Why We Should Stop Doing Our Best
August 16, 2022
Glennon Doyle:
Hello love bugs.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh my God.
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh. This is what my kids do in the back of the car.
Glennon Doyle:
No sister, she does this too sometimes. She follows me around and will not stop repeating things like she’s five freaking years old.
Abby Wambach:
I know, but didn’t you guys laugh a little bit just right now.
Glennon Doyle:
No, look at me now.
Abby Wambach:
You did. You laughed. You laughed. You smiled.
Glennon Doyle:
We laugh, so we don’t cry. Okay?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Hi everybody. Sissy, how is your summer going? Talk to us a little bit about your summer and how it’s going, sis?
Amanda Doyle:
It was going great until this.
Abby Wambach:
Sorry. I just needed to bring some joy.
Amanda Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Glennon Doyle:
Look how joyful I am about it.
Amanda Doyle:
She’s so joyful. Look at that face. So we have a new member of the family, I need to tell you about.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
Last weekend we went to a Crawfish Boil.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
So this is a thing that is usual. It’s sort of a Southern thing. I think because crawfish are from Louisiana.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s where the crawfish sing?
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. Where the crawfish fish sing. Exactly.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
And so some folks up here had a crawfish boil and we got invited. So John was out of town and I took the kids up there and I learned something about the two types of kids there are in the world. And one type of kid goes to a crawfish, boil and eats. And other type of kid goes to a crawfish boil and searches the entire yard for any lone survivor of the crawfish boil that doesn’t make it into the pot and picks it up with their bare hands and demands that we rescue this crawfish and make it part of our family. So that is in fact what happened. Alice, found this little baby crawfish and God bless her. She has no fear. She just ran. It’s like a mini lobster.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
If it’s little pictures. It looks like a tiny mini lobster. She found it on the ground, she picked it up and was carrying it around. And she was like, “I’m not leaving without Buddy.”
Glennon Doyle:
Not without my crawdad.
Amanda Doyle:
Not without Buddy, which she had immediately named. And so I had to go and borrow a pan, like a baking pan and put the crawfish in the pan. We rode our bikes there. I had to abandon my bike and walk home with this large baking pan with the water. But at first I tried to put it in a little mason jar, but I only had filtered water that had been sitting in the cooler at the crawfish boil. So I poured the water on it, at which time it clenched up into a tiny ball because Louisiana water is not apparently like that and little buddy was like in a frozen ball. So then we had to take buddy off and put him on Alice’s, like skin on skin.
Abby Wambach:
Oh my gosh.
Amanda Doyle:
To warm Buddy up.
Glennon Doyle:
Skin on exoskeleton?
Amanda Doyle:
Skin on exoskeleton. And until Buddy warmed up and then transfer him to the pan and walked him home. And it was a whole situation. I had to watch five YouTube videos, she made me watch, so we could determine the sex. So turns out, Buddy’s a female. But Buddy the craw fem.
Glennon Doyle:
But buddy will reveal Buddy’s gender when Buddy’s damn ready.
Amanda Doyle:
Older. Right. But then turns out buddy needs all kinds of various [inaudible 00:03:50] because buddy cannot live in a pan. And so I went on Facebook marketplace because all of the aquariums are like $700-
Abby Wambach:
That’s so ridiculous-
Amanda Doyle:
… and I’m like, no. Over my dead buddy, am I going to spend $500 on this thing. So I go on Facebook marketplace and I buy this aquarium and filled up the tank and we just watched buddy for 10 hours. Watch buddy in there, buddy was so happy. And then the next morning-
Abby Wambach:
Oh!
Glennon Doyle:
Oh no!
Abby Wambach:
What?
Glennon Doyle:
Buddy passed?
Amanda Doyle:
The next I went, yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Buddy went to the different lands.
Glennon Doyle:
Crawdad heaven.
Abby Wambach:
What did Alice do? How did she respond?
Amanda Doyle:
She just kept saying, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand.”
Glennon Doyle:
Oh!
Amanda Doyle:
And it was very sad. And I tried to explain that buddy had been through a lot of trauma. I mean, buddy was sent in a cooler from Louisiana. All the crawdads are in there, fighting each other in the cooler. Then they get there, then 99% of buddy’s comrades boiled.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh Jesus!
Amanda Doyle:
Buddy then frozen with my filtered water, then unfrozen, and then spent the last 24 hours of buddy’s life in the bougiest aquarium of its wildest dream-
Abby Wambach:
She had a good sendoff.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. I feel like she really had the last little happiness. So this weekend we have a memorial because Alice wanted to wait until buddy’s godmother, which was her other little friend who was also at the crawfish boil with us. When the godmother returns to town, we can have a proper…
Abby Wambach:
Does Alice eat meat? Is she mostly vegetarian?
Amanda Doyle:
She does eat meat. But I remember recently she asked me, “Why do we eat animals?”
Glennon Doyle:
Oh shit!
Amanda Doyle:
And I was like…
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t understand. I don’t understand-
Amanda Doyle:
When you say it like that, I don’t know. It’s really fucked up.
Glennon Doyle:
It is fucked up.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. Anyway, so that was the big events of our last couple days.
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, buddy, it might be the only crawfish on earth who really experienced true love. Was truly loved at the end there.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Well we don’t know a lot of true loves down in… I mean, it’s New Orleans, a lot of love going on there.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s true.
Amanda Doyle:
Free crawfish love down there. I’m not sure.
Glennon Doyle:
How are you, babe? How’s your summer? Anything that exciting?
Abby Wambach:
My summer has been going really wonderfully.
Glennon Doyle:
Really?
Abby Wambach:
I just feel like our kids are at a cool age where we’re starting to really get to know them. Their personalities are starting to really stabilize.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
The young years are-
Glennon Doyle:
They’re picking a lane. They’re picking a freaking lane.
Abby Wambach:
But something that’s been happening recently, the last two days, I’ve decided to play music loudly.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh yeah, yeah.
Abby Wambach:
In our top floor, one hour before dinner. Where I get to center myself before I have to go into the cooking, cleaning whirlwind of dinner. And we’ve been choosing to listen to the station called, Born in the USA.
Glennon Doyle:
Bruce Springsteen. Yeah. Last night we ended up with a white snake. It’s a little bit life changing that hour.
Abby Wambach:
And so we sit there, we play Solitaire-
Glennon Doyle:
We dance-
Abby Wambach:
… we get the cards out and we sing and I take silly videos of Glennon, because that’s my favorite thing.
Glennon Doyle:
Because we’ve been going back to my ’80s glam rock, head banger.
Abby Wambach:
And before every song sister, literally before every top ’80s song comes on, she goes, “This might be my favorite.”
Glennon Doyle:
This is my favorite. Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
This is my favorite and then goes into-
Glennon Doyle:
(Singing).
Abby Wambach:
And then she goes into my hair was this big and-
Amanda Doyle:
It was. God Abby.
Abby Wambach:
I’m just like, “Did you go to any of these concerts?” And she’s like, “No.”
Glennon Doyle:
No, I wasn’t allowed to do anything. But I had all their posters covering my walls.
Abby Wambach:
I’m doing good. It’s been a good summer. I’m not excited for it to be over. How is your summer going?
Glennon Doyle:
Well, I feel like I have just figured out over the last couple weeks that I’m in a different phase. So you know how the winter was hard for me. I had the eating disorder relapse, all the things I think I was in a bit of a depression. When you’re in that, I don’t know why, but it’s hard to recognize it. I just feel like, oh my life is terrible and everything’s awful and I hate everything. I’ve always hated everything and I’ve always been this way. I can’t see it as a season when I’m in it, but now I am starting to see it as a season. So I think about the time that comes after that season for me. So I have a time where I am down. We call it down, depressed, melancholy, whatever you want to call it. Sadness comes, sinks in a haze over my life.
Glennon Doyle:
And then I come out of it, then it lifts. And now I’m in the post lift time. And what happens in this time is that it’s like the depressed time is a forgetting of everything. And I always forget the beauty of the after season because I forget everything, and then I come back to life and the next season is a very much like a spring time. Everything is brand new. I’m learning everything for the first time. Everything’s beginner’s mind. It’s like, I’m learning how to be human again for the first time. And it’s silly. It’s like, “Oh water! Oh, moving my body! Oh, the sun! Fresh air!” It’s like, I’m an alien who’s been dropped on the planet and I’m learning everything for the first time. And it’s quite wonderful actually. And I’ve been thinking about it in terms of crabs.
Abby Wambach:
What?
Glennon Doyle:
Just stick with me for minute.
Abby Wambach:
Like the animal, since we’ve been on the crawfish?
Glennon Doyle:
Which by the way, I didn’t think of until you said that. Okay. Sister and I spent a lot of time near the Chesapeake Bay, so everything was about crabs. So crabs, they have seasons where they start to hide. They go into very dark places of the bay and they hide. And then they’re hiding because they’re losing their shell and they have to hide because they’re very vulnerable when they lose their shell. They’re soft, shell crabs, soft shell crabs are crabs that are caught in between losing their old shell and growing a new shell-
Abby Wambach:
They’re mid transformation.
Glennon Doyle:
Right, they’re mid transformation.
Amanda Doyle:
They’re on the landing and they got caught.
Glennon Doyle:
They’re on the fucking landing and they didn’t make their boundaries. They snuck out and they got picked off. That’s why, when you are in a depression, you keep your boundaries. You don’t go out where there’s predators.
Abby Wambach:
Oop.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay? Because you are a soft shell crab. I do believe that there is something about going through a deeply sad melancholy time that is about growth. That we can’t understand, what the hell is happening and we think it’s all bad. But what I do think is in this season… And by the way, I won’t be able to see this next time it happens to me. I will not be able to see it until afterwards.
Abby Wambach:
I know, I’ll remind you.
Glennon Doyle:
But there is a time where it’s like a molting, that this depression thing for me is sort of terrible, and I don’t think I would choose it, but it also is a reset that happens every once in a while in my life, that is about getting bigger.
Abby Wambach:
What do you mean by bigger?
Glennon Doyle:
Like growing into a new self.
Abby Wambach:
Oh.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s a new self. It’s a beginning, but it’s like leveling up. It’s like a video game and I’m on a new level and it has nothing to do with outer things, like you wouldn’t be able to see, but there’s just a spiritual growth that’s happening. So in case anyone is in the molting part or the dark part or the whatever, I want to read this paragraph that has helped me through many molting times.
Abby Wambach:
Many molting.
Glennon Doyle:
Many molting times. So I’m going to read something by Rilke. It’s called Letters to a Young Poet. He’s writing to his friend who is a young poet and young poet is going through a melancholy time. He’s a feely-
Amanda Doyle:
Not a poet going through a melancholy time.
Glennon Doyle:
Sister. Yes. Okay? So he is an older writer, anxious, sensitive bunny, who’s trying to coach this young poet about making it through these times and being this kind of deeply feeling person. And he says to him this, “So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen. If a restiveness like light and cloud shadows passes over your hands and over all you do, you must think that something is happening with you. That life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand. It will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life? Any agitation, any pain, any melancholy, since you really do not know what these states are working upon you.”
Glennon Doyle:
Okay? So that’s where I am. I don’t know what the next thing is, I just am experiencing everything as brand new.
Abby Wambach:
When a crab molts.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Does it molt into a larger shell?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, for real?
Amanda Doyle:
I’ve got some buddy intel on that. Okay?
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God, of course you do. You have done research on this.
Amanda Doyle:
I hope. Well, I had to watch all the YouTube videos with Alice. She pulled them all up, we had to watch them all. So when at least a crawfish, I assume they’re related. When a crawfish molts, that’s when it’s exoskeleton, it comes out, it’s the soft thing, it actually consume… They said, don’t take that skeleton out. You’ve got to leave that in there because they eat it to have the strength to build their next one around them.
Abby Wambach:
That is some shit.
Amanda Doyle:
So they need the nutrients from the, what looks like a discarded, useless past identity, to grow into their new, going to take them forward identity.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
Nothing is wasted. Nothing is wasted. None of that old pain. I feel that in my endoskeleton bones. That is true that we are using every bit of every version of ourselves we have ever been to create the next version of ourselves that we will be. And that sometimes when we’re feeling really, really tender, in our family, we call it tender. When we’re feeling really tender, really porous, really sensitive, we think that that’s a weak state, but I think actually that could be a transformative state where we are becoming the next thing.
Amanda Doyle:
I have a question for you about your beginner’s mind. When you talk about how everything is new and it’s beautiful when you kind of wake up from the depressive state. How long does that last? Because my only analogy to that is, when I’m feeling sick and I’m in my bed, well first of all, I always think I’m going to die whenever I get sick. And I’m like, “This is over. I had such a good run. I wasn’t ever as happy as I should have been, and now never get…” This is like, I have a fever. Okay? “And I’m never going to get better. And God, if I had only enjoyed my life.” And then, I always swear to God that once I feel healthful again, I’ll never complain. I’ll be so happy just to be able to not be sick. And then I start to feel better. And I feel like that truly, I feel so grateful for about seven and a half hours. And then I’m back to my just curmudgeon self. So how long does that last?
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. I love this whole comparison because I… Here comes weird Glennon. Okay. So here we are. If there’s a God, and I’ve always, even when I was just on cocaine and alcohol and would feel like God was hanging out with me and we were just like buddies always, if there’s a God, if God is like joy and love and peace for human beings are when they notice the little miracles of life. That’s it. People who can soak in the sun and see their friendships and their loves as a miracle and breathe and feel like that’s a miracle and walk around, if that’s the joy then-
Amanda Doyle:
Carpe Kairos.
Glennon Doyle:
Great. Then when I get too far from that, because I’ve become so capable again, because I’ve become so efficient, because I’ve become so steady and stable, then that’s when the depression comes. Because that takes me back to beginner’s mind and the beauty and the joy again. So I don’t necessarily feel like it’s… I feel like I’m going get in trouble for saying, “Depression is a blessing from God that takes us back to beginner’s mind.” I don’t think it’s exactly that, but I do think that for me, that’s how I can frame it to make it, instead of feeling cruel, to feel like a blessing.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s what the episode with Dr. Lori Santos, she’s the professor who teaches the happiness class at Yale, and the science behind it really is that the irony is that the happiest people are deeply in touch with the precariousness of life. They are happy because they realize that anything could change at any time and that it is not as steady as it feels. You think those would be the people that would be most sad about life, but they’re actually the happiest because they appreciate that this is all very unstable and therefore their gratitude for it is bigger.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. That’s how it feels. And it feels like back to the basics. Oh, that’s so cute that you thought you were an actual grownup, and you were chugging right along and back to the beginning. And if I describe to you what that bigger self looks like, I can already feel it coming. And it’s silly, really silly. In my beginning growing the new shell phase, I have to find little teeny spots where I feel safe. So as you all know, I’ve been going to this little yoga studio. I’m talking about it a lot, because it’s my little safe place right now and I freaking love it.
Glennon Doyle:
And I’m laying there the other day and there’s these teachers that are all different, but they’re all amazing. And they say the nicest things. They just are like, “You all are beautiful and perfect and amazing. And you all are breathing, and that is amazing.” I’m like, yes to this. I love you. I need somebody saying really nice things to me. I need somebody who tells me I’m perfect the way I am. I need this.
Abby Wambach:
You are.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay? That’s a basic thing. Yes to that. This is a new thing for my new self that I’m learning in the yoga studio. When I go there, there’s all these young people there who are doing very hard things for a very long time. They are doing hard yoga. And I think of myself as the permission to rest lady, in those classes.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
#PTR. Okay? I am like, “Mm, child’s pose for 20 minutes,” or whatever it is. And I just do it and it feels so good to give myself exactly what I needed. And here’s the thing, I realize this, I am 46 years old.
Abby Wambach:
That’s how old you are.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, and I don’t want to do my best anymore. I actually, and I’m sorry to tell you my pod business partners, I don’t want to give a hundred percent anymore. I don’t believe in it. I want to show up at things that make me feel good. And I want to give like 70%. And I want to keep a little bit for extra and for me. I don’t want to work hard and play hard, I want to work medium and play low.
Abby Wambach:
Play low? Your play, also just don’t forget-
Glennon Doyle:
Is just rest-
Abby Wambach:
Is reading and resting. So-
Glennon Doyle:
That’s play low.
Abby Wambach:
No, it’s balance, right? It’s like work medium, play medium. Balance.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Okay. But what I’m saying is, I don’t buy it anymore. I don’t buy the, show up and give a hundred percent, anymore. I feel like, show up and do exactly what feels right and good and tender and loving to you. Every time I’m there, I’m like, “Well, I already did it. I’m already here. Who cares what happens next?” So this is a new way of this new self. And it feels like if we just showed up and gave medium, we wouldn’t have to be always wanting to quit.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah we wouldn’t stress about it. That’s been revolutionary for me in my working out right now, as I just show up and whatever happens, happens.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
It’s awesome.
Glennon Doyle:
So this is what I mean by a new self. It’s not a leveling up in any way that anyone else would be able to tell. It might look like leveling down.
Amanda Doyle:
What you’re saying, Tony Robbins isn’t cosigning on this level.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re fucking sick. No, it’s the opposite. I’m like a demotivational molter. Okay? And I know that that sounds funny, but I actually think it’s very true and real and deep because it’s like unlearning all of the things that frantic capitalistic culture teaches us about what we have to do to be relevant. And, oh no, no. This is what I have to do to be peaceful and love.
Abby Wambach:
One of my favorite things that I’ve recently read, a famous person was just asked, “What is your most favorite thing you’re doing right now?” And they said, “Divesting.” And I thought, shit! That’s so awesome. They’re a little bit older, and I thought-
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, divesting.
Abby Wambach:
Because you’re like, “I need to get and invest and create and grow my family and whatever.” And I thought, I think that we need to make the transition to the divesting sooner. Think that that’s where-
Amanda Doyle:
And by that you mean just extricating yourself for the things that aren’t the core of what you care about?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Looking at all the things that everyone told us we had to do and being like, “Do I?”
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. Questioning everything.
Glennon Doyle:
Anyway, that’s how our summer’s going. I’m so excited to hear from a pod squader today, we get this one question asked over and over again from so many people. So we’re to focus on in one question today. And that question is from Catherine.
Catherine:
Hi. My name is Catherine. My relationship with both of my parents has never been easy. They are both complicated people, but I know they love me, but there have been many times in my life where has been extremely hurt by their words and their actions. I know these words and actions stem from a place of pain, from their own experiences and challenges that each of them have faced. Despite knowing this, I find it so hard to not hold on to how they have treated me in the past, which leads me to resentment. This has led to what now feels like a barrier between us. Do you have any advice on how to accept the people we love knowing they are imperfect and cannot always recognize how they’ve affected us in the past. I love my parents and I still need them in my life, but I can’t help but wish they were better to me. Thank you so much in advance. I love all three of you. Bye-bye.
Glennon Doyle:
Catherine. I don’t know about you two, but it feels like this in some form is the question that every single one of my friends is dealing with right now.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s like a time of life thing or-
Abby Wambach:
Our age. Our parents are getting a little older. We’re having existential crisis because of the age of our parents.
Glennon Doyle:
And because we are figuring more out and looking back on our childhoods and some of us are parenting, we’re figuring out how we’re parenting and then wondering why they didn’t parent us the way that we’re parent… Anyway, it’s-
Abby Wambach:
Lots of problems here.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I mean, I can tell you, Catherine, I had a really cool conversation with a couple of friends recently who were talking about this exact scenario, that they want to be able to hang out with their parents and not be angry all the time and not be resentful and not wish things were different, but just accept what is. Especially when you get to the point where you realize you’re not going to change anybody and you give up on that. That idea that forgiveness is letting go of the idea that your past could have been any different.
Glennon Doyle:
I know I have a friend who told us that one of the ways she made it through this was that she stopped. She was 50 years old before she stopped thinking of her parents as her parents. So let’s say that her parents were Bob and Joe. Nope. Maybe there was a woman and a man.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. You just went into a gay man’s… That’s so cool.
Glennon Doyle:
I did. I’m starting to homosexual brain instead of a heteronormative brain. Okay. Let’s just go to Betty and Joe for this one. Okay. So Betty and Joe are your parents and you called them mom and dad, your whole life. When you’re 50 years old and you’re trying to figure out, how do I have a relationship with these two people that is not so freaking loaded with resentment? One strategy is to stop thinking of Betty and Joe as your parents, as my mom and dad, and just start thinking of them and refer to them in your mind as Betty and Joe.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Now let me explain why. Because when we say, my mom, my mom, my mom, my mom, what we’re also bringing to that is all of these expectations we have for what a mom should have been, what we believe a mom should have been, and the gap is there between what we think should have happened and what actually did happen. Or even in the present, like what we think should happen when my mom should call me right now. If we call her mom, we’re bringing all of these expectations and resentments and sadness to it right away. But at some point we figure out that our parents are just freaking people who have their own personalities and their own trauma and their own upbringing and their own experiences on the earth. And they’ve just always been themselves.
Glennon Doyle:
So when we think about whether our mom called us or not, when we hoped she would, and she didn’t, we just think, instead of my mom, didn’t call me, it’s like, well, Betty’s just Bettying. There’s Joe, over there. Joe’s just Joeing. It’s like this depersonalization of roles, and when we take the role out of it, I’ve been trying it, and there’s something kind of sweet that comes into it too, where you just start seeing your parents as human beings. We see it, now with our grown kids, they’re already telling us stuff we did wrong. Or stuff that we would ever… And I think that for them to start seeing us as like Glennon and Abby, two people that are just trying to do their best and love them and have our own shit, it’s just one little strategy.
Abby Wambach:
Is it possible to accept familial relationships as they are, and also crave more? I think that the acceptance of the way things has allowed me the chance at time spent with my family, with my mom, especially. She’s recently gone through some health stuff, which she’s come out perfectly on the other side. And I feel like I left my resentments in the past and I just want to experience the time I have left with her in a non-chaotic, non-res resentful. And I think that maybe there will be a part of me that always craves more. But that’s just like me. Judy’s just going to Judy.
Glennon Doyle:
Judy’s Judying.
Abby Wambach:
She’s going to Judy. And Abby’s going to Abby.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, Abby’s going to Abby.
Abby Wambach:
I’m a person who craves more connection and that’s okay too. I think both things can be true at the same time.
Amanda Doyle:
I think there’s a distinction here. We hear this all the time. And what we hear from Catherine is she says, I find it so hard to not hold on to how they have treated me in the past with resentment. So I think there’s two buckets of people who are dealing with this. One is, I’m looking back at my life and seeing freshly for the first time that I was not treated the way I should have been. And now it’s hard for me to be in live relationship with you, knowing that this unexcavated treatment that we have never talked about is always there.
Amanda Doyle:
And then we have this whole second group of people where there’s active mistreatment, crossing of boundaries in the live right now. And that’s a second bucket. We’re going to have Nedra Tawwab, on soon to talk about that whole phenomenon. But I think with Catherine, I just want to say that I get it. It comes from a really real place. There’s almost a sense of justice that our lives and our personhood demands to be, wait, I’m looking back on this and I see that this was candidly fucked up. But now I’m in a relationship with you that doesn’t acknowledge, that doesn’t unearth, that doesn’t deal with that. And it’s somehow, I’m complicit in my own mistreatment by not unearthing that or not testifying to it.
Glennon Doyle:
So does it feel like you’re abandoning your old self, your little self, if you let it go?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. I think that the reason a lot of us are getting to this point in our lives is we’re just beginning to understand boundaries. We’re just beginning to understand what we will accept and what we won’t. And then we look back in our lives and say, “The people that are closest to me are the people that I have accepted the most bullshit from.”
Glennon Doyle:
So you want to set retroactive boundaries.
Amanda Doyle:
Exactly. But what I want to say to that is, we don’t need to defend, unless it’s an active thing right now, and that’s a separate bucket. We don’t need to defend ourselves and we don’t need to, in some ways, punish ourselves for being unable to defend ourselves then because we were children. And the fact that somebody treated us badly doesn’t mean we did anything wrong, and it’s almost like a self flagellation that happens now, when we are uncomfortable because of the way people treated us in the past, we have to make it right for ourselves. But that’s not on us. That’s on the other person to make it right, if they choose to and many of them will not. So it’s the freedom to be like, “Yeah, Joe and Sally, they didn’t do right. And also, that’s not my problem.”
Amanda Doyle:
What’s happening right now is deciding what relationship I want with the limitations of who these people are. And can it be a satisfying situation for me and that I don’t need to carry this book bag of burden just because it was handed to me when I was young. I can put it down and try to have whatever relationship feels warm to me now, if it does. It’s cognitive dissonance, because we’re like, “I love you. This is lovely.” But yet, I keep looking back and seeing how fucked up that was. That’s not ours to carry, that’s theirs to carry. And I bet they’re thinking the same thing, but that’s their bag to carry. You don’t have to live in the cognitive dissonance. You can live right now because you don’t have to get that retroactive justice for yourself.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, that’s good. I think there can be a letting go and a forgiveness of the past when we remember. I was reading this article recently that brought up the idea of presentism. Which is, presentism is the idea of applying what we know now and who we are now, to past situations. So what that means is I look at, I think of myself and what I know now about boundaries and what I know about healthy relationships. And even my parents know now about boundaries and healthy relationships and mental health and all the things, and I take everything I know now, and I look back at my life when I was 10. And I’m like, “Why the hell didn’t this happen? And this happened, and this happened, and this happened.”
Glennon Doyle:
Because I’m taking my consciousness now and applying it back then. Sweet Jesus, I hope that my children in 30 years will not apply their consciousness then to me right now, because I hope 30 years from now that I even have, I know a lot more and I can understand more about interpersonal relationships and I know more about the world but now, I actually am doing the best I can with what I know. So sometimes people are doing the best they can with what they know, and it’s still not good enough for your future self because you know more, to avoid-
Abby Wambach:
It’s also, sometimes not good enough for your present self.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. Yeah, yeah. That’s a big quagmire that everybody has to figure out. But that little idea helps me of presentism, of not applying the same consciousness retroactively and expecting that everything should have happened the way it would now.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. That’s so hard to do. I bet a lot of parents are like, “I did the best that I could.”
Glennon Doyle:
That’s what they mean.
Abby Wambach:
You’re just different now.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. They just mean, “I think I was doing the best I could.”
Amanda Doyle:
And the thing under the thing that I think is the reason that this type of question and this type of feeling is so pernicious, is that what she says is, how they’ve affected me. So when we get to this stage in our lives and we have them as much as self-awareness, it’s not just that they did that thing back then. It’s because what they did back then is so inside of us that we can see it in our own actions, in our own automatic responses to things and the way that we are parenting our kids. And that makes us pissed.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes!
Amanda Doyle:
That’s why parents are so triggering. Because the thing in them is the thing in you that you are most allergic to.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
I just always view it as a football player, carrying the ball. I’m like my parents were given a set of circumstances on the field and they really did carry the ball. They carried the ball as far as they could. And they carried what for them was a dramatic drive down the field.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, that’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
Now my job, I know that I have shit in me that is going to affect my kids and I wish it weren’t and all I’m going to do is carry the ball as far as I can down the field, and then I know that my kids will have the same, but when they finish their play, it is going to look wildly different than my parent’s. Just because we’re all just doing the best that we can.
Abby Wambach:
And what you’ve just said, allows us to take the power in a situation where we didn’t get or receive the kind of love and attention that we needed back then. Because if we are playing out these scripts in so many ways like all of us do, that we have our parents in us, that’s something that we can proactively do to figure out, “Okay, where am I going to make sure that I don’t pass this on to my kids?”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. That’s where therapy is. But you don’t, I don’t know a ton about the sports, but I imagine that you don’t spend your down, going back to your parents down and rerunning their plays over and over. You stay in your part.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Let’s hear from our pod squader of the week. Can we hear from sweet Lexi please?
Lexi:
Hi, this is Lexi and I am calling because I just want to thank you all for changing the world. You are getting into people’s subconscious, including mine, and a couple of honest things here. I talk to the three of you all day long. I ask you questions and you answer me back. We are in conversation all the time because I listen to your podcast and you are in my head and thank you for that. Another thing, I just want you to tell me I’m doing a good job. I have four children, seven and under, and it’s a lot. And if I could ever hear it from you guys, that I’m doing a good job, it would mean the world to me.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, Lexi. I am a person that words of affirmation is my jam. Glennon is not as much. Lexi, you’re doing an incredible job. Four children under the age of seven, the fact that you even knew to remember numbers, to dial numbers-
Glennon Doyle:
She knows how old they are, she knows how many of them they are-
Abby Wambach:
Well, the numbers to the pod squad.
Glennon Doyle:
She knows phone numbers-
Abby Wambach:
To the voicemail to dial in, to call and leave this voicemail.
Glennon Doyle:
Jesus, crushing it.
Abby Wambach:
Get out of here.
Glennon Doyle:
I get this. I mean, going back to the beginning of this episode, when I sit in that little room and those women tell me that I’m doing a good job just by breathing and that I am fine. And that Lexi, sometimes when I think about those teachers, I get scared they’re going to leave. I get terrified that they’re going to leave because I need for them to tell me that I’m okay. And I actually was thinking about that this morning. And I thought, “I wonder if that’s how the pod squad feels about us?” That’s a bold thing to say and consider, but it made me feel really good and important because it made me feel like maybe that’s all that they need, is to just hear us say, “We are here and it’s hard for us too. And we love you and you are crushing it.”
Glennon Doyle:
And if it’s really hard for you, if life and love and marriage and work and losing and all of it’s really hard for you, that doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. In fact, Lexi, that probably means you’re doing it right, because people who are doing what I would call, life right, which means that you’re just showing up again and again, and trying and failing and flailing and trying again, are often the people for whom life is the hardest.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Lexi, we love you. We think that actually there’s nobody better on the entire freaking earth than Lexi. Right?
Abby Wambach:
I’ll go ahead and say it. I’ll go ahead and say it.
Glennon Doyle:
Go ahead.
Abby Wambach:
You’re the best in the whole earth.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re the best in the world, Lexi.
Amanda Doyle:
Lexi, you’re doing a beautiful job. And it’s like in school when they said, if someone asks a question, it means the rest of the class had the same question, I think we should go ahead and extrapolate from Lexi, that everybody needs to know they’re doing great. And I would just like to say, I was listening to a podcast this morning about historically our roles. And I firmly believe that 50 years, a hundred years from now, they’re going to look back on this generation of women and be like, “What in the actual fuck?” Like we are at this intersection of having it all, of having the careers, of having the educations, of having the whatever, and we are doing more than has ever been done before.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
You know what we all did a hundred years ago? Farmed. The kids farmed. We farmed. Husbands farmed. There weren’t dance classes. Nobody was taking anybody to school. Nobody was making sure they got tutored on Saturday. No one was making origami. Okay? Summer camps were not a thing.
Abby Wambach:
Summer camp.
Amanda Doyle:
Everybody, when they woke up, they farmed, they went to sleep.
Glennon Doyle:
Nobody talked about what they felt.
Amanda Doyle:
No. There was an essay writing class for college admissions and also your 50 hour a week job. And also, did you remember avocados? Because it’s a super fucking food, nobody was doing that shit. Okay? So this is what I want to say, Lexi. Historically, people will look back on you, there will be statues of Lexi.
Abby Wambach:
That’s fucking right.
Amanda Doyle:
And they will say, “Thank God, we stopped that horrendous experiment we were doing that just eviscerated all the women.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s it.
Abby Wambach:
That’s it?
Glennon Doyle:
And with that, with statue and honor, to Lexi. We end. We will see you next time, if you come back on, We Can Do Hard Things.
Amanda Doyle:
Pour one out for buddy. Bye.
Abby Wambach:
Bye.