So if you have little ones around grab your headphones now.

Hey, it's Marie Forleo, and welcome to another episode of MarieTV and the Marie Forleo Podcast.

So today you are in for a treat.

I have one of my dearest friends, she's a brilliant writer and she's got a new book

out that I know you are going to love.

Glennon Doyle is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Love Warrior, which

was an Oprah's Book Club selection, as well as the New York Times bestseller, Carry On

Warrior.

Glennon is an activist and speaker, and she's the founder and president of Together Rising.

She lives in Florida with her wife and three children.

Her latest book, Untamed, is available now.

Glennon.

Hi baby.

I know my audio guy's like, "What the hell is she doing?"

You guys, Untamed.

I texted you from the plane, I was halfway through.

I was bursting out of my skin because this thing is incredible.

I was like, "Who is my friend?

Who has my friend become?

How has she become one of the most brilliant moving writers I've ever had the pleasure

of reading in my life."

I have so many damn underlines in here, I'm like, "Holy cow, this interview is going to

be ..." I was like, asked you, texted you, "How long do you have today?"

Because this conversation's going to be big.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

I can't believe you said bursting out of your skin.

That's what I want this to do.

Let's get women to burst out of their skin.

And it will, and it will.

I have a feeling it's going to be atop anything that you can possibly imagine.

So.

I love the line, "When women learn how to please, we forget who we are."

For those in our audience who may not know who you are quite yet, or just may not be

familiar with your story and your journey, can you share a little bit about what inspired

you to write Untamed?

I will share another line.

I've been doing this a lot in this interview you guys, basically telling Glennon about

her own brilliant words.

"What follows is how I got caged and how I got free."

Yeah.

Well, who I am.

I've spent the last 10 years writing and speaking about feminism really, about women trusting

themselves and believing in themselves and conspiring together and challenging institutions

and ideas.

Then I got all of that tested fairly recently, a few years ago.

I was struggling for many reasons in my marriage.

That was the last book, and I was at an event, and a woman walked in the door and I looked

at her and three words swelled up in my being, and the words were, "There she is."

For a long time, I thought those words had come from on high.

This was some magical Disney moment.

It took me a while to realize that those words had actually come from within, right?

That I was actually hearing from the voice of the person I was before the world told

me who to be, right?

Because I fell in love with her, and it was the first time I'd loved someone beyond the

people who I had had been conditioned to love, right?

I wanted her so much, and it was the first time I had wanted something beyond who I'd

been trained to want and what I'd been trained to want.

Right?

What unfolded next was this question, will I trust that voice?

Will I trust myself?

Because what I realized is it's one thing to be a feminist out in the world saying,

"Believe women, trust in women," and it's quite another thing to become a woman who

actually trusts herself.

Yes.

Right?

Because the whole rest of the world, you can imagine, the whole rest of the world was saying

to me, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no," about upending my life, and following my truth to

love Abby.

But I think that's when you realize that you're starting to untame when the whole rest of

the world is going, "No," and you're going, "Yeah."

That is the good stuff.

Yes.

You're like, "If this makes no sense to me the world, then this must be me finally hearing

from myself."

Yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

Again, for those who don't know your journey specifically, all of this was going down when

your last book was soaring to the top of the charts.

Oprah had you on the show.

We're talking about marriage, you're a faith-based person.

There's all of these different layers and it's like, "Whoa!"

And life isn't convenient that way.

Yes.

Right?

You'll get tested right at the moment...

You'll get tested.

The universe will say, "That's nice that you're out there preaching that.

Do you believe it?"

Right?

Because yeah, I announced my divorce I think a few weeks before my book came out that was

touted as a marriage redemption, and this is life, right?

Yes.

This is life.

Yes.

Before we go any further, we have a lot of writers and aspiring writers and creators

in our audience, and I want to take a little bit of a right turn for a minute into the

structure of the book, because I get asked a lot of questions about, "Oh my gosh, I have

this other idea for a book," or, "I want to write my first one, how do I do it?"

What I so appreciated about yours, was it's like these little...

I would call them almost like little chapterettes, toastettes, little delicious pieces of toast

that I want to put tomatoes and mozzarella on, and then we go into an area that there's

Q&A, and then it's different.

It is untamed and it's structured.

So I'm curious from the craft of writing side, did you go in with that intention or did the

book reveal that to you as you were writing it?

It felt to me, writing this book –– art, feels to me the same way that religion or

sexuality, all these categories that we have, right?

So I have this wild faith inside of me, right?

This unique wild idea about who God is and who I am and how we co-create together, and

then I get this blueprint for religion, and I'm like, "Not that.

It doesn't fit in there," right?

Yeah.

Or I have this a sexual identity, right?

That's weird and different, and I can't really explain and was different last year than it

is this year.

Then they're like, "Here's the blueprints for sexuality."

I'm like, "What's in here, the wild in here doesn't fit inside there," which is what a

lot of people are saying now, which is why our old ideas of sexuality are crumbling,

and our old ideas of religion are crumbling, right?

Yes.

Same with art.

I wrote this book which is really about getting that wild inside out into the world and living

with integrity, which means that our insides match our outsides, right?

In a very structured way at first, it was essay after essay about what it means to be

a woman in the world.

And I sat down with a dear friend, and I was figuring out why isn't this working?

By the way, this is 100,000 words in.

Okay?

Yeah.

That's no small amount.

That...

No, at that point you're like, "I'll just make this work."

Right?

Yeah.

We figured out, "Oh, you're writing a book about being untamed and you're trying to put

it in an old structure that's been created by somebody else."

You're trying to birth this thing, this idea.

I mean art is just about having a vision inside of us and somehow through all this blood,

sweat and tears, making it real in the world.

You have this particular wild vision inside of you and you're trying to fit it into somebody

else's structure.

Burn it, throw it away, let it all burn.

Start over.

The opening vignette is about a cheetah.

I wrote it like that cheetah.

I want to run through this.

I don't want to second guess myself, I don't want to try to fit it into anybody, I want

the reader to be breathless by the end.

Right?

That's how I wrote it, and I think it feels wild.

It does.

It feels fantastic, and when I say it makes sense, I mean on an intuitive and soulful

level, not necessarily from a logical structured place because that's why I was like, "Yes."

I was like, "Even how this book unfolds is untamed."

I'm curious, from the publishing standpoint or editing standpoint, did you get some pushback

initially or...

Yes.

Yes, okay.

Cool.

Talk...

If you don't get to pushback initially, that means you're not doing anything new.

Yes.

Right?

Absolutely.

It's very interesting to be an artist because your job is to always push the envelope, to

always do the next thing that no one's ever seen before.

But inherent in that is that you're bringing that new thing to a structure that is built

on, but all of these other things have worked.

Totally.

Right?

It is your job as the visionary to push back on that.

It is their job by the way, to still say, "Yikes."

But that's why it's so important to be with a team and be with an editor, be with a publishing

house that believes in your vision even when they're afraid.

Absolutely.

Right?

We experienced that with Everything is Figureoutable too, and I was really grateful to have people

that I could have those tough conversations with and that we can go back and forth, and

for me to be able to just remind them like, "Hey, here's why you invested in me because

you saw something different than I was going to do something a little different."

Yeah, I just...

And you trust your people that they'll get it, right?

Yes.

It's not just with art, it's with your life, it's with your relationship, it's with the

way that you speak about your faith.

Like, "Oh my God, that's scary.

That doesn't fit into the mold."

I think they'll get it.

Yes, 100%.

I think they'll get it, and even if they don't agree, they're going to feel that...

They might not say, they're going to feel the truth and the beauty in it.

That's right.

Right?

We're not trying to be right, and when you're an artist and they say, "That won't sell,"

you have to say, "Okay, all right.

I'd much rather make what's real and true and see what happens than change this thing

to fit what you tell me will happen next."

Yes, absolutely.

You talked about the cheetah story, which by the way, come on.

I love a theme.

Let's stay on theme, baby.

The story about the cheetah and the dirty pink bunny, oh my God, I was laughing but

also the metaphor of that just struck me so hard.

I'm wondering if you can share that story, because I think it alludes to the fact that

so many of us begin to get caged at a very early age.

Yeah.

I love that day, because when you're messing with ideas in your mind and then you see the

metaphor for it in the world, there's no more exciting moment, right?

Yeah.

I'm at the zoo, this safari park with my daughters, and we go to this thing called the cheetah

run.

This is the park's big event for the day.

The zookeeper comes out, and she's holding the leash of a lab.

I'm like, "What?"

She says, "Is this our cheetah?"

The kids all say, "No."

She said, "You're right.

This is Minnie the lab.

We raised Minnie alongside Tabitha, the cheetah, so that we could tame her.

Now, Tabitha and Minnie are best friends, and Tabitha does whatever Minnie does."

Something about it, and we watched the cheetah run.

Tabitha...

Minnie went first, and they attached this pink stuff, dirty bunny to a Jeep, this little

Jeep, and then the Jeep took off, and Minnie the lab chased the dirty pink bunny, right?