Fix Your Most Important Relationships with the Enneagram: Suzanne Stabile
July 12, 2023
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Today we are picking up right where we left off with National Treasure, Suzanne Stabile, an internationally recognized Enneagram teacher, co-author of The Road Back to You and the author of The Path Between Us and The Journey Toward Wholeness. If you haven’t listened to yesterday’s episode yet, you’re going to want to go back and start there. These two episodes are really going to help you understand yourself and your people better and figure out how to have more compassion for yourself and your people. Let’s jump back in as Suzanne helps me understand more about why I am the way that I am. Attention, fours. I think that every single four on the planet is in the Pod Squad. So listen up, and then she’s going to dive into five, six and Abby, seven, and then we’ll put the Enneagram into practice to help improve our relationships.
Glennon Doyle:
Here we go. I’m always trying to undo co-dependence because that tends to mess up my relationships, and somehow, and I don’t know exactly how to explain it, the way that you are teaching the Enneagram, it takes away co-dependence because it’s like you’re not being how you are because it’s my fault or because I have to do something different. It’s not a reflection of me. It’s like an undoing of codependent somehow.
Suzanne Stabile:
Absolutely. I’m a Christian and I love the church as long as my husband pastors in charge and people are being loved well and not hurt. In my context, I can’t understand, Glennon, why … I get first chair as a two. Twos have every necessary gift to be codependent and fours are second chair. So why do we have all the gifts for that if it’s such a bad thing? People who have a gift of singing, that’s not bad. My codependent nature is my … it’s a gift and I’ve got a big one and it almost destroyed two of my four children. So that’s not good. But you see, I am codependent in the world because I don’t bring up thinking and you’re codependent because you don’t bring up doing. Once we’re balanced in those three codependency kind of falls away.
Amanda Doyle:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
Can you give me an example of if I’m feeling a certain way and then thinking how I’m feeling, what is doing?
Suzanne Stabile:
You can’t manage your feelings with thinking.
Abby Wambach:
Whoa.
Amanda Doyle:
Ooh.
Suzanne Stabile:
You can only manage them with doing. After you commit to doing, then you get to think about which of the possibilities of doing you should follow through with that will respect your feelings and the feelings of other people. But if you don’t do, then you don’t stop long enough and you know what you do? What fours do. I’m over personalizing. Here’s what fours do. Sorry, Amanda, I over personalized with you two. It just felt to me like.
Amanda Doyle:
No, it was dead on.
Suzanne Stabile:
For a minute it was like we were on a girls trip. You know what I’m saying?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Suzanne Stabile:
Like we were all just in some place somewhere chatting. So for fours, an average feeling is not all that great. If fours are happy, they want to be happy, and if they’re sad, they want to be sadder. But this space of just another day, nothing much going on, just a kickback laid back day, that, without a little punch of some feeling, is just not quite it.
Glennon Doyle:
Abby’s laughing crying again. Not quite it.
Suzanne Stabile:
Not quite it.
Abby Wambach:
This is perfect.
Suzanne Stabile:
That’s what you can use, Abby. You can say, “I know this is not quite it for you, but I need this moment.”
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. Wow.
Suzanne Stabile:
So if you bring up doing, you don’t need it to be everything.
Glennon Doyle:
Do you mean do something like go for a walk, make a phone call?
Suzanne Stabile:
Yeah. Well, be careful about the phone call.
Glennon Doyle:
Right, because then you want to talk about what you’re thinking.
Amanda Doyle:
You’ll just talk about your feelings and thoughts.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. All right. I gotcha.
Suzanne Stabile:
Unless you’re going to call somebody who’s going to say, “What are you going to do this afternoon?”, then you better just wash the dishes.
Amanda Doyle:
So is that like setting a boundary? You could talk about something that was bothering you, feel the bothering, do it … is doing act on that thing to make a thing, or is it actual physicality of-
Suzanne Stabile:
Okay, I gotcha. I got all of you. I know that you have in your possession The Journey Toward Wholeness.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, we do.
Suzanne Stabile:
It’s going to hand you spiritual practices for you to do that are designed to help you manage your dominant center so that you have enough space to bring up your repressed center.
Amanda Doyle:
I love that. At the end of every chapter, there’s a things to do, and it’s just like a list … it’s so good. Very concrete and efficient of you.
Suzanne Stabile:
Thank you. It was edited a number of times by people who are more like you. Glennon would have much more to choose from if I hadn’t been edited. So Glennon, the beauty of you is that you’re a four, and the problem is that you’re a four. So what we all have to do is wrap our arms around the totality of who we are and receive the three innate gifts that we were all given, thinking, feeling, and doing, and then use them intuitively, each one for what it’s for. Our youngest son is a four and when he stops doing, I know there’s trouble. So what he’s learning to do as his spiritual practice is rather than sharing with his husband walking the dogs at the end of the day in the morning, he does it because that’s doing and that gets him out of his feelings because there’s nobody there to get him whipped up with.
Glennon Doyle:
Whipped up, yeah.
Suzanne Stabile:
When you feed your feelings and you think and feel and think and feel and think and feel, then it’s not even the feeling you had anymore.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly! I told my sister recently, I said, “I’m trying to figure out what I actually think and not just what I could think,” because I could think a lot of things right now. I have paragraphs in my head about what I could legitimately make a case around, but I don’t think I even feel that.
Suzanne Stabile:
No, you just need to walk the dog.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Suzanne Stabile:
Do y’all have dogs?
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Two.
Suzanne Stabile:
Two? You get on it. You need to fire the dog walker and you need to walk the dog.
Amanda Doyle:
She just called you right out. She saw through that whole walking the dog thing.
Suzanne Stabile:
I’m as serious as I can be. If it’s raining, you need to go do something else. When you do that, all of us, I have to do it, I have to think. It’s awful.
Amanda Doyle:
I don’t know. I have to feel, and I have the shortest stick of all.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s pretty hard, sissy. If you’re not used to feeling and that’s not your comfort zone and you have to start feeling, that’s a hard one. I’d rather walk the dog.
Amanda Doyle:
I’d rather walk the dog than feel.
Suzanne Stabile:
Yeah, you’d much rather do. None of that. Okay, Abby can help you. She’s going to have to feel too, a whole half a range of emotions that she doesn’t like to feel at all. Here we go. Fives. Fives are thinkers who have feelings about what they think. Their orientation of time is the past. My guess is if we went to the place in Washington where they have all the patents invented things, I would guess that fives would be at least 75%.
Amanda Doyle:
Wow.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Suzanne Stabile:
Fives appear to be introverts even when they’re extroverts. I don’t know if I said that eights have the most energy of all the numbers.
Abby Wambach:
You did.
Suzanne Stabile:
Nines have the least energy of all the numbers because they’re trying to have no conflict, so they’re boundaried internally and externally, keeping out anything that’s going to steal their peace, keeping in anything that’s going to disturb the peace. But fives have a measured amount of energy and I hope everybody who hears this who knows a five, will never ever forget this piece of what I’m about to say. Fives wake up every morning with the same amount of energy and they can’t do anything to add to it. That’s what they get. They can’t save up extra from today for tomorrow. So they do all of life with this amount of energy every day. Every phone call, every handshake, every encounter with a human being, every problem, everything that has to be solved, everything that requires energy takes it and takes it and takes it. They live their lives trying to get home before the energy’s gone because it’s excruciating vulnerability if they don’t make it.
Suzanne Stabile:
So we say about fives, “They’re very withdrawn, they’re very guarded. I don’t know what they think. They don’t say. I don’t know what they feel. Who knows?” They are doing their best to show up for all the things and intuitively and intentionally measuring their energy as they go through the day. They’re observers who need to learn to participate, and they observe life, they say they do, rather than participate, and their work is doing repressed. So they think and feel about what they think and feel about that and that goes on. Doing for them, the reality for them is they plan to do things and they count that as doing.
Abby Wambach:
Good.
Suzanne Stabile:
My best friend since I was 18 is a five on the Enneagram, and she moved and her backyard, she didn’t like. She likes to work outside. So she had everything pulled up and then she started going to workshops to decide what to plant and reading books to decide what to plant, and considering if she was going to have a deck and looking at decks and decide what to plant and two years later, everything had grown back up and nothing was done because she was planning. If you said to her, “How’s the backyard coming?” She’d say, “Great. It’s so good.”
Suzanne Stabile:
So fives have to do, and what fives really want, they need to perceive things and to perceive means to fully understand, and so they are thinking and observing and trying to fully understand what’s happening and they struggle to get out of whatever pattern they have set for themselves. I wanted to coach basketball so bad, and when I was a sophomore at SMU, I had a chance to keep playing for SMU basketball and start a basketball program at a Catholic high school here in Dallas and it happened to be where my friend Carolyn was already coaching and teaching. I coached with her. I had the cheerleaders, she had the drill team. I had basketball and volleyball, she had track, and she just never really got whipped up about much of anything, and I thought, “How do you behave that way?” Well, because she has to keep her energy till she gets home. She got to measure everything. But I didn’t know the Enneagram then.
Suzanne Stabile:
Fives don’t like to be touched too much because it takes energy from them. Y’all, I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but I’m a toucher. Now, I have a guy who’s in my current cohort and he’s a pastor and he walks in the room and he hugs me really big when he first gets here for three days. He gives me this huge hug and then he looks at me and says, “Is that good for the weekend? Can you not hug me again?” He’s trying so hard, right? That’s his work.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. Right.
Suzanne Stabile:
That’s his work. You see how simple it is?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, and he’s trying to honor your number too. He’s trying to honor you while also caring for himself.
Suzanne Stabile:
Yes, exactly. Like, “Let’s get this out of the way so I can sit in the back and just take in information.” Morgan Harper Nichols is a five. Y’all know her?
Glennon Doyle:
We just interviewed her. Yes.
Suzanne Stabile:
Well, she’s a five on the Enneagram and she was in my cohort and she and the other fives sat at the back right on the room. Now remember, there’s just 42 people here and they named it Fifth Avenue and they all sat back there where nobody was going to touch them, they were boundaried and protected by each other and they could just think together.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, cool.
Suzanne Stabile:
At the end, they wrote me the most beautiful letters about all that they think about what they experienced.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, that’s so beautiful.
Suzanne Stabile:
Isn’t it beautiful? You and I would hate it.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Suzanne Stabile:
Fives are the only number that’s capable of neutrality.
Glennon Doyle:
Wow.
Suzanne Stabile:
Nines see two sides to everything, but they have a preference. Fives neutrality is their thing.
Suzanne Stabile:
One of the things that I think we should be mindful of is that it costs them more to show up for an intimate relationship than any other number. I don’t mean just marriage. I mean an intimate friendship. It takes everything they have to do that and people who don’t know that and fives who don’t know the Enneagram who don’t know how to teach people how they see the world, it means that we are misjudging every number. Correct? We’re misjudging every number because we don’t understand how they see. Five’s orientation to time is the past, which is a great place to be because it’s “All the touching and all the talking and all the stuff’s already past me. I don’t have to do anything back there.”
Suzanne Stabile:
Sixes, I believe there are more sixes than any other number and at this juncture, I really think that’s a good thing because sixes are the number who are the most concerned about the common good. They’re the people who are willing to do the stuff in the back room that nobody knows about. They are the fabric that hold together every organization that we belong to. They do the name tags, they pack the giveaway bags. Different from other numbers, though, there are two kinds of sixes; phobic and counterphobic. All sixes are focused on authority, all of them, so they all know what authority wants, and phobic sixes adhere to that authority. They think that’s where safety is. They would rather surrender than push and they believe if you go by all the rules and do all the things, things are going to work out really well.
Suzanne Stabile:
Counterphobic sixes don’t trust authority and so they watch authority figures to see to it that they’re just, and that they’re good to everybody, and that they’re taking care of the people who aren’t at the top. They do what they say they’re going to do. If authority doesn’t do that with counterphobic sixes, counterphobic sixes will just take you out. They’re kind of like eights. They often misidentify as eights and are misidentified as eights. The difference is sixes have a lot of anxiety and the passion that’s associated with sixes in ancient Enneagram wisdom, which I adhere to as closely and as much as I can, is fear. To tweak fear just a little bit, it’s actually anxiety, because sixes are worried about possible future events.
Suzanne Stabile:
They’re great in an emergency, they can handle anything while it’s happening. They’re worried about the stuff that’s down the road, and that is anxiety. Anxiety is being concerned and worried about possible events. They don’t need a lot of attention. They like to be counted on. Lots of them teach school. Lots of sixes have told me that they’ve taught second, third, and fourth grade and I say, “Well, why did you change teaching teams?” I know what the answer is, so it’s not a fair question, but 80% say, “Because they asked me to be the lead teacher, and I just don’t want to. I just want to teach kids. I don’t want to do all that other stuff.”
Suzanne Stabile:
Sixes are thinking dominant and thinking repressed because they’re a core number. Three, six, and nine are core number. Nines are doing dominant and doing repressed. That means they walk into a room and knows what needs to be done, and they think somebody else should get to it. Threes walk into a room and read the feelings because they’re feeling dominant and then they set feelings aside because they’re feeling repressed. Sixes are thinking dominant and thinking repressed and so that means that they misuse the thinking center, and they use the thinking center to manage their fear and their anxiety by having a plan for a possible future event. They think, “Okay, if this happens, I’m going to do this, and if this happens, we’ll do this. If this happens, we’ll do this.” Then most of the things don’t happen and they wasted all of that thinking on that.
Suzanne Stabile:
Sevens.
Glennon Doyle:
Sevens!
Suzanne Stabile:
I think it’s really hard to be a one, I think it’s really hard to be a seven, and I think it’s really hard to be a four.
Glennon Doyle:
We can do hard things, Suzanne.
Suzanne Stabile:
Yes. There you go. Is that where that came from?
Glennon Doyle:
In general.
Suzanne Stabile:
“I mean, life is hard. Oh, I know. We can do hard things.” So most people kind of want to have the things that sevens have. They want to be able to lighten up the heavy stuff and walk into a room and kind of lift everybody up a little bit. They want to be easy to be with, and they want to make everybody’s life better using humor and logic and it doesn’t work. I’m going to just address the logic, because Joel’s a seven too. My guy here, our son that works with us full-time, or we work with him, or we all work together. I don’t know how to say that so everybody gets it that it takes all three of us.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Suzanne Stabile:
But he’s a seven and as his mom, I know intimately what’s hard about being a seven and I know that when he started his journey towards sobriety in all things, nobody wanted that. “What happened to you? You’re not fun anymore. What’s wrong? Are you depressed? What’s going on with you? Do we need to do something?” Joel’s answer is, “I’m doing what you and Dad taught me to do. I’m doing my work.” It’s harder for sevens to fall and get up without making falling a joke than anybody else on the planet.
Amanda Doyle:
Wow. That feels right.
Suzanne Stabile:
So since childhood, I’m going to say things Abby, and you just stop me when they’re not true.
Abby Wambach:
Okay.
Suzanne Stabile:
Since childhood, you have been able to reframe any negative into a positive.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Suzanne Stabile:
You do it so quickly and so intuitively and so easily that it means it was possible for you to live for a long time without grieving, without dealing with loss, and without embracing the other half of the emotional field, which I’m sure somebody refers to frequently as dark emotions, and you were able to reframe things and reframe this and reframe that, and reframe this and reframe that to make it all work and to keep moving and to keep being what everybody wanted you to be until you came upon the first thing that you couldn’t reframe. When that happens for sevens, all the dominoes fall and it’s like you have to deal with everything that you didn’t grieve and everything that you weren’t able to be sad about and everything that you’ve been carrying somewhere, but you don’t know where.
Suzanne Stabile:
Seven’s orientation to time is the future and I mean it’s detailed. Future plans have details.
Glennon Doyle:
Correct.
Suzanne Stabile:
Oh my gosh. The first weekend that Joel traveled with me when he started working with us, we drove back from Louisiana. It’s like three and a half hour drive that, I don’t know, took 11 or something. He started by telling me that he was going to get a motorcycle someday, which I’m totally opposed to, and then he told me what his boots are going to look like, what his pants are going to look like, what his helmet’s going to be like. He has the whole thing planned out and then we were finally in Dallas, and I said, “Over my dead body will you get a motorcycle.”
Glennon Doyle:
We’ve had this exact situation, Suzanne.
Suzanne Stabile:
Sure you have.
Glennon Doyle:
Even down to the motorcycle and the costume.
Suzanne Stabile:
Oh, got it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I’m with you.
Suzanne Stabile:
So what I’m saying is when you can reframe in real time anything that might make you come over here, when you don’t practice a full range of emotions, because of the way you’re put together, it’s not your fault. It’s not like somebody said, “Hey, you need to be over here more.” Nobody said that. In fact, everybody said, “What’s wrong with you? Come back over here.” So then when you can’t reframe this, there’s just trouble that you have no tools to manage.
Abby Wambach:
It’s actually really interesting. Sometimes I’ll instinctively go into the reframe and Glennon, she’s such a truth seeker, that she’ll say, “That doesn’t sound right. That doesn’t sound as true as it could be.” It makes me … it literally happened this morning and I’m thinking about it, and I’m like, “Yeah, that’s right. It’s me not wanting to experience the feeling that whatever the circumstance is forcing me to feel or I should be feeling.
Suzanne Stabile:
You today need to order Miriam Greenspan Healing Through the Dark Emotions and read every word and then read it again. Because when you can’t make space for a full range of emotions, all these other things happen, like addiction. That’s why sevens struggle so much with potential addiction, because anything that happens, that would be a warning signal you reframe, and anytime you try to go over here, people come get you and bring you back over here to where they want you to be. They do it for all the right reasons. It’s because they love you, care about … it’s all the right reasons. It’s just inadequate.
Glennon Doyle:
Because for a seven, I’ve noticed with some of Abby’s old people in her life have suggested that they’re more concerned about her now than they were when she’s in active addiction. It’s like people don’t see past the, “But she looked happy then.” For sevens, if they start to deal with their harder side and they’re actually experiencing all of it, and so sometimes they actually do seem sad or they do seem angry, or they do … it’s because they’re healing. But people see, “Well, you used to be happy.”
Suzanne Stabile:
Right. All the time. So all of us … nobody’s excited that I’m not volunteering to teach vacation Bible school. Pastor’s wives do that. It’s like I don’t. I teach adults. I do my part for the world.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, you do.
Amanda Doyle:
Sure enough do.
Suzanne Stabile:
But nobody wants me to quit being a helper. “Good old Suzanne, she’ll do it.” The healthier I get, the less I do.
Abby Wambach:
In terms of where I am dominant, obviously the feelings part is the thing that I need to work on. Can you orient me in terms of what comes first?
Suzanne Stabile:
You’re a thinker.
Abby Wambach:
A thinker? Okay.
Suzanne Stabile:
So five, six and sevens are in the thinking tribe and that means you take in information with thinking, and then you do something about what you think, and then you think about what you’ve done, and then you do something literally about what you think about what you’ve done. All of that keeps you from this range of feelings. To be clear, so just to be very clear, you and Glennon and I are all equally messed up, and Amanda looks good, but she’s messed up.
Amanda Doyle:
Touche.
Suzanne Stabile:
All right. So now let’s think about that. You have a half range of feelings, Abby, and you have picked up for your whole life that that’s where people want you to be, the people that you love, and you’re still getting that message. And that’s a mess, you got to get over here and be over here too. Glennon, you don’t want happy to just be average happy, you want extra happy, and you don’t want sad to be average sad, you want extra sad. Amanda, you want to know how everybody feels, but then you don’t want to be bothered with it while you’re getting your stuff done.
Amanda Doyle:
Correct.
Suzanne Stabile:
I want to make everybody want me by knowing what they feel and doing something about it. Now, the same Enneagram that taught me that teaches me what to do about it. What we have to do is not control, that’s not the word. We have to manage our dominant center. But in Enneagram work, you never push down anything. You bring up what will create balance. So you’re going to manage it, but you’re not going to try to push it down and you’re going to bring up your repressed center, and you’re going to use that middle center to deal with your default emotion. The default emotion for twos, threes, and fours is shame, the default emotion for eights, nines and ones is anger, and the default emotion for five sixes and sevens is fear.
Suzanne Stabile:
Your support center that’s in the middle, its purpose is to help you manage your default emotion. So just under the surface all the time for us as twos, threes, and fours is shame. It’s just waiting in the wings, just waiting to get us. For five, sixes and sevens, fear’s just waiting in the wings, and for eights, nines and ones, it’s anger.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Can you, Suzanne, give us as a four, a seven and a three, what is a simple way we can love each other better or handle conflict?
Suzanne Stabile:
Well, let’s start with love each other better, because conflict can be very loving so I want to separate those. All right. Based on our conversation today and my awareness of some of the stories that make up your lives, this sounds so self-serving, I’m really struggling, but honestly, the best way you can love one another better is to agree that each of you is going to go to the journey toward wholeness and pick out two things, just two, that you’re going to work on and share it with the other two and say, “I’m asking you to hold my feet to the fire to see to it that I do these two.”
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, let’s do it and then report back.
Suzanne Stabile:
Let me tell you what one of the two needs to be. A contemplative practice.
Glennon Doyle:
I love that.
Suzanne Stabile:
A 20-minute sit every day. You might love it, but your two buddies here don’t.
Abby Wambach:
I do not.
Suzanne Stabile:
Abby, I want you to hear Joe Stabile, the love of my life, teach contemplative prayer, and we’ll send you a link for that when we finish today.
Abby Wambach:
Thank you.
Suzanne Stabile:
Because once he teaches it to you, you’ll think, “I kind of want to try that.” We will send prayer beads to all three of you and the prayer beads will come with a prayer card that is for the fruits of the spirit. For all three of you, you need a distraction as you try to begin a sit. You can’t go from the world to nirvana. So you’re going to pray the beads to get you there. They’re fruits of the spirit and what you’ll find out is that after you pray the beads for … I don’t know. Joe created the beads, by the way. He created the prayers, he created the beats. Now, I found out that we were the only denomination, Protestants, that didn’t have prayer beats, and I couldn’t stand it. It’s like if some people don’t have it and I don’t have it, I’m okay. But if everybody else has it, and I don’t, must be missing something.
Suzanne Stabile:
So he wrote the prayers and he designed the beads, and what you’ll find is that after you pray them for a while, you’re just a little more patient. You’re just a little more gentle. You’re just a little bit kinder. I never can remember the last one, so I’m still struggling with that. The last one is self-control. So you pray the beads and you’ve learned what Joe has to teach you about doing a sit and this is for everybody who’s listening. This is what you do, and from the foundation of a contemplative practice, you begin to do other things. As you look at the list so that you can do the work, figure out the one that you most want to do, and then don’t do that one.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s good.
Abby Wambach:
Because the one you most want to do is going to feed your dominant center and that’s not what we need.
Glennon Doyle:
God, I love that it comes down to just sit still and work on your own shit so we can love each other better.
Suzanne Stabile:
Except when you hear Joe teach contemplative practice, you’re supposed to sit still and let go of your shit. Not work on it. You’re supposed to let it go. Honestly, I’ve been doing a 20-minute sit almost every day for, I don’t know, 30 years, and when I don’t do it, everybody knows it. Now, we can do hard things. I know that developing a contemplative practice is a really hard thing. I get that. I’m all in. It’s really hard for me too.
Suzanne Stabile:
Okay. Now how you love one another better. You use Enneagram language instead of personal language to work through difficulty. There’s no way y’all can work together and live together and do all that and not have trouble there. That’s not a thing. That’s not reality. So you whiteboard it for a while so that you are looking at it, and then you’ll learn to do it without that and you just say, “All right, the three wants this, the four wants this, the seven wants this. What is the thing that we should do? What encompasses what we need? Where is the path?” Y’all, you can say things using Enneagram numbers that you cannot say using somebody’s name. It’s just too hurtful if you use names.
Glennon Doyle:
That makes such good sense.
Amanda Doyle:
Yep.
Glennon Doyle:
I love that.
Oh my goodness.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
You are a gift.
Amanda Doyle:
You have been missing from my life for too long.
Suzanne Stabile:
Y’all have no idea what it’s like to have me in your life and not wanting to go away, so hunker down.
Glennon Doyle:
I put my phone number in the chat.
Suzanne Stabile:
We need phone numbers and we need addresses so we can send you the beads.
Glennon Doyle:
Perfect. We will do it. Suzanne, this has been such a gift. I feel like I already know my sissy and my wife better, and I’m going to do your things. I’m going to do your contemplative sit. I have actually read all of your books, but I haven’t finished the Wholeness one, so I’m going to go back to that to finish it, and I hope you will come to our house when you’re in California.
Suzanne Stabile:
I’ll let you know when we’re coming. If you’re serious, I’m serious.
Glennon Doyle:
We’re serious.
Suzanne Stabile:
Okay. Well, I am too. Joe will be with me and you, then you’ll just adore him. Everybody does. I would just say this, though. I don’t have a lot of space for relationships, so I don’t invite them without commitment.
Glennon Doyle:
And I just began allowing relationships into my life two years ago, and I know what you mean, and I feel the same way.
Abby Wambach:
I’m not going to reframe this conversation.
Glennon Doyle:
When you come, we can talk about happy things and sad things as long as they’re very happy and very sad.
Suzanne Stabile:
There you go.
Glennon Doyle:
We love you, Suzanne.
Suzanne Stabile:
When we want to be in the middle of happy and sad, we’ll send you to do something.
Amanda Doyle:
Walk the dogs, lady.
Glennon Doyle:
Pod Squad-
Suzanne Stabile:
Oh, y’all, I’m so thankful for this opportunity to be with you.
Abby Wambach:
Same.
Suzanne Stabile:
And I so hope I gave you what you want.
Glennon Doyle:
And more.
Abby Wambach:
You gave more than. Geez, Louise. More than.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you for all that because what an offering. All of the thinking and feeling that that required of you. I kept thinking, looking at you, how much you were offering, and I’m grateful for all of it.
Suzanne Stabile:
Loved it. Thank you for your work.
Abby Wambach:
You too.
Suzanne Stabile:
Thank you for your way of being in the world. Thank you for your courage. I’m not sure people even know what that means anymore.
Glennon Doyle:
What does courage mean to you?
Suzanne Stabile:
Telling the truth. Trusting my aging body to get me where I need to be and that I’ll do okay. Wearing those ugly black socks so my feet won’t swell on an airplane.
Abby Wambach:
Courage. Bye, Pod Squad. We’ll see you guys next time. Thanks for coming.
Glennon Doyle:
If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you’d be willing to take 30 seconds to do each or all of these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Gard Things? Following the pod helps you because you’ll never miss an episode, and it helps us because you’ll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you’re there, if you’d be willing to give us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios.