How to Face Your Biggest Fear with Amanda Doyle
February 9, 2023
Abby Wambach:
Okay, welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things, folks. Abby here, a little switcheroo. It’s usually Glennon, but I’m just giving her a little rest because guess what we got on the docket today?
Glennon Doyle:
I’m so delighted. And also a little bit nervous because this is a new thing that we’re doing because we’re actually interviewing the most amazing person that I’ve ever met.
Abby Wambach:
We say this, but this is actually, this is the truth.
Glennon Doyle:
I never said the most amazing.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, that’s true.
Glennon Doyle:
So today, pod squad, we are getting in deep with Amanda Doyle.
Abby Wambach:
Sister.
Glennon Doyle:
Amanda Doyle, who so many of you have asked so many questions about because she has been a bit of an enigma wrapped in a puzzle. Wrapped in-
Abby Wambach:
Mystery.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. So today we are doing a, This Is Your Life interview with Sister Bear, as I call her. Amanda Doyle is Glennon Doyle’s business manager and head of staff, and a co-host of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast. She’s also the Vice President, General Counsel and a member of the Together Rising Board of Directors. She graduated with high honors, who didn’t? From the University of Virginia, where she double majored in studies of women and gender and political and social thought, and wrote her distinguished major thesis, In Defense of the Violence Against Women Act. She graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law on Merit Scholarship, practicing at the law firm of Hogan Lovells, and then as a legal fellow with International Justice Mission. She loves roller coasters, thrift and vintage treasure hunting, and then she also loves to tell you, when you say, “I love your shirt,” she says, “I got it for $4,” and making pretend future plans for herself and others on Zillow. That’s where you’ll find her, on Zillow. Or Goodwill.
Amanda Doyle:
You can’t get anything for $4 on Zillow, is the unfortunate reality. That’s why they’re pretend plants.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. Goodwill or Zillow.
Abby Wambach:
She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband John, her two children, Bobby and Alice, and their dog, Shamus.
Amanda Doyle:
The goodest boy.
Glennon Doyle:
He’s the goodest boy.
Abby Wambach:
Most beautiful rescue I’ve ever freaking seen.
Glennon Doyle:
I know. He’s just such a love bug.
Abby Wambach:
Also, I’m going to amend this bio because there’s nothing in it about what she does for me. She is not just your business manager, but she also thinks through and reads through all of my contracts that I ever get to sign.
Glennon Doyle:
She just runs our life. I do want to tell you one thing that Abby said just last week that I just remembered, or maybe it was last month. But at some point, it was 7:00 in the morning in California and I was getting a bunch of texts from Sister and I was waking up to all of these texts and I was cranky as shit. And I turned to Abby and said, “Why am I getting all these texts in the morning?” For Sissy, I’d just woken up, so you just give me a break.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, I know. I know. You’ve talked to me about amending the, “Good morning. Here’s 14 things for you to consider,” plan.
Glennon Doyle:
And Abby looked at me and she said… She had just woken up, too, and she said, “I know you want me to be mad, but I need to tell you something. I am never going to be mad at Sister.”
Amanda Doyle:
I love you, Abby.
Glennon Doyle:
I was like, “Really? Never?” She’s, “Never.” So, anyway.
Abby Wambach:
It’s a boundary. It’s just a boundary.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s a boundary for her.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s on her field of honor.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right. That’s right. All right. There are million different lenses through which we could look at your life. And I got a little bit stressed trying to decide which one to take until I realized that if I don’t get to everything during this hour, we have low so many more podcasts and years to ask each other questions. So when we were starting to think about this, this one moment popped into our heads, Abby and I’s.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh God, I’m scared.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. I want to start with a bit of a Sliding Doors moment. So this is a moment where things in your life could have gone one way or another. We all have those. So 14 years ago, you’re sitting in an airport in Rwanda, you’re waiting to catch your flight home from Rwanda after you’ve been there for a year sitting in the airport. Tell us what happens.
Amanda Doyle:
It was actually an airport in Ethiopia at that time. At the end of my year in Rwanda, I planned some solo travel for a few weeks before I came back to the US as was planned, and I wanted to extend the time as long as possible. So I had my flight returning from Kigali to the US was planned for 14 hours after I was going to return to Rwanda from that trip. So in order to catch the flight home, I made it so that I could come home, say goodbye to my people, grab my stuff, and then go back to the US.
Glennon Doyle:
What people? Say goodbye to what people?
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, the people that I was living with in Rwanda.
Glennon Doyle:
We can get into this deeper later, but just so everyone understands, what were you doing in Rwanda for a year?
Amanda Doyle:
I was a legal fellow with International Justice Mission, and we were working there to collaborate with local authorities to set up prosecutorial functions to prosecute child sexual assault cases and to return land to widows whose land was stolen from them after their husbands died.
Amanda Doyle:
So I had gone to several countries and I think I was flying in from Egypt at a stopover in Ethiopia and had to get on that flight in order to get home from Rwanda. So I’m sitting at the airport in Ethiopia having a drink with a bunch of other back packed passer throughs. And a few minutes before I have to board my flight, one of the girls says, “You should come with us to South Africa.” And all of a sudden I am frozen because these two paths just crystallized.
Amanda Doyle:
And one was this path of passing through these extraordinary adventures and unknowns with who the hell knows. And this other path was a path of ordinary adventures with this man that I loved at home who was waiting for me, John, and the family that we would eventually have. And both were so beautiful to me, and choosing either one of them meant forsaking the other one. And it’s just like this impossible reality hit me for the first time, that choosing one thing you love means losing another thing you love. And I think maybe that’s why we don’t choose things because it prolongs this kind of fiction that will be able to have both of them.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s why Zillow’s more fun than actually buying a house.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, totally. Yeah, exactly. Right, right. Exactly right. So I’m frozen in that moment, and it felt like a long time, and I think it was a long time because all of a sudden over the airport intercom, I hear this, “Amanda Doyle, your flight is departing. This flight is going to leave if you don’t show up now.” And I was forced in that moment to make a momentary lifelong decision. And the calculus happened and my body just chose and I threw out my backpack and I sprinted like hell to the airplane. And that path was the path that I chose and the other one disappeared. And I think that’s a moment that it changed for me because I was like, “This is where I am, this is where I’m going.”
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, so let’s rewind to figure out how we even got to that moment. Pod squad, you have to know that the path we are going to take to walk through Sister’s life is riddled with boys.
Amanda Doyle:
Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
Here’s something you don’t know about Sister, y’all, throughout her life, she has been a major flirt. Would you say that that’s fair, Sister?
Amanda Doyle:
It is very fair. And I would like to have a discussion about that because I think flirting is an understood phenomenon.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. I want you to teach us about flirting because if there’s anyone who knows less about flirting, if there’s a spectrum of flirting, Sister is all the way to one side and all the way to the other side.
Abby Wambach:
I’m on your side, Glennon, I’m not a flirt.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Sister was visiting me very recently. We went for a walk on the beach. This is the place where I walk every single day, twice a day to keep my shit together. So I’ve been to that this place hundreds of times. There’s always people playing volleyball out there. Sister and I walk onto the sand. This amazing thing happens, which is that, I don’t know, 40 men who were all playing volleyball just suddenly recognized this energetic field around Sister. And all of the energy on the beach turned towards us was terrifying. And all the men started yelling and saying things-
Abby Wambach:
Like what?
Glennon Doyle:
Like, “Hey, hey.”
Amanda Doyle:
No, no. It was not that. That’s like a cat calling thing.
Glennon Doyle:
It wasn’t cat calling.
Amanda Doyle:
It was not that at all.
Glennon Doyle:
It was not cat calling.
Amanda Doyle:
It was… Yes, it was a mutual acknowledgement of force field.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, well, mutual between you and them. Okay? So they turn all their attention towards us and I feel like, “Oh my God, what are we going to do? How are we going to get out of this situation?” And Sister turns to them and starts talking back, “Hey, hey, you, jokey joke.” I have walked that beach, no one has ever noticed me that one time. It was the weirdest thing. It’s just this force around her. Talk to us, Sister, about what flirting is to you. Just give us an education.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, it’s ’cause I got big jugs. Says the AA Doyle over here.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, what is it then? You’re gorgeous. There’s the gorgeousness.
Amanda Doyle:
Honestly, I really, truly, I know that this is a phenomenon and I believe to my bones that it has very, very little to do with how I look because I don’t look good when I leave my house.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s not a lie. That’s not a lie.
Amanda Doyle:
So it can’t be that. So I think, first of all, I am an equal opportunity. I feel like I flirt with people who I’m attracted to and very, very rarely does that have anything to do with a sexual attraction at all. So that’s how I am in the world. So if I see a woman at school pickup and she just looks like she has this great energy, I’ll say, “You have amazing energy around you. It’s so cool.” Or if I hear someone in a meeting say something, maybe I’ll say, “I really loved what you just said. That was awesome.” What’s different from that to you send a text to your friend and you’re like, “I’ve really been thinking about you.” It’s a mutual acknowledgement of energy in whatever setting. So sometimes, yes, it has the sexual piece to it, but 99% of the time it’s just walking around with open energy.
Glennon Doyle:
Open energy versus sending energy.
Abby Wambach:
But yeah, open energy versus sending energy.
Glennon Doyle:
If I had a choice, I would have one of… I think about this all the time, actually. Sometimes it’s a strategy that I use. You know those invisibility cloaks? I think about that all the time, and then I think nobody can see me, so it’s fine. You could have a neon visibility cloak with flashing lights on it. Okay, so fascinating. And Sister is a noticer, she’s a lighter up of a room. She lights up other people, she notices everyone in the room, they notice her back. It’s like this moth and flame thing. I’m like a fly swatter. She’s like a moth to flame.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, I just feel like if that’s what flirting is, then if you’re not going through your life flirting, then it’s either you’re going through life cut off from those energy exchanges or you’re going through life with unexpressed attractions. What is it? You don’t get a buzz from those energy exchanges with random people?
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Abby Wambach:
I do, but also, I have to temper how much energy I give other people because-
Amanda Doyle:
Well, because you’re famous.
Abby Wambach:
No, I-
Glennon Doyle:
No, she’s famous in everywhere we stand, no matter, it has nothing to do with fame.
Abby Wambach:
No, it’s not necessarily that. It’s just, to me sometimes I worry about that energy exchange being misunderstood, and so I actually do consciously hold myself back from doing that like my natural state would, because I never want to complicate or confuse any situation. I’m very boundaried around what other people leave walking away from me in terms of that flirtation.
Glennon Doyle:
Because you’re saying, Sister, it’s just all the same, but it’s not always just the same. When you’re with men, it’s way different.
Amanda Doyle:
No, that’s so true. So here’s how I feel like it is with when there is that sexual thing that is present, because there is. I feel like it’s just a really cool reminder that the world is just one big pool of pheromones and it’s just occasionally you smell out a match, and it doesn’t mean anything other than it was a match. It’s like a magnetic force. And it reminds me of those people who walk around with the Pokemon Go and they’re just searching. They’re walking the blocks, they’re looking for their Pokemons or whatever the hell it is they find in their Pokemon Go, and then occasionally, bam, they have their little match. And I feel like they have their little moment of bliss, they log it, and they keep walking. And I feel like that’s exactly what I do. I just feel like it’s like you just walk around, there’s an energy exchange. It’s like, bam, “Who would’ve thought of all the gin joints on this block? You person, who I’m never going to see again and never want to.” Just have your little mutual acknowledgement and walk along.
Abby Wambach:
What I think is cool about that is because my personality is so monogamous, I think it’s really interesting that you don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that in a committed relationship.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, I don’t know. Maybe people are going to tell me it’s interesting, but here’s the thing, first of all.
Abby Wambach:
No, I think it’s really open and really probably more natural.
Glennon Doyle:
Cool. Yeah, it’s really cool.
Amanda Doyle:
I never, ever not once have flirted with someone I will ever see again as a practice in my life. The only comfort I have is when it is literally in passing, like the walking on the volleyball beach. There’s never-
Glennon Doyle:
Passing. Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
We are not going to pass this way again. There is no suggestion that there is an after this moment. And no one that I know in my life, because that, I think that suggestion of availability or interest, to me, is very, very wildly inappropriate. But if I’m literally crossing a path with someone and they say something funny that’s a joke and I can throw it back to them and there’s like a exchange of energy that many would call flirting, my only other alternative is to keep my head down and be like, “I don’t see the thing. I’m scared of that thing. I can’t engage with that thing.”
Glennon Doyle:
But I think that it has to do with safety because if I’m walking on that beach and a man is like, “Hey,” I am giving, sending energy because it scares me.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. I’m not scared by it. I think for me it is a spar. I think if you are highly attuned to energy around you and you have this confidence and funny and humor and quickness where it’s fun to spar like that, then I think it’s just an outgrowth of that. It’s almost like, “He thought he could say that to me and I would be nervous and giggle and that’s not going to happen.”
Abby Wambach:
Oh, cool.
Amanda Doyle:
What’s going to happen is I’m going to send it back to him and he’s going to be like, “Well, what do I do with that?”
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, that’s cool. Yeah, that’s really cool. ‘Cause I hate it when somebody says something to me and then I just nervous, giggle and then leave. I’m like, “Ugh.” Can you talk to us about what your earliest memory is of your first romantic relationship?
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. I think I was 14 and got together with this guy who I was on and off again for years. And only in retrospect, do I see that it was real bad. Real bad. It was real bad. There’s a lot to unpack there. He was very unavailable. He was not nice to me or really anyone else, but if he was going to be nice, I guess it would be to me. And maybe that made me feel special.
Glennon Doyle:
It was very strange to people that knew you because she was like this golden girl and then he was this bad boy. What do you think that was about?
Abby Wambach:
Attraction? Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s a great question.
Glennon Doyle:
Because it was weird, Sister.
Amanda Doyle:
It was weird.
Glennon Doyle:
Like, “What?”
Amanda Doyle:
It got really fucked up, too. This is so embarrassing to say, but when you look back at the manipulation to isolate, to further manipulate process, I was so fucked from that. I remember it got to a point where I had this compulsory confessional thing where I had no personhood of doing anything or deciding anything was okay on my own. I remember calling him and telling him when I would cuss. That’s humiliating to say, but I just think it is a very slippery slope to get to a point where you’re doing things that don’t make any sense in retrospect.
Glennon Doyle:
Can you get us there? How does that happen? How do you get to a point where you are actually calling to confess to your person when you do something that was out of his idea for you or your idea for you?
Amanda Doyle:
I don’t know. That’s what I don’t remember. Maybe that was representative of me even having a life.
Glennon Doyle:
Separate from him?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. I don’t know what it was. I was so desperate for affirmation from him, which was so ironic. The power dynamic of the relationship was inverted from an outside perspective, in terms of I should have had the more of the power, but inside of it, it was exactly the opposite. I think it was like this, obviously I’m oversimplifying his humanity, but from the outside world, very rough human whose softness was only for me, even though it was few and far between, made me special. If I can access softness in that, then I’m extraordinary because anyone can access softness and care from a perfectly healthy, well-developed individual who is the person you should be with?
Glennon Doyle:
Who would want that shit? That’s easy. We can do hard things.
Amanda Doyle:
Exactly. That’s easy to conquer. Who the hell wants that kind of just low hanging fruit?
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God, it’s so good and true and terrible. Do you remember any particular ways that that manipulation happened? And then how did you get yourself out of that relationship? Because it lasted a long time.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, too long. Well, the typical, “Your friends are terrible,” and never knowing when he would make himself physically available to me. So he had his whole group of friends that of course that would be more fun and more cool to hang out with. And then every once in a while would be like, “All right, fine, we can hang out.” So you’re waiting for the moment where it is allowed, but you’re not you’re never certain. You’re always off balance. You never know when it’s going to happen
Glennon Doyle:
And you have no agency in it.
Amanda Doyle:
Right. You’re waiting for it to be revealed and also just the mercurial nature, super annoyed, super unavailable. Then the next moment may be, “Oh, I love you so much.” Unstable from the perspective of not knowing what you’re going to get. Also, the diminishment of whatever ways that I was given value from the rest of the world, undermining those as valuable things.
Glennon Doyle:
And I just want to point out to the pod squad, one of the reasons why this is so interesting is in elementary school, middle school, high school, Amanda was the captain of every single team, the president of every single thing, the fashion plate. I remember she got this award that was called The Optimist Award, and the principal stood up and said, “She is the kindest student and she makes being kind cool.” That’s who she was. She was the coolest one.
Abby Wambach:
Still is.
Glennon Doyle:
And also the nicest one. There was not one mean girl thing inside of her. So for her, who was getting all of the success and accolades and kindness and goodness, the golden girl to be in this relationship. It’s interesting.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. It’s a record scratch.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s a record scratch. But, the thing that is consistent is that it was something that was out of the ordinary and exceptional for you because what would’ve been expected would’ve been something different.
Abby Wambach:
That’s interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
It was out of the ordinary. So do you remember how you got out of it?
Amanda Doyle:
I think after a while, I think I felt very shitty enough for long enough. And then I also was in different spaces where I was feeling good in those spaces and I just decided that I would give feeling good a try.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s why the manipulation of isolation. Right? Because they don’t want you to feel joy in other places and realize that there’s life out there. So you graduate from high school, you go to UVA, and you said this really cool thing to me, which is, I always say the first thing in my life that I’ve ever done that was actually my idea, was falling in love with Abby, starting a life with Abby. Every single other thing was just from a guidebook that someone was like, “This is how you should do life.” You say that the first thing you ever wanted to do that was completely your own idea, was after your freshman year at UVA, you decided you wanted to go to Ireland by yourself with no agenda and just travel throughout Ireland.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. I just remember being just, I didn’t know why, but I was like, “That’s what I need to do.” I remember laying in bed buzzing about it being like, “That’s the thing. I have to go. I have to figure it out.” And so this dear woman, who was a senior when I was a freshman, her name is Maggie Sly, and she’s an educator in D.C., she’s still an amazing human. I haven’t talked to her in 20 years, but she was studying in Galway at the time, and she had this apartment with these Irish women and I was like, “Can I drop my bag there? Can I just set up shop for a few days and then figure it out?” That’s annoying. A tiny apartment. She doesn’t know me from Eve. All I can think about is what a ridiculously egregious ask that was of someone. And she was like, “Okay.” And so I went there and then just stayed with them for a bit and then just hitchhiked around, which is a terrible idea.
Abby Wambach:
Hold on, hold. You stuck your thumb up and you got in people’s cars and you got around Ireland this way?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, but that’s not a good idea. This was the 90s in Ireland, which was a little bit like I imagined being in the 60s here, which was also not a good idea. All I’m saying is that yes, but it wasn’t… I mean, don’t try it at home.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. Okay. So let’s put out that disclaimer obviously, but seriously, that’s so amazing. What are some highlights from Ireland? What is it like to be traveling alone?
Amanda Doyle:
His name was Kieran.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, Kieran, of course, of course.
Amanda Doyle:
But no, I feel very strongly about Maggie. I feel like I owed to her this blooming love of traveling alone, which has been I think one of the greatest loves of my life. And so I’m very thankful to her for that. And I just feel like there’s something so amazing about traveling alone because it is this only opportunity in the world to be in a place where no one knows you. And there’s something so awesome about that because you can be anything you want and you won’t pass this away again. So because of that, I am able to live in the now in a way I am never able to in any other time precisely because it is not leading to anything. Where I feel like so much of my life I’m thinking, “Okay, if X now, then Y in a month and Z in a year.”
Amanda Doyle:
And when you’re traveling by yourself for a limited period of time in a place, there is no Y and Z. There’s only X. There’s only right now. And so it’s the only time that I can shut that part of myself down and just think about this day, this week. And so no one has any expectations of you beyond their own biases. You don’t have any expectations out of everyone else, and you don’t have a plan. If you go with a group or a few people, you have a plan. And if you have a plan, you already know what’s going to happen. But if you don’t have a plan, you don’t know what’s going to happen. And that’s awesome.
Abby Wambach:
So cool.
Amanda Doyle:
And you also don’t have to take care of anybody. You’re not like, “Okay, I’m going with this person. This is what this person knows about me. This person knows that I would definitely do X or definitely not do X.” When you’re by yourself, you’re a free agent. Nobody knows that you’re a person who’s not going to do X, so you might do X. You really might.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s so interesting because the two things about Sister that are so… Everybody who knows her would say is, number one, you’re the most planned person. You plan everything, you strategize everything, and that you take care of everyone. So it feels like those are two parts of yourself that you are free from when you’re traveling alone, which must feel like a different part of yourself you live into.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Wow. Can you tell us about Kieran? Because I feel like you made out with him in a castle, is that true?
Amanda Doyle:
Yes, but I feel like these serendipitous things happen when you just show up places. I think I met him in a bar in Galway and we were hanging out for a little bit, and then I traveled up to Donegal by myself somehow was walking through Donegal and he walked out of this other bar and was like, “Hey,” and this is well as far as way you can get in Ireland. And turns out he’s from there. And then we hung out at his grandma’s house and went to a castle up there. I feel like the universe is making connections when you’re by yourself that it’s not able to make in the buzz of when a lot of people are around.
Glennon Doyle:
So what are some other places that you’ve traveled alone?
Amanda Doyle:
I was in Hawaii for a couple months
Glennon Doyle:
And you were learning to surf and working at a pizza joint in Hawaii.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, terribly. I was learning to surf terribly. I still am horrible at surfing. Tanzania, Kenya, Zanzibar, Egypt.
Glennon Doyle:
I just want to give a shout-out to my mom because I just can’t imagine if my kid was living this way. I might be just making this up, but I feel like one time we almost had you home and you were at some airport and all you had was a layover. It was just an eight-hour layover and then we were going to get you home. And then my mom called me and was, “Oh, Jesus Christ. She left the airport for the layover and she’s at some woman’s house and now they’re on a donkey or something.”
Amanda Doyle:
Well, she couldn’t have known that. That must have been after the fact because I sure as shit didn’t tell anyone that that was the plan. So yeah, So I was flying to meet a friend of mine in Costa Rica in the Osa Peninsula, and for some reason I had an 11-hour layover in San Jose, which is the capital of it, I’m sure, because I could save $75 by having a-
Glennon Doyle:
Right. Of course.
Amanda Doyle:
Hour layover. So I’m there in San Jose and I have 11 hours, so I’m like, “Well, this is fun.” So I just walked through the cab line to find a woman cab driver. So I finally found a woman cab driver, and I’m like, “Can you show me around?” She’s like, “Yes, I will absolutely do that.” And I spoke better Spanish at that point because I was closer to my years of education. So she takes me to go to her house, hang out with her kids, we eat, we’re just hanging out for the day. And it’s at this point that I learned that it’s December 26th. It’s the day after Christmas. It is the National Day of Horseman in Costa Rica, which means they have to me this thing called El Tope, which is this traditional horse parades are all over the country and the biggest one is in San Jose.
Amanda Doyle:
All her friends and family are going to this thing. She invites me to join them. Of course I am joining them, but I don’t have boots and a hat, which I feel like is critical if you’re going to go to horse parades. So she’s like, “Yes, we will go.” And so she takes me downtown, I get boots and a hat, and then we go back to the parade. And then at some point I’m in the side watching with all of her family. And I don’t know how this happens, but I go from being in the crowd to being hoisted, in the parade, hoisted on a horse in the parade, and then I just ride the horse for the rest of the parade. And I still don’t have any recollection of how that particularly happened. Then it was time to go back to the airport. So then she just dropped me back at the airport and that was my San Jose experience. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. When did you meet the man formerly known as your husband? Let’s call him Tim.
Amanda Doyle:
Tim’s great. Tim’s a great name.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. So did you meet Tim when you were in law school?
Amanda Doyle:
No.
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Amanda Doyle:
I met Tim in undergrad. So I was part of this group at school, and we had this party, it was kind of a crazy group. We had this big bonfire and wood through it, so you could walk through the fire. And I remember I was walking through the fire and as I got to the edge of the fire, he walked up and I saw him and I was like, “Oh my God.” It was like this moment that I can remember and I’ll never forget, but I was like, fire hot, danger, danger, fire. And I didn’t do anything with it, but we were really good friends, started dating this other wonderful man. They were really good friends, not all good enough friends to not eventually-
Glennon Doyle:
Make out with each other.
Amanda Doyle:
Right. But not until I had broken up with the first guy. That was very hard.
Abby Wambach:
Okay. So you and Tim get together.
Glennon Doyle:
Why?
Amanda Doyle:
Because I could not stand to not be together with him.
Glennon Doyle:
Looking back, do you see it as doomed from the start, number one? You have said of that marriage, “I wasn’t there for a lot of it,” the marriage, what does all of that mean? What were the problems there? Why were you not there for it? How did it all fall apart?
Amanda Doyle:
I was so enamored with him, and he was so larger than life to me and such an appropriate match in my judgment to me that I assimilated into him and I didn’t have a separateness from him. And as I got sicker and sicker because I was miserable in law school because I didn’t have a personhood outside of him, it wasn’t just the absence of me, which it had been before. It was a sick me plus him. And so I didn’t have any agency over anything to improve it. And I didn’t recognize any problems because I was in my own drama of my bulimia. I was in my own self-destruction. And so I wasn’t present there.
Amanda Doyle:
And so I don’t know, I don’t know what would’ve happened. I don’t know if it was doomed from the start. We both had a lot of reasons why that relationship shouldn’t have worked. But I don’t know that anything is doomed from the start. I think there’s some times when I think back when I think if I hadn’t given him the ultimatum to leave his job or be together, that we would’ve stayed together. And then I don’t know when it would have dissolved.
Amanda Doyle:
So part of me is, would it have dissolved at a chance that didn’t give me a chance to have another life? And also because I felt so passionately about him, if I was connected with him through a child, I think that would make life really, really difficult because I can just abstain from him forever. I don’t have to have any interaction with him, nor have I ever. And so that’s a blessing because I really feel for the people that were desperately in love with their spouses and now have to reclassify them in their brain and every interaction probably peels the scab off every single day. And I don’t have to have that. I can have a deep scar and leave it untouched.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, that’s really good.
Glennon Doyle:
What is your take on why everybody has their self-destructive bents? But maybe I hope, I don’t know.
Abby Wambach:
Self-destructive what’s?
Glennon Doyle:
Bents. Ways they’d go when things get tough. If you’re not healthy and integrated, things you do to cope, to manage that are ultimately self-destructive. What’s your take on why we both leaned so hard on bulimia. We had such different lives. It’s just interesting that we both ended up there.
Amanda Doyle:
I don’t know. I think maybe it wasn’t going to be okay for me to be like, “I’m not okay.” So it was really bad my first year of college, my bulimia. And then it was intermittently bad, but under control-ish throughout the rest of college. Then in between, my year between when I wasn’t at school, between undergrad and college, it was great. And then first year of law school, absolutely disastrous. Worse than ever before.
Amanda Doyle:
So it’s not like I was going to say, “I’m fucking miserable in law school and this is not for me and I hate this and I’m leaving.” That was never going to happen. So what do I do with my misery? What do I do with that? Same with the first year of college. I didn’t know what was going on. I’m there. I don’t know what my place is here. I don’t know how to reestablish myself. Everything is overwhelming. I don’t know who I’m going to be friends with. I know I don’t fit exactly that mold, but I see very clearly what the mold should be. And it’s all overwhelming.
Amanda Doyle:
And so I wasn’t going to be like, “I’m doing bad in college.” So where does that go? Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It goes somewhere. So I think it’s the consolation prize, “I’m miserable. I’m not going to get myself the help I need, but I got this little thing we could do that’ll make you feel better. I’ll take care of you. You’ll do this thing, you’ll work it out. Then you’ll go back out there and fight.”
Glennon Doyle:
Is that a tragic flaw for you, not being able to say, “This isn’t working for me”? There are some people who would be like, “Law school’s miserable and I hate this and I’m taking a different track.”
Abby Wambach:
That’d be me.
Glennon Doyle:
Or do you know what I mean?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Is the inability to flip the switch on the circuit breaker and say, “This is not working, this is too much,” and so then the house burns down. Right?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Is that a higher priority for you than not admitting defeat?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, I think probably that plays a lot like that. That reminds me of the Brene Brown thing we did, where she’s said that, “Her biggest power and her biggest weakness is the ability to dig deep.” And we talked about how the bullshit of that is that you think when you’re digging deep that there’s no cost to it, but you’re excavating from somewhere. You’re excavating from yourself or you’re excavating from the soil that belongs in your relationships or the soil that belongs to your own health. And so you’re digging, you can keep digging, but you’re stealing soil from somewhere else. And I think that I have been in soil debt for a lot of my life.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
What about now? What are the other self-destructive bents for you?
Amanda Doyle:
I think one of my self-destructive bents is that I have this pull, toward extraordinary, and I have this fear of ordinary, which is the two paths that cleared in Ethiopia, where it’s like, “Okay. Now, that’s an extraordinary life.” You’re going to take your book bag, you’re going to meet how many different folks, you’re going to go to how many different countries, you’re going to see all these things. You don’t know what’s ahead. That’s extraordinary. That’s wild.
Amanda Doyle:
And then there’s ordinary, which is a partner and two and half kids and a job. And you know what’s going to happen there. Theoretically, you don’t really, spoiler alert, you don’t really, but you think you do. And I think that the more that I’ve thought about that is maybe it’s not a fear of being ordinary. Maybe that fear of being ordinary is really a fear of accepting who I am and where I am and who I’m with, and maybe my need to feel extraordinary, to feel valuable, and my need to have experience that are extraordinary to make them valuable. And I need to have a partner that’s extraordinary, for example, a highly decorated Navy SEAL to be valuable. Maybe that makes sense in terms of what I have chosen, because that makes it extraordinary, as opposed to believing that is worth in the ordinary and being okay with who I am and being okay with where I am and who I’m with because that is so much peace. Do you have the audacity to give yourself that much peace and stop chasing, just being okay with it?
Amanda Doyle:
And I think that’s my biggest fear, because remember when we were talking about when the guy told me I would only need one more boiler for my house for the rest of my life. And it just made me cry because I think that it’s the chase and what happens when you’re on the chase and then the finish line is closing in, then there’s no more path to chase down, if that has been what you’ve done. And I think my biggest fear is that when I get to the period in which I have nothing left to plan for or, or build for, or chase down, that I will have this aching emptiness.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Which makes the ordinary seem a lot more attractive.
Glennon Doyle:
So as life does, life lets you beat your head into the extraordinary for a while. So you’ve got your extraordinarily bad first relationship. You’ve got your extraordinarily decorated second relationship. These things don’t work out. You’re in the law firm, which I would remember as being a place that you met some wonderful people and also was not your best life. I’ll just say it that way.
Amanda Doyle:
Hashtag not your best life. Oprah does not recommend.
Glennon Doyle:
No, but you were digging deep to make it work. You were not going to quit. I remember you were living with me after the divorce, and every day you would be so miserable. And I would be like, “Well, what about quitting?” And you would get so furious with me. You would. You would be like, “I’m setting myself up for future freedom.” And I would be like, “But now,” that’s the conversation we’ve been having for 30 years. Right?
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And they’re both right and they’re both wrong. Okay. So you meet John. If I remember this correctly, I believe it was our dear friend Joanna, who was trying to set you up with John. And she kept asking me if it was okay. And I kept saying, “No, it’s not okay. I’m scared of everything. Just everyone stopped doing anything near this woman.” And then finally, one day, for whatever reason, I just said, “Okay.” Because I actually knew John through my ex-boyfriend.
Amanda Doyle:
Okay. This is backstory for the long haulers here. So Glennon’s boyfriend from college, Let’s call him Rob, Rob. Okay. So Rob grew up from little bitty playing little league and football with Johnny. Okay. And then when Johnny would come visit you guys at college, he would talk with you.
Glennon Doyle:
And talking is a, I don’t know, we would mumble in each other’s direction. We were both totally wasted the entire time.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, and then, okay, flash forward to four years ago. I’m telling John about… Because then you continue throughout college, in the summers you come home, you’d occasionally hang out with Johnny. I’ve never met him at all. I don’t have much interest in this whole group. But four years ago, I’m like, oh my gosh. So I want to tell you about a memory I have, we used to have this big blue van. It was a club wagon. It was crazy. We would drive to the boat and he goes, “Oh, I know the club wagon.” And I was like, “How do you know about my?” He was like, “Oh, I’ve made out with people in the club wagon.” And I was like, “What the fuck? My life is so…” The little club wagon that I used to sleep my whole body in, my future husband is making out with somebody before I meet him.
Glennon Doyle:
Anyway. Because I gave the van to Rob’s fraternity. I gave it, my parents’ van to a fraternity and they took all the seats out and they would drive it to parties and bring 20 people in it. And then they would put lawn chairs on top of the van. So my dad would be like, “Why is our van caved in?” And I’d be like, “I don’t know.”
Amanda Doyle:
“I don’t know. Weird. Birds, probably.”
Glennon Doyle:
What our parents have been through. But you can understand why I wouldn’t be super excited about green lighting the meeting of my brilliant Sister to someone in this group.
Abby Wambach:
How did you and John first meet? What was your first date?
Amanda Doyle:
I remember the day, because it was on, I went to Vegas for my 30th birthday for the first and very last time that will ever happen. That is a place that is incommensurate with my personhood. And while I was there, had an APB literally put out on me.
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know this.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, yeah. And then maybe related to that, maybe not. I met this person who then changed their flight so they could stay the whole time.
Abby Wambach:
Was it a boy?
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
Oh my God.
Amanda Doyle:
We already have plans to meet in New York and a couple of weekends. And I’m on this flight home and I am banged up. It’s not a good scene. And I get three emails from John because he was so nervous writing me, he kept pressing tab to make a new paragraph, but he kept sending it. So I’m like, “Hi, dear Amanda. My name’s John.” Send. “Oh shoot, accidentally press the tab button. Anyway, I talked to Glennon last week,” and send. And finally, he was just like, “I’m wondering if you want to go out a date this week. Bye, John.” It was so amazing.
Amanda Doyle:
So we got off to a very awkward start, which is beautiful. And I was like, “Yes, I do want to meet you, but I am not suitable for meeting anyone until Thursday because I’m banged up.” And then we met on Thursday. I walked into O’Connell’s where we eventually had the reception for our wedding, it’s an Irish pub in Old Town, Alexandria. And I walked in and he was just so damn cute standing there and he didn’t speak. It was literally out of a movie. I walked up and I was like, “Hi, are you John?” And he said, “Mm-hmm.” He didn’t say any words. And I was like, “Shall we go to our table?” And he was like, “Mm-hmm.” I was like, “Well, as awkward as the emails, but that’s okay.”
Amanda Doyle:
And we sat and we had steak and Guinness, and then they had to kick us out when they closed at 2:00. And then we sat in the car and talked for a long time, and then the street sweepers came. So then we had to move the car. And I was like, “Hmm, I’m going to save you in my phone.” And then the second time we went out, I called the Vegas guy and I was like, “This is awkward, but I’m not coming to New York.” And then I called the two other guys I was dating and I was like, “This is very awkward. And I don’t know if this is going to come to anything, but I don’t want to be in the position to, let’s say I marry this guy that I just met and then I have kids with him. And then I’m going to know for the rest of my life that in between the time I met this guy, I made out with you in the middle.”
Glennon Doyle:
And then I might do a podcast about it. And then I’d have to tell that part.
Abby Wambach:
Oh my gosh. You knew.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
There was a part of you that knew what was happening.
Glennon Doyle:
And John couldn’t speak because he thought you were so beautiful.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, he’s very sweet.
Glennon Doyle:
And then when you ordered the Guinness, he knew he was going to marry you. That’s what he told me.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, it might have been the medium roast steak. I don’t know.
Glennon Doyle:
So here’s the part. You fall in love with John. John falls in love with you. And as you crawl towards this soft landing space of this relationship, that could be the real thing, could be marriage, could be family. The universe does its thing. And IJM calls you and asks you to come to Rwanda and prosecute child sex offenders, fight for widows land. You have a decision to make, stay, continue this relationship with John. Go to Rwanda, do this work. Some combination of both. You sit down, you have a conversation with John, and this is another Sliding Doors moment. What was that conversation about?
Amanda Doyle:
Actually, I had known I was going to go Rwanda when I met him. And so a couple weeks into it, I was like, “Here’s the deal. You’re awesome. I think you think I’m awesome and we should probably break up because it’s not fair to you because I’m going to go okay to this. I’m going to do this thing. And so I don’t feel like it’s fair to you because I feel like what you’ll think is that I’ll fall so in love with you that I’ll decide not to go. And I’m just telling you that’s not going to happen. And I feel like in fairness to you, we should probably break up because I don’t want you to believing that that’s going to happen because it’s not.” And he was like, “I’m good. I’m good.” And I was like, “Huh. All right. Well, great.”
Amanda Doyle:
And then right before I was going to go, I was sitting down with him just having all of my lurching agonized heart things about, “If we were going to have a life, it was going to be like this. This is going to be this extraordinary thing. And then we’re going to do this. And why aren’t we like this as a couple? We need to be like this.” And I remember him just being like, “Why do you want those things?” And I remember using the word extraordinary. I remember saying, “I just feel like that that is the way to have an extraordinary life, and I feel like that’s what I’m going to have.”
Amanda Doyle:
And he said, “What’s wrong with ordinary? Because I really, really want ordinary.” And it was so touching because it was like, “Oh, wait. Ordinary isn’t the lack of extraordinary. Ordinary is its whole other thing that has all of this beautiful cadence and rhythm and purpose and bond and magic. And here’s this lovely man that is putting a very high-value on ordinary and not as a thing that lacks whatever extraordinary has but a thing that has something that extraordinary doesn’t have.”
Abby Wambach:
Whoa.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. What does ordinary have, Sister, that extraordinary doesn’t have? Because now we are back full circle in the airport, when you decide to come home to ordinary, which in your case might be the extraordinary, because what’s hard for one person is easy for another person and vice versa. For some people, the scary thing might be to go travel and hitchhike across Ireland, God help them. For you, the scariest thing was coming home and doing the quote, “Ordinary thing,” which was intimacy and relationship and motherhood and family and marriage. Did you end up choosing the thing that was scarier for you?
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. In fact, I remember on my wedding day you gave me a letter that said that I was stepping into the hardest thing for me and the biggest adventure and challenge for me. And you gave me that pendant that said, “I’m not afraid. I was born to do this.” The Joan of Art quote. And I think that that has rung true. I think that I have always been comfortable, whether it’s flirting or traveling with the, “I will not pass this way again.” And I am passing through and there are no expectations of me and I have no expectations of you. And what has been harder for me is the not passing through and the staying and the not finding something to fix the thing, but settling into the thing and trying like hell to become interdependent.
Amanda Doyle:
And because the irony of everything, and this is how I think I know this is true, that I can flirt my ass off with anyone that I’m never going to see again. But you tell me to say something I want in bed with my partner and I am stone-cold immobilized. How can someone be so flirty and sexy out there? But when it comes to the real deal, not know how to speak…? Or even in relationship, I need help in life. I can’t do that. The being there to ask someone to help me and for them to be there and know that they’re helping me. In other words, that I could not have done it without them.
Glennon Doyle:
They know they helped. They know that you needed help.
Amanda Doyle:
Not only is it horrifying to ask for it, now I got this person running around knowing they’re helping me. I’m just saying, that I think for me, for a lot of people, it’s being brave enough to go get the thing. And going and getting the thing has always been easy as shit for me. The staying and getting the thing, is very, very hard for me. And I am very, very lucky, very lucky to have a lover of the ordinary that loves the staying.
Glennon Doyle:
I would like to end with this, Sister, I just sent you the poem that you loved, I think years ago when we were talking about this ordinary versus extraordinary thing that you found. And it’s called Make the Ordinary Come Alive. Would you read it for us to close out?
Amanda Doyle:
I sure will. This is Make the Ordinary Come Alive, by William Martin. “Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is a way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples, and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die, show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand and make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.”
Abby Wambach:
Sister, making an ordinary life extraordinary. That’s what you do.
Glennon Doyle:
We love you Sissy Bear. I just wanted to tell you that when we were talking to about interviewing you, I was talking to Allison and Dynna, who of course are our family. Allison said that she was thinking about attachment theory and why she’s so attached to you and then also why she’s attached to all three of us in real life. And then also why everyone is attached to We Can Do Hard Things podcast. And this is what she said. She said, “If you think about attachment theory in terms of the way Dr. Becky presents it, which is, ‘Am I real? Am I safe? Do I matter?'” She said, “Glennon, you answer the question for me, ‘Am I real?’ Sister answers the question for me, ‘Am I safe?’ And Abby answers the question for me, ‘Do I matter?'” And Allison said, “I never feel more safe in my life than when I’m in the presence of Sister.” And that is so true.
Abby Wambach:
Yep. Same.
Glennon Doyle:
For me, too. And for you, too. And that must be a lot of pressure. So we should send her abroad by herself once a year as a break.
Amanda Doyle:
No, it doesn’t work anymore.
Glennon Doyle:
I know.
Amanda Doyle:
It doesn’t work anymore. By the way, if you can’t be whoever you’re going to be because there’s no expectations on you. Spoiler alert, when you’re married with children, there are expectations on you.
Abby Wambach:
Exactly. There’s nowhere you can go.
Amanda Doyle:
That proverbial ship has sailed, people.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, you did it at the right time.
Amanda Doyle:
I sure did.
Glennon Doyle:
We love you Sister Bear.
Abby Wambach:
Sure did.
Glennon Doyle:
We love you so much.
Abby Wambach:
I love you.
Glennon Doyle:
And to the pod squad, we’ll see you back here next time. We Can Do Hard Things. Bye.
Abby Wambach:
We can do ordinary things.
Glennon Doyle:
We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Odysee, or wherever you get your podcasts. Especially be sure to rate and review the