Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living: THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

I had an epiphany: It must be that should and shouldn’t, right and wrong, good and bad—they’re not wild. They’re not real. They’re just culturally constructed, artificial, ever-changing cages created to maintain institutions.

I remind myself that what is really happening in the circle doesn’t matter. What matters is what people outside the circle perceive to be happening there. What matters is not what is real, but what I can convince others is real. What matters is not how I feel inside, but how I appear to feel on the outside. How I appear to feel will determine how o

But “progress” is just perpetually undoing our no-longer-true-enough systems in order to create new ones that more closely fit people as they really are. People aren’t changing, after all. It’s just that for the first time, there’s enough freedom for people to stop changing who they are. Progress is the acknowledgment of what is and what has always

This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.

Consumer culture promises us that we can buy our way out of pain—that the reason we’re sad and angry is not that being human hurts; it’s because we don’t have those countertops, her thighs, these jeans. This is a clever way to run an economy, but it is no way to run a life. Consuming keeps us distracted, busy, and numb. Numbness keeps us from becom

To me, living by faith is allowing the swelling and pressing inside me to direct my outward words and decisions. Because to me, God is not a being outside of me: God is the fire, the nudge, the warm liquid gold swelling and pressing inside me.

Every day, I returned to the closet, sat down on the floor littered with T-shirts and jeans, and I practiced sinking. The Knowing would meet me in the deep and nudge me toward the next right thing, one thing at a time. That was how I began to know what to do next. That was how I began to walk through my life more clearly, solid and steady.

In most cultures, folks like Tish are identified early, set apart as shamans, medicine people, poets, and clergy. They are considered eccentric but critical to the survival of the group because they are able to hear things others don’t hear and see things others don’t see and feel things others don’t feel. The culture depends on the sensitivity of

May the invisible order become visible. May our dreams become our plans.