The Episode That Wasn’t
November 3, 2022
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things Pod Squad. This might be the weirdest episode that we’ve ever recorded because, we’ll see, we are sitting here staring at each other, the three of us right now, because we just had a very strange thing happen. We’re going to call this the episode that wasn’t.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
What happened is that we had a guest coming on today and we were very excited about this episode and we prepared the living hell out of it and we’ve been talking about it nonstop and then when the guest came on, the guest was deeply unkind.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, not to us.
Glennon Doyle:
To our team.
Abby Wambach:
The way that this works-
Amanda Doyle:
What happens is… Yeah. Let’s go backstage for a moment, shall we?
Glennon Doyle:
Right. Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
The way it works is, we have a couple members of our team who go over and meet with the guest and make sure if they’re having any questions about the tech, and how are their earphones, and then they’re over there getting the guest ready with tech checks, making sure everything checks out, and then another member of our team is with us on a different Zoom, making sure our tech checks are ready, so that when the guest is ready, we join together that Zoom and begin recording the episode. So, we were over on our tech check and I, Amanda, started getting texts from the guest Zoom in which it was relayed that the person who was helping this guest prepare, who was this person’s husband, was getting aggressive with our-
Abby Wambach:
Team.
Amanda Doyle:
… team member.
Glennon Doyle:
Aggressive meaning, raised his voice at the team member. This was relayed to us on our other Zoom, and we all just decided immediately, well, this interview is not happening.
Abby Wambach:
Of course.
Glennon Doyle:
We will never have someone or in our orbit or on our podcast who mistreats a member of our team in any way. So, sister got on the other Zoom and said to this person-
Abby Wambach:
What did sister say?
Glennon Doyle:
… face to face. Tell us what you said, Sissy.
Amanda Doyle:
I said, “Hello. We love your work, have been thrilled about this episode, have delved into your work for weeks, and were really looking forward to being you, and also, this recording is not happening today-
Glennon Doyle:
Or ever.
Amanda Doyle:
Right. Is not happening, and I wanted to come and let you know that it’s not happening because of the way that you and your husband treated our team member. And then that person-
Glennon Doyle:
And tell us what that person said, which everyone listening will be very familiar with this gas lighting horseshit. Go ahead.
Amanda Doyle:
… said, “Oh, is this about, insert team member’s name, getting their feelings hurt? I have done,” and then proceeded to insert famous man podcast here. “I have done so and so’s podcast and this was not a problem.”
Glennon Doyle:
Tell them what you said to that, Sissy.
Amanda Doyle:
I said, “Well, I am not surprised that you treated so and so famous man’s team different than you treated our team member who happens to be a woman, and that is not how this team works, and we will not be recording this podcast.”
Glennon Doyle:
The end. You also said, “This is not about our teammate’s feelings. This is about what you did, what you and your husband said and did,” which was super important. Anyway, you all, we are sitting here.
Abby Wambach:
This is real time. This happened like-
Glennon Doyle:
Real time. This just happened.
Abby Wambach:
… five minutes ago.
Glennon Doyle:
And sister’s idea was like, “Let’s just get on and talk about it right now,” because actually what we’re doing is putting into action all the crap we always talk about, which is, I guess this is a hardcore boundary for us. We actually don’t have to promote, talk to, let into our orbit people who mistreat our people.
Abby Wambach:
Any single person in our orbit or our team, that is an extension of who we are.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s a privilege because we have the power to be like, we’re not working with you, and we get to choose who we’re working with, and there’s a lot of people in-
Abby Wambach:
This is true.
Amanda Doyle:
… who are working in a lot of different sectors a lot of the time, who don’t get to choose who they work with.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
But I think there’s individual micro parts of this that are important. For example, our team member who was reporting this, that is a very courageous position that she was in.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Because she relayed it, and of course immediately, when I was asking questions over text before I decided to bring it to you, Glennon and Abby, I was asking questions like, “Well, tell me what happened,” and of course the immediate reaction is, maybe I’m overreacting.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Maybe… You start to question yourself. I wouldn’t say, “Yelled.” Maybe they didn’t yell, just aggressive, and no one’s ever done that to me on a tech check, and I’ve never felt that way. I immediately recognized a thousand times that I’ve done that. When I report how I feel, and then someone takes it seriously, and then I start to spiral into being like, oh wait, you’re taking this seriously? Now I need to interrogate the shit out of myself.
Abby Wambach:
Can I trust myself?
Amanda Doyle:
To make sure that, that… Yes, can I trust myself with that? If you’re going to listen to me, now I have to, whoa, really drill down to be like, was that what I think it is? Was it reasonable that it made me feel that way? All of that stuff. I think her reaction was really profound.
Glennon Doyle:
Let’s talk about that because that… What happened in real time was that I got fired up and wanted to be the one to go talk to this person, and I believe that my suggestion was that I say, “Fuck you. Fuck your husband,” and then you said, “Perhaps not. Let’s take that spirit.”
Amanda Doyle:
What was just excited. You were looking to avenge a thousand suns.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, and I was looking to avenge every woman who has ever been mistreated by an aggressive man who did not respect her in a place and thought he could come in and mistreat her. I was making it universal. They say, if it’s hysterical, it’s historical. I was getting a little bit hysterical, and I mean that in the most respectful way, not the misogynistic way people use the word hysterical. So what was very wise in that moment, and that we can all learn from, I love just how you said all the things so succinctly and strongly and to this person’s face, but did it without any sort of-
Abby Wambach:
Snark.
Glennon Doyle:
It didn’t seem snark… No snark and no fear, because really when you get worked up, that’s a level of fear. I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared.
Abby Wambach:
No excuses or explanations.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. You said, “We don’t need to explain it. We just need to say this is how it is. Goodbye.”
Abby Wambach:
I admire that so much in you, sister, for being able to feel probably a little bit off kilter in certain ways. This is not a normal thing that happens on a daily basis, and to be able to go there and to show up with such grace and poise, and also, the kind of leadership that, that takes to be able to protect somebody on our team who is listening to the words that are coming out of your mouth, seeing and feeling… I’m imagining being this person and seeing somebody stick up for what I said. My team believed me, and then they said the things that needed to be said to protect me, and they’re taking a loss. We’re not doing this episode. They spent weeks preparing for this. These are the kind of things that I think are so indicative of why you’re such an incredible leader, and I will be with you forever.
Glennon Doyle:
Remember you used to say, the soccer team used to say, when the referees are the people in the black socks… When the referees, the bosses who are judging everything all the time-
Abby Wambach:
Everybody knows who the referees are.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Anyway, when they do something that’s messed up or a bad call or whatever or the other team starts getting chippy with you, and then you would say to each other, ice in the veins.
Abby Wambach:
Ice.
Glennon Doyle:
Ice in the veins. Sister can do ice in the veins.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, she’s a champ at ice.
Amanda Doyle:
Not usually. I think it was also a woman to woman thing. I really admire this person’s work. I really wanted to do this episode, and I think the key is, we get really caught up in deciding whether someone else’s standards are reasonable instead of embodying our confidence in our own standards.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m not going to get into a debate with you about whether your behavior was X or Y. I’m saying that the way we work is, we don’t deal in X and Y. It’s not going and saying, I’m going to prove to you how shitty you behaved. It’s saying, this is really sad and disappointing because I love your work, and also, I am not able to work with you because this is our line. Our line is that if any member of our team is treated aggressively and feels like their nervous system is activated by yelling or screaming or aggressiveness, we can’t work with you.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s not a court case.
Abby Wambach:
I would love to know how many women in the world right now, today, have had their nervous systems activated because they’ve been mistreated and they have learned how to condition, pushing those feelings away, going for a walk to take care of some sort of activation, swallowing it, going home and just complaining and venting. It has to end, and I think that, that’s why we wanted to record this because this is a very specific moment that happens all the fucking time. All the fucking time.
Glennon Doyle:
All day, every day.
Abby Wambach:
To women and marginalized people all over the world, and I just think that it’s fascinating to get into the crux and the detail of it because it happens in offices, it happens at grocery stores, and how we can unlearn or de-condition ourselves to just keep taking it and taking it, day after day after day.
Glennon Doyle:
This is my favorite podcast day. We didn’t do the podcast because what’s more important to me is this team. We’re doing it. We’re not just talking about it, we’re doing it, and I love this team. I love this group of women who make this offering, and today, we had this opportunity to really take care of ourselves and each other on this team, and it feels really good to not use the world’s standards of what’s acceptable for women, but to use our standards, and not have to explain them because it’s ours.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Because this is ours. We get to decide. And that is a privilege. And when you do have that privilege, you have to fucking use it.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Because you use that privilege to put people on notice that this will not be forever how you get to treat people, as more women start owning the places and things and get to make their own freaking conditions.
Abby Wambach:
Good.
Glennon Doyle:
For entry.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s how the rules change, is when people start enforcing different rules. When she and I got back on the Zoom-
Abby Wambach:
With us.
Amanda Doyle:
… with us, after we left the guest, it was emotional.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
She explained how it was that feeling that she had when the man was speaking to her that way is something she had never experienced professionally, but had experienced personally, in relationships of the past, and it’s like, everybody knows that feeling.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Everybody does.
Amanda Doyle:
Whether it’s belittling, it’s just the flavor. It’s like that spice that gets added to something and it just tastes that way.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
No matter how many other spices are in there. Even if they’re saying words that are not that thing.
Abby Wambach:
It brings you right back to the moments to be on a work call and trying to help these people and then have this experience where you feel like, wait, what’s happening right now? And then, having to go through all of the questions.
Glennon Doyle:
Am I crazy? Am I too sensitive?
Abby Wambach:
Am I reading this wrong? What’s going on with me? I don’t know. I just think that it’s so important for women everywhere to remember, and if their nervous system is activated, something is wrong.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s not you, it’s them.
Amanda Doyle:
I wanted to record this just because I… Not to be self aggrandizing.
Abby Wambach:
No.
Amanda Doyle:
No one did anything heroic here. We literally have nothing to lose. This is just, nope, this is not how we roll. We roll a different way, so we may not roll together today.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
But I think it’s just because, precisely because it happens a billion-teen times a day that maybe somebody comes in to a meeting and treats the valet guy like shit, maybe treats the executive assistant like, maybe treats the waiter serving the lunch like shit, all during the process of being in the meeting with the CEO and treating them like a prince-
Glennon Doyle:
Amen.
Amanda Doyle:
… or a princess. That reveals more about that person-
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
… then it does about any kind of hierarchal order when you have the privilege to be in a position to be like, “Oh, the thing is, we gained some data about you based on, you were treating us like shit when you were treating her like shit.”
Abby Wambach:
Exactly.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Abby Wambach:
There is no distinction.
Glennon Doyle:
That is so interesting. Yeah, I wonder, had they made it to our Zoom, would they have been a different person?
Abby Wambach:
Of course they would’ve. Of course they would have. That to me is all character, how you treat people in the service industry, and if you’re treating those people differently than you’re treating a CEO or somebody in power, then there’s something fucked up about your character that you prioritize and think this power dynamic should relate to how you relate to people.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s also just interesting because this person, it was the husband… It was also this person, but the aggressiveness loudness part came from the husband and then was excused by the person, and made excuses for. That we all know, is such a dynamic and such a sad, sad dynamic. There’s a lot of sad nuance there in terms of women who are in positions where they have to constantly excuse, cover up, minimize, emotionally abusive communication. But the point is that we weren’t going to do that. We weren’t going to become complicit with that.
Abby Wambach:
The detail, this little detail that happened when she said, “Oh, her feelings were hurt,” and it’s like, no.
Glennon Doyle:
No,
Abby Wambach:
You were being assholes. This is not because her feelings are hurt.
Glennon Doyle:
This is about what you did.
Abby Wambach:
You did this thing. It’s this weird, I don’t know what we-
Amanda Doyle:
That one got me because that is the move.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s the move.
Amanda Doyle:
Right? The move is, “Oh, so I happen to be in a conversation with a super fragile person.”
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
“Oh, I didn’t realize that I was dealing with someone who was super sensitive.” So that’s the problem here, is that you have someone on your team that’s super sensitive, as opposed to that could have not even phased that person in the least and they could have cared not at all, and had they reported the exact same information, it would still be the exact same hard no, but that’s the dig. She got her feelings hurt, not I behaved in a way that should be unacceptable.
Glennon Doyle:
Another way of saying, “Oh, she got her feelings hurt. I didn’t realize she was so sensitive,” is like, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was dealing with someone who has self respect. Oh, I didn’t realize I was dealing with someone who has ideas about how they should be treated or who has boundaries or has self iden-“
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
No, I think it’s more than that. We live in a world where, and this is going to be very binary and ridiculous and stereotyping, but we live in a world where historically and objectively we have excused men’s poor behavior on a chronic and systemic level.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
So when you get on and there’s two women trying to work out a problem, and here comes the husband and he gets aggressive and loud, the deal is we will all agree that, that’s just what men do. They lose it a little bit and they act a little aggressive, but we’re all going to agree in a few minutes to be like, that was awkward.
Glennon Doyle:
Fuck that.
Amanda Doyle:
And that’ll be the end of that, but when you’re in a position where you are able to operate in a way that it doesn’t excuse that and does not proactively make excuses for poor behavior, and you have that privilege, you should go ahead and not make those excuses and not conspire with folks to agree to make excuses either silently or explicitly.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, it’s the-
Glennon Doyle:
That.
Abby Wambach:
“Oh, her feelings were hurt,” that’s the trigger for me. Also the, “Well, I’ve been on a famous man’s podcast and they seem fine with the way I behave,” and it’s like, that was an interesting thing to say, too.
Glennon Doyle:
That was very interesting.
Abby Wambach:
That was a really interesting thing to say.
Amanda Doyle:
And she said that a thousand times during the tech check, too. That’s another way of saying, your standards are screwed.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re just difficult women.
Amanda Doyle:
Not my behavior.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re just difficult women.
Amanda Doyle:
You have jacked up standards. Let me inform you of where your standards should be, and it should be on this level of this famous dude.
Glennon Doyle:
Without considering the fact that there’s no way in hell that your husband talked to that famous dude like he’s talking to us-
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
… because that’s not what those kind of men do.
Amanda Doyle:
Also, I think there’s a thousand dynamics where this shows up in pernicious ways. The way that someone will report a sexual assault and other people will be like, “But that guy’s so nice to me. I worked with them and they were so great.” I just feel like what we can all aspire to, and maybe it’s not in our workplaces because few people have the privilege we have of being able to be like, yes, we want to work with that person, no, we don’t want to work with that person, but I think even if you just have two solid friends where you can just say the word, you can look at them and be like, that person’s not it, and the other people are like-
Glennon Doyle:
I believe you.
Amanda Doyle:
That person is dead to me.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
I believe you. And that’s finished.
Glennon Doyle:
It goes back to the Dr. Becky thing. I believe you. That’s what this was this morning. That’s why it felt so good.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
It was one sentence. I believe you. Yes. We’re out.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. No follow up required. Done. It’s having just even a single person have your back. Even with partnerships, it’s saying, “That person makes me uncomfortable. That person makes me feel icky,” and having someone be like, good enough for me. Done.
Glennon Doyle:
Done.
Amanda Doyle:
I think it’s even powerful having one person in your life who can say, say less about that. It’s finished.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
We don’t ever have to be in that person’s presence. You do not need to justify. I do not need the receipts of every interaction. I’m not going to say, “But are you sure you’re not overreacting?” We all just need one person who we can just say, it’s the Maya Angelou, “No one will remember what you did. They will remember how you made them feel.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
We need the flip side of that, is that I don’t necessarily need to report to you everything that person did. I can report to you how that person made me feel, and that should be good enough.
Glennon Doyle:
The idea of overreacting, which we all talk about. I’m scared of overreacting. I overreacted. It’s because we have been conditioned for so long to not react. We’re not allowed to react.
Amanda Doyle:
To under-react.
Glennon Doyle:
To not react at all. So when we react, we think it’s an overreaction because we have been trained not to react. We have been under-reacting for so freaking long that it’s going to take us a little while to get used to just reacting and allowing ourselves to, and not calling that an overreaction, and I was recently at a table with a very famous person and a couple other people at the table were reporting a person’s behavior, and what happened was, sister, what you just said is that the famous person was like, “I just don’t, that person is so nice to me,” and I actually said, “Of course, that person is so nice to you.” When you’re a person that is in power, you cannot judge people by how they treat you, ever. You always have to assess people by how they treat the people around them with equal or less power. That’s who people really are because power and privilege completely change how people treat you.
Abby Wambach:
It’s like this weird… I’m going to say, I had this thought, and it might not make any sense, but I’m just going to say it. For all of time, men are leading the world. They’re in power, they are leading the workforce in terms of having all of the leadership positions, so the standard of operations, the way that the world gets run, has this male standard of whether it’s aggressiveness or just way of being. For a long time, women getting in the workforce had to increase their barometer-
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
… and their standard-
Amanda Doyle:
That’s right.
Abby Wambach:
… of ways of being, in order to-
Glennon Doyle:
Survive.
Abby Wambach:
… survive and stay and be in the workforce. Well, now there are more women coming into the workforce finding themselves in these positions where they’re experiencing a lot of this behavior, and what has always been required is for women to raise their standard, and what I think this specific circumstance we can call to is, where are the fucking men changing their standard? This is the thing that I always say is, why isn’t anything being asked of the men? The men never have to do fucking anything to change their behaviors, and this is what this is calling for them to do is look around and understand that you can’t just operate the way that you want to operate all the time.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s also like, we’re not going to be like that. We’re not going to do it that way.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re going to have to do it our way.
Abby Wambach:
That’s an old form of leadership.
Amanda Doyle:
Right. It’s all about acclimating, and I do know because its data driven that we operate in a world that accommodates and excuses men. That’s not my opinion. It’s true, but I don’t think this is a men versus women thing. I think this is a way of being in corporate settings, in business, in personal relationships that has historically been male driven, male built. If you just look at corporate culture. We got cutthroat, we got you’re not succeeding here because you don’t have a thick enough skin. When I was at the law firm, one of my five criteria for evaluation every year was my forcefulness. Not like correct and forceful delivery, not like you were even saying the correct thing. It’s just delivering everything with force.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s so fascinating.
Amanda Doyle:
Literally, forceful.
Glennon Doyle:
It doesn’t matter what you’re saying, as long as you pretend you are fired up about it, and you know what you’re doing.
Amanda Doyle:
Your facade, your delivery, your essence is forceful, which by the way, the whole connotations of forceful-
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
… is a whole situation, but that is corporate culture, so if you don’t have thick enough skin, you can’t be successful there. There’s acclimating. There’s acclimating, there’s pushing down who you are, what you need, what offends you, so you’re constantly questioning yourself. It’s that internal, is this wrong because it’s wrong? Or is it wrong because I have failed to acclimate appropriately to this standard? That is what was happening there. By any measure, what happened in that situation this morning was standard and excusable in a certain culture and standard-
Glennon Doyle:
And families.
Amanda Doyle:
And family. That’s what I think that when you’re in a position to not have to acclimate, and that’s why we need women centered leadership. We need a new way, whether it’s a man leading it or a woman leading it to say, “We are actually making up our own rules.”
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
We are making up our own way of being, our own culture, and we are not assessing the viability and the success of those measures based on any other currently existing standard, so when we say that we can’t have that, we’re with you. We understand that, that behavior is excusable and nine out of 10 situations. We’re just saying, “This one isn’t one,” so although we were looking forward to this, not going to happen today.
Abby Wambach:
Oops, that was inappropriate.
Amanda Doyle:
Exactly. That’s the Geena Davis-
Glennon Doyle:
Back to Geena.
Amanda Doyle:
Oopsie.
Glennon Doyle:
Oops.
Amanda Doyle:
You must think that this is like 90% of the world, but that’s not what we do here, so oopsie.
Glennon Doyle:
Oops, you’re a misogynist.
Amanda Doyle:
Oopsie.
Glennon Doyle:
I think it’s really important what you just said about not men and women completely. I will say that I have mostly in my life experienced this situation from men, but I have also experienced it from women.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And I have experienced great gentleness, in this way we’re talking about of respect from men, too. So this idea of this way of leadership and way of being that’s based on respect and good communication, grown up communication, and self-control and emotional intelligence, that is something that I have found in both men and women.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. Well, and I think that the husband in this situation was the “aggressor”, but I think that the wife, our guest, she had a passive aggressiveness that was equally as destructive. She didn’t say, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.” She didn’t come to the defense of… She just-
Glennon Doyle:
Shamed the person.
Abby Wambach:
And then, she tried to excuse the behavior of her husband, which is as aggressive. It’s actually even more aggressive and that’s more hurtful.
Amanda Doyle:
Right. It is.
Glennon Doyle:
It is.
Abby Wambach:
I think that you’re right. I think that there are women that can act in these ways and sometimes it feels passive aggressive, but in fact, it’s actually more aggressive.
Amanda Doyle:
Just to be clearly in my partnership. My husband is much more the reasonable, let’s think it through, let’s calm down. He is much more on the culturally sensitive side. Sensitive as mean, this situation doesn’t require us at a 10. This is a very five level situation. Why do you always have to go to nine?
Abby Wambach:
I don’t even think it’s sensitive, sister. I think it’s non-confrontational.
Glennon Doyle:
Amanda Doyle:
Abby Wambach:
I think that me and him are a little bit more on the non-confrontational side of things.
Amanda Doyle:
But even in this standard, the reverse has happened to me. The exact same thing that we did today. I think it’s fair to say, this isn’t a self-congratulatory moment. This is just an example of a moment, and I have been on the opposite end of this moment. I remember when everything was going to shit in the pandemic, right when Untamed came out and we were just, I didn’t sleep for a month and your book was not in people’s bookstores and the shipping wouldn’t work, and no one was fighting as hard as I was to get things back on track, and I was desperate, and I was doing the thing like a drowning person, pulling people down with me.
Amanda Doyle:
I was behaving poorly in that way, that you’re just thrashing around trying to get people to help you and trying to get attention and slowly ratcheting up your aggressiveness in trying to get people to pay attention to you, and I treated our incredible beautiful editor, Whitney Frick, who we’ve been with for ages in a shitty way, because I was like, “You’re not doing what I need you to do. You’re not fighting hard enough. You’re not mad enough about these things. I need your help,” and she wrote me an email after the slow boil and it finally got to this rolling boiling point, and she was like, “Hey, I’m not going to let you treat me like that anymore. This type of communication is not acceptable anymore from you. I’m with you on your goals, but you can’t use this way with me anymore.”
Abby Wambach:
How did you respond? How was that for you when you read that? What was going on in your body?
Amanda Doyle:
I was like,
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, busted.
Amanda Doyle:
After my first 24 hours of breathing and being like, but I’m right about all the underlying things and I just want what’s best, I was like, “You’re exactly right.” To be honest, it was a relief. It was like a mad woman running around with weapons in her hand and being like, “I’m crazy. Someone take these weapons away from me.”
Glennon Doyle:
My weapons are email, the phone.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
I should not be allowed these things.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes, I am a desperate woman and I cannot be held to account. That was her way of being like, there’s a line, and you can’t cross this line anymore, and that was me as a woman behaving that way. So, I don’t think it’s a male or female thing. I think it’s just whether we can get to a place where we can embody our own standards and say, “Here’s my line.” Whether that line makes sense to you or not, is not my concern. My concern is having my line, knowing what it is, and holding it, and if you can’t behave with me, within my line, then we can’t work together, we can’t play together, we can’t be together, but that is not my problem.
Glennon Doyle:
Our line is different for everybody based on every experience we’ve ever had, so we can stop trying to spend our entire lives wondering if our line is sane enough or okay enough or-
Amanda Doyle:
Reasonable.
Glennon Doyle:
… valid enough, or actually, our lines are all different based on every experience we’ve ever had growing up. Your line is your line. You don’t have to explain or validate it. Actually, sometimes you have to explain it, but you don’t have to validate it.
Glennon Doyle:
One thing that I have learned from this strange day is that I feel like there is work, a lot of work for me to do in terms of when this kind of thing happens again and again, because I observed in my reaction kind of the way that I deal with the kids when something crosses their boundaries or I deal with you when someone crosses one of your boundaries, Abby, or I just-
Amanda Doyle:
You activate.
Glennon Doyle:
I activate. I lose it and-
Abby Wambach:
She becomes a Power Ranger.
Glennon Doyle:
A fighting little Power Ranger, like a Tasmanian Devil, and that is unhelpful. That is not leadership. It reminds me of our episode with Tarana Burke where she said she couldn’t tell the people in her life when anyone was mistreating her because she couldn’t trust that they could handle their business, because she couldn’t trust that they wouldn’t freak out and do something that would then cause more harm or trauma. To me in this moment, what our team member needed in that moment was sister’s leadership, was the calm steady, oh no. The hard no of this isn’t going to happen, but also the steadiness of, and we’ve got this. Nobody’s going to lose their shit, because for my reaction is so fired up, which makes me know that it’s fear based. It’s not like a woman who trusts and knows herself to handle this and can keep out who she needs to keep out, and by the way, this is what I’m working on in therapy right now, is a calm reaction because I trust myself to handle the thing.
Amanda Doyle:
Because it’s an equal and opposite. Your level of fired up was an equal and opposite reaction to his aggressiveness.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
You were meeting aggressiveness with aggressiveness.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
As opposed to being like, “Oh, we don’t do aggressiveness.”
Glennon Doyle:
Right. I do do aggressiveness. That’s the problem. I’m working on it. I do do aggressive. It’s like when Bobby said, “God damn it,” and sister said, “Bobby, we don’t say damn it,” and Bobby said, “Yeah, we do. We do say damn it,” because sister always says damn it.
Amanda Doyle:
And I was like, good call.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, listen.
Amanda Doyle:
We definitely say damn it.
Abby Wambach:
I would argue though that, the trio of us, I think that your ability to show the rest of us how wrong something truly is… We trust you so much and we also have these other ways in which we can get it communicated.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, so we know I’m not going to be the communicator, but we appreciate-
Abby Wambach:
Yes, we do.
Glennon Doyle:
… my-
Abby Wambach:
Of course, we know that. Sister and I knew it all along.
Glennon Doyle:
I didn’t. I volunteered so much.
Amanda Doyle:
We were entertaining it for a while. Yeah, that’s probably what’ll happen.
Abby Wambach:
We wanted you to know that you were heard, and I said, “Okay, sister, you go over and…” So I think that there is a need for somebody to be like, “No, that is fucked up.”
Amanda Doyle:
Right, right, right.
Abby Wambach:
To point out the fucked up-ness of something, you also need somebody who is a little bit more pragmatic, and is not going to get their engines at a 10, and then you need somebody to be able to go and communicate well, concise, like sister. So I think that the three of us had our roles that we all played in that experience.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, thank you, baby.
Abby Wambach:
Really, I do. And when you’re by yourself, obviously you deal-
Glennon Doyle:
It’s tougher.
Abby Wambach:
You need to-
Glennon Doyle:
It’s tougher when I’m by myself.
Abby Wambach:
You need to manage, but in that circumstance, we all were energetically using each other for our strengths.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Well, I love you all so much and I love this team and I love that we are trying to embody what we believe.
Amanda Doyle:
And what we talk about, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t say, we are doing it all the time, but we are trying to do it, and I just learned a lot today.
Abby Wambach:
Me too.
Glennon Doyle:
And I believe everyone on this team, and I just want for everyone listening to have somebody who believes.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
We did hard things today.
Abby Wambach:
I feel like it.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, let’s go take a nap.
Abby Wambach:
Really hard and strong and true. True things.
Glennon Doyle:
We did true things.
Abby Wambach:
It was good. I love this. I think the Pod Squad needs to send us some of their experiences.
Amanda Doyle:
You all, how did you like our episode that wasn’t an episode? Would you tell us? The episode that wasn’t. It’s like a ghost of an episode.
Glennon Doyle:
But we allowed this day to be awkward. It was weird. We talked about it anyway afterwards, and if we again, live out what we believe, it’s the good stuff that happens in the awkwardness. That’s where growth happens and change happens, is inside this, what the hell just happened moment. Instead of choosing inner conflict, which is we all just eat how we feel and we suck it up… We suck it up, and do this interview, we chose outer conflict, which is better.
Abby Wambach:
We chose to bring the truth of what our team member experienced and said, and to let that live in the middle of this conversation, and sometimes it’s awkward and sometimes it doesn’t make sense, and we are just processing through this whole thing together. I just-
Amanda Doyle:
Can you tell? Can you tell, everybody?
Abby Wambach:
I just think that when you pull out the truth of something, I believe that good things are bound to be said or understood and processed.
Glennon Doyle:
Pod Squad, (747) 200-5307. If you’ve made it this far in this episode, bless you and keep you. We can do hard things. We’ll see you next time. Bye.