Untamed

When I got pregnant with Chase and quit drinking, drugging, and purging, I thought it might be my last chance to stop being bad and start being good. I married Chase’s father, and I learned to cook and clean and fake orgasms. I was a good wife. I had three babies and put all their needs so far ahead of my own that I forgot I had needs at all. I was a good mom. I started going to church and learned to fear God and not ask too many questions of folks who claimed to represent God. I was a good Christian. I watched beauty trends carefully, and I dyed my hair and paid to get poison injected into my forehead so I wouldn’t look too tired from all the effort it takes to be good at beauty. I started writing and released bestsellers and spoke to sold-out audiences all over the country. A woman isn’t allowed to do well unless she also does good, so I became a do-gooder for the world. I raised tens of millions of dollars for people who were hurting, and I lost a decade of sleep writing back to strangers.

You are a good woman, Glennon, they said.

I was. I was so good. I was also exhausted, anxious, and lost. I assumed that was because I wasn’t good enough yet; I just had to try a little harder.

My husband’s infidelity was a jagged gift, because it forced me to see that being a good wife wasn’t enough to keep my marriage together. Being a good mother wasn’t enough to keep my kids from pain. Being a good world saver wasn’t enough to save my own world.

Being bad had almost killed me. But so had being good.

I was talking to a dear friend around that time. She said, “G, remember that amazing Steinbeck quote? ‘And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.’ I’ve kept it on my desk for years. I looked at it last night and thought: I’m tired of being good. I’m so tired.

“Let’s change it to:

“And now that we don’t have to be good, we can be free.”