Untamed

What's inside (7 sections)

1. The marriage before Abby
2. Meeting Abby and telling the truth
3. Kids and relearning parenthood
4. Faith and the body
5. What I argued with and what I kept
6. Key takeaways
7. FAQ

I started Untamed on a Saturday because three different friends had mentioned it in the same month, each in a different tone. One loved it. One rolled her eyes. One said it made her call her sister. That mix made me curious. The book came out in 2020 from The Dial Press, 352 pages in hardcover, and it reads fast for a memoir because Doyle writes in short bursts. I finished it in two sittings with a lot of pauses to argue in my head.

The short version is this. Doyle was married to Craig Melton, the father of her three kids, after years of building a public life around faith and family and recovery. The marriage was strained and honest work was happening, but something was off. At a conference she meets Abby Wambach, the retired soccer star, and feels a jolt she cannot explain away. She eventually leaves the marriage, falls in love with Abby, and rebuilds her home around honesty and desire rather than approval. That sounds simple. The book is about why it was not.

Doyle opens with a memory that sets the tone. She takes her daughter Tish to watch a cheetah at the zoo. The cheetah is supposed to run, but it just paces and lies down. A handler says it has learned to be tame. Doyle watches Tish watch the animal and feels sick. She sees herself in the cage. That image returns again and again. It is a little on the nose, but it works because it is concrete. You picture the animal and the girl.

The marriage before Abby

Doyle does not trash Craig. That surprised me. She describes a good man who loved her and worked hard, and a marriage that held a lot of love while slowly losing truth. They had three young kids, Tish and Chase and Amma, a house full of schedules, and a public story that made splitting feel impossible. She had written about being a good wife and mother. Readers felt they knew her. She felt trapped by the version of herself she had sold.

She writes about trying to fix it from inside. Counseling. Prayer. Date nights. Honest talks after the kids went to bed. Some of it helped for a week. None of it touched the deeper flatness. She describes lying awake doing math about the future, counting years until the kids left, wondering if longing was something mothers were supposed to give up. Those pages are quiet and sad. There is no villain. There is just two people pulling in different directions while trying to be kind.

Her own history matters here. Doyle has written before about bulimia and drinking and the early chaos of her twenties. She got sober, found faith, married Craig, had kids close together. By the time this book starts she has been sober for years and speaks openly about recovery. She credits structure for saving her. Then she starts to wonder if the same structure that kept her sober is now keeping her small. Rules that once protected her feel tight around the chest.

I appreciated that she lets Craig be human. He plays and laughs with the kids. He shows up. When talks turn serious he listens. The problem is not cruelty. The problem is that Doyle feels she abandoned herself to keep the peace, smiling in photos while feeling numb inside. She calls that numbness death by a thousand small yeses, though not in those words. She means church volunteer yeses and school committee yeses and smile-for-the-camera yeses.

What hit me early: she treats self abandonment as a habit, not a single choice.

There are scenes with her sister Amanda that break the tension. Amanda is blunt and funny and acts as a mirror. When Doyle spirals, Amanda says the plain thing. When Doyle tries to spiritualize a bad decision, Amanda laughs. I wished there was more of her. The book is strongest when other voices enter and Doyle has to answer them.

Meeting Abby and telling the truth

The meeting is famous now. Doyle is speaking at a conference. Abby Wambach is also there. Doyle sees her across a room and feels what she describes as a bell ringing inside. She is still married. She goes home confused. She tries to pray it away. She tries to explain it as admiration. It does not go away.

What follows is messy in a way I found believable. Doyle does not present herself as brave right away. She stalls. She cries in the car. She talks to friends who tell her to be careful. She talks to God in language that is angry and raw. She worries about her kids and her parents and her readers. She worries about being wrong about her own heart. That worry feels honest. Anyone who has felt a sudden pull while committed will recognize the panic.

She tells Craig. Those are hard pages. She does not write them as triumph. She writes them as grief. Papers are signed. They set up separate bedrooms. Then they tell Tish and Chase and Amma that Mom and Dad will live in different houses. The kids react in kid ways, with questions about dogs and holidays and who will be at soccer games. Doyle lets those details sit without smoothing them. I respected that she did not turn pain into a lesson too fast.

Falling for Abby is written with a lot of heat and a lot of fear. Abby is newly retired, famous, used to pressure and crowds, also working on sobriety. They bond over recovery meetings and late talks and the strangeness of being known by strangers. Doyle describes Abby with awe that sometimes tips into fan talk, which is one of my criticisms. At times Abby sounds more like a symbol than a partner. But there are grounded scenes too, cooking in a small kitchen and learning how to fight without leaving.

The proposal and wedding are not the climax. The book treats them as facts rather than fireworks. What matters more is the decision to live openly as a queer woman after years of identifying as straight and Christian. Doyle knows some readers will feel betrayed. She addresses them directly but without begging. She says she can no longer trade honesty for belonging. That line, in my own paraphrase, captures the whole project.

Kids and relearning parenthood

The parenting sections were my favorite and the most useful. Tish is sensitive and strong, an early teen who asks sharp questions. Chase is tender and anxious, quick to feel what others feel. Amma is younger, funny, direct. Doyle writes about learning to parent each child differently instead of applying one rule to all three.

One story stuck with me. Tish comes home upset about expectations around looks and clothes. Doyle wants to fix it with advice. Instead she listens and later talks about how girls are taught to be pretty and quiet and grateful. She tells Tish she can be wild when needed and angry out loud when something is wrong. It is not subtle, but as a parent I felt the pull. How often do we comfort a child back into the same box that hurt them?

Chase gets pages about sensitivity. He cries easily. Coaches tell him to toughen up. Doyle admits she used to worry he would be picked on. Then she watches Abby play with him in the yard, rough and gentle at once, and sees that softness can live alongside strength. She stops trying to harden him. She starts protecting his nature. I have a soft kid in my extended family, and those pages made me put the book down for a while.

Amma brings humor. She asks about God and divorce and whether Abby likes leftovers. Kids cut through adult speeches. Doyle lets Amma's questions expose where her own explanations are thin. When Doyle gives a polished answer, Amma frowns. When Doyle says I do not know yet, Amma relaxes. That pattern repeats with all three kids. Honesty calms them more than plans do.

Doyle also rethinks discipline. She stops using shame as a shortcut. She apologizes to her kids out loud when she yells. She tells them about her own mistakes in age right language. Some readers will find this too permissive. I found it refreshing, though I wanted more about limits. Love without boundaries can tip into chaos, and the book sometimes skips the boring parts of bedtime and homework and money where boundaries live.

Parenting shift I kept: feeling first, lesson second, and apology as routine.

Her ex remains present as a co parent, and to Doyle's credit she shows him showing up for games and school events. Blended family logistics get honest treatment. Who sleeps where on holidays. How to introduce Abby without forcing the kids to perform happiness. What to do when Tish misses the old house. These are small scenes, but they carry weight because they are specific.

Faith and the body

Doyle grew up Catholic and later became part of evangelical spaces as a writer and speaker. Untamed pushes hard against that training. She writes about a God who feels closer in nature and quiet than in services. She writes about prayer as listening to inner knowing rather than reciting correct words. Readers who share her old church background may feel stung. Readers who left similar spaces will feel seen.

The body is central. Doyle connects her teen eating disorder to years of trying to be small and pleasing. She describes workouts that felt like punishment and diets that felt like control. As an adult she starts to move for joy, lifting and running because it feels good, eating without apology. Abby, as an athlete, models a different tie to the body, one built on power and use rather than display. That contrast helps Doyle, though at times the book leans too hard on athlete as ideal. Not every reader can or wants to find freedom through sport.

There is a chapter built around memos and permission slips that many people quote. Doyle imagines the messages girls receive, to be good and pretty, and rewrites them. Feel it all. Want what you want. Disappoint the right people. I liked the energy, even when the writing turned slogan like. The point is clear. Women are trained to doubt their own signals, then blamed for feeling lost.

Work gets examined too. Doyle built a career on confession and help, with books and talks and a large online following. She asks when helping becomes performing. She describes saying yes to stages while her home felt thin. After meeting Abby she starts saying no more often, canceling trips, writing less for a season, choosing presence over platform. As someone who juggles freelance gigs, I felt both envy and doubt. It is easier to choose presence when money allows it, and the book does not fully face that gap.

Race and privilege come up briefly, and this is where I wanted more. Doyle notes she is white and resourced and protected in ways that make breakout easier. She nods to friends and writers who taught her, and she urges readers to listen wider. Those passages feel sincere but short. A memoir centered on personal freedom can sound tone deaf if it skips how money and safety shape choice. She names it, but she moves on fast to keep the focus on family.

I also want to note the style. Short chapters. Lots of white space. Some chapters are two pages. Some are a story. Some are a talk she gave. That rhythm makes the book easy to pick up, but it can feel choppy. Ideas repeat. The cheetah returns. The bell returns. The memo returns. Repetition helps a message stick on stage, less so on page 280 when you want new ground.

What I argued with and what I kept

Let me be plain about friction. Doyle can sound certain about inner voice in a way that worried me. Follow your knowing sounds freeing until you remember that feelings can mislead. She admits mistakes, but the book rarely shows a time when her gut was wrong and she had to turn back. That missing story would have made the trust theme stronger. Without it, discernment looks like impulse with better lighting.

The excerpts about Craig will divide readers. Some will think she was brave to leave. Some will think she broke a good family for a spark. The book does not settle that. It shows kids crying and then adjusting, shows Craig hurt and then steady, shows Doyle guilty and then lighter. Life is like that. Two true things at once. I wished she had given Craig more pages in his own words, even a letter or interview, so his view felt less filtered.

Money is the quiet gap. Doyle talks about choosing love over image, but she writes from a house with help and a platform that pays. Most mothers weighing divorce do math about rent and childcare and health care. The book mentions fear, but not budgets. That does not make her story false. It makes it partial. Readers without a safety net may need to translate her advice into smaller steps.

What I kept is still a lot. I kept the cheetah image for my own daughter, not as a lecture but as a question about cages we accept. I kept the apology habit with kids. I kept the pause before yes, asking whose approval I am chasing. I kept the line of thought about feeling rather than numbing, picking a walk over scrolling when I am flat. Those are small moves, but they add up across weeks.

I also kept her view of love as action. Doyle shows love for Abby not only as spark but as showing up for school pickup and recovery meetings and hard talks with exes. She shows love for kids not only as pride but as listening when they correct her. She shows love for herself not only as treats but as telling the truth before it curdles. That practical streak saves the book from floating away.

Would I lend it? Yes, to the right person at the right time. If you are in a strained marriage, read slowly and talk to someone you trust, because this book can sound like permission when you may need counsel. If you parent girls, the middle chapters will spark good talk at the table. If memoir with spiritual talk annoys you, you will skim parts. I skimmed a few and still found enough to mark up.

I closed the last page thinking about Tish watching that cheetah. At the start Doyle sees herself in the animal. By the end she sees her kids watching her. Are they learning to pace a pretty cage or to run when the gate opens? That question is direct and a little heavy handed, yet it landed for me because it is about example, not theory. Kids watch how we live more than what we post. Doyle decided to live wider even though it cost her the old story. Whether you agree with each choice, the honesty about cost feels real, and that is why the book spread so fast after 2020 and still gets passed along.

FAQ

Who is Abby Wambach in Untamed?

She is the retired American soccer star Doyle meets at a conference and later marries after divorcing Craig Melton.

When was Untamed published and how long is it?

It was published in 2020 by The Dial Press and runs 352 pages in hardcover.

Who are Doyle's children in the book?

Tish, Chase, and Amma, who live across a blended co-parenting home with Craig and Abby.