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Before we went back inside, I snapped a picture of us, smiling with the sun setting behind us, and later I posted it. Someone commented, “Gah. You’re so lucky to have each other and this life.”

I replied, “It’s true. We are terribly lucky. It is also true that we imagined this life before it existed and then we each gave up everything for the one-in-a-million chance that we might be able to build it together. We did not fall into this world we have now, we made it. I’ll tell you this: The braver I am, the luckier I get.”

****

I’ve spent much of my life lost in the woods of pain, relation­ships, religion, career, service, success, and failure. Looking back on those times, I can trace my lostness back to a decision to make something outside myself my Touch Tree. An identity. A set of beliefs. An institution. Aspirational ideals. A job. Another person. A list of rules. Approval. An old version of myself.

Now when I feel lost, I remember that I am not the woods. I am my own tree. So I return to myself and reinhabit myself. As I do, I feel my chin rise and my body straighten.

I reach deeply into the rich soil beneath me, made up of every girl and woman I’ve ever been, every face I’ve loved, every love I’ve lost, every place I’ve been, every conversation I’ve had, every book I’ve read and song I’ve sung, everything, everything, crumbling and mixing and decomposing under­neath. Nothing wasted. My entire past there, holding me up and feeding me now. All of this too low for anyone else to see, just there for me to draw from. Then up and up all the way to my branches, my imagination, too high for anyone else to see—reaching beyond, growing toward the light and warmth. Then the middle, the trunk, the only part of me entirely visible to the world. Pulpy and soft inside, just tough enough on the outside to protect and hold me. Exposed and safe.

I am as ancient as the earth I’m planted in and as new as my tiniest bloom. I am my own Touch Tree: strong, singular, alive. Still growing.

\"PHOTO:
ABC News
PHOTO: Abby Wambach, Robin Roberts and Glennon Doyle on "Good Morning America," March 9, 2020.
>

I have everything I need, beneath me, above me, inside me.

I am never gonna lose me.

Excerpted from UNTAMED by Glennon Doyle. Copyright © 2020 by Glennon Doyle. Excerpted by permission of Dial Press, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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