Untamed - Glennon Doyle Page 0,77

must be forged by us.

Anger delivers important information about where one of our boundaries has been crossed. When we answer the door and accept that delivery, we begin to know ourselves better. When we restore the boundary that was violated, we honor ourselves. When we know ourselves and honor ourselves, we live with integrity, peace, and power—understanding that we are the kind of woman who will be wise and brave enough to care for herself. Good stuff.

And there’s more. Even better stuff comes when we go deeper. When we say, “Okay. I understand that this is my boundary.” But what is a boundary anyway?

A boundary is the edge of one of our root beliefs about ourselves and the world.

We are like computers, and our beliefs are the software with which we’re programmed. Often our beliefs are programmed into us without our knowledge by our culture, community, religion, and family. Even though we don’t choose those subconscious programs, they run our lives. They control our decisions, perspectives, feelings, and interactions, so they determine our destiny. What we believe, we become. There is nothing more important than unearthing what we really believe to be true about ourselves and our world—and nothing unearths what we really believe faster than examining what pisses us off.

My anger at my ex-husband was a relentless doorbell trying to alert me that a major boundary of mine had been crossed. My boundary was the edge of this root belief of mine: The most important values in a marriage are honesty, loyalty, and faithfulness, and when those are gone, I am no longer safe.

That belief of mine was neither right nor wrong. Beliefs have nothing to do with objective universal morality and everything to do with each person’s specific, personal one. In this case, I decided to accept and keep this root belief about marriage and loyalty because it served me, made me feel safe, and felt true to me. I accepted that delivery and brought it right into my second marriage.

But sometimes my anger delivers to my door a root belief that I don’t want to keep.

Abby works hard and rests hard. Often in the middle of a weekday, she will lie down on our couch and watch zombie shows. When she does this, I get clenched and tight. I get agitated, then angry, because she is relaxing at me. I start tidying loudly and aggressively in the couch’s vicinity. She hears my violent tidying and asks, “What’s wrong?” I say, “Nothing” with a tone that suggests “Something.” This dance plays out again and again: Abby relaxing on the couch and me getting angry about it and Abby getting angry that I’m getting angry.

We talk this out, again and again. You have not seen talking until you’ve seen the incessant talking of two married women who are introspective spiritual seekers and also sober so they have nothing else to do. We adore each other. We never want to hurt each other. We want to understand each other and ourselves, so we really want to get to the bottom of things. So we talk, and we talk, and we always seem to arrive at this conclusion: Abby is a grown woman, and she is the boss of herself. Glennon should stop feeling angry about Abby’s decisions.

I always agree with this conclusion. My mind does, at least. But how do I get this memo to my body? What do I do with should? Should never helps me because I am dealing with what is. Layering a judgment on top of a feeling doesn’t change the feeling. How do I not become angry? How do I not become…activated?

One day I walked into our family room and saw Abby jump off the couch and begin straightening pillows, trying to look busy and productive for my sake. I stopped in my tracks and stared at her while a memory from childhood floated into my mind. When I was young, if I was at home relaxing on the couch and I heard my parents’ car pull up in the driveway, I’d panic, jump off the couch, and try to look busy before they opened the door. Exactly like I’d just seen Abby do.

That’s when I stopped looking at Abby and thinking: What is my anger telling me about her? And started asking: What is my anger telling me about me? My anger was delivering a package with one of my root beliefs in it—a belief that was programmed into me during