She Taught Me How to Stop Abandoning Myself

— An Open Love Letter to Glennon Doyle

The first time I read Untamed, I didn’t even know I was in a cage.

I was still pretending, still holding on to something that wasn’t working, still forcing myself into a life that was slowly killing me. It was a few weeks after the first Covid Christmas (aka 2020) and this simple stocking stuffer I’d tossed into the shopping cart on Christmas eve had turned out to be much more than a glittery covered self help book that made me ‘say sorry less’.

This was more like a great. big. giant flashlight- pointing to everything that was wrong in my life and in my marriage.

I knew I was on the “before” side of transition (it was a place I’d been before), but I had no idea what was in store for me. I’d soon be grieving the loss of so much- a marriage, a love, and a life I used to recognize as my own.

And there I was, holding a book that dared to ask:

• What if your knowing is holy?

• What if your truth is enough?

• What if staying small to keep the peace is actually the war?

I dog eared the corners and highlighted so many lines in that book I might as well have dipped the whole thing in fluorescent pink. Because every few pages, Glennon would say something that knocked the breath right out of my lungs — not because it was new, but because it was familiar. Like someone had finally written the manual for what my soul had been yearning to hear.

I wrote my favorite quotes on post-its and stuck them everywhere, reminding myself I wasn’t crazy, I was a goddamn cheetah.

And now, Glennon’s voice — which has helped so many of us crawl out of cages and into truth — has come under fire for simply daring to exist on Substack. I don’t know all the politics behind the backlash (having had a two night hospital stay this week), and I don’t need to.

What I do know is that people who tell the truth, especially messy truth, are often the ones most misunderstood. And also the ones most needed.

So I want to use my tiny corner of this platform to say: Glennon Doyle, you belong here. You belong anywhere you want to be. And thank you. Thank you for giving women like me permission to stop abandoning ourselves — even when it costs us everything.

In fact, Untamed made such an impact on me that after my husband chose to exit this world by his own hand rather than divorce me, I decided to write my own book. I wanted to my words to be the ones someone would eventually cling to to save their life, even if it was just some future version of me, re-reading my google docs “book” folder one day.

I’m not quite finished with that memoir I started nearly 4 years ago, but I want to share a little bit of it here. I didn’t name it explicitly in the chapter then — but I want to name it now.

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📖 Excerpt from my upcoming book: Apparently I'm an Author Now
(aka that time I went on a writing retreat that changed my life — but not for the reasons I expected)

Of all the Airbnbs in all the world… or at least in Austin, Texas… I somehow ended up in this one. Super cute, minimalistic with an awesome backyard, AND pet friendly? Sign me up! I was in town for what I dubbed a writing retreat — even though I had my kids, my dog, and hadn’t written a single word yet. Still, it felt like a sacred pause. After a potty break and a quick FaceTime tour with my bestie, she gave me the bossiest, most loving instruction of the whole trip:

“Go sit under that big-ass tree and start writing.”

So I did.

And what came out of me wasn’t just a chapter. It was a reckoning. I wrote about how surreal every trip feels since Jason died. About how grief cracks open time — how everything becomes a blurry line between “before he died” and “after he was gone.”

I wrote about how people ask if I’m angry at him for leaving this earth the way he did. And how my answer will always be layered and complicated and full of compassion, because if anyone saw how deeply he suffered while he was alive — it was me.

I watched him try. I watched him try so hard to fix it. I sat next to him in therapy. I saw him fight to understand his rage. I watched him self-medicate with video games and silence. I watched him grow — and still, it wasn’t enough. I will always wonder what might have been if he’d found the right kind of help. I will always hold love and heartbreak in the same trembling hand.

That was one of the first times I realized: I wasn’t just writing a book. I was writing my way out of a cage.

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And long before that trip… I’d already been building the courage to leave.

The courage to believe I was allowed to want more than survival. That I didn’t have to keep absorbing pain just to keep the peace. That love wasn’t supposed to hurt like that.

Just a few months before her book reached my hands, my ‘happily ever after’ had already started to crumble. We’d been down the road to divorce before and had spent 3 years on a counselor’s sofa repairing things, and our relationship was the best it had ever been.

Yet, it still got worse. The abuse turned physical (TW) and I began to realize that the dream of staying together forever wasn’t ever going to come true. I wasn’t going to stick around and try, not anymore. Not with someone who would hurt me like that.

This part of my story — the moment my knowing roared to life — is one I’ll never forget. It felt like the moment the “cheetah” in me woke up, just like Glennon said she did.

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📖 Excerpt: The Road to Divorce (written Oct. 2023)

Three years ago I was sitting at the kitchen table, journaling and drinking coffee, when Jason walked in. He was already tense — we'd just had to cancel a trip to see his family because of the “made up covid monster” (his words) that he’d been looking forward to for months. It didn’t take long before a regular argument turned into something else entirely.

He shoved me. Hard. Into the kitchen counter. I remember how cold the granite felt against my back. But what hit even harder than his hands was what came next — the words. The way he weaponized my dreams and spit vile all over my hopes for the future. The way he said I’d never be a life coach, that I was too fucked up to help anyone. He threw the deepest whispers and desires of my heart back at me like daggers and knives.

I slid down to the floor. My kids were asleep in their rooms, or at least I hoped.

And there, on that cold tile floor with the cabinet pressed against my back, something inside me snapped awake.

I realized: he’s never going to change. This is who he is. And I’m not going to stick around and wait for him to be someone else any longer.

I remembered what people say about abuse — that it always becomes physical eventually. And suddenly, I couldn’t unsee it. This was the end of the road. This was the moment I chose me. Chose my kids. Chose a different future.

And as terrifying as it was to walk away, the thing I carried with me, the thing I now know to be true because Glennon said it first, was this: “We can do hard things.”

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…He threw my deepest hopes and dreams back at me, like twisted and poisoned weapons. Things I’d shared in vulnerability — my desire to help women heal, my dream of becoming a life coach, my belief that maybe, maybe, I could make something beautiful out of all this pain — he spat them back at me as proof I was delusional. Broken. Unworthy. “Too messed up to ever help anyone.”

But he was wrong.

About me. About what healing looks like. About what women are capable of when they stop asking for permission.

I’m so glad I found Untamed when I did. That book landed in my hands like a lifeline. It reminded me that I wasn’t crazy for wanting more. That the wild part of me? The part that dreamed of freedom, that raged against the bars that held her in, that refused to go numb any longer — turns out she was NEVER the problem.

She was the solution.

Glennon’s words mirrored back to me what I hadn’t yet learned to say out loud: that we don’t have to keep betraying ourselves to be loved.

And now, years later, I’m that coach he swore I’d never be. A writer, a guide. A lighthouse for other women standing at the edge of the same cliff I once thought would swallow me.

Just last week, one of my clients — brave and beautiful and standing right in the thick of her own unraveling — messaged me this loving phrase:

“We can do hard things.”

I cried when I read it. Because she doesn’t even know that’s the phrase I clung to like a rope when I started over. She doesn’t know that those five words — Glennon’s words — got me through prepping for divorce, death, rage, and rebirth. And now here they are, echoing back to me through the mouth of another woman, doing her own sacred, terrifying work.

Full circle. Healing. Fire turned into light.

So yeah, I guess I’m an author now. But more than that, I’m a woman who stopped abandoning herself. A woman who burned the old script. Who gave herself permission to want more.

And Untamed was the spark.

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So if you’re someone who thinks Glennon Doyle doesn’t deserve space on this platform — I respectfully, lovingly, and fiercely disagree.

She’s one of the reasons I found the courage to take up space myself.

And to every woman reading this who feels like she’s still whispering her dreams into the void, who’s still swallowing her knowing: you belong here, too.

We’re allowed to be messy, real, healing out loud. That’s what this platform should be for.

So here’s to taking up space.
Here’s to naming the truth.
Here’s to building something beautiful from the rubble.

Miss you Glennon,
Mindy