Walking Away from Cages

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I was reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle, and I had to close the book at one point because the tears wouldn’t stop.

She wrote about walking away from cages, and I knew with my whole body what she meant.

For most of my life, I lived inside invisible cages.
Cages of conditioning.
Cages of performance.
Cages of survival.

I didn’t know who I was, not entirely, until my late thirties.
That’s when I began to tap in.
But the timing was painful, because while I was trying to tap in the relationship, I was in was trying to tap me out emotionally.
By the time I got free, I felt like I was starting all over again.

Even leaving that relationship felt like another cage.
I wanted it to work, not just because I loved the person, but because I had experienced so much failure in love that another ending felt like proof that something was wrong with me.
But walking away was the first time I truly began walking toward myself.

Over time, I’ve been learning to leave the cages behind.
Some of them were locked by people.
But most of them were built by programming beliefs I inherited before I even knew they weren’t mine.

In the book, Glennon asks,
 “Were we ever allowed to just be?”

That question hit me like a wave.

Because I don’t remember a time I was.
By age 10, she writes, we’ve already been programmed.
And when I think about it, that’s probably when I started fantasizing about marriage, babies, the white picket fence.
Not because I saw it modeled in my home, but because I saw it on TV.
In Disney movies.
In the magazines I flipped through while my mother ignored me.
In the books I read, no one screened or explained.

So, no, it’s not always our parents who trap us.
It’s the culture.
The world.
The subtle seeds planted in us over time, teaching us who to be, what to want, how to look, and what a “good life” is supposed to be.

But those seeds weren’t mine.
They were given to me.
And now, I’m finally handing them back.

I am walking away from:

  • Beliefs that told me I couldn’t express anger

  • Ideas that said my body had to look a certain way

  • Stories that said love has to look like struggle

  • Roles I never signed up for but felt obligated to play

And as I leave those cages, I find…
 New love.
 New faith.
 New worldview.
 New identity.
 New purpose.

This is the rebranding of my life.
Not for the world — for me.

I’m no longer interested in being palatable.
I’m interested in being free.


Walk Away from the Cages

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