Untamed

Part 3 commences with Doyle’s life at thirteen years old as she battles bulimia. Doyle details fighting the Ache, which, by the age of ten, “has become my constant interrupter” (82). The Ache creeps up on Doyle and fills her with thoughts of death and depression. She discovers bingeing and purging at age ten and uses bulimia to keep her “busy, distant, distracted” (83). While relying on her bulimia in private to quiet the Ache, Doyle begins to rely on alcohol in public. By the time she is twenty-five, Doyle is distanced from her family, coughing up blood, and has been arrested multiple times. Soon, she finds out she is pregnant and feels “a deep desire to grow and birth and raise a person” (84). This desire overrides the Ache and Doyle decides “to get sober and reenter the land of the living” (84). As Doyle struggles with withdrawal and morning sickness, she teaches third grade and finds herself repeatedly passing by a friend’s classroom and reading a sign “which says in big black block letters: WE CAN DO HARD THINGS” (85). This message becomes her new mantra.

Ten years later, Doyle is now a successful writer with three children and a husband.