Dr. Brené Brown: On Holding Boundaries & Facing Our Fear
December 2, 2021
Glennon Doyle:
Hi, everybody. We are back with Dr. Brené Brown, who is going to be answering all of your 40,000 million questions that you sent in.
Amanda Doyle:
She is not going to be accountable for that but she is not accountable for that.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
Good God. So many questions for you. Guess what? I get to ask the first question. Here’s my question. Okay, I’ve been dying to ask you this question in a public forum for years because we’ve talked about this several times in non-public forums.
Glennon Doyle:
My question for you, Dr. Brené Brown, is about the way women’s work is defined and perceived and translated in the world compared to men’s. You and I have talked about our slight, just minor frustrations around the phenomenon of our male counterparts in the world, often being defined as so many things, leadership experts, et cetera, et cetera, while no matter what we introduce ourselves as, we are often defined and I’ve even seen you defined many places, as a self-help guru.
Glennon Doyle:
Can you just … I am sure that there are many people who would think why is that even an issue? Why is that … Can you just talk to us a little bit about your thoughts about how your work is defined in the world compared to counterparts and how misogyny is laced in a lot of that?
Brené Brown:
Yeah. I’m so mad just even thinking about it. Yeah. Look, I have $125,000 in student loans. I went to school after I graduated from college for like seven years. Anyone that does what I do, any man that does what I do would be called a social scientist, researcher. They would never … There was a headline in the UK that said Self-Help Queen.
Glennon Doyle:
I remember that.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. You know, it’s diminishing.
Glennon Doyle:
Yup.
Brené Brown:
Social scientist queen, great. Send me a tiara or whatever, I’ll wear that. Great. I’ll stick my data right up there. It’s two-fold for me. One, it’s just the patriarchal gendering of me but then it’s also dismissing from a long history of rational thought over emotion. It’s dismissing my work as quaint and secondary and soft skills and optional.
Glennon Doyle:
Women’s work.
Brené Brown:
Women’s work.
Glennon Doyle:
Women’s ministry.
Brené Brown:
Oh my God. Oh my God. Don’t ever put those two words together in front … I mean, yeah. It’s so hard because it’s like I write Dare to Lead and Dare to Lead has been a really big book, but so many people in the beginning said … It’s like women read leadership books by men and women, men read leadership books by men. You know?
Brené Brown:
I don’t even like the gender binary part of that story but it’s … I don’t get it. It’s not that you feel less. It’s not that your lack of paying attention and your lack of self-awareness around your emotion is benign. You’re hurting people.
Glennon Doyle:
Yup.
Brené Brown:
You know? You think this is soft skills … Let me give you two options. You can take three days and you can study PowerPoint or you can study three days and we can talk about shame and the diminishing feelings inside you and how it’s leading you into power over as a leader, they’re going to pick PowerPoint every time. That’s the soft skills. You know? It’s a passive-aggressive gendered jab that I just cannot tolerate. I can’t stand it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. It’s a jab not just to you but I think if you’re in a place where you are writing to mostly women or women are consuming your work, it’s insulting to them, to call everything we do self-help. If it’s for men, it’s about how to conquer the world. Right?
Brené Brown:
It’s performance.
Glennon Doyle:
How to use what they have to conquer the world, but if it’s for women, we’re just such neurotic messes that we just have to fix what’s inside of ourselves real quick before … Right? The idea that everything we do is self-help is so misogynistic to everyone who even receives our work.
Brené Brown:
That word that keeps coming to mind is dismissive.
Amanda Doyle:
Self-perpetuating too. I mean, [crosstalk 00:05:17] to the way Abby’s, women’s sports don’t make as much, well, A, they do but, B, it’s because the marketing dollars and the channels you put them on and all of the … It takes the investment to get the return and when you assume, as a publishing company or whatever ventures that you’re in, “Oh, this cute thing from Dr. Brown is going to be for these ladies over here”, they’re not making the investment, they’re not marketing it as if it is what it is to the world.
Brené Brown:
I mean, do you know that when I was … Oh my God. The first book I wrote, I couldn’t even get an agent, much less a publisher, so I borrowed money and I self-published it. I paid an extra $30 at a writing conference to have an audience with a real New York City agent. It was so funny because, first of all, he said, “Don’t use humor in your work. There’s nothing funny about shame. Nietzsche once said blah, blah, blah” and then he said, “We’d be interested if you would be willing to turn the book on women and shame to women’s most embarrassing moments.”
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, Jesus. That’s so good. You can’t make it up.
Brené Brown:
No. Yeah. What does that mean? Remember the time that tampon fell out and I was walking and it went down … I don’t even … What does that mean?
Glennon Doyle:
Same same. Like so similar to your actual work is that vibe. Oh my God. Well, I remember when my last book came out, the New York Times article said, “Glennon Doyle releases another memoir??” Okay? Then David Sedaris came out with his 48th book the next week and it was like, “David Sedaris reveals blah, blah, blah. Yay.” It was just like … In the title, it was like is she going to say another damn thing? She’s going to say another thing? She has three things to say?
Brené Brown:
Is she still talking?
Glennon Doyle:
She’s still … Why are we letting her talk more? When it’s a man, and he’s on his 60th book, it’s just amazing to me how men … I’ll do interviews and they’ll say, “Do you ever worry that it’s narcissistic to keep talking about yourself?” I’m like, wow. Men talk about their lives and it’s a reflection of the human experience. Women keep talking about their lives and it’s narcissism. Right?
Brené Brown:
Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember I reached out to you, I don’t even think I knew you that well, and I read something that said Christian mommy blogger.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, dear God, it’ll be on my mother fucking tombstone, no matter what else I do. They only did that, that only came out when we got together because some … Talk about propagating, some person wrote a headline because what’s the most shocking clickbait-y thing we can put with Abby Wambach, a Christian mommy blogger. Right? To be in a lesbian relationship. One person put it in a headline and then that’s all I was called for five years. I wasn’t a mommy blogger anymore. I don’t even know if I was a Christian anymore. It doesn’t matter.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. It is … Sometimes I can talk about it like this and be okay but sometimes I’m in a corner crying, sometimes I am … I did Texas Monthly, which is a big thing in Texas. You know, Texas Monthly did a cover story and it had a picture of me, an illustration, like I was looking into the clouds and it said … The journalist kept saying, “As a therapist”, I’m like, “I’m not a therapist. I go to a therapist, I love therapists, I train therapists but I’m a researcher. I’m not a clinician. I’m a researcher. I’m a social scientist.”
Brené Brown:
It said, “America’s favorite therapist” and then in parenthesis, on the front of the thing, on the front it said, “But for heaven’s sake, don’t call her that.”
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, because she’s also real touchy.
Brené Brown:
She’s real touchy.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s exactly it. It’s important to just recognize for every person … Language matters and then when people are assigning us roles and assigning who we are to us, when it is not true of our experience, and we are seen as touchy, overly sensitive or precious, when we clarify who we are in the world, that is a universal issue that women face I think.
Brené Brown:
I love the point that you’re making, Amanda, because I have a real shame trigger for me just family of origin stuff about being high maintenance. When we were growing up, high maintenance was not a good thing to be. It’s like, “Hey, we’re going” and it’s like all of the girls, baseball caps on, ponytails, in the car in five minutes. There was just no dilly dallying. If we’re on a road trip, you had to go to the bathroom but it was across the freeway in the other direction, you’re like tough shit, we’re going.
Abby Wambach:
Hold it.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. Hold it. Hold it. When I say, “You know what? Can you not refer to me that way?” They’re like, “Oh, sorry. She’s kind of high maintenance.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. Yeah. I’m like, “Am I?”
Amanda Doyle:
I feel like it’s integral to all of the work. I mean, how are we supposed to be people who set boundaries to know where our edges are but yet we’re supposed to be when the world tells us who we are, when the world tells us where we belong, we’re supposed to turn into this amorphous just fitting in wherever we may be.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I mean, the whole book, Atlas of the Heart is about using specific language to tell you who I am, but then when she tells the world literally who she is, they don’t have to use that. It’s so important when people tell us who they are, to believe them and to use that language.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
Let’s go to one of the 40,000 hundred thousand trillion questions that our pod squad asked Dr. Brené Brown.
Brené Brown:
I’m ready.
Carolyn:
Hi, my name is Carolyn and I am calling for a question for Brené. I wanted to ask you about personal evolution and guilt. It’s a wonderful thing to work on ourselves, to do hard things, and to evolve as a person in whatever time we get with our one precious life. I’ve found that sometimes that can come with a sneaky side effect of guilt, one that evolution can mean leaving parts of our life and even relationships and friendships behind. I was wondering, Brené, if you have any advice for embracing our false selves. Thank you, Brené and thank you, Glennon, sister, and Abby. You are loved. Have a great day.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. I think back to in social work, we study systems theory and for every change and for every shift and for every boundary, there’s reverberations. I maybe 10 years ago used to be more cavalier about you just have to do what’s best for you and hope that other people can appreciate that and if they can’t appreciate it, I hope they can just respect it.
Brené Brown:
I think when we make changes and we evolve and we figure out who we are, I think that path always includes some grief. You know? I think that we don’t talk about grief as a part of change enough. I think when we don’t do that, it does people a real disservice because then when they hit grief, they think they’ve done something wrong or they think, “I didn’t know this was going to be coming … I am changing for the better but …”
Brené Brown:
Look, I’ve done everything from completely lost relationships that were important to me to having to really reconfigure and recalibrate relationships in a way where they exist but they don’t look or feel like they used to and there’s always been some grief in that and questioning myself and I think about this personally in my own life, I think about this in the research, I think about this in the leadership work I do, change is often … Actually, change is always … I’m trying to think if I’m being hyperbolic but change is always or always includes a series of small deaths.
Brené Brown:
If we don’t understand that grief is going to be a part of change and that loss is going to be a part of change, I don’t think we can successfully evolve and I don’t think we’re doing people a favor by not saying there’s going to be some loss. Even if it’s the death of an expectation, like I set this boundary and I really expected this person to say, “I respect that boundary and I want to make this new relationship work with this boundary in place” and they never show up like that, there’s a death there.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s so helpful. Just the expectation. Also, there’s a death either way is important to remember because if you don’t choose the change, if you don’t choose yourself, then there’s a death happening that way also, which is whatever you were about to become.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
Death this way, death this way. Choose your death.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. Choose your death and maybe be guided by the possibility of rebirth as you choose your death. You know? I don’t know that we can birth what we don’t have some control over. I’m always going to choose … Sometimes it’ll take me 10 minutes and sometimes it’ll take me a decade to make those choices. Loss is hard.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Okay. Let’s go to Kim. Kim, are you there?
Kim:
How do you know when to quit? I feel like I beat a dead horse until it has gone to dust and ashes and I stay in things too long. I think the fear of change is probably a reason why but I just don’t know when you know when to walk away from a job, from anything. It’s not just relationships or anything like that. Thank you.
Brené Brown:
I think it goes back to the first question as well from Caroline, right? Yeah. I think, for me, and what I see in the research is the question of … I think about you, Abby, a lot around this because I actually think about sport in general but I have to say, just for the record, the Wolf Pack was the most impactful leadership … I’ve read 5797 research books. I don’t think anything changed my life as much as Wolf Pack.
Abby Wambach:
Oh my God.
Brené Brown:
Oh my God.
Abby Wambach:
Brené, get out of here. You’re so. That’s sweet.
Brené Brown:
No. No. I don’t. I don’t. I don’t think … I get teary eyed thinking about it. It was so monumentally just impactful and useful and really changed me. It changed who I am as a person, as a parent, my partnership with Steve.
Abby Wambach:
Thank you.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. I think that thing that when we find ourselves just not letting go and wondering why am I … I think it’s the question of fear. I always ask myself when I find myself charging towards something over and over, or running away from something over and over, what’s the fear? What is the fear? If I let this go, if I stop doing this, what’s the fear?
Brené Brown:
I think when we can surface the thing that we’re most afraid of, that’s the most … A love affair with the thing you’re most afraid of, there’s nothing more powerful than that, than not running from that thing but saying I’m going to invite you to be with me, this thing that I am the most afraid of and teach me what is it that … What am I doing?
Brené Brown:
I think sometimes we’re so afraid to name … We hold on to the job or the relationship or the hope, the expectation, the dream, because we don’t understand the fear that’s right under letting go of it. Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Dang.
Brené Brown:
I think about your work a lot … Let me just tell you this weird story. This is a very weird aside from the question but … I was a competitive swimmer … Any sport I did, you can start with competitive. It’s just my nature. Yeah. Yeah. But not high level, not like a professional or even a D1 athlete. Just whatever, I’m going to beat you, wherever I play.
Abby Wambach:
I love that.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. It’s really good and it’s terrible. Tennis and then I just took up pickle ball. Abby, have you played pickle ball?
Abby Wambach:
I have not played pickle ball but I know of it. It’s like huge in Naples.
Brené Brown:
Oh my God. That’s the capital of pickle ball.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. Yes.
Brené Brown:
Naples is the capital … Anyway, this is my fear, this is my love affair with my fear, so I played a lot during … As an ex-tennis player, it’s great because it’s less hard … I thought so, theoretically, but it’s probably still pretty hard on your body. I’m playing, I’m playing, I’m playing and I’m like I’m going to be a four player by this time, and I’m doing this, and then all of a sudden, I’m in COVID playing and we go one day because it’s raining to an indoor pickle ball place and there’s four of us. It’s me, my sister, and then my coach and then another friend of ours in Austin.
Brené Brown:
You don’t get a court with all four people. You lay your paddle down and it’s open play and two people at a time and you play. It’s the first time I’ve been in public in a year. People are already like, “Oh, hey. Oh my God. I love your work” and they’re taking pictures of me. I get on the pickle ball court and these two paddles, I’m holding them and I’m like, “Oh, shit. Those are ours.”
Brené Brown:
I go and these two men and when you serve in pickle ball, you just put the ball into play, it’s nothing fancy. You’re not tying like a tennis ace. You just put the ball into play. Seven faults in a row. Seven faults in a row. Just wrong side of the court and the guys are like, “Of course. We draw these two women.” You know?
Abby Wambach:
I fucking hate those guys. I hate those guys.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. Hate those guys. Fucking hate those guys. They don’t know, because we haven’t been able to play because I’m faulting everything, that the person with me is a professional pickle ball player, D1 college coach, coach at UT, and she just looks at me and she goes, “What are you afraid of?” I said, “I don’t know what’s happening right now.” She goes total sports psychology on me, “Focus on the task. Bounce the ball, hit the ball, bounce the ball, hit the ball.” I said, “I’m afraid of being filmed, I’m afraid of people putting me on YouTube. I’m afraid of Brené Brown … I’m afraid of … Oh my God. I’m afraid of letting down these fuckers I don’t even know at this pickle ball place.” You know?
Brené Brown:
Then I was like, okay, and I literally just grabbed this air and I was like, “Okay, fear” and I stuck it in my pocket and I was like, “Okay” and then I just played and we beat them, of course.
Abby Wambach:
Fuck yeah.
Brené Brown:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
How you like me now Texas, pickle ball boys?
Brené Brown:
Yeah. I talked to Pippa Grange about this, the sports psychologist, and she’s like you got to befriend the fear, it’s telling you something, probably trying to protect you from when you didn’t have agency as an adult. You know? But what are you afraid of?
Abby Wambach:
So good.
Amanda Doyle:
That reminds me of that part of your book where you said anger is a wonderful catalyst but a terrible companion.
Brené Brown:
Oh, yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Which will be on my tombstone but the idea of that fear being catalyst to be like what is it? As opposed to I’m just going to be with it, I’m just going to let this just be with me and define my experience for this whole time.
Brené Brown:
Yeah and not letting go of something is not a good catalyst, because you don’t know what the emotion is underneath it, so what’s the fear? What’s the shame? That’s the catalyst and then you’ll get the decision whether to let go or not, or keep gritting away. You know, big difference between grit and grind.
Glennon Doyle:
Say something about that. I need to know the difference between grit and grind. More, please.
Brené Brown:
You know, grit … I’m thinking of Angela Duckworth’s construct here, but grit … People who have a ton of grit walk away from stuff often. They’re not afraid to say, “This is not working. This is not what I thought. I’m changing course. I’m pivoting. I’m letting this go.” Grind is much more externally focused than grit. Grit is this is about me, this is about my grit, this is about … Grind is what will people think?
Abby Wambach:
Holy shit. This is so fucking transformative for me because it’s exactly the thing that I’ve been working on in the last five years of retiring from playing sports. I was grinding as an athlete because I was so focused on the external, what people thought of me, the rewards that I would get externally and then over the last five years because I don’t have that audience, literally, I’ve been working so much on the grit and being able to say, “You know what? That actually isn’t working for me” so when I suck at commentating when I first retired on ESPN, I hated it, I hated every second of it, and I also got the feedback that it was really terrible on Twitter and Instagram.
Abby Wambach:
I thought, “Okay, this isn’t for me” and I just left it. Now I find myself doing things … That’s really, really fascinating.
Glennon Doyle:
That are for you inside, that you know the right kind of hard or the wrong kind of hard.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right. That’s right. I can be disciplined. I go surfing every day, even though, I suck because I want … I have grit because I want to figure it out.
Brené Brown:
That’s grit.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Brené Brown:
That’s grit. That’s grit. Like waves up your back, shot water up your nose, can’t breathe, fuck I don’t want to go today.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Brené Brown:
That’s grit.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
With no one watching.
Brené Brown:
It’s just you … Yeah. It’s you, the board, and the wave.
Abby Wambach:
That’s so good.
Brené Brown:
To watch you play, like my sisters and I did obsessively, that was grit.
Abby Wambach:
So good.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. You could say, “She really doesn’t give a shit what any of us thinks.” It’s her, the pitch, the ball, “I wonder if she even knows we’re here.”
Abby Wambach:
I did.
Brené Brown:
Do you know what I mean?
Abby Wambach:
I did. I have a little vanity in me for sure.
Brené Brown:
But the difference between grit and grind, it’s really big.
Abby Wambach:
I love that, Brené.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, you guys, let’s hear from Danielle.
Danielle:
Hi, everyone. My name is Danielle. My question is around boundaries. I know boundaries are super important. I can set boundaries. How do I tell people what my boundaries are? I feel very uncomfortable being like, “Hey, I have boundaries. This is what they are. Can you please follow them?” I’m not understanding how to do that in a way that is comfortable for people to get my boundaries across and that is my question. Thank you so much.
Abby Wambach:
Boundaries.
Amanda Doyle:
Listen to Brené’s podcast. It’s very good at this, concrete, very concrete instructions.
Brené Brown:
I set really concrete boundaries but I don’t think I’ve ever used the word boundary. Yeah. In setting them.
Glennon Doyle:
Really?
Brené Brown:
I think that’s really complicated and hard and could set you up for a not good conversation. I think that the setting of boundaries is about … I wish she was on the phone so we could role play one together.
Glennon Doyle:
I’ll role play with you.
Brené Brown:
Okay. Great. What’s something you’re worried about?
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Let’s say there’s.
Abby Wambach:
We don’t have enough time for that, Brené.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, the holidays are coming, so let’s say … A lot of people are trying to set boundaries with family, like people who say inappropriate things or, say, I’m a person who is single and my mom is always bringing up marriage in ways that make me uncomfortable. How do I talk to my mom about stop saying stupid shit?
Brené Brown:
Yeah. “Hey, Mom. I’m super excited. I’m going to get in Wednesday. I’ll be there probably about noon. I cannot wait to see y’all. One thing I want to let you know is I know you love me, and I know you think a lot about me finding a partner and I love that you think about me and you worry about me. It’s okay to do that. What’s not okay is to talk about it with me. You can worry about me, you can think about it all the time, you can have a ton of questions, that’s okay. What’s not okay is to bring the questions to me and to talk about it in front of other people, even with me. You can talk about it with Aunt Julie, you can talk about it with whomever. I don’t want to be in that conversation.”
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. In your research, what is the next thing that Mom says that is so hurtful and not accepting of this boundary? What do they say next? Like, “Well, you’re so sensitive”?
Brené Brown:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, “Oh, come on. Come on. We love you and we’re just having a good time and I just think you’re … What a catch you are.” “Oh God, Mom. I hear you and I love you too and I love that you think I’m a great catch. That means the world to me. I’m going to ask you again, I don’t want to talk about that. It’s hurtful to me. I’m going to say it’s okay that you think about it and worry about it. It’s not okay that we talk about it at dinner.”
Glennon Doyle:
Excellent. Then I have one more followup question. The thing that people say over and over again as if it’s some kind of antidote to everything painful and shameful that we say to each other is this word, “Oh, we’re just joking. It’s just a joke.” What do we say.
Abby Wambach:
I do that.
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, I love how you talk about sarcasm in the book too and how that can be so dangerous to relationships. When someone says, “I’m just joking” as if that’s a permission slip to say whatever you want, what is a way we can approach that whole concept? Because it stops conversations.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. I think there’s a couple things. I think one of the most powerful things about a boundary that people forget is people think boundaries are just what’s not okay. When we tell people what is okay, when we tell someone, “Look, hey …” This is a true story. Always had a Christmas party, when Ellen was in elementary school, invited a lot of the folks from the neighborhood and just people that we’re not really friends but you know how you just become a community, our kids go to school together kind of thing.
Glennon Doyle:
Yup.
Brené Brown:
Talk of the neighborhood for a while was someone who drank a whole lot, it was funny, everyone was joking because passed out at book club, those kind of things. Not ever funny for me. I had two choices. I had given up gossiping for Lent that year, which was really hard. It was a very quiet 40 days and 40 nights.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. I realized I had no friends at all really because I was like what am I talking about with most of these people except for other people, I don’t really like anyone. It was a very spiritual practice for me to give up gossiping. Then I thought, “Oh man. What am I going to do with this person at the holiday party?”
Brené Brown:
I actually asked to talk to her after drop-off one day and said, “I’m super excited about you and husband and kids coming to the party. Can’t wait to see you. I’m going to have to ask that you don’t drink at the party this year.”
Glennon Doyle:
Wow.
Brené Brown:
Yeah. She said, “Ha ha. I get it. I was a little wasted last year. I’ll take it easy.” I said, “I’m not asking you to take it easy. I’m saying I really want you to come, I really want to see your husband, your kids, I really want y’all to be there but I’m asking that if you come, that you not drink at all.”
Glennon Doyle:
Wow.
Brené Brown:
She said, “Are you telling me that I cannot drink a drop of liquor if I come to your party?” I said, “That’s exactly what I’m saying and I’m saying that I hope you come.” She said, “I wouldn’t come to your party if it was the last fucking party in the world.” I said, “I’m sorry and I get it and I’ll miss seeing you there.” That was it and we never spoke again.
Brené Brown:
I’ll tell you the story is she ended up in a very tragic situation in rehab about a year later. There are just times when we have to choose … What are the choices there? Are the choices I don’t invite her? God, that’s painful. That’s so painful for that person. So painful. Are the choices I invite her but I don’t let any liquor in the house? Well, maybe. We actually don’t serve a lot of booze at anything but I think this was a BYOB is what we usually did but I’m not going to do that because I don’t see a reason to do that and she’s not going to control the whole party.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. Exactly.
Brené Brown:
Do I let her come and let her get drunk again? Which is really weird for my kids because I’ve been sober before they were born, and Steve drinks a 12 pack a year. You know? What are my options? That’s my only ethical and my integrity option is to be honest with her.
Brené Brown:
I think the whole, “I love that you think that I’m a catch, I love how much you love me, I love that you’re worried about me, that’s okay and I appreciate it. Not okay to talk about me. I want you to come to the party.” The joke thing is, as a family that comes from joking and teasing that always ends up in tears, I think when someone says … We’re really good at it. We’ve honed the craft of … I think when someone says, “I’m just joking” and you can say, “You know what? I get it and it’s tricky in our family because we have so much fun giving each other a hard time, this is not funny for me. This hurts me. I’m going to have to ask you not to do it. If we have to make joking off-limits, I’m willing to do that and that will be hard but I’m going to ask that we make joking about this off-limits. It’s not funny for me.”
Glennon Doyle:
That’s good. Brené Brown teaches us clear is kind.
Abby Wambach:
We have to go to rapid fire because we have like very few minutes left.
Glennon Doyle:
Three minutes left.
Abby Wambach:
We cherish your time.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. okay.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m still trying to get over that varsity level shit of telling that woman. I’m like wow.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m going to think about it for the rest of my life. Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s so good.
Glennon Doyle:
Dr. Brené Brown, what’s the one emotion that’s hardest for you to carry?
Brené Brown:
Fear.
Glennon Doyle:
What’s the one emotion hardest for you to receive in others?
Brené Brown:
Fear.
Glennon Doyle:
Who makes you laugh?
Brené Brown:
My sisters.
Glennon Doyle:
Same. Abby gets jealous about how much sister makes me laugh. What’s the thing about yourself that you find most challenging?
Brené Brown:
I can be scary when I’m scared.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. What color brings you the most joy?
Brené Brown:
Teal or turquoise.
Glennon Doyle:
What’s your favorite place on Earth?
Brené Brown:
Lake Travis.
Glennon Doyle:
If you could have dinner with any person dead or alive, who would it be?
Brené Brown:
My meemaw.
Glennon Doyle:
What’s your Zodiac sign?
Brené Brown:
Scorpio.
Glennon Doyle:
Interesting. What has been your best Halloween costume?
Brené Brown:
I don’t do Halloween.
Abby Wambach:
Me neither.
Glennon Doyle:
If you had to get a tattoo, if you had to, like today, someone said they’re coming and they’re going to do the thing, what would it be?
Brené Brown:
God.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s a good one. God.
Brené Brown:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. How do you decompress after a stressful day?
Brené Brown:
Pickle ball.
Glennon Doyle:
Love that. What song, we know music is very important to you, what song is at the top of your playlist right now?
Brené Brown:
Oh my God. At the top of my playlist right now is Brandi Carlile.
Abby Wambach:
We love her.
Glennon Doyle:
And to end with Brandi, let’s end with Brandi.
Brené Brown:
It all begins and ends with Brandi.
Glennon Doyle:
Ends with Brandi.
Brené Brown:
That’s it.
Glennon Doyle:
Dr. Brené Brown, we are so flipping grateful for you. I just want to say real quick, just as we end, what the world needs to know about you, Dr. Brené Brown, is that besides what you already know about her, most of the time when I’m talking to someone who is in this world but is not as far ahead, they say to me, “Well, I just had a call with Brené Brown and she told me this” and then the next person is like, “Well, I just had a Zoom with Brené Brown.” What you do for people behind the scenes is real and true and beautiful and nobody gets to see that. So rarely do we see people who are even more of who they are when no one is watching and that is who you are and we love you for it forever. Thank you.
Brené Brown:
Man. Thank y’all so much. I just love y’all and I’m glad we’re all here at the same time making our way.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Before we head out, let’s please hear from our pod squad-er of the week.
Abby Wambach:
This is my favorite time.
Sarah:
Hi, Glennon, Amanda, and Abby, my name is Sarah. This morning I was having a really crazy, stress morning, as most moms I’m sure experience a couple times a week. I was trying to get my three year old and my seven month old ready to go over to their grandma’s house for the day, trying to pack up all of their things. I was just running around and I know that my three year old, who is very intelligent and emotionally attuned to see the stress on my face, he came over to me and he hugged my leg and he said, “I love you, Mommy. It’s going to be okay because we can do hard things.”
Sarah:
It just stopped me completely in my tracks. You used the advice, which I gave you, which Glennon gave to me back onto my self and it was just a really incredible moment. I just wanted to say thank you for filling my soul and my heart every week with your podcast. It’s really obviously made a difference not only in my life but my children’s lives and the way that we can communicate to each other and share information. I’m looking forward to continuing to listen to your podcast in the future and please make them for the rest of eternity. Thanks. Have a great day.
Abby Wambach:
I love that so much. I just think about that little moment and how … I just think it’s so cool that this podcast has and can do things like that. It’s just incredible.
Glennon Doyle:
Isn’t it cool how we forget … We know things and then we forget and then somebody in our life just walks right back up to us and reminds us of something we already know. That’s what we’re doing for each other, right? We’re just reminding each other, forget and then remember, forget and then remember.
Glennon Doyle:
All right. When you forget this week that you can do hard things, don’t forget, you can. We love you. We’ll see you back next week.
Glennon Doyle:
We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts. Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn’t, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.