Abby’s Christmas Miracle: When All the Heartbreak Made Sense
March 17, 2023
Glennon Doyle:
Hi.
Abby Wambach:
Hi, welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Hi.
Glennon Doyle:
Thanks, babe. As she said, welcome back. Shall we begin?
Amanda Doyle:
Let us. All right. Spoiler alert, you will want to go back and listen to episode 188 and episode 189 where we interviewed Abby part one and two before proceeding with this, if you want to hear it first from Abby, because I’m going to ask a follow up. So G Bird, the beautiful, beautiful moment that episode 189 ended with, Abby was talking about what happened on Christmas morning, the gift that the kids gave to her. So I wondered if you could share what your side of that was, because clearly you knew about it before it happened and what it felt like for you in that moment.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, so the gift that to which you’re referring is that on Christmas morning, the kids presented Abby with a letter that was from a lawyer and explained to Abby that it was a beautiful letter that explained that the kids were seeking to have Abby officially adopt them. The kids had written a list of all the reasons why, and it ended by saying, “We want you to understand that while we will be asking for you to have full parental rights even be added to our birth certificates, we will not be cleaning the sink.” So-
Amanda Doyle:
So just business as usual for this?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Basically it was like we’re asking you to take on a lot of responsibilities, but we just want to be clear that we will be taking on no further responsibilities.
Amanda Doyle:
I don’t think it was, we’re asking you, I think this is to commemorate and to make official the responsibilities that are already existing, which is you take such good care of us and you have this internal obligation to us and we don’t clean the sink.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. But in yesterday’s episode, you and Abby were talking about it and Abby said, “Thank you.” Or something about it, and you said that I think “This is actually the kid’s way of saying thank you.” And I was thinking about that last night, and actually I totally understand why you said that, but actually that’s not the vibe that it was at all. There was no vibe from the kids about this is an offering that Abby has earned and deserved, and so she’s going to get it. The kids felt like your kids would, if they began to understand that one of their parents had no legal rights to them.
Amanda Doyle:
They were like, “We have to make this right. This is crazy that this isn’t the case.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. It was personal for them that they wanted this. It wasn’t like a duty. A while back, Abby, and I don’t know if you remember this night, but we were laying in bed and we’d talked a lot about the situation that a stepparent who’s as involved with the children as either of the biological parents, some have this feeling of terror. Abby had this deep feeling of, “I have nothing official with these children. I’m giving them everything. I love them more than anything, and they could be taken from me any minute.” And I remember sitting with her, laying with her in bed and her saying sweetly and kindly, “But my relationship with them is completely and utterly dependent on you. Our romantic relationship determines whether I get my children or not.” And there’s like a romantic row, “Woo. Of course we’re going to like whatever.” But that’s actually not fair.
Abby Wambach:
It puts a whole fucking shit ton of pressure on our marriage and relationship.
Glennon Doyle:
And also, I thought about it, of course, I overthought about it for six months and I thought about it from a million different angles, and there’s a lot of ways to talk about it. One of which is, and this is the sixth version, but that’s not a good thing for our relationship either. I don’t want to think you’re only with me because you’d lose the kids if not and it’s just so unfair because these kids need you and want you in a way that is equal to how they need and want me and Craig. And so they wanted and needed a solidification of that just like you did.
Glennon Doyle:
That was the vibe, not like a “She deserves this, so we’ll give her her coaching trophy. It was a making right of something. And so we thought about it a lot. You sister sent me a phone number to some lawyer. I called the lawyer, and because for a while I thought, “There’s nothing we can do about this because there’s just not a lot of legal precedent for it.” We found out, God bless California, that there actually is third party adoption that’s possible, and we will be entering this journey together of trying to make this so, which is so important for step families and queer families to be able to say together what their family is and have it reflected legally. It’s really, really important.
Amanda Doyle:
And for background, for people who are like, “Whoa, I hear all the time about stepparents adopting kids.” It’s generally the case that in order to have a stepparent do that, you have to have one of the birth parents relinquish their parental rights. So in other words, one of them, either through abandonment or through voluntarily relinquishing their rights, that is usually the case that a stepparent can be added. And what they’re doing here is maintaining the two birth parental rights and adding a third.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. And so the idea is a lot of these rules are made for tragic situations or painful situations, divorce, abandonment. Can we also use it for loving expansion? If we can do these things for the opposite, can we do it when a family is expanding out of love? And so speaking of not this situation in particular without abandoning either of the biological parents’ rights. So I went to talk to Craig about this months and months before Christmas, and I was a little bit nervous. I know that Craig is the most generous. Craig understands our family. It’s not like he doesn’t understand that how the three of us are co parenting. But it’s just such a dramatic thing to be like “We’re going to add someone to their birth certificates who will have equivalent rights as you. If you have a pie, why are you going to cut it up if you don’t have to in three ways?”
Abby Wambach:
Technically it’s not equivalent rights. It’s like you now lessened your 50% right-
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Abby Wambach:
…to 33.3%.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. If this was a voting board, the weight of your vote has gone down. Yeah. If you have the capacity to feel threatened and insecure in your position, this idea would certainly activate that.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And it’s not even just feeling, it’s real. You don’t have to feel insecure to understand that factually and mathematically you will have less. And also, he can’t control our relationship.
Amanda Doyle:
So what you’re saying Glennon is if you and Abby get divorced, then I get a third of the time with my kids and there’s nothing I can do with that relationship to save it. Right. It’s just a lot.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, it’s a lot.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s a lot. So I do my breathing and get all of my ideas and get myself in a low nervous system place. And-
Amanda Doyle:
So after that, six months of preparing, for real.
Glennon Doyle:
For real, and then I say, “So Craig” and I say my first sentence, “we’re thinking about entering a journey where Abby might be able to adopt the children without us giving away.” And he goes, “Oh yeah, for sure. 100% yes. Abby’s family, and it should be on paper.”
Abby Wambach:
It’s amazing.
Glennon Doyle:
And I had 17 more paragraphs. But here’s the amazing part. He said that my immediate reaction was “Just slow down, dude. What the fuck, are you reckless? What? Do you understand what I’m saying? This is what I’m saying. We have a pot.”
Amanda Doyle:
“Tell me the 12 things you need to be afraid about and then let assuage your fears. You can’t just come out agreeing with me.”
Glennon Doyle:
I can’t stand it when people are not scared. Do I have to do all the scared? I have to do all the scared. But it was so interesting to me because I was like, “Oh, you’re scared. You’re scared.”
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. You yourself, Glennon are scared. Not-
Glennon Doyle:
I’m scared. Nobody else was scared. I was driving the train, helping the children can have all the desires they want. They’re not doing paperwork. So-
Amanda Doyle:
No, not doing the dishes, not doing the paperwork-
Glennon Doyle:
Not doing the sink and that. So what I realized after that first conversation with Craig was, “Oh, this is you Glennon loosening your grip on your two most precious things, which are your children and your control.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s not what I thought you were going to say. That’s funny.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. And when your two favorite things are mixed together, children and control. So to me it felt like way more of a leap of love, faith, and commitment than way more than the wedding.
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh yeah, for sure.
Glennon Doyle:
Way more than the wedding, wedding willy-nilly like whatever, but adopting the children. But it was knowing that all I would be doing if I didn’t do this is just not reflecting accurately what already existed. I wasn’t doing anything. I would just be pretending that the thing wasn’t happening that was happening, which is that Abby is just as much as their mother as I am.
Abby Wambach:
And in the moment when I was listening to the kids, read the letter, and then I opened the letter from the lawyers, of course, I immediately burst into the kind of cry. I don’t know, it was a primal cry, and I’m hugging the kids, and then-
Amanda Doyle:
You’re on your knees, you turned into like fetal position on the floor. It was amazing.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. As I’m hugging the kids, I realize, “Oh my gosh, Craig had to agree to this.” So then I turn, and Glennon is sitting right, be beside me. Craig is sitting next to her, and I just let go of the kids and I grab both Glennon and Craig and I just wail into both of their arms.
Glennon Doyle:
Craig was crying.
Abby Wambach:
We all were.
Glennon Doyle:
Kids were crying, sister was crying. John was crying. John was crying with a little bit of fear in his eyes because he had been given the job to video it by sister, and you can imagine how terrified he was.
Amanda Doyle:
Don’t fuck this Up. Don’t fuck this up. Don’t fuck this up.
Glennon Doyle:
Bubba and Tisha were crying. We’ve had a lot of beautiful Christmas moments and was for me was the most beautiful Christmas moment. What was your take sissy that morning?
Amanda Doyle:
It was just such an honor to be there for it. I’m so thankful that you all chose to do it in that moment so that we could be witness to it. It’s rare in life that in the moment that something is magical and pivotal and one of the most special things you’ll see in the moment itself, it was just overflowing joy, gratitude. I loved the way the kids were so light about it too. It was clearly such a profound moment, but they were just happy and laughing and smiling, and it felt like just a celebration of what is rather than this remarkable, oh, we’re going to go do this thing that’s monumental. It just felt like an acknowledgement of how truly remarkable it already is.
Abby Wambach:
I think legally speaking, just to be very, very clear to cover all of our bases, the letter from the lawyer, it was kind of cute and funny because Glennon was, approached the lawyer on my behalf because I’m the one that has to seek adoption, so this was all as, because it was going to be a surprise for Christmas, et cetera. The lawyer said, “Assuming you agree to the responsibility”.
Glennon Doyle:
Assuming Glennon-
Amanda Doyle:
Surprise you adopted the children.
Glennon Doyle:
Because Glennon just swears Glennon swears you want this, but I don’t know.
Abby Wambach:
And by the way, it’s going to going to be a process. We have to go through the legal proceeding of it, but the unveiling of it was just absolutely the most special moment of my entire existence on this planet, in this body.
Glennon Doyle:
It was a wedding, a really good wedding because it was a family sacrament moment, really sacrament meaning a moment where you’re ritualizing or making visible something that is already exists but is invisible. That’s what sacrament is, right? It’s like we’re seeing it happen. What we’ve all known is true there because there was no forcing of it. There was no faking. It was just so obvious that this should be happening and the fact that it became real.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh just thinking of it’s the opposite of what, when Abby was talking about in our first marriage, how it was something was missing before they got married. So it was like, okay, well, we’ll insert this officialness and then that’ll supply the thing that’s missing. It was the opposite of that. It was like nothing is missing except the official acknowledgement that nothing is missing.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Beautiful.
Abby Wambach:
And it’s so weird because as a queer person who had lived in a world where I couldn’t get married, I didn’t have many rights, this was just something I accepted as the way things are. I guess I probably didn’t fully understand the trauma that’s involved with knowing and having to accept the way things are, and what that means is you have less rights, that you have less solid ground to live on. I think anybody that has ever been in that position, any stepparent out there or any bonus parent or any person who has lived through the decades that I’ve lived through, I think it’s really important that not I do this or I get to do this, that we can set a precedent for this positive union and solidification of a family so that other families out there might have this chance of not just accepting “what is already.”
Glennon Doyle:
That’s so beautiful. And to what you’re saying too, one of the reasons it feels so important is that our kids aren’t all straight, and so to not have their parents be able to be reflected accurately and equally due to queerness is hurtful for them, picturing their future selves and what they deserve and what they seeing their future families reflected legally and equally.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. And the likeliness that maybe their family ends up looking like our family someday in their future, the statistics of the divorce and how their families will look. We want to make sure that we’re building those foundational blocks now so that they can step into whatever family they need to.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And it’s not the truth that stepparents need to always be second class citizen. It’s not true. That does not have to be the case, and it’s complicated, but especially in a family where everyone is saying, “This person is an equal parent, and we all agree and we are a united front, and we want to see our family reflected the way that we feel it and experience it legally. No one should stand in the way of that.
Abby Wambach:
Totally.
Amanda Doyle:
I think what you said, Abby, just now about the trauma of growing up and knowing that this is just how it might be for you as a queer person, that your relationships and connections would have a kind of official precariousness, and you called that a trauma. It just got my head spinning because when I think about so much of the drive for marriage equality was not about, so you could have this stamp of what is a heteronormative rite of passage. It was so you didn’t have to live in a precarious world in which it depended on who the nurse was on staff as to whether you could visit your partner in the hospital or be by their side when they died, or be able to make medical decisions for your children. All of these things are, it’s not a cutesy stamp.
Amanda Doyle:
It is putting you in a place that isn’t precarious, and we’ve been talking over and over in this podcast about attachment, and the marker of attachment is secure bonds and connections, and when we put folks in a position to grow up in a society where their bonds are necessarily insecure because they can’t rely on them in an official space to act in a way that honors and reflects their relationship, then of course that kind of insecurity is a trauma.
Glennon Doyle:
And affects their relationship because it’s a feedback loop. It’s like if our kids know in their bones, they’re brilliant humans, that their relationship with their parent with Abby is completely predicated on me and whether I stay in this relationship or not, they know that. At they then protecting themselves a little bit, is it is detrimental to their actual bond with their parent. And that answer is of course, yes. Especially children who have gone through a divorce already. 50% of all children.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. And also just speaking from the person, me being in this situation, it makes me feel shitty about myself deep, deep down. Subconsciously it’s like, I’m not good enough, and that is how so many of us in the queer community have felt for all of our life. And so these are the kind of things that can establish, I know that it might sound weird because I’ve been fighting against, oh, well, legally speaking, it doesn’t matter. I still love myself. All of that. That’s the conversation I have. And so I think it is important so that we feel relevant and real. This thing really, I mean the Dr. Becky episodes, it brings it up very, very important. It’s huge. This makes me feel real.
Amanda Doyle:
Are you real, are you safe?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And this is what we need. All the rainbow flags are great, and all of the gay days are great, and all of the marches are great, but we need laws that make life less precarious, and we want our children to see that happen so that they don’t grow up with the feeling of being a second class citizen, a feeling that all of their love will be precarious and that they will just be lucky to be included.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, it’s fascinating. And I’m curious how many folks are staying in relationships they shouldn’t be in because they know that if they’re to leave that relationship, their relationship with their stepchildren will radically and dramatically change.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Man, stepparents are just a class of unprotected citizens, man. And speaking of this on the floor, everyone bawling together, tell the pod squad who you called right after that moment when we all got our shit together.
Abby Wambach:
Well, luckily John is still married to Amanda because he took a good video.
Glennon Doyle:
He did take good video.
Abby Wambach:
So I got all of the video and the pictures and I sent them to my mom, and I called her and it’s going to make me cry again. Fuck. It’s just like when you’re a little gay kid and you tell your parent that you’re gay, and they’re like, “No.” And I know that so much of it’s wrapped up in not having a traditional family for my mom because kids were so, they just ruled her life. And that is, I think what her idea of love is just to keep having babies.
Abby Wambach:
And I think I’ve carried that fear with me virtually every second of my existence, “I’m not going to have a traditional family, and it’s much more difficult to have children when you’re a gay woman,” And all of that. And my mom loves our kids and loves Glennon and loves the life that we’ve built with each other, but this is still, I think probably one of the things. So when I called and told her about it, I was completely wreck, and she starts crying and she’s just like, “Oh, this is so…” Because being the person who has lived through so much of the hard times with my mom, she said like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to get official grandbabies.” She still puts them in the count when she talks about it, but I don’t know. It’s like when you have kids, you want them to experience all the love and joy that you’ve been able to create yourself, and I think that this kind of officialness and the beautiful moment that the kids showed and how much she respects Craig and Glennon for what she knows is kind of giving up some parental rights.
Abby Wambach:
It was a profound moment, and I think that there was a little bit of relief-
Glennon Doyle:
Of course.
Abby Wambach:
…in her and also in me, because it was like, “Mom, I know that you had these big fears about the life I was going to live, and here I am telling you and showing you that they were just fears. I’m here living out my dreams, and also I’m here living out your dreams for me.” Yeah. It was something, I tell you what.
Glennon Doyle:
I kept thinking because I came down and you both were just bawling on FaceTime. I was like, “Well, we’re going to do this again. Here we go.” But I kept thinking, “Oh, she’s less scared.” Like what you said, because everybody probably is protecting themselves a little bit. She can’t love those grand babies as much. She can’t let herself, but now she can. Oh, Judy Wambach, you just kill us Judy.
Abby Wambach:
Making a comeback. Just a full circle Judster.
Glennon Doyle:
Judster, hey jude take a sad song. All right. Pod squad, we love you. Of course. We will take you along on this journey whether you like it or not.
Abby Wambach:
I’m glad that we were able to get into the nooks and crannies of this story. I know I may have sped through it a little bit on the prior podcast, so I’m glad that we were able to talk about what really happened, and-
Glennon Doyle:
You’re such a good mama.
Abby Wambach:
Not for nothing, but I’m the logistic paperwork person in this family and having to fucking get you to sign shit.
Glennon Doyle:
I know. Do you know I did all that by myself for the first two months?
Abby Wambach:
It’s so hard to get you to sit down and sign all the kids’ paperwork, and so-
Glennon Doyle:
And what do you say whenever you give me a piece of paper to sign?
Abby Wambach:
“Sign Glennon Doyle.”
Glennon Doyle:
Every time she goes, “Glennon Doyle.” Because I look at her like, “What?” “Glennon Doyle.”
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, so you’re saying that this will be such an ease burden because now you’ll be able to sign everything without giving it to Glennon and reminding her of her name.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. Once a week. Once a week a child has something that needs to get signed and it’s a big pain in the ass. And shout out to all the stepparents out there who are the kind of organizers of paperwork in the family. Shout out to you. We’re trying to make it easier for you to maybe one day sign your own name and not have to say “Glennon Doyle.”
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, and that’s insulting too. You’re like, “I take care of all this stuff. I’m the one driving them over there and I can’t sign the piece of paper.” That’s how I feel when I file my taxes, I do all the work. I know all the details. Send it over to the accountant. They’re like, “Please have your husband sign this as a taxpayer.” I’m like, “My husband doesn’t know where our money is. Why am I not the taxpayer?”
Glennon Doyle:
First of all, that’s horseshit.
Amanda Doyle
Yes, it is.
Glennon Doyle:
Second of all, this is the little daily indignities. It’s every day. Little death by a thousand cuts.
Abby Wambach:
Little microaggression that I’m like “motherfucker.”
Glennon Doyle:
With that, we will leave you with motherfucker. Okay. We love you called pod squad catch you next time. Have a good weekend.
Abby Wambach:
Love you guys. Thanks for doing this for me.
Glennon Doyle:
If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you’d be willing to take 30 seconds to do each or all of these three things first, can you please follow or subscribe to? We Can Do Hard Things following the pod helps you because you’ll never miss an episode, and it helps us because you’ll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you’re there, if you’d be willing to give us a five star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios.