Jenny Lawson is Broken (in the Best Possible Way)
May 31, 2022
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Hi, everybody.
Abby Wambach:
Hi.
Glennon Doyle:
How you’re doing babe.
Amanda Doyle:
Hello.
Abby Wambach:
I’m very excited.
Glennon Doyle:
And how are you, sis?
Amanda Doyle:
I’m very excited.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, good.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m very excited to talk to our guest today.
Glennon Doyle:
Me, too. As you might know, it’s Mental Health Awareness Month.
Amanda Doyle:
Otherwise known as, all year in our world.
Glennon Doyle:
How funny is it that we’re going to take one month to talk about mental health? It’s so fascinating. I think it shows how we haven’t yet figured out that mental health is for everyone with a mental, right? With a mind. Yes, I know, I know. It’s a mind. But there are some people whose minds are so special and so different that they can serve as guides for all who have mentals. And our guest today is one of those guides and she has been a guide for me, forever. I have been reading Jenny Lawson’s… well, first, on her blog, decades ago. The Blogess is how I found her. I think her tagline on her website is, “Like Mother Teresa but better.” That’s how I first fell in love with her, with just that line.
Glennon Doyle:
I’ve always loved Jenny. She’s a hero of a lot of folks, for many reasons, one because she’s unbelievably hilarious and honest, because also because there’s so many people who talk about mental health in our cultural way of talking about it, which is just from an expert view or from a before and after story, like mental health extreme home makeover. Like, “They used to be a mess and now they’re better.”
Abby Wambach:
Before and after.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. And it never feels true to me, because that’s never been true for me. Ever. So I don’t understand how that… I always feel like people are lying when they’re done with mental illness or something. That’s not the way it works.
Abby Wambach:
At least it just not the way it works for you and Jenny.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, I feel like for anyone, but fine. I’m sure there’s some people who have fixed their mentals.
Abby Wambach:
I’m just trying to say that there might be different people out there, also.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, but great for them. Happy for them.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, and it also speaks to maybe that is true of those people’s experiences, but it’s not socially acceptable to talk about it from the thick.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. It’s only like, “Oh, I too used to be an alcoholic. I, too, used to whatever.” But when you say, “Currently, now, right this moment live, broadcasting live to you,” it’s a very different beast.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s revolutionary-
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
… In a world that just celebrates victory stories. And it’s true, in a way that makes people like me and millions of people feel really seen and okay in belonging. So she talks about mental illness from it, not just about it. She just shows up in the middle and is one of us. Let’s just get her here. Obviously, our guest is Jenny Lawson.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. Jenny Lawson.
Amanda Doyle:
Wouldn’t it be funny if it wasn’t? Well, after that intro, we couldn’t get Jenny, she’s high demand, but we have this other girl who used to know Jenny.
Glennon Doyle:
Who’s better now.
Glennon Doyle:
Hi, Jenny.
Amanda Doyle:
Who’s better now.
Jenny Lawson:
Hello. Oh my gosh. I’m so glad to be here and also very nervous. I normally can’t say that when I’m doing podcasts, because I’m like, “I’m going to be very professional,” but this feels like a very safe place and that I can just be honest about it. And so, I’m both very excited and also slightly terrified that I am going to disappoint in dealing with a lot of imposter syndrome and fighting that off.
Amanda Doyle:
Same, Jenny.
Jenny Lawson:
Right?
Amanda Doyle:
Same to all of it. Welcome. We welcome you with open arms.
Jenny Lawson:
Thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
And also, I just want to say, there’s no possible way you could ever disappoint. We have this hour together and I’m so thrilled to have this hour together and if we just stood here and stared at each other, I would be so happy. I’m just grateful to get to see you and your face in real life. Can you read Jenny’s bio?
Abby Wambach:
Jenny Lawson is an award-winning writer and humorist known for her piercing candor in sharing her struggle with mental illness. She’s written four, count that folks, four New York Times bestsellers, including Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir; Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Terrible Things; and Broken (In the Best Possible Way), which recently won the Good Reads choice award for the best humor of 2021. She’s the owner of Nowhere Bookshop an indie bookstore in San Antonio. Jenny lives in Texas with her husband and child and would like to be your friend, unless you’re a real asshole.
Glennon Doyle:
Unless you’re a real asshole. Nobody be an asshole. Sister, Abby, I’m trying to be Jenny’s friend.
Amanda Doyle:
She how she led with me, Jenny. She added Abby to be sweet, but mostly it was for me.
Abby Wambach:
Well, I mean, I don’t think that I, of any of the three of us have assholery in me.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re the least asshole.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, that’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
I-
Amanda Doyle:
On the pie chart, you’re a sliver.
Glennon Doyle:
… need to talk to myself.
Abby Wambach:
That’s exactly what I was trying to get at.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m the asshole.
Jenny Lawson:
I think it depends on what you’re using your assholery for, because it can be a fantastic tool for the right thing.
Glennon Doyle:
Jenny, talk to us about, first of all it’s Mental Health Awareness Month and then next month is Pride Month, so this is really my time to shine, Jenny. This is like game months for us.
Jenny Lawson:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Can you tell us, in Broken, which I love all of your books so much, Broken’s just the most recent one I’ve read, and I’ve read it twice and I read it once for my own little heart and mental and then, again, for the interview. Talk to us about your first panic attack that you remember when you were little.
Jenny Lawson:
Oh, goodness. Anxiety has always been my constant companion. So I’m not sure if I could even break it down to the first. It’s really more that there’s a lot of stuff that, in retrospect, as I got older I look at and said, “You know what? The average kid does not take out all of their toys out of the toy box and shut themselves in like it’s a tiny coffin or a sensory deprivation chamber. The average kid doesn’t throw up every day because they’re going to have to go to school. The average kid doesn’t have problems communicating with people.” And so, for me, it was always just my constant. I was just weird. I think now it’s easier to be weird, but this was back in the ’70s and ’80s when you couldn’t find your other weirdos and I’m living out in rural Texas and yeah, it was rough.
Jenny Lawson:
It took a long time before I saw… that’s really kind of how I discovered writing, was because I couldn’t communicate in any other way. And so, not only because I was so afraid of talking, but also when I would talk I would get really panicking, so I would either not talk at all, and I was just the very quiet person sitting in the corner or as soon as I started to talk I could not stop and I would ramble and I would go off on these ridiculous tangents. And now I embrace it, now I’m like, “I’m okay with the ridiculous tangents.” But, at the time, it was a different era and people were like, “Oh, there’s something real wrong with her.” But finding writing gave me the ability to slow down time and sort of reprocess it and say, “Okay, here’s what I want you to know and here’s who I am.” And it was through that that I was able to communicate.
Glennon Doyle:
That tracks. So your book is called Broken, the most recent one, and it’s so interesting because I always had a complicated relationship with that word. My friend Brandi Carlile named her book Broken Horses and I was like, “No, you cannot name it Broken Horses. You’re not broken.” We had a whole thing. I was like, “If you name it Broken Horses, no one will read it.” And then, she did and then it became this huge New York Times bestseller, so that was fine.
Amanda Doyle:
As did Jenny’s.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, as did Jenny’s so I’m not getting asked for advice about titles anymore. But can you tell me your relationship to the work broken and your embracing of that word?
Jenny Lawson:
For me, I have always felt a little bit just not right. I have clinical depression that’s treatment resistant and I have anxiety disorder and I have avoidant personality disorder, which just kind of makes me think that everybody hates me all the time, and I have impulse control disorder and I have trichotillomania. I collect disorders like other people collect Holly Hobby. And I just was like, “There’s something really wrong with me, because I don’t know anybody else like this.” The more that I explored it, the more that I realized that the way in which I was broken, and I use that word in a way of sort of reclaiming it, of broken as in shattered in a slightly different way, but in a way that lets the light in. And it creates this ability to see things from a different perspective. I mean, it is a horrible struggle to deal with mental illness, but I think that for a lot of people, it creates a very deep well of compassion, because you know how hard it is.
Jenny Lawson:
Everybody’s depression presents in a different way, which was something that, for me, I always have to continue to remind myself, because some people will be like, “Oh, I’m really depressed, so I was crying all day.” And I’m like, “My depression presents as an extremely uncomfortable numbness. My face feels like it doesn’t connect to me. I have absolutely no energy. I just basically have to cling to the couch and be like, “Keep breathing. Your depression is lying to you. Your depression is telling you some terrible things right now and none of them are true.” And that is awful and terrible, but it also makes me who I am, and that’s not to say if somebody said, “Here, take this pill, you can get fixed forever,” I wouldn’t be like, “Yes, please. Let me have it.” I’m not like, “Oh, yes. I love to suffer. It’s great.” But one of my doctors said, and it was one of the nicest things that anyone has ever said to me, it’s always stuck with me, he was like, “You don’t let your pain go to waste.”
Jenny Lawson:
And I think every single time when I’m struggling and everybody has their own struggle with whatever it is, I just think, “If we all could just learn from that,” because it’s so easy to turn brittle or angry, but to turn it and make it into positive, forward motion of how could you help others, how could you have compassion for others, how could you have compassion for yourself? Because, I mean, honestly I’m really good at forgiving people for the things that they do to me. It is almost impossible for me to forgive myself. And I’m like, “Okay, well I don’t go to the PTA meetings, because I can’t handle it.” And I don’t go to so many of my kid’s things that I really want to be a part of, and I’m like, “I physically cannot make myself do it.” I have to sort of pick and choose and it was really hard, for a long time, to deal with the fact of the disappointment that I felt in myself as a mom, especially when Hailey was really young, because when they were young, I didn’t have any ability to sort of tell them that there was something wrong except I would just be like, “I just don’t feel very good.”
Jenny Lawson:
And so, whenever things would get really bad, our thing was we would watch Dr. Who, because I was like, “I can just sit on the couch and it’s one of the TV shows that doesn’t jar me, for some reason.” And so, we would spend all this time, and I would be thinking, “All of these other mothers are out there, they’re cooking dinner for their kids, I’m not. They’re washing their clothes, they’re doing all this stuff, I’m just laying here. I’m literally doing nothing, just trying to breath, to get through this week.” And when Hailey was older, I was able to explain it to them and apologize and they were like, “First of all, I didn’t really realize that that was what you were going through and I’m so sorry, but also those were the best memories for me. Do you not understand? You sat with me on the couch. Everybody else’s mom was like, ‘I don’t have time for you. I got to…’ But you were like, ‘Oh, no. This is just me and you time. We’re going to spend four hours just sitting here, snuggling and watching Dr. Who.'”
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s so beautiful.
Glennon Doyle:
God, the things we think we should feel guilty about are the moments our kids are like, “There she is. She’s with us.”
Abby Wambach:
She’s letting me watch four hours of TV. I love my mama.
Glennon Doyle:
One of the things that’s so important to me is it’s not just, “Oh, we’re broken and busted up so there are these silver linings.” It’s like there’s this chapter in your book called Rainbow Fire about the actual gifts of these ways of being, not just the sour grapes, not just silver linings. But there’s this moment where you’re on tour for the book. And so, Jenny writes these books. She writes them, I think, much of her writing she makes sure she’s in the place, she in the depression, she’s in the anxiety, that’s why we can feel it so real and so connected. Then she has to go on tour.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, it’s a sick joke, sick joke.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. So you have this one moment where you’re on tour, you’re in a hotel room. You’re supposed to go out and speak to all of these people about your book and you get extremely anxious and you can’t go out and you can’t go out into the world and you are stuck in this hotel room and you’re too anxious to go explore, which is such a metaphor of anxiety, it’s like what always literally happens and then you’re like, “Oh, I’m missing my life,” and all of those people are out there, out the window, doing the things humans are supposed to do, but I can’t experience life, because of this anxiety and I’m wasting my life. And then, can you tell everybody what happens next when you’re looking out the window?
Jenny Lawson:
Yeah. I’m looking out the window and you can see Times Square off here and just all of these things that I’d always heard about on… like you read about them and you hear about them and then you actually see them in real life and you’re like, “Oh my god, that’s a real place and it really exists. It’s not just a fairytale kind of thing.” I kept going back and forth from my window to my door and every time I would get stuck and I would be like, “I cannot do it. I cannot leave this hotel room. I cannot make myself leave here. My anxiety is too strong.” And I just felt like such a failure, and I sat down next to the window and just opened it up and was like, “At least I can feel like I’m kind of in New York. I can hear the noise.”
Jenny Lawson:
And I look down and there’s this big fountain and I don’t know what it’s called, but it looks like a whole bunch of dandelions and it’s fountains on fountains and it’s so pretty and I look down and I notice that there is this rainbow fire coming up off of this fountain and I am trying to figure out what it is and I realize that it’s a prism effect. And I’m looking at it and I’m like, “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful, and everybody is walking past it as if they couldn’t care at all.” And I just thought, “Maybe they’re just so used to it.” You get used to beauty and you don’t see it anymore. And then, I realized that that wasn’t what it was it all. It was because I was so high up in my building, that I was the only one that could see the light hit it in that certain way, and that no one else was seeing this amazing, fantastic thing that was greater than anything that I would have seen out there. And that, sometimes, life creates a path for you and it ends up that it’s the right path and I was so grateful that I was there in that moment.
Glennon Doyle:
You said, “I was reminded that there are amazing things I would never see with normal eyes and other paths. I cried again, but this time out of a small thankfulness that my brokenness set me in the place where I am, beautiful, terrible, unseen by most.”
Amanda Doyle:
You have so many of these so-called brokennesses and you just mentioned a few of them. You also have ADD and severe autoimmune diseases. One of the reasons so many people hold to your words like a lifeline is that you’re able to put words to experiences that so many have, but are lonely and severely isolated inside of, because they don’t have a bridge of words to be seen and understood by other people. And you put words to these internal realities that are so absurdly accurate and honest and brilliant and often hilarious, that you are bringing light to the experience that so many have. And I believe it’s saving lives, that you are giving people a bridge to walk over with your words. You describe your ADD self as a kitten on cocaine.
Jenny Lawson:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Please say more.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s important for-
Amanda Doyle:
What is it like to live with ADD?
Jenny Lawson:
It is utterly exhausting. It’s very much like working on LSD, where you think, “Oh, I think I’m doing this.” And then later you look and you’re like, “Well, I was not doing that at all.” On a very regular basis, I would say on a typical day, like today, this happened, I cannot even count how many times this has happened, today I have this hyperfixation on… I tend to eat the same thing over and over again, so my hyperfixation lunch, which I’ve had pretty much every day for maybe three years is a pimento cheese sandwich on toasted bread. Big pimento cheese is in business just because of me. And so, I went to put toast in the toaster and there was already toast in the toaster and I was like, “I must’ve done this already.” But then, I looked at it and I was like, “Wow, that’s really cold.” And I’m like, “Oh, it’s stale.” And I’m like, “Oh, I did this yesterday. I did it yesterday and forgot to eat it.” Just literally was like, “Yeah, I guess I must’ve eaten.”
Jenny Lawson:
My biggest problem is that I have a lot of problems remembering to get my medication filled, because I have ADD, which is impossible. And then, because I have ADD and I kind of just get things confused, I’m like, “Did I take the pill? Did I not take the pill?” And then I’ll be like, “Wait, did I take my vitamin pill? Am I ODing on vitamins?” I have no idea.
Abby Wambach:
Oh my gosh.
Jenny Lawson:
I think there’s some sort of machine that says, “Not you, uh-uh, you had too many.” And so, instead, I end up not taking enough because I’m like, “I don’t know, maybe I already had one. I’m not going to chance it.” Yeah. It’s really hard. I’ve had to find a whole lot of tools and the really great thing with mental illness, with depression, with anxiety, is that there are so many people know who are willing to talk about it. They’re willing to say, “This is what works for me, this is what works for me,” and you can kind of pick and choose. And I always think, I have my toolbox and I can be like, “Okay, this works for me. This thing that everybody was like, ‘Totally works,’ this thing does not work for me.” And so, when somebody’s like, “You should try yoga,” like, “Fuck you.”
Abby Wambach:
I agree.
Jenny Lawson:
Right? It works for everybody else. But no, I don’t want to sweat and be uncomfortable and I’m going to strain something. And also, I’m going to fart so many times-
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Jenny Lawson:
… I don’t want to do that in public.
Abby Wambach:
Thank you.
Jenny Lawson:
Right?
Amanda Doyle:
You’re like, “That should be good for my anxiety, having to deal with thinking about farting in front of 30 people from the PTA.”
Jenny Lawson:
The entire time. And you’re in these positions and nobody else farts. I’ve been three yoga classes, no one ever farts and the whole time I’m like, “How?” There’s nothing, nothing. Anyway, it’s insane. But I have all these tools, and so, for me, one that has been really helpful is pink noise, you they have different kinds like gray noise and brown noise, and whatever, pink noise it sounds kind of like the ocean, but there’s something about that particular tone that helps block out. So when I have ADD, I hear all the light bulbs in the house and I hear-
Abby Wambach:
Whoa.
Jenny Lawson:
… I mean everything is very loud all the time, so I can’t concentrate on anything else. It’s like if everything in your house turned up the volume to 90 and people are talking to you normally and you’re going, “Do you not hear what’s going on?
Amanda Doyle:
Wow.
Jenny Lawson:
… We’re in the middle of an earthquake.” And they’re like, “No, it’s really not.”
Amanda Doyle:
Wow.
Jenny Lawson:
I’m like, “Do you hear the lights?” And they’re like, “No.” But if you talk to people with ADD, most of them will say, “Oh yeah, oh my god, the lights in here are so loud,” especially like fluorescent lights. Awful. But pink noise drowns it out and the really helpful thing is when I’m writing, because I have a really hard time sitting down and getting things done. There’s a YouTube compilation of just free pink noise and I think it’s like 20 minutes long, and so when I turn it on, I can write and as soon as I start to get distracted, I know that it’s turned off and I can say to myself, “I just worked for 20 minutes,” even if I only got one sentence one, even if I’m going to delete it. It still gives me a chance to say, “I completed 20 minutes, I think I can do another 20. Let’s try it one more time.”
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s awesome. As someone who deals with ADD, does it annoy you or not when people are like, “I’m so ADD,” on all their memes and graphics, because they forgot one thing. Is that an annoyance and a hurtful thing for you?
Jenny Lawson:
I understand why it’s hurtful for other people, for me, no it doesn’t. For me, it feels kind of compassionate, in some way, because they’re like, “Oh, this really sucks that I was forgetful or I was this.” And it’s not the same and, of course, you shouldn’t make fun of it and everything, but at the same time, I mean, I call myself crazy all the time and there are some people who are like, “You can’t call yourself crazy,” and I’m like, “You know what? I get to take that word back. I’m like Justin Timberlake with sexy. I’m taking crazy back.” I embrace it and I’m okay with it. One of the really nice things that has come from writing about mental illness is the fact that… I’m going to have to tell this story backwards to get to the thing. When I first wrote about it, I was very afraid to talk about it, but what I would do is I would write these funny posts and I would keep them, so that when I was having a week when I couldn’t do anything at all, I could publish them then. And I was like, “Oh, this is good. This is covering.”
Jenny Lawson:
But what happened was, in fact, it made it so much more painful, because of the cognitive dissonance of people going like, “You’re so funny. Oh my gosh.” And instead I’m like, “I cannot shower. I cannot stand up. I hate myself.” And so, I was like, “I’m just going to have to write about it.” And when I did, my father he just was like, “I don’t think this is a good idea. This could affect you.” But I did anyway and what happened was, instead of people running away, thousands of people said, “Me too. I also feel alone. I also feel sometimes like the world would be better off without me.” I also listen to those lies that depression tells and I have to remind myself that those are lies and when I come out I’ll go, “Oh, that was not real.” And so, what happened was, I got all of these responses from people later on who were actively in the process of planning their suicide and decided to not and to get help, not because of what I wrote, but because they saw thousands of anonymous strangers say, “Me too, me too. I also feel like this.”
Jenny Lawson:
And they thought, “How could they possibly feel like the world be better off without them?” And then they thought, “Well, if I feel that for that stranger, maybe I could give myself that same benefit of the doubt.” And what is so amazing is that now there are all of these people who reached out and they got help and they’re still alive today and they’re mothers and fathers and children and parents and they were saved by anonymous strangers who have no idea that they saved lives. You don’t know the ripples that you put out there, just in saying, “I also feel like that,” that they saved lives. And after that, my dad was like, “I’m really proud of you and I’m going to start talking about my mental illness, too.” And before, he really… I mean, to the point where when I first started to see a psychiatrist when I was like, “This is really bad.” My mom just kind of sat me down and said, “You know that this runs in your family? You know that your dad has some really difficult issues and your aunts and your grandparents?” And I was like, “No, no one told me.”
Jenny Lawson:
But that’s how it was. It was only recently that I found out that my, I think she was my great-great-grandmother, my grandmother’s grandmother, I was doing some genealogy stuff and I found that she died in a mental institution in our town and I was like, “That’s so strange, because I would’ve thought that I would’ve heard something about that.” And my mom was like, “I didn’t know anything about that.” And my grandmother was like, “I didn’t know anything about that,” because it was hidden. It was completely hidden and I found her death certificate and it was death related to psychosis and I was like, “Well, psychosis doesn’t kill you.” And so, I did some research on that hospital and what they did at the time was insulin therapy where they put you into a diabetic coma and they did this thing where they put you in freezing cool water, hydrotherapy, they just did these really barbaric treatments that a ton of people died from, because they had heart attacks.
Jenny Lawson:
And that’s what happened with her, so every time that I start to think it’s hard to open up, it’s hard to open yourself up and know that even 99.9% of the people are going to say, “Hey, I’m with you,” or “Someone I love also has depression,” or “I don’t get it, but at least you’re funny about it,” that there’s still going to be that 0.1% who’s like, “I knew you were crazy. They should take your kid away. They should lock you up.” I just look at how far we’ve come and how easy it could be to fall back. I mean, we can see that now with the stuff that’s going on with the supreme court where I’m like, “Oh, this was a done deal. I didn’t have to think about this for the rest of my life.” And all of a sudden I’m like, “Oh, this is back. What?”
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right. Jenny, I feel like it’s important to talk about suicide and it’s scary to talk about it, because people are convinced that talking about it is contagious, that if you talk about it, that means other people will think of it or something and maybe they wouldn’t have thought of it before, and I think that comes from a good place, too, right? Everybody’s just trying to avoid it, but what has always been surprising to me, and I have no idea if this is just because of my mental health issues, is that people seem so shocked. “I can’t even imagine,” is usually the refrain, right? Like, “I can’t even imagine,” and that is always very… feels othering to me, because I’m always like, “Really? You’ve never thought about that?”
Glennon Doyle:
So I don’t even know exactly what I’m trying to say, but I think what I’m trying to say is, I feel like talking about it, even admitting, “Yes. I, too, have had those feelings. I, too, have considered suicide. I have had beginning thoughts or middle thoughts.” I don’t think that that propagates suicide. I think that what you just said is so important, talking about it makes people think, “Oh, maybe I’m not alone it,” and that makes you less depressed, which makes you less likely to commit suicide, right?
Jenny Lawson:
Yes, yeah. I totally agree. There are some issues, so for instance I have suicidal ideation, which means that I think about suicide a lot, even though it’s not necessarily something where I’m like, “Oh, let’s do it.” It’s just an impulsive thought that I have, and for a long time, it really bothered me, because I would think that and I would get so upset about it, and then I would get upset about being upset, and it would actually make it much worse. And instead, what I’ve learned is the best thing to do is just recognize that emotion and that thought and go, “Okay, I see you. That’s a little crazy. Put it in a bubble. Push it off.” And then, if it comes back, you just continue to do that. The other thing is that, for a lot of people, if you’re in a dark place or if you have suicidal ideation, one of the things that you have to learn and it’s a really hard process, but you have to learn how to take care of yourself and sometimes that does mean removing yourself from that sort of stuff.
Jenny Lawson:
There are certain types of triggers. There’s some movies and I’m like, “Oh, I want to see this movie so bad,” and I’ll do a little search and it’ll be like, “Oh, this type of this happens,” and I’m like, “Oh, I can’t. I can’t,” because I know it’ll make those thoughts and I don’t want to have to deal with it. So it does kind of suck that you’re kind of having to carry your brain around in a little bag and go, “I know you want to look at this thing, this really dark thing looks exciting to you, because your brain’s there.” But I absolutely think that talking about suicide and the thoughts of it are so important, because I think when it happens, it can be so terrifying that you can automatically think, well, I guess that choice was maybe the right choice, instead of having somebody say, “Oh, it’s okay to have that thought,” that thought doesn’t mean that you’re going to act on it, it just means that you need to talk to somebody.
Jenny Lawson:
You just need to make sure that you’re safe. You need to talk to a therapist, talk to a friend. I’ve called the crisis hotline so many times and it’s wonderful. It’s so helpful. Even sometimes I’ll get somebody and I’m like, “Mm, nope. Okay. I’ll talk to you later.” And then, I’ll call back and I’ll be like, “Can I talk to somebody else?” Because sometimes you get people who want to fix you and I’m just like, “I don’t really want somebody to fix me, I just want somebody to say, ‘That sucks. I’m so sorry. You’re going really good. You’re going to get through this.'” And that’s what I continue to remind myself. But yeah, you really see people who are like, “I can’t believe that this person had everything going for them,” and when your brain is not working properly, it doesn’t matter.
Glennon Doyle:
It doesn’t matter.
Jenny Lawson:
Yeah. And we don’t do this to anything else. We don’t go, “Oh, she lost her battle to cancer. She must be so weak.” And I think suicide is terrible and horrible and if you were in any way thinking about it, at all, I can tell you, you need to reach out. You need to get help, because there are so many people who would miss you. I mean, you do not know the ripples that you would make. But I also will say, for a lot of people who have left us, I feel really badly that for so many of them, that’s all people think about, is their last moment. And I’m like, “They had such an amazing, wonderful life and we should celebrate that.”
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Jenny Lawson:
And I think that also can be really helpful for people who have suicidal ideation, because when somebody big dies by suicide we all feel like, “Oh my god, I could be next. I could be next.” And you feel like, “Oh, okay. Well, they failed.” And if you can retrain your brain to be like, “Actually, they succeeded in saving their life over and over and over again.” Like Robin Williams had this long and amazing life filled with comedy and humor and pathos and severe ups and downs and flew and he had such an amazing life, and I think it’s really sad when people just go like, “Oh, his life was a tragedy because it ended in this way.” Because everybody’s life is an amazing chance to celebrate magic and appreciate it and feel it and if you, right now, are feeling depressed and numb and feeling like you’re never going to feel that again, I mean, you just have to trust that you will come out and every single time I’m in a depression, I just came out of one, and when I was in it, I had to go back and read my own stuff to be like, “Okay, the past Jenny said, ‘I’ll come out again,’ and past Jenny must know.”
Jenny Lawson:
It doesn’t feel like it. It doesn’t feel like it’s possible, and then it does and you can breathe again and light works again and you can just be a normal person, which is so fantastic, but also a little exhausting, because you come out and you’re two weeks behind on everything and there’s always people who are like, “Well, it’s because you’re lazy. If you exercised more.”
Glennon Doyle:
The damn yoga people.
Jenny Lawson:
Exactly. If you prayed the right way, if you found the right God. It’s probably your glucose, no it’s your gluten. I’m like, “You know what? It’s just my brain. It’s generations of people. We just have weird brains.”
Glennon Doyle:
Coming out of it is so interesting though. I saw something that made me feel so seen, I’m sure it was a meme, because that’s the way my brain works. But it said something like, “Coming out of depression is when you do your worldwide apology tour.” And I feel like that’s it. It’s just like you’re in it and then you spend the next month apologizing for every fricking thing you didn’t do, didn’t show up for, the things you said, the things you didn’t say. It takes another month.
Jenny Lawson:
Oh my god. That is absolutely 100%. And then, you have this doubt in yourself of, “I didn’t do these things that the average normal person can do.” I mean, it really is like waking up and you have the worst flu ever and you don’t know how long it’s going to last, and everybody’s like, “Well, you can push through the flu,” but then they have the flu and they’re like, “Oh, I can’t push through this. I literally can’t get out of bed.” It’s like, “That’s what it is, except it’s the flu that’s in your brain.” But guess what? Your brain controls everything, all my favorite stuff is in there, so when it’s broken, all of this is broken. Everything that’s attached to this is broken.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right, that’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh god.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, it’s so good.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s so amazing. All my favorite stuff’s in there. I’m just going to say real quick for anyone who’s experiencing that who needs a place to reach out Jenny mentioned the crisis hotline. It is 800-273-8255.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you, sister.
Amanda Doyle:
800-273-8255. And if you’re sitting here thinking, “How is that brilliant, amazing woman possibly considering that the world might be better without her. That’s crazy.” No pun intended. That is also true for you-
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
… the person who is listening.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
That is also true.
Glennon Doyle:
And for someone who never has had any experience with suicide and doesn’t understand what we’re talking about, one thing that you could do is just to make sure that whenever you’re in a conversation about this or you hear about it, that you react with reverence and not judgment. This is something we can do, we can stop staying that suicide is selfish. I also think about this poem that Warsan Shire wrote about her refugee experience, when I think about suicide. And she said, she has this one line that says, “You must understand, no one leaves their home unless the water is safer than the land.” And that’s how I-
Jenny Lawson:
I literally have that book right next to me.
Glennon Doyle:
Really?
Jenny Lawson:
Yes. Oh my gosh.
Glennon Doyle:
Every time someone says, “It’s so selfish. It’s so whatever. I can’t imagine.” I want to say, “You have to understand, no one leaves their home unless the water is safer than the land,” so just be grateful you don’t understand.
Jenny Lawson:
Yes, yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And have some reverence.
Jenny Lawson:
I have a lot of people who will come to me and will say, “I don’t understand it. I don’t understand depression. I don’t understand anxiety. But my wife or my husband, they suffer from it and so they gave me your book to try to understand and I have a better understanding, but what am I supposed to do to help them?” And I think that’s, first of all, such an amazing… I love the fact that their first thought is not, “Ugh, this is going to be exhausting for me.” It’s, “How do I help them?” And I always just say, “It’s different for every single person and really the best thing that you can do is to just ask them, ‘What is it that you need from me?'” One other thing that I would say… so I don’t talk about my child and their experience, because they’re 17 and I’m like, “You know what? When you’re 18…” I mean, they talk about their own stuff, but I’m like, “I’m not going to publicly talk about any of their stuff until they’re an adult and they’re okay with it and they can make that decision fully.”
Jenny Lawson:
But I will say, for parents, especially if you have hereditary issues, one of the greatest things that you can do is to ask your kid how they are and that sounds so dumb, like, “How are you?” But to really be like, “But, really, how are you? On a scale from one to 10, zero being the worst, 10 being the best?” And that’s really helpful, because sometimes you’ll have a kid and they’ll be like, “I’m a 10,” and that’s actually not great. That might be like maybe there’s some swings that are going on there. And also, the fact that they’re able to think about it that way and be like, “Where am I really?” Because you automatically want to say, “Fine.” You automatically either want to please your parents or get away from your parents. Usually both, if they’re teenagers. And so, that, to me has been really helpful is that question of, “How are you really?,” once a day, one to 10, where are you right now? And it’s okay, I’m not going to judge you, nothing bad’s going to happen, I’m on your side. There’s all sorts of different options. It’s something that I wish I had found earlier, so I always pass it onto parents.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, putting a number on it, I think-
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, it’s good.
Abby Wambach:
… for me, especially with Glennon, who also suffers from depression and anxiety, I have had to tune into some of her triggers, like become hyper aware of some of her triggers, actually one of them happened last night. And the way I respond to knowing that something could be upsetting or could be creating an anxiety in her, the way in which I respond to that, the way in which I ask about that almost is more important, in some ways, than me even asking. I mean, I think putting a number on it is a brilliant way, because it kind of cuts out any kind of judgment. And so, that I think is going to be-
Glennon Doyle:
And words don’t make any sense when they’re-
Abby Wambach:
… really helpful, I think, for me, in my marriage. Because I’ll just say, “How are you feeling?” And she’s like-
Glennon Doyle:
I’m like, “Don’t give me another job right now. I don’t fucking-
Abby Wambach:
She’s doing like six calculations in her head like, A, why did you fucking ask me that? And B-
Jenny Lawson:
Why? Do I not look like I’m not feeling okay?
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Abby Wambach:
How am I responding? So I think that putting a number on it is really, really beautiful.
Amanda Doyle:
Plus, fine can mean so many different things. Fine depends on your baseline. I mean, fine can mean I’m getting through, I’m surviving, I’m going to show up tomorrow. But that’s not necessarily fine. Like when I was reading your book, Jenny, it was one of the things that convinced me to get on anti-anxiety medicine, because I read a part of your book that has always been my fine. I just thought that’s how life was. And I didn’t understand that there could be a way that could be different, that that might actually be anxiety that is that experience that could potentially get better for me, as opposed to I would’ve said I was fine, because that’s how I’ve always 100% been. I want to read this one part that I identified so much with, because to the extent it helps anyone else.
Amanda Doyle:
You were talking about anxiety and you said, “Sometimes my anxiety gets hard in ways that you might not expect. If you struggle with anxiety, you probably know this feeling, the paralysis. I get stuck and suddenly it’s been days since I replied to people on the internet and the pressure gets worse and I panic that people I haven’t responded to are mad at me, so I ignore their emails and I don’t look at my DMs or my texts and I don’t answer my phone or listen to voicemails, because if I just wait until my mind gets better, maybe I can deal with this then, but I don’t, because it doesn’t. And instead, I look at those unopened emails from my friends and family and colleagues until I have memorized the subject lines by heart and I think about how strange it is that they probably think I’m ignoring them when, in fact, I am utterly haunted by them.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. I always think, “I’m sorry I didn’t write you back, it’s because I like you so much.”
Amanda Doyle:
It’s the idea that you would spend and hour thinking about the email that would take five minutes to write back and not understand why you’re such a deeply fucked up person that you have now spent six hours thinking about someone who must only assume that you don’t give a shit about them, because why won’t you text them back for the third time. That they’re like, “Just text me back and let me know you’re okay.” And you’re like-
Glennon Doyle:
And then you just shut down. Yeah.
Jenny Lawson:
Yeah, then it gets even worse. Yes. My husband always… he’ll walk in and he’ll be like, “Touch it once. That’s the rule. You open an email you immediately respond to it, you close it. Touch it once.” I have hit mark as unread, that is my default. I look at an email and I’m like, “Nope, can’t respond to that.” And they’re simple emails, but I’m just like, “Nope, I don’t know how words work.” And then, I’ll come out of it and all of a sudden it’s like I’m a superhero. Like, “Oh my god. Is this how normal people are?” I went to CVS to pick up my medication and didn’t have to lay down afterwards?
Glennon Doyle:
Hero.
Jenny Lawson:
Oh my god. It’s so insane.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, it’s so good.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, god. It’s so good.
Glennon Doyle:
We are so close to out of time, so we want to end with this. First of all, very quickly, I need to tell you that the word stet, I wear around my neck.
Jenny Lawson:
Yay. Stet the like wind mother fucker.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my god.
Abby Wambach:
Well, what does stet mean?
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. So stet, which Jenny has an entire chapter about in her book. Okay, so when you first start writing and you write a book and then your editor’s like, “You should change everything,” and you’re like, “You’re right. Just change everything. Just change it all, I suck at writing.” And then, when you get to a certain point where your editor asks you to change all these things and you can write this fancy word that is stet, S-T-E-T, and what that means is leave it as it stands. Leave it as-
Jenny Lawson:
Let it stand.
Glennon Doyle:
… I wrote it. Let it stand. Or, as Jenny says, okay, this is what Jenny says, “Stet is my favorite verb and it is the dryer setting I live my life in. Stet equals yes, it’s fucked up, but I like it that way.”
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
So thank you for that.
Jenny Lawson:
Exactly. Exactly.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you, Jenny.
Jenny Lawson:
It’s so wonderful. I’m like, “Sometimes you have to learn how to write and what all the rules are, just so that you can break all the rules-
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Jenny Lawson:
… and it’s so freeing and fantastic.” And there are so many things that I have given myself permission to in my life, like I don’t own an ironing board or an iron, because guess what, dryers exist. Just put it in the dryer, that 100% works. I don’t always use a plate, because if you eat over the sink, it’s just-
Abby Wambach:
Oh my gosh.
Jenny Lawson:
… a big bowl.
Glennon Doyle:
Or you can use your shirt.
Jenny Lawson:
Oh my god. 100%. 100%. Oh my gosh. Yes, yes. Well, and see, I wear dresses because it’s like a picnic table that you’re wearing all the time. It is the best. And people are always like, “Oh, it must be so uncomfortable to wear a dress. I’m like, “Are you kidding me? I’m not wearing pants. Wouldn’t you like to take your pants off right now?” I don’t understand. And all my dresses have pockets, so I’m just like, no, that’s it, that’s it. This is the key to my life is dresses that are big enough that I can eat all my food on, they have to be super washer friendly, non of them have to be ironed, and they have to be made out of whatever fabric that car fur doesn’t stick to, and that’s how I live.
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, every time I see a hand wash or dry clean only, I just think, “Well, I guess this is going to be disposable. This is going to be like I wear it one time and then I throw it away.”
Jenny Lawson:
Absolutely.
Glennon Doyle:
No one’s doing that.
Abby Wambach:
No one’s doing that.
Jenny Lawson:
Absolutely. No one is doing that.
Glennon Doyle:
So thank you for stet.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s kind of a pretentious charade. I’m like-
Glennon Doyle:
It is.
Amanda Doyle:
… okay sure, t-shirt. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s like when I buy broccoli at the grocery store and I bring it home and Abby’s like, “Should I just throw this directly in the trash or do you want to put it in the refrigerator for two weeks and then throw it in the trash.” Because it’s like a hopeful version of myself goes to the grocery store and then a different version of myself lives in my home.
Jenny Lawson:
See, that’s why I go straight to the frozen broccoli.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s good.
Jenny Lawson:
Especially the one that you can make in its own pack, because then, guess what, it’s its own bowl. You just open it up and you can either put butter in there or, you know what you could put in there? Pimento cheese.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, she brings it back.
Glennon Doyle:
You don’t even have to be dressed then.
Abby Wambach:
No.
Jenny Lawson:
You don’t.
Amanda Doyle:
There’s no reason for you to have your dress on, so you can just have your frozen broccoli just naked-
Jenny Lawson:
Naked.
Amanda Doyle:
… with your Mr. Who.
Jenny Lawson:
Oh my god.
Glennon Doyle:
So what we’re saying is if you go to the grocery store and you find yourself in front of the fresh broccoli, you look at the fresh broccoli and you say, “Stet, mother fucker,” and then you go to the frozen section.
Amanda Doyle:
And take off your dress-
Glennon Doyle:
Take off your dress.
Amanda Doyle:
… and then pull off the broccoli-
Glennon Doyle:
Get naked. Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
… and go home.
Jenny Lawson:
They’re going to make you go in front, everybody’s going to be like, “No, that’s okay. You can go ahead of me. You can go ahead.” Because you’re the naked person holding frozen broccoli.
Glennon Doyle:
Who’s going to mess with you.
Jenny Lawson:
You win.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Jenny Lawson:
You win life.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right. So what the next right thing’s going to be, Jenny, is one of the things that we’ve been talking about incessantly about you is just what you’ve just done. It’s like, life is so ridiculous and being a human being is so ridiculously difficult and there’s just this one thing that helps, maybe two things, one is honesty and the other one is absurdity. The way that you embrace absurdity, it’s like an injection of humanity and joy into life that just demands… it’s like desire and absurdity are the only things that can help us hold onto our humanity. So you have entire chapters or months on social media that is all I read for a month, where you were talking about mortifying things that you do, like when you’re in the airport and a person says, “Have a great flight,” and you’re like, “You, too.” And then, you’re like, “Fuck, why again, did I do that?”
Abby Wambach:
It happens to me every time. Every single time.
Glennon Doyle:
And then, everybody starts telling their mortifying stories and it’s this common… what is it Jenny? It’s like nothing bonds us like our humiliating-
Jenny Lawson:
Oh my god.
Glennon Doyle:
… Even humiliating, it’s like the word human in it.
Jenny Lawson:
Yes, yes. There is something so incredibly honest about sharing the most mortifying that that has ever happened to you, not only because you are opening yourself up in such a vulnerable way, but because that thing that has been stuck in your head that you have been like, “Oh my god, that horrible thing that happened to me in seventh grade that I lay at night at 2:00 in the morning and just my stomach hurts when I think about it,” once you share it and people laugh and say, “Oh my god. You thought that was bad, let me tell you what happened to me.” And then, all of a sudden you’re making friends and you realize that those are the people that you want to be friends with. You don’t want to be friends with the people where you’re like, “Oh, I have a car,” and they go, “Oh, I have a nicer car,” and you’re like, “Oh, I can’t wait to be friends with you.” I don’t know, because you have whatever. Nobody’s like, “Oh, I can’t wait. This person has really great hair and so I want to be best friends with them.”
Jenny Lawson:
No, you want to be friends with the people who make you laugh, who make you feel safe, who make you feel comfortable. And what was really great is not only that, I mean, they were so utterly fantastic every single one that was shared that was like, “I need to put this in the book, because this really helped me.” And I thought, I was like, “I want to give credit to all of the people.” And I thought, “I bet a lot of them will be like, ‘I do not want this in a book that people are going to read.'” And so, I reached out to, I want to say maybe 100, 150 and every single person said, “Absolutely, yes. You can use it.” And they were like, “Not only did that terrible thing turn into something that now is so funny I have found friends out of this, who I’m now friends with, because they reached out online.” And now, this thing that, before, made my stomach hurt every time I thought about it, now I’m like, “Oh, that was part of a New York Times bestselling book-
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Jenny Lawson:
… about humor and acceptance. Yeah, it’s amazing. And that’s what people want, they want from each other and that’s what we want from ourselves, is that authenticness of, “Hi, I’m fucked up. Are you fucked up, too? Can we be fucked up together? Can I lower my shield? Okay, let’s hide behind both of our shields.” And then, all of a sudden there’s this whole group of people and we’re all together and we’re like, “This is-
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, god. It’s so good.
Abby Wambach:
It’s beautiful.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Hell, yes. Because of you, we started telling our most humiliating stories, just the three of us. We’re going to do a whole episode on our Jenny Lawson inspired-
Jenny Lawson:
Oh, I love it. Love it.
Glennon Doyle:
… most humiliating stories. Jenny-
Amanda Doyle:
My favorite one in the book was the woman at the hairdresser who when they said, “Well, what do you want done today?,” and she said, “I would like to have a wash, a cut, and a blow job.”
Jenny Lawson:
Yep, yep. Or the lady who asked for a blunt cut, but she mixed up where the N was supposed to go and asked for a blunt something else and-
Abby Wambach:
A blunt cunt?
Glennon Doyle:
Cunt or clit?
Jenny Lawson:
A blunt cunt.
Abby Wambach:
The C word.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my god. That’s so good.
Jenny Lawson:
She wanted a blunt cut and she asked for a blunt cunt.
Glennon Doyle:
Bless her. And you know what, the hairdresser is a lot of them, and I think it’s because the hair dryers are going-
Abby Wambach:
It’s the hair dryers.
Glennon Doyle:
So just real quick, I’ll tell you that my hairdresser, who I love, her name’s Ashley and she’s this young exciting whippersnapper, and she was doing my hair and she was telling me about some big plans she had for the next year and she said, “Glennon, I’m going to become a escort.” And I was like, “This is my moment where I might have some feelings, because I’m a 45-year-old mom,” but this is a young woman who’s sex positive and she’s going to be an escort and you, Glennon Doyle, are going to celebrate this in the moment. And so I said something like, “Oh, okay. Where are you going to get your clients?,” or something. And she said, “Well, I’m just going to keep the same ones.” And I was like, “Holy shit. All right.”
Jenny Lawson:
That’s a weird crossover.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. I was like, “Okay. I’m excited for you. Let me know how I can support you,” whatever. So later, much later in the day, we text back and forth and I realize what she said, Jenny, is “I’m going to be an S corp.” An S corp.
Jenny Lawson:
Oh my god.
Abby Wambach:
C-O-R-P.
Glennon Doyle:
Which is-
Abby Wambach:
A business-
Glennon Doyle:
… a fricking business term.
Abby Wambach:
… title.
Glennon Doyle:
She’s going to be a different name for her business or something.
Jenny Lawson:
And you’re like, “Not an LLC?”
Abby Wambach:
She’s going to incorporate.
Glennon Doyle:
No, so of course she was going to have the same clients, but she wasn’t going to have sex with them. Anyway, hairdresser.
Amanda Doyle:
Maybe she was.
Glennon Doyle:
Jenny, you are a revolution. You are a leader for all of us who just want to be close with each other in a real way. We want to be human together. You have this part of your book where you’re talking about this art called kintsugi and you say, “It’s the Japanese art of fixing broken things with lacquer, dusted with powdered gold to treat the repair as part of the history rather than disguising the breakage. The brokenness becomes part of the story and beauty of the piece.” And Jenny, that is you.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Nothing is disguised, all of it is shown. All of it is golden, you are human kintsugi and we are so grateful for you. Thank you for helping us do hard things.
Jenny Lawson:
Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. And this was fantastic and this was a hard thing that was very worthwhile, so thank you for having me on. I cannot tell you how much I actually needed this today.
Glennon Doyle:
Same.
Jenny Lawson:
So thank you.
Abby Wambach:
And for the next right thing, I think everyone should just go out and share their most humiliating stories.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, do it. In honor of Jenny’s belief that we also believe that one of the things we can do to draw closer to each other is share our mortifying stories. Please call and share your embarrassing, mortifying stories with us.
Glennon Doyle:
We’re just so excited to hear these messages we’ll probably get together and listen to them during a slumber party, but also we’ll probably play some of them during our mortifying moment episode, which is forthcoming.
Abby Wambach:
Or you can email-
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
… if you prefer that. If you’re not into the voice messaging, the email is [email protected]. So it’s the first letters of We Can Do Hard Things pod at gmail.com. [email protected].
Glennon Doyle:
Or the phone number is 747-200-5307. Once again, that is 747-200-5307. Tell us story-
Abby Wambach:
Or email.
Amanda Doyle:
Please tell us your stories. We cannot wait.
Glennon Doyle:
And when life gets hard, don’t forget loves, you can do hard things. Talk soon. Bye. We Can do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts. Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn’t, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.