That Friday Freeling

Almost every Friday a post will be released for all subscribers which will consist of an excerpt from a book with some thoughts. Here is the premier.

This week's book: Untamed by Glennon Doyle

I finally got around to reading this book. Glennon Doyle's memoir Untamed was recommended to me by a dear friend while on a Yoga Retreat in Costa Rica (perfect timing, I know). As I flip through the pages I find myself nodding my head up and down in agreement, laughing out loud, holding my breath for no other reason than that I am taking it all in and I must have forgotten to inhale. When I do take a full breath in, I release stale air out. It's amazing what a book can do to you.

Excerpt

Scene: Glennon at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France inside the Mona Lisa room.

I stared from a distance, trying to appreciate her. I really didn't understand what all the fuss was about. I wonder if all the jostling people understood or if they were just acting like they did. A woman walked over and stood next to me.
She said, "You know, there's a theory about her smile. Want to hear it?"
"Yes, please," I said.
"Mona Lisa and her husband lost a baby. Sometime later, her husband commissioned this painting from da Vinci to celebrate the birth of another baby. Mona Lisa sat for Leonardo to paint her, but she wouldn't smile during the sitting. Not all the way. The story goes that da Vinci wanted her to smile wider, but she refused. She did not want the joy she felt for her new baby to erase the pain she felt from losing the first. There in her half smile is her half joy. Or maybe it's her full joy and her full grief all at the same time. She has the look of a woman who has just realized a dream but still carries the lost dream inside of her. She wanted her whole life to be present on her face. She wanted everyone to remember, so she wouldn't pretend."
Now I understand what the fuss is all about. Mona Lisa is the patron saint of honest, resolute, fully human women - women who feel and who know. She is saying to us:

Don't tell me to smile.
I will not be pleasant.
Even trapped here, inside two dimensions, you will see the truth.
You will see my life's brutal and beautiful right here on my face.

The world will not be able to stop staring.

~Glennon Doyle, Untamed 2020

Thoughts

First, wow. I think back to the multiple times I have played tour guide for friends and family at the Louvre and wish that I had given Mona Lisa more of my time, despite the crowds and workers rushing me along. I type "mona lisa" in my Google Photos search engine and click on one of the photos I took of the painting. I give her a good hard look. It's like I am seeing her for the first time. I get it. I think to myself.

Second, is this story really true? From some digging around I unearthed some truth to it. It is believed that Mona Lisa is Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the wife of a silk merchant. There is evidence that the type of gauze veil on the dress she was wearing indicates that she was either pregnant or had recently given birth, and historical accounts do show that she had lost a baby girl in the year 1499, which aligns with the calculated dating period of when the painting was drawn in the early 1500s.

Last, but not in any chance least, Glennon Doyle is such as badass and talented writer. "She has the look of a woman who has just realized a dream but still carries the lost dream inside of her." How many of you can relate to this? Often the woman tends to put on a big smile and carry on like the world is full of rainbows and unicorns while her insides are on fire. I've listened to the calmest and coolest women, the "got-their-shit-together" women, and the happiest-go-luckiest of women tell me about their depression, the tornado of emotions swirling inside of them. While admiring them from a ledge, nobody would have guessed that they felt they were at their edge. Mona Lisa's smile all those years ago is a reminder that we can wear both emotions on our faces; hold contrasting feelings in our hearts. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Our portrait does not need filtering. We do not need to be coerced into smiling for the camera.

Grazie, Mona Lisa.

~Zavoir