her book and give her a chance...the whole learning about soccer and falling in love with the game this past summer during World Cup?
Well...her daughter plays on an elite travelling club and has for about three years. Abby and Glennon's ex-husband (they all co-parent and still do things together, very healthy) play in the same adult league and have games weekly. AND she's part owner of a NWSL team. There is no fucking way someone who describes herself as a control freak who researches everything would have a daughter, wife, ex-husband who all play and own a team and not know anything about soccer. They were cute stories, but they weren't real.
And if I'm reading a bio/self help book the main thing it needs to be is real, if I find out it's not real I'm going to discount everything else as well.
So what would I have gotten out of it in my 20s?
Nothing. I would never have read it. In my early 20s I would have looked at her history and passed. There wasn't a lot of room for grace while I was dealing with my own stuff. I didn't trust addicts. I didn't have warm feelings about the church. I absolutely would have wanted nothing to do with someone who was living with a woman but couldn't own the fact that that meant she was at least bisexual. I would have passed.
I should have passed this time, just not anything there for me...
...that I haven't already read in a Brene Brown book.
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