Untamed

At ten years old, a bright-eyed girl begins to learn the rules of being "good." She watches as the world hands her invisible cages labeled with expectations: how a woman should look, what she should want, whom she should love, and how small she must make herself to fit. For decades, she contorts herself to squeeze into these prescribed boxes, becoming bulimic, then alcoholic, desperately trying to numb the pain of abandoning her true self. But sometimes, even in the most tamed among us, the wild refuses to die completely.

This is the story of a woman who spent forty years learning to be what others wanted, only to discover that her salvation lay in unlearning it all. Through marriage, motherhood, divorce, and an unexpected love that changed everything, she embarked on a revolutionary journey back to her authentic self. From her struggle with addiction and eating disorders to her emergence as an activist and truth-teller, we witness how one woman's courage to live untamed became a beacon for others seeking their own freedom. Her path reveals the transformative power of feeling deeply, trusting inner knowing, and daring to imagine a truer, more beautiful life beyond society's narrow definitions.

The caging begins subtly, almost imperceptibly. At ten years old, the spark in a young girl's eyes starts to dim as she learns the unspoken rules of goodness. She discovers that her loud voice is "too much," her strong feelings are "dramatic," and her natural curiosity about the world must be tempered to avoid seeming "difficult." The world offers her a simple trade: surrender your wildness for acceptance, your authenticity for approval.

She accepts this bargain, believing she has no choice. She learns to curl her hair just so, to make herself smaller in conversations, to laugh at jokes that aren't funny, and to pursue dreams that aren't hers. The effort of maintaining this performance while her true self screams for release creates an unbearable tension. Food becomes her first escape, then alcohol, then anything that can silence the voice inside that keeps whispering: "This isn't right. This isn't you."

The addiction years are marked by a desperate attempt to stay numb enough to bear the life she's built on lies. Bulimia becomes her secret rebellion, a place where she can be animal and hungry and real, even as she punishes herself afterward for the transgression. Alcohol offers temporary relief from the exhaustion of pretending to be someone else every single day. Each substance promises the same thing: you don't have to feel the pain of living a life that isn't yours.

What she doesn't realize during these lost years is that her addictions aren't character flaws or moral failings. They are symptoms of a deeper sickness, the inevitable result of trying to thrive while denying her essential nature. The substances aren't her problem; they're her ineffective solution to the problem of living caged. Every binge, every blackout, every moment of self-destruction is actually her wild self fighting for survival, refusing to be completely erased.

The breaking point comes when she finds herself pregnant, staring at a positive test while surrounded by empty bottles and the wreckage of a life half-lived. For the first time, something inside her wants life more than death, wants truth more than numbness. The desire to become a mother awakens a fierce protectiveness not just for the child she's carrying, but for the woman she was meant to be all along.

Recovery begins with a radical idea: what if her feelings aren't enemies to be conquered, but messengers bringing essential information about her life? In early sobriety, she learns that emotions aren't problems to be fixed but experiences to be fully inhabited. The pain she's been running from through food and alcohol contains within it everything she needs to know about who she is and what she truly wants.

The first key to freedom is permission to feel it all. Anger becomes a boundary alert system, showing her where she's been violated or where she's violating herself. Heartbreak reveals what matters most to her, pointing toward her purpose like a red arrow. Even depression and anxiety, rather than being enemies, become teachers showing her where she's abandoned herself and how she might return. She discovers that she's been taught to medicate away the very feelings that could guide her home to herself.

The second key emerges in quiet moments of stillness: the discovery that beneath all the noise and confusion, she knows things. Not the kind of knowing that comes from books or experts, but a deep, bodily knowing that has been with her all along. When she sits quietly and drops beneath the swirling thoughts and fears, she finds a warm golden certainty that guides her toward the next right thing. This knowing doesn't give her five-year plans, but it never fails to illuminate the next single step.

The third key is perhaps the most revolutionary: the permission to imagine a life entirely of her own design. She begins to understand that her longing and discontent aren't character flaws but invitations from her imagination. The persistent whisper of "not this" becomes the starting point for discovering "this instead." She learns to ask not what she should want, but what she actually wants, and to trust that her deepest desires aren't selfish but sacred.

These three keys work together like a combination lock on the door of her cage. When she feels her emotions fully, trusts her inner knowing, and dares to imagine beyond the prescribed life, she begins to live from the inside out rather than the outside in. This shift from performing to being, from pleasing to knowing, from conforming to creating becomes the foundation for everything that follows.

The life built on pleasing others eventually reveals its fundamental instability. Her marriage, constructed on the foundation of who she thought she should be rather than who she actually was, begins to crumble under the weight of unspoken truths. Her husband's infidelity becomes a painful gift, forcing her to confront the reality that being good hadn't kept her safe, and that playing small hadn't protected her from heartbreak.

For years, she tries to rebuild their relationship using the same blueprint that failed the first time. She contorts herself further, attempting to become the wife who can forgive and forget, who can make their family whole through sheer force of will. But her body rebels against this plan, flooding her with rage every time she tries to be vulnerable with him. She realizes that her anger isn't a problem to be solved but information to be honored: her knowing is telling her that this relationship is no longer safe for her true self.

The decision to divorce comes not from hatred but from a deeper love, a recognition that staying in a marriage that requires her to abandon herself daily is not actually loving anyone well. She understands that she cannot teach her children to be brave and authentic if she remains a living example of compliance and self-betrayal. The choice to leave becomes an act of mothering not just her children, but herself.

The process of untangling a life built on false foundations is both terrifying and exhilarating. Each institution she's belonged to, each relationship that required her to be smaller, each belief that asked her to mistrust herself must be examined and either transformed or released. Some friends cannot accompany her on this journey of becoming; some family members struggle to love this new version of her who refuses to stay quietly in line.

But with each act of honoring her own truth, she grows stronger and clearer. She discovers that integrity isn't a luxury but a necessity, that having only one self instead of a public self and a private self is actually what it means to be whole. The dissolution of her marriage becomes not an ending but a beginning, the first step toward building a life that doesn't require her to disappear into it.

Love arrives like lightning, unexpected and undeniable, in the form of a woman she meets at a literary event. The attraction is immediate and overwhelming, not just physical but recognition of a depth and authenticity she's never experienced before. For the first time in her life, she understands what it means to fall in love rather than fall in line, to be chosen for who she actually is rather than who she pretends to be.

This love forces her to confront every remaining cage she's living inside. Coming out at forty means rejecting not just heterosexuality but the entire script she's been following about what her life should look like. She faces the loss of religious community, the confusion of friends and family, the potential destruction of her career built on being a certain kind of Christian writer. Yet the cost of not following this love feels infinitely higher: the permanent death of her authentic self.

Building a life with another woman requires her to imagine a new kind of family entirely. There are no blueprints for their particular configuration: her three children, their father, his new girlfriend, and her wife, all learning to love each other in unprecedented ways. They must create their own rituals, their own definitions of success, their own version of what it means to be whole. The traditional markers of a "good" family prove useless; they must discover what a true family looks like.

This relationship becomes a laboratory for learning how to love without controlling, how to be fully known without being absorbed into another person. She discovers that healthy love doesn't require her to lose herself but to find herself more completely. Her wife refuses to be managed or improved, insisting on her own autonomy even within their deep intimacy. This teaches her that love is not about making someone perfect for you, but about seeing someone perfectly as they are.

The building of an authentic life proves to be ongoing work requiring constant vigilance against the forces that would pull her back into performance and pretense. She learns to check decisions against her inner knowing rather than external approval, to choose discomfort with truth over comfort with lies, to build from her imagination rather than her indoctrination. Each choice to live authentically makes the next authentic choice easier, creating a momentum toward freedom that becomes unstoppable.

Freedom brings with it both opportunity and responsibility. As she steps more fully into her authentic self, she discovers that her sensitivity, once considered a weakness, is actually her superpower. The same depth of feeling that led her to addiction now fuels her activism and art. She realizes that those who feel deeply are not broken but essential, serving as early warning systems for a world that has grown dangerously numb.

Her platform as a writer becomes a launching pad for addressing injustices that break her heart: immigrant children separated from their families, the epidemic of violence against women, the ongoing legacy of racism and inequality. She learns that personal healing and social justice are not separate endeavors but two sides of the same coin. The work of becoming authentic inevitably leads to the work of creating a more authentic world.

Motherhood in the age of awakening requires her to parent differently than she was parented. Instead of trying to protect her children from all discomfort, she focuses on teaching them to trust themselves in the midst of difficulty. Rather than raising them to be good, she commits to raising them to be whole. This means allowing them to fail, to feel their feelings fully, to discover their own gifts and boundaries rather than inheriting hers.

Her relationship with her children's father evolves into something unprecedented: a conscious co-creation of family that transcends traditional definitions. They learn to put the children's need for security above their own discomfort with change, to model forgiveness and flexibility rather than rigidity and resentment. Their divorced family becomes more loving and functional than their married family ever was, proof that form matters less than intention.

The integration of all aspects of her life becomes the final frontier of living untamed. She refuses to compartmentalize her identities, insisting on being fully herself in every context. Whether speaking to Christian audiences about her gay marriage or discussing faith with secular crowds, she brings her whole self to every interaction. This integration comes with costs but also with profound liberation: the exhausting work of managing multiple selves finally ends, replaced by the simpler work of being who she is.

This extraordinary journey from caged to wild reveals that authenticity is not a destination but a daily choice, requiring constant vigilance against the forces that would diminish us back into compliance. The greatest tragedy is not that we suffer, but that we suffer in service of lives we never actually chose, abandoning our deepest selves to fit into boxes designed by others who never had to live inside them.

The path to freedom requires three revolutionary acts: feeling our emotions without numbing them, trusting our inner knowing over external authority, and daring to imagine lives of our own design. This process is not comfortable or convenient, but it is necessary for anyone who refuses to reach the end of their days wondering what their real life might have looked like. For those ready to stop performing and start living, to stop pleasing and start being, to stop hiding and start shining, this story offers both permission and a roadmap toward their own untaming.