Glennon Doyle is truly living untamed. She is the founder of Together Rising and the author of several bestselling books, including Untamed, her most recent memoir and our new favorite masterpiece! We both breezed through Untamed in like two sittings. It was unparalleled. All of her books are on our bedside tables, and we know we can always open up to a random page and trust that her memories will give us a laugh/cry combo and a powerful truth bomb we all need to hear.

We connected with Glennon on such a deep level — her commitment to sharing and listening like we’ve been friends forever keeps inspiring us to be present and be ourselves more than ever! One of the key takeaways from our conversation with Glennon was the internalized misogyny of joy. Talk about deep stuff.

Glennon dropped some major wisdom and food for thought. She found that once she became happy, it made her unrelatable to people. The more joyful she got, the more people came up to her telling her how relatable she USED to be. 

So she came to the conclusion that we love suffering women in this culture. And society wants our women to be humble, and messy, and sad. She started noticing it right after she met her wife Abby. There was a huge firestorm after she announced that she was in love with Abby and would be marrying her. Entire religious denominations — ones that she wasn’t even a part of — were writing takedown pieces on her kicking her out of their denominations.

There’s something ingrained in us to make us think, “there’s just something I don’t like about her.” Glennon recognized that it’s our own internalized misogyny. The more successful, bold, and powerful a man becomes, the more people like him, but for a woman it’s the opposite. And Glennon experienced all of this firsthand as she moved out of a space of pain and suffering and into a space of joy.

So how did she push past all of that? By moving past the martyr mentality. A lot of the criticism came from owning it all for the first time. But what she found was that the truth ALWAYS stands up. She realized that sometimes when you’re a woman, criticism and people not liking you feels like the end of the world…but it’s not! Glennon learned that people don’t expect you to be perfect, they just expect you to be honest. And so that’s what she did. Making it through all the criticism and seeing so many people hate her made her feel fearless, and she hasn’t looked back since.

At the end of the day, it’s all about trusting and honoring yourself by liberating yourself with the truth!

Want to revisit our incredible conversation with Glennon? Listen to it here!