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Nikki DeLoach is speaking out about her painful childhood, the toll it took on her mental health, and how she moved forward. 

The Hallmark Channel star was a guest on the December 11 episode of the Syndicate X Library YouTube series Books That Changed My Life. She spoke with host Chris Collins about how discovering Glennon Doyle’s bestselling self-help book Untamed helped her come to terms with her experiences of childhood sexual abuse. 

Nikki DeLoach say Glennon Doyle’s ‘Untamed’ helped her ‘learn to love myself’

“The first chapter in [Untamed]…[Glennon] talks about being 10 years old and at 10 years old that’s when we’re taught what it looks like to be a ‘good girl,’” DeLoach, 46, said. “At 10 years old is when [the sexual abuse] happened to me, and I was silenced, and wasn’t allowed to actually say what happened to me. And so at 10 years old, I was told that being a ‘good girl’ was letting boys do anything to you and keeping your mouth shut, letting adults do anything to you and keeping your mouth shut, that my life was not worthy of protection, that there was something so deeply broken and unloveable about me that I didn’t deserve that.”

That effects of that trauma on DeLoach were deep and long-lasting. She developing “disordered eating” habits and “just began to disappear.”  

“Man, did it take me decades to untangle that and learn to love myself, and this book was such a huge part of me being able to do that,” she said. 

DeLoach, who recently starred in the Hallmark’s A Grand Ole Opry Christmas, said she connected immediately with Doyle’s message.

“I had been following Glennon … when she began to post about this I was like, ‘Oh this is different,’” she recalled. “I would read anything that she wrote.  I think I devoured the book in two days.I could not stop. I read it again and again and bought it on Audible and I just kept listening to it until I could repeat the words back to myself.”

Hallmark star has given away dozens of copies of ‘Untamed’ 

The All-New Mickey Mouse Club alum wanted to spread the word about Untamed and “proceeded to buy it for every woman on every set I was on for years. I’ve probably bought between 60 and 70 copies of this book for people.”

For DeLoach, reading Untamed helped her connect with a childhood self she thought she had lost. 

“We are all placed in cages at very young ages, and we lose who we are,” she said of the book’s message. “And then if we’re lucky, we spend the rest of our lives remembering, getting back to what our soul came into this world to be. When she says ‘Untamed’ it’s really, ‘What is your wild, untamed, uncaged self?; and ‘How can we become that and bravely live that every single day in spite of what society tells us?’”

DeLoach said that since discovering Untamed, she’s been better able to accept who she is, “flaws and all.”  

“I don’t beat myself up for mistakes. I know how to repair with myself, I know how to repair with others,” she said. “I don’t betray myself or abandon myself, anymore … I finally, after so long, love myself.”

The book was so impactful that DeLoach – a lifelong avid reader – that she’s now working on her own book.  

“I’ve been asked. I’m chipping away at it,” she said. “It took me two years to say yes and finally I did. So I’m working on it.”

How to get help: If you or someone you know has been sexually abused, text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 for free and confidential support.

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