Abby for the 1st Time On Divorce & Her Unrequited Love
March 16, 2023
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. If you have not listened to part one of this series about the Mary Abigail Wambach, please go back and listen to the first episode. We are interviewing my love, Amanda’s sister-in-law, Abby Wambach. The theme that we keep coming back to in Abby’s life is love. From birth till now, relentless pursuit of love and all the different forms that’s come in her life so far. We’ve talked about her mom, her love story with her mama, Judy. Her love story with soccer, the soccer. The love story of her first marriage.
Glennon Doyle:
And now we’re going to get into one of my favorite topics, which is addiction and what it is. And I think it can be a different thing for everybody. What I’ve always thought of when I think about you and your drinking is that you seem to, like a lot of people, use drinking as a way of not knowing something that in your bones you know. For example, in the last episode, you talked a lot about knowing that something was missing in soccer because you got to the highest of the heights and it didn’t, as you say, ease your angst. You also had a knowing, and this is all at the same time in your life, that your marriage was not working. But you could not let yourself know that because you are not a quitter.
Abby Wambach:
That’s true.
Glennon Doyle:
Because you felt like you were carrying the entire queer future of marriage on your back, and you couldn’t let this marriage fail because then everyone would be right. And it would be proof that gay marriage doesn’t work because you loved your ex-wife, and so you couldn’t let yourself know that this was never going to work. And so you did what?
Abby Wambach:
I drank.
Glennon Doyle:
You drank. Tell us about drinking and what it was in your life from the beginning.
Abby Wambach:
So I started drinking when I was young, being the youngest of seven kids, being 12, 13, 14 years old, and brothers and sisters off in college. And they’re doing the drinking thing, and then they come home for breaks or summer and they’re doing the drinking thing. They’re actively doing it. I learned that that was what people did for fun to blow off steam.
Glennon Doyle:
And belonging because that’s what your big sisters and brothers were doing.
Abby Wambach:
And I actually noticed, interestingly enough, when I was young, I noticed that they became more vulnerable people while drinking.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, that’s so true.
Abby Wambach:
They would tell me their feelings. We would connect. It looked like fun. And so I got the memo, “Oh, this is what we do.” And this also supports the idea of splitting myself from soccer player into normal person. Like, “Oh, I’m going to prove that I can be a normal person as much as I’m going to prove that I can be the best soccer player.” And so I took drinking on as the thing I did whenever I wasn’t playing soccer. I did it through college and then my young adult life. And if I were to be really honest with myself and looking back at all the heartache that I had in my life, it was the very thing that I went to to suppress. At least, that’s what I thought at the time, to fix my heartbreak for whatever situation I was in. And it was a real love-hate relationship that drinking was. She was my best friend at times, and also the biggest fucking bitch.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, frenemy.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. And I loved her. I really did. I really felt like this is a part of my identity that I’m going to hold onto for dear life.
Glennon Doyle:
What did it look like, babe? You’re out drinking and then your private in-drinking?
Abby Wambach:
It depended on where I was emotionally. If I was in a good place, then it was just free, fun-loving, everybody’s out, we’re doing really fun things. And if I had any kind of heartache or something that I was trying not to know, it would be like me by myself pouring the biggest glass of whiskey you’ve ever seen as a, quote unquote, “nightcap.” Wife goes to bed and I’m just sitting alone on the couch with a six finger whiskey, a ridiculous amount of alcohol. I was trying to black out. I didn’t have the off switch, so until my body fell asleep, that’s when I stopped consuming alcohol during certain seasons of my life. I always was struggling with, “Do I think I’m drinking too much?” And I would do it for short periods of time because soccer for so much protected me from that part of myself. It was like this safety mechanism that was in place.
Amanda Doyle:
Or you couldn’t go too far because then… Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. When I was on the road, I’d be on the road for three weeks. I didn’t have a single drink. Totally fine.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s why they say it’s not how often you drink, it’s how you drink.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Even if you only drink once a year, but you lose all of your mind and your life and your relationships.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I was one of those people that was trying to get everybody to drink around me more. I had some friends that they could drink one glass of wine at dinner, and I’m like, “The fuck. What?”
Amanda Doyle:
No. No, I don’t.
Abby Wambach:
I’m like, “The bottle is open. You can’t put that cork back in the bottle. The bottle needs to be finished. What are we doing?”
Glennon Doyle:
I’m so jealous.
Amanda Doyle:
Once you pop, you can’t stop. It’s like Pringles out there.
Glennon Doyle:
Aren’t you just so jealous of those people who can just drink? So babe, what was your FIFA player of the year moment with drinking? When did you finally realize, no matter how many rungs down I go on this drinking ladder, it’s never going to love me back?
Abby Wambach:
Oh, man.
Glennon Doyle:
Enough.
Abby Wambach:
Well, I think when she got my mugshot on the ESPN ticker.
Amanda Doyle:
That’ll do it. That’ll do it.
Abby Wambach:
She did me dirty.
Amanda Doyle:
She did you real dirty with that.
Glennon Doyle:
Tell us the story. Please tell us the story.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. It was a few days after I moved out of my house because of the divorce. I was getting separated from my first wife and I went golfing and drank too much, lied to my friends, told them I was getting an Uber, and I drove.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh baby.
Abby Wambach:
I got behind the wheel of a car and ran a red light going back to my apartment. And I was so deep in my own, I don’t know, sadness and pity that I actually thought that I was sober. I actually believed in my… I was like, “Oh, I haven’t. I will not blow.” So I was like, “Yeah, well, let’s do this.” And then I blew into the breathalyzer thing and I was now convinced that the machine was broken, and I said, “This is not right. I need another machine.” And of course, I was just completely fucked. And so I remember I had Birkenstocks on that night because I’m a gay person living in Portland, Oregon.
Amanda Doyle:
They issue you those, right?
Abby Wambach:
Yes. And I remember being in the jail cell and the other women that were in there, they had all of their shoelaces taken out of their shoes. And so they just kept walking around, they’re sliding their feet. And I kept thinking, these people are crazy. This is not where I belong. I remember crying so much before they actually took that mug shot. I literally couldn’t stop crying to take the mug shot. And it was a horrific photo. It looked like I was, I don’t know, it was the worst night of my life. I think my life is over. As I start sobering up sitting there, I realize, “Oh my gosh, you do belong here. You are up fucked up. You are exactly them. You just got lucky that you’re wearing fucking Birkenstocks.”
Glennon Doyle:
What was in the car.
Abby Wambach:
So I had been moving all of my stuff and that morning I had went and got all of my gold medals, my jewelry. I got for my hundredth cap playing on the national team, the most valuable pieces to my existence as a person were in my car. The car now is going to get parked on the side of the street because I can’t drive my car. And I begged the police officers, I was like, “My whole life is in this one bag. I need to bring this one bag, please.” And so I begged them and they had to check it in at the police department. When we got there, the police station.
Glennon Doyle:
What were the days after that? What were they like in your home?
Abby Wambach:
So surprisingly, my ex picked up the phone because I made my one phone call and she picked up the phone and she came and bailed me out of jail the next morning. And I went back to the house that she and I lived in, and there were news cameras outside. I thought my life was over. I thought everything that I had spent my life building and doing. Playing soccer, traveling the world, fighting for women’s equality, I now was going to be put in the category of canceled. And so I hold up in my house and I remember just crying and watching the ESPN ticker and just seeing my mugshot over and over and over again.
Amanda Doyle:
You were watching it, you turned it on to watch it?
Abby Wambach:
Oh, yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Wow. That’s very masochistic of you.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I had to create a statement, like a public statement to put out to the press. And the one that I first created was much more mean to myself than the one put out into the world. I was really fucking doing a number. I was beaten myself up like I had never been beaten up. I don’t know what was happening, but something was happening. And then my agent sat down, my lawyer sat down at the table the next day and explained the process. And in Oregon where I was arrested, I could enter in what’s called a diversion program. And this diversion program would require me to be alcohol and drug free for one year. I’d have to take drug tests, I’d have to do victim impact panel. I’d have to do therapy that was court ordered and moderated. And when the lawyer told me that I could not legally drink for a year, I let out a kind of… God, I’m getting emotional thinking about it, but it was kind of like the sob that you scream when you’re a baby just born.
Abby Wambach:
You finally got your first breath and somebody took the keys away from me, literally. And somebody took my choice away. And that’s all I needed. I needed that so much. I needed somebody to be like, “Can’t do it anymore or else you’ll be in jail.” And I needed every second of the shame that ESPN ticker gave me. I needed all of the wake-up call this opportunity gave me, and it needed to be as big as it was for me to wake up, for me to actually see what was happening in my life. And I remember in the moment being like, “Okay, I am going to make this the best thing that ever happened to me.” This is horrible right now and sad. And I actually had a 10 stop speaking tour that was happening in one week to college campuses across the country.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, Lord.
Amanda Doyle:
That is a kick in the shorts.
Abby Wambach:
I had to go out into the world in a week. I remember actually being in my first airport a week later, and some person was standing close to me, and they had Googled me because they thought it was me. I was wearing a hat. And I could see my mugshot on their phone.
Glennon Doyle:
Because that was the first thing that comes up, right?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I was like, “Oh, so this is it. That this is how it’s going to be.” And I really wanted to process and proceed with all of that happened with honesty and truth and integrity. And I wanted to be as upfront and honest about it as possible. And so I don’t know how this story necessarily ends, but I’ve been sober ever since that day, that night in jail.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s incredible.
Glennon Doyle:
Babe. I want to talk about one more hard thing.
Abby Wambach:
One more hard thing?
Glennon Doyle:
And then we will stop the hard things.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, God.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. But we cannot do a conversation with you about love and unrequited love without talking about the major romantic relationship in your life that was an unrequited love. And-
Abby Wambach:
How would you define unrequited?
Glennon Doyle:
It’s when you just desperately love something and it never loves you back. And I actually don’t think that it’s love. So be, it would be a more complicated answer than that, but our cultural definition of unrequited love is when you love something fully and it never loves you back. Like drinking is unrequited love. Soccer was unrequited love, but it was a lot of amazing things.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s one way love, basically.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s one but which isn’t love.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s a relationship that you’re having with someone who is not having that relationship back with you.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. That is sort of this relationship. And you correct me if I’m wrong, that this was a great unresolved, agonizing romance in your life, the one we’re about to talk about.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
How would you describe this relationship? How did it start? Take us back.
Abby Wambach:
Ugh.
Amanda Doyle:
Real softball there.
Glennon Doyle:
But doesn’t everybody have one love where, so when someone asks someone, they just go, “Ugh.”
Amanda Doyle:
Absolutely. Mine parallels yours a little bit, Abby. So I’m happy to go down with this ship too. If that makes you feel better.
Abby Wambach:
Well, I think that I’ve had a lot of time to think about this over the last almost 20 years, but we met about 20 years ago, and it was early on in my national team career. This person was, she was just completely unique to the kind of person I’d ever met before. Adventurous, active, seemingly super connected. She was just fucking cool. And I aspired to be the kind of person that somebody like her would love. I felt like, “Oh, this person’s going to make me better.” Have you ever met somebody like that where you’re like, “Oh yeah.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes
Abby Wambach:
Me.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, that’s sweet. So we met and we fell in love, and I should have seen the red flags early on, but I didn’t because I was so into the fantasy of, and the idea of this love.
Glennon Doyle:
And was she straightish?
Abby Wambach:
She was straightish.
Glennon Doyle:
She was straightish. Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. She was straightish.
Amanda Doyle:
Would that be one of the red flags you thought you should have noticed?
Glennon Doyle:
Well, not always.
Abby Wambach:
Not at the time. Not at the time. She was straight with the side of Abby, I would say.
Amanda Doyle:
Okay. Okay.
Abby Wambach:
And she was painfully honest. She had this way of being so brutally honest that it made me trust her. Have you ever met somebody like that?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, that’s a thing with you, you think if people are mean, that that means they’re honest and that that’s love.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I don’t know. We were living such different lives, and I guess one of the big red flags early on should have been that she was never able to actually define the relationship with me. I was always trying to nail that down in some way. And it was like this elusive, love is not definable and all this stuff. But when we were together, it was amazing. And I’d see her for a week here or a week there for months, and then not months. We would not see each other. And this is not back in the day where texting and stuff was a constant occurrence. You’d have to actually call the person. You have to pay for Skype minutes. It was harder to stay in touch back then.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh my gosh.
Abby Wambach:
I know. And this was something that went on for a little while, a year or two, and I think ended, specifically ended because she got engaged. I went… Gosh, when was this? I decided after we won the gold medal in ’04, that I was going to go on a solo trip. And so I drove my jeep across the country. I was going to go to Moab and Zion and Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon. And on my drive from Florida, I just took a U-turn and went to her house.
Amanda Doyle:
I’ll start my solo trip by going to visit someone.
Glennon Doyle:
And if every time you try to take your metaphorical solo trip and your car veers to a certain person or substance or whatever, that might be a sign that this is the distraction you’re using from yourself.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I drove through the night. It took me 32 hours to get there.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s a short detour of 32 hours.
Abby Wambach:
It was so ridiculous. And so I get there and she’s surprised to see me, opens the door and won’t let me into her apartment, which I thought was kind of weird. And so we went and sat on the hood of my Jeep, and then she proceeds to tell me that she slept with somebody that day. And that’s why I couldn’t come in to the house.
Amanda Doyle:
The person was there.
Abby Wambach:
I don’t know if they were there or not.
Glennon Doyle:
Honey, they were there. They were there. She wouldn’t let you in the house for God’s sake.
Abby Wambach:
I actually don’t really have vivid memories of that, the whole experience. But I remember feeling pretty heartbroken and went on my little solo trip by myself. And I was just so sad. I was so sad and so confused. A couple months later, maybe a year later, I don’t know exactly the timeline. But I’m at practice, national team practice, and one of my friends says to me, “Did you hear so and so is engaged?” And so, so is this person that I’ve loved. And you have probably never seen the blood drain from a human being’s face like it did that day.
Abby Wambach:
I shut down, I was like, “How did this happen without me knowing?” We were still in kind of contact, but not as consistent before. Because the sleeping was somebody else was a little bit, really hard for me to accept. Well, she goes on, she gets married, she has kids, the whole thing. And during this time, I get into relationships and get out of relationships. And every single time I would get out of a relationship, I would call her. And there was always still this energy, this I miss you, I love you thing-
Amanda Doyle:
From her too?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. This vibe that was always there.
Amanda Doyle:
She was keeping you hanging there. She liked you exactly where you were.
Abby Wambach:
And for whatever reason, the fantasy of this love was keeping me there too. This wasn’t just a horrible one sided, she’s a horrible person and I’m the good person here. I was also a part of this toxic experience. Granted, she was married with children and probably should have had the integrity to say, “I can’t do this anymore because I have this whole other life.”
Glennon Doyle:
And she knew that’s what you wanted more than anything in the world. So she also knew that keeping you hanging there with her would allow her to have the thing.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
And have you and would keep you from ever having the thing. And you would only have this 10% version of her. Do you think that there’s any part of this that has to do with growing up in the time you grew up in terms of this tragic-
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, like Brokeback Mountain,
Glennon Doyle:
… This idea that queer kids are taught that since they can’t have out in the open love, that the only kind of love that they can have is dark and brooding and incomplete. And that what we tell ourselves about that is that that’s better anyway. That that’s the only real love is the-
Amanda Doyle:
Mystery.
Glennon Doyle:
… dark underneath mysterious love. And so you stay there because you don’t think you can ever have the other thing. And you just tell yourself that that’s what’s real.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. And also, PS Sister, Brokeback Mountain was and is one of my favorite movies to this day because it reminded me so much of this unrequited love. It made me, I feel like every gay person, at least my age, understands that movie on a totally different level.
Amanda Doyle:
And in your head, you’re like the love that person has, like Brokeback love, is they just feel like they have to do this family thing, but their real love is with me. But you actually don’t know if that’s true. That could be true. And in some of the stories that is true. And in some of the stories those people have their real love in that family or that other relationship they’re living out, and they’re just super interested in this drama. And having the best of all possible worlds by having this undefinable, can’t get me in trouble because I’m not technically doing anything wrong love, on the side. And that’s a very particular situation to be in.
Glennon Doyle:
Because that’s not real. What I have here, that’s not real. But you were very real.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
I have a question too. Did you call when you and your ex broke up? Was-
Abby Wambach:
My ex-wife?
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. Your ex-wife?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Was so-and-so the first person you called?
Abby Wambach:
Yep, yeah. And I hadn’t gotten arrested yet. I hadn’t gotten sober yet. So I made the phone call after a long drinking night out. And I actually, I think in my memory, because I was pretty intoxicated, I asked her to leave her husband and to be with me, thinking, “Oh, this has to be the thing. This is the thing that’s going to fix me. This is what my problem has been all along.”
Glennon Doyle:
God, we so badly want to make sense of ourselves.
Amanda Doyle:
I did the exact same thing. I did the exact same thing, yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, she said no, obviously. Like she had been saying for 15 years or how, 13 years.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, she was saying, “No, but…”
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
But I love you and I miss you.
Abby Wambach:
So I don’t know how to… I guess the way that it kind of ends is when I get sober with some real helpful therapy, I was able to call her and tell her all of the way, the years of being… What is it called? Being the-
Amanda Doyle:
Strung along.
Abby Wambach:
Strung along
Glennon Doyle:
The side piece, we call that.
Abby Wambach:
Well, I mean, there was nothing physical that ever happened. Well, after she got married, there was no physical, it was just this emotional thing that I think that I realized maybe I was experiencing on my own.
Glennon Doyle:
Uh-uh, nope.
Abby Wambach:
And for the first time as a sober person, I got the courage to call her and say, “This is bullshit. And the fact that you have strung me along for this long has prevented me from living a full life and probably in many ways prevented me from having a real relationship.” I told her it was unfair, and she agreed. She agreed with everything that I said and was kind. And I told her that I never ever wanted to talk to her again. And not out of meanness or self-protection, but I don’t want people like that in my life. I don’t want people like that that say one thing and do another. I don’t want somebody that says that they love me, but won’t ever do anything to prove it. Because that was a whole relationship that was provably making me believe that I was unlovable over and over and over and over again.
Glennon Doyle:
You weren’t worth choosing.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. And I know that that gayness and sexuality played a little bit of a role in this whole thing, but I’m good enough to be chosen. And I had to actually say those words. I had to actually be intentional and say the things that I really meant. And I really did love her. And in some ways, this fantasy of the love kept me company for a lot of years. It was a source of all, a lot of heartbreak. It was also the source of a lot of joy because having those in love feelings is wonderful at times. But I needed to stop it. I needed to quit. And good old Brokeback Mountain fashion, it was hard to quit her, but I finally did.
Amanda Doyle:
Did she put up any resistance? Did she try to rationalize with you? Like, “Oh, but we can still keep in touch.”
Abby Wambach:
No.
Amanda Doyle:
No, she got… Okay.
Abby Wambach:
She understood. She knew what was needed.
Glennon Doyle:
So where we are in your story right now, just this one lens, we’re looking at it through, you have now lost soccer, ended soccer.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, because I retired, soccer ended and drinking really ramped up.
Glennon Doyle:
So soccer is over. Your marriage is over and the drinking is over.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
This is where we are right now. Many of your unrequited loves are over. Can you talk to us about the night at the Palmer House?
Abby Wambach:
It’s a seemingly normal event I have to go do. I’m just about to publish forward the memoir that I wrote soon after I retired. And I’m traveling with a manager kind of person, and they hand me the book of information of the other authors who are going to be there, who are also trying to promote their books for their upcoming releases. And so I scan through the authors and I’m like, “Nah.” And then I see Love Warrior on there, and I read the little bio that Glennon had, and it had something in there about being sober. I was newly sober. And I remember being like, “Oh, that’s a sober person.”
Amanda Doyle:
I’ve heard of those people, but I’ve never met one.
Abby Wambach:
One. Yeah, I’m going to talk to that person. Because the truth is, I really swear to you, I had never really met a sober person before.
Glennon Doyle:
She didn’t know a single sober person.
Abby Wambach:
I had created a whole life around me that it was just people who partied to support my addiction, my habit. So we walk in and we’re running a little late, which is my biggest pet peeve. And I had said, “I don’t want to have dinner.” And I guess all the authors who we were all going to be up on the stage giving little talks about our books to the librarians of the world, we love you, librarians. So I walk into this back room backstage and all the authors are all in there eating, and I’m late. I didn’t know that this was a private backstage event before the event starts.
Glennon Doyle:
Is a table with George Saunders, Terry McMillan, Maria Simple.
Abby Wambach:
I didn’t know any of those people. All I cared about-
Amanda Doyle:
Like, “I still don’t know any of those people.”
Abby Wambach:
All I cared about was meeting the sober person there. And so when I walk in and somebody stands up in the room-
Glennon Doyle:
That was me.
Abby Wambach:
… I recognize that it’s the person that I actually am there to hopefully talk to at some point. So I walk around, we hug, and then I sit down in my chair. And the way that we were seated, she was away from me and at a weird angle. So she was in the peripheral of my vision, not in my clear path. And so I kept talking to this one author and he seemed kind enough, but I kept looking over to her, more interested in wanting to know what they’re talking about over there with her seatmate than I was interested in talking to my seatmate. So then the dinner ends and all the authors want to take a picture together, and we walk outside and Glennon’s nowhere to be found. I’m like, “Where is she?” She’s the reason why I want to take a picture.
Glennon Doyle:
But now that you know me so long, you would know where I was now, right?
Abby Wambach:
You were in the bathroom.
Glennon Doyle:
Hiding in the bathroom as many times as possible and just hide there for as many minutes as it won’t seem weird.
Abby Wambach:
You were in the bathroom and then you came back and we all took a picture. So when we are walking to the stage, I finally get the seconds that I’m hoping to talk to you about, because I had yet to figure out what I was going to include in the memoir forward. And so I really wanted your advice about, I just got the DUI knew I could talk to you about it because you’re sober and you just said some things like you touched my arm. It was just electricity. I was like, “Oh,” like a shock. Something happened to my system and I kind of didn’t pay any real attention to it. And then when we sat, on the day as we were seated next to each other, and I was so glad to be seated next to you.
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know if you remember what we were talking about on that walk, which is that whoever wanted you to write that book, the shiny version of you.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Just when you talk about your two halves everybody wanted you to write it just as your shiny-
Abby Wambach:
Soccer player self.
Glennon Doyle:
… soccer self. They did not want you to include any of what you call your shadow side, which was really just all the real stuff in the book because they thought that would tarnish your Captain America reputation. It was like you thought it was like you were revealing the deepest, darkest secret. The first thing you said to me was, “You probably know what’s going on.” Because you had just gotten the DUI and I was like, “About what?” And you were like, “Well, it’s all over ESP.” And I was like, “That doesn’t help me.” And you said, “I just got a DUI.” And you said you were thinking about including all of your struggles inside your memoir, but you were afraid that people wouldn’t like you anymore or something.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I mean, I think I was afraid of tarnishing the soccer Abby legacy, the soccer star legacy. And when you touched me, you said, “Sweetheart. Oh, sweetheart, we in the real world, like real people.” And it was just this really simple thing that I think my intuition and my newly sober self was feeling. And when you said that, I was like, “Yes.”
Glennon Doyle:
It was an invitation to integration. It was an invitation to say to you, “You don’t have to be these two things anymore.”
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
We want both of you. In fact, what the hell is a memoir, if not all this stuff? It was an invitation from the soccer world into the real world where you’d get to be your whole self.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right. That’s interesting, I’ve never thought of it that way.
Glennon Doyle:
Me neither, until now.
Abby Wambach:
You gave me an opportunity to integrate my two selves in that second, and then you went up and talked about your book that you were publishing, and I was so excited. First of all, you made me laugh and cry and all the things, and there was just this unmistakable, unquestionable energy that was happening between us. It felt like for the first time, somebody was seeing the whole of me and not wanting to discard what I would’ve called then the shadow side. Like, “The bad Abby.” Good Abby, bad Abby. You were like, “No, that’s the good stuff. You’ve got this all backwards.” And so I went back to my room that night and I read Love Warrior until one or two in the morning. I was a little disappointed with the way that it ended.
Glennon Doyle:
So was I, babe. So was I.
Amanda Doyle:
That puts us completely full circle back at the beginning of the conversation we had in the last episode because when we were talking about how Dr. Franco says that if you’re holding something back, you can’t accept love because you don’t trust it. And I wonder if the Palmer House was, it was the opposite of that moment because there wasn’t anything you could do to hold back at that point or keep hidden. It was all over ESPN, it was all over the ticker. And since it was all out there, if someone were to love you in that space, then that would mean that you could trust it. Whereas before, when you only had shiny Abby at the front and shadow Abby, you would never be able to really accept and trust love because you’d be thinking, “Yeah, but you don’t know about Shadow Abby.”
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
I think that’s why I have so much feeling for your first wife. You’re amazing at talking about what a great love we have and me and why you love me so much. And we do have an incredible love story and incredible love. But what was different then was not just me, was not just that I was a new person. It was that for the first time you were fully and completely present. You were fully available. The drinking was gone, the soccer was gone, it was just like all of you there, all of the unrequited love was also because you weren’t there fully to love.
Glennon Doyle:
And I know there was a moment where your ex-wife asked if… You were having a conversation with her and you explained that you were in love and all the things. And she said, “Have you stayed sober?” And you said, “Yes.” And she burst out crying. And I just have such feeling. I know it was messy. I know there’s a lot there, but I do have this big love for her because I feel like she knew in that moment that you were going to be available in the next phase of your life in a way that you weren’t available in the last one. And I feel like everybody has that in their life, the things that went wrong, and then you know the person’s going to be better for the next thing. But you’re the one who did all struggling. And I don’t have any tender feelings for the one that left you hanging on all the time. I’m just going to say that.
Glennon Doyle:
But I feel like you are who you have always wanted to be. The way that you love. It’s like watching someone who is the greatest painter in the world. And since they’re painting you, everyone’s looking at the painting thinking, “She’s amazing. Look at her.” But the person sitting for the painting only looks that good because the painter is so freaking amazing at painting. That’s how you love me. And I feel so grateful that I get to be the one who is loved by you. Because you were right all of the time, your whole life. You were meant to love big and love huge and love with all of your being. And what you needed was somebody who would be fully present in there and be in it with you and be a hundred percent with you. And I get to be that.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. And I think for a lot of my life, I just thought that there was going to be some other thing this other love that was going to fix me and make me feel lovable. And I think that what I’ve learned from our relationship and the work we’ve done is the only source of working through that heartache or that emo angst. I don’t know what it is, this seeking for more. I had to figure out how to love myself. And we had a very amazing, intense love story, but we’ve also created a lot of space, a lot of safe space for each other to be able to learn how to love ourselves really deeply.
Abby Wambach:
Because in the end, I think that that is what I’ve been searching for. You’ve been like this beautiful space giver and the safety net, almost like I needed somebody strong enough and safe enough and that would love me so hard and so well that I could fake myself into believing that it was possible for me to do it myself. You gave me this runway of lovability. I keep looking at you and I’m like, “Okay, maybe it is possible. Maybe I am actually lovable.”
Glennon Doyle:
She’s pretty smart. You think she could be onto something.
Amanda Doyle:
Abby, you mentioned in the first episode how you were at FIFA and that’s the moment that you got the Best Player of the World Award and the love didn’t sink into you. And you realized, “Well, if I can’t feel the love after this, then soccer is never going to be able to fill that void.” Have you ever had a moment where you have received love in the moment and you could feel it immediately click that sinks in, I get that this takes?
Abby Wambach:
Yep. Well, it happened a couple of months ago, an unsuspecting Christmas morning. The kids are going around, they’re unwrapping their gifts, and all of a sudden Glennon’s like, Abby, it’s your turn. And I was like, “Adults go later in the morning, what’s happening?” So I’m opening up this present and it’s this letter from a lawyer that is essentially, Glennon has started the process with consent from Craig that the kids want me to adopt them as their parent legally. And there’s a lot of mixed feelings in that because we’ve talked before that there’s a grief that I will live out with the rest of my life for not biologically carrying a child of my own. But that gets completely overshadowed with the love and the joy of parenting these three children that Glennon and Craig brought into the world.
Abby Wambach:
And I guess it’s hard to explain for a stepparent who might not have a biological connection to their step kids or bonus kids, like we call it. But I don’t know, it was one of those moments, it was one of those moments in life that, no offense honey, but it’s one thing to have your romantic partner show you, tell you, marry you and-
Glennon Doyle:
Choose you.
Abby Wambach:
… and make you believe that you are lovable. And it’s a whole nother level of proof that I am a lovable person. When these three children, 14, 16, and 19 at the time, and their father, and Craig, it’s essentially the most crying I’ve ever, the hardest crying, the wail cry. There’s a similar cry when I first got sober. I don’t know how to describe it well enough, just if it makes sense, there’s like brief moments in a person’s life where all of your heartache makes sense. Every single heartbreak and issue that I had was because I didn’t know that I would be chosen.
Abby Wambach:
I first had to figure out how to love myself well enough and I had to find a love. But the kids don’t have to do that. Our life would’ve gone forward with no problems. They want that, they want me in a person way, in a parent way. And so that happened. And so we’re in the process right now of getting me added and not taking away any parental rights of Craig or Glennon, but getting a third parent added to our kids’ birth certificates. And obviously it means a lot to me. It’s just I don’t know how, I don’t know how I’ll ever thank you all. And I know that that’s not how love works, it’s just, I told Glennon she better not leave me because now I’ll take the kids.
Glennon Doyle:
The kid said three Christmases?
Amanda Doyle:
I don’t think it’s for you to thank them. I think that was their way of thanking you, Abby.
Abby Wambach:
And just so much of my life has felt like there was a thread of sorrow or shadow or darkness, and that’s not true. It was all necessary and part of my process, and I needed every bit of it to feel that moment of love.
Glennon Doyle:
Wow. All right pod squad, here’s what we’ve decided to do. We can’t just break that news of the Christmas adoption moment without explaining it more. So tomorrow we’re going to give you a bonus episode where we talk about how the adoption has come together in that moment in our family when we told Abby and what happened. And all the implications of it for our family and for other families, because it’s turned into kind of a big deal and we want to share it with you. So come back tomorrow for a short episode where we give you the deeps on the adoption. We’ll see you then.
Glennon Doyle:
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