Don’t Tell Glennon to Love Her Body
April 20, 2023
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. So, you might want to go back and listen to the last episode because I gave an overview of what recovery feels like to me and what a difficult miracle it is.
Amanda Doyle:
A difficult miracle. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Difficult miracle. Today, I want to talk about not the first three parts, which we talked about last time, which were the invitation that you get to recovery and the acceptance of the invitation or the denial and the withdrawal that comes after you take away the thing you couldn’t live without. Then today, I actually want to talk about this part that is this beautiful, amazing part that happens after the withdrawal time. You know what? I think that might be too neat to say it. I don’t think it happens after the withdrawal.
Glennon Doyle:
I think it’s melded all together. It’s a new knowing of yourself. It’s a leveling up. It’s a way of life that feels freer and better and deeper than what you were living before. I have found it without fail every time I’ve entered any recovery. If you stick through the withdraw period, if you do that work, you usually end up with a different version of yourself that you wouldn’t go back to the other one that you wouldn’t trade.
Amanda Doyle:
Again, we’re talking about recovery in this sense that you can think about it in the traditional way of drugs or booze or eating disorders, but we’re also in the wider sense of moving out of something that you could not live without. So, whether that’s a relationship that you were in, whether that’s a career or a job, whether it was an immediate family that you grew up in that you could no longer maintain the same level of relationship, it’s any of those principles at play.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, or even the personality characteristic. I see that all the time. I’m going to try not to be so closed off with people. Well, letting go of some blockage between you and life. So, all right, here’s the story. This’ll get weird because recovery’s weird. All right. It’s weird for everybody. Weird shit happens. So, I’m about six months in, right?
Abby Wambach:
Five-ish.
Glennon Doyle:
To restriction recovery.
Abby Wambach:
Five, six.
Glennon Doyle:
So, I have not been restricting food, which means that every time I think I should not eat that thing, I eat the thing. That’s the only thing I can’t do is listen to that voice that tells me to not eat something. Any other thing but hunger is not allowed to be the boss of me.
Amanda Doyle:
There are no dangerous foods. There are no forbidden foods.
Glennon Doyle:
No, nothing.
Amanda Doyle:
You’re not living in that world.
Glennon Doyle:
No, which might not sound wild to people listening, but it’s wild to me. I have been so structured and disciplined equaling. I have been overriding my bodily instincts my entire life around food.
Abby Wambach:
With your brain. Early on, we’d go to dinner and I would look and I’m like, “Oh, what does my taste buds want to taste?” You would have to say out loud, “Okay, my brain is telling me I should get the salad, but I’m going to get-“
Glennon Doyle:
The grilled cheese.
Abby Wambach:
… the grilled cheese or the burger or something. She would have to make herself do that. It was like a forcing of the override of the brain.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. I always get the cheapest thing too.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, cheapest and most caloric.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. So, what I will tell you is that I don’t want to get into numbers, but I have gained over a 10th of my body weight in this last six months, which is also judging for the last 20 years, I’ve probably known my weight up to a pound or a half pound. I would’ve told you that I could feel the difference between a half pound. So, gaining 10% or more of my body weight is significant to me. In the beginning of this growth period-
Abby Wambach:
I would say change.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, but I meant literally.
Abby Wambach:
I know, but I feel like-
Glennon Doyle:
I was growing.
Abby Wambach:
… I feel like language is important here. The way that you’re saying growth period, it can mean both things.
Glennon Doyle:
It means positive to me. I’m using growth as a positive.
Abby Wambach:
Okay. Okay. I just don’t want it to be sarcastic.
Glennon Doyle:
No, literal growth. I have had times where I can’t wear a thing in my closet anymore. Actually, most of my things from the waist up still fit. In the beginning, I just got rid of a few tight jeans and now no pants, zero pants. So, I have had moments where I’m carrying the laundry basket of the new set of jeans that don’t fit anymore out. I feel like I am stepping into bigger version of myself literally, but also figuratively. It feels like all this shit is too small for me from now on. These pants, these old ideas about myself, these ways of being in relationship, these narratives I have, it’s all too fucking small.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
Just get it out, get it out, get it out, but it was also very, what I would call excruciating for me, especially in the beginning. Let me give you an example of that. So, Abby would wake up in the morning and she would go, “How did you sleep?” I would have not slept. The reason why I had not slept is because I would be up all night feeling, pod squaders probably won’t believe this, but it is actually what happened to me, feeling my body grow. I would describe it as an oozing. It felt like I was an alien oozing outside of my boundaries. If I were made up of gel, it was all oozing out of the casement.
Abby Wambach:
So, when I would say, “How did you sleep?”, how would you respond?
Glennon Doyle:
I would say I slept oozing. I was oozing all night. Okay. So, that’s how it went. When I tell you it was like being an alien, I don’t know. It was wild. Here’s what I want to explain to everyone about eating disorder recovery, which by the way, I think is actually on a larger level. I wouldn’t be talking about this if I thought it was just about eating disorders. I think it applies to everyone who has a body. One of the reasons why I have not been able to stand eating disorder recovery or any talk about how people get a better body in an inch or whatever is because I’m not worried so much about the shape of my body or the size of my body as much as I fucking hate having a body.
Glennon Doyle:
My problem is having a body. I’ve told Abby this so many times. When I die and go to wherever’s next, I fully expect to be seated with a bunch of the other worldly beings or whatever in whatever heaven is and have them say to me, “Oh, honey, you did your best. That was your first incarnation as a body.” For sure.
Amanda Doyle:
We got a first timer.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. She was flailing about so much. She kept talking about how much I hate having a body and everyone else was normal with it, but we were up here going, “It’s okay, honey. It was just your first time as a body. Before, you were a tree and then you were a frog and then you were the air. Now, you’re like this human in this human body and it’s very uncomfortable for you.”
Amanda Doyle:
It takes some getting used to.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Then it will all make sense. Then I’m going to look at everybody and say, “I told you. I told you that was my first time as a body.” Okay. So, the thing that is my major struggle with recovery for body stuff is how it’s presented, because eating disorder recovery assumes that your problem is your body image, that your problem is you just don’t think you’re skinny enough or you don’t think that your thighs are cute enough or you don’t think that whatever. So, eating disorder treatment or how we all talk about it in the general culture is like girl power, body positivity. It’s like people telling you over and over again to have a relationship with your body. Just love your body. Love your body.
Glennon Doyle:
If I had a dime for every single person who told me to love your body, here’s my problem with loving your body. Love your body. Glennon, just love your body. Okay? What I hear you saying to me, I cannot understand things if they’re not linguistically correct, my brain just stops. I need to understand things. If the words you’re saying to me don’t make sense, I cannot integrate them into my life, into my knowing, into my being, into my wisdom. So, if you tell me to love my body, all right, here are some other beings that I have a relationship with that I love. I love my wife. I have a relationship with my wife. I love my wife. I love my dogs. I have a relationship with my dogs. Love my dogs, love my children, love my sister. These are all beings that I have relationships with that I love.
Amanda Doyle:
You have a positive dog image, positive Abby image.
Glennon Doyle:
Positive sister image, right? Yes. Love them. Here is the thing that all of those beings have in common. They are not me, okay? The relationship is me. I’m the subject. The object is the other being, my wife, my dog, et cetera. There are two parts, two parts in a relationship, the person who is doing the loving and the being that is being loved, subject-object. So, that right there is the very framing of the solution is the problem, because loving my body presupposes that my body is not me. It is other than me. It is the object. If I am loving my body, if I am having a relationship with my body, I am already objectifying my body. I am the subject. My body is the object. So, just stay with me here. So, I have a cat, okay? This is whatever. People are allergic to my cats. I have a cat.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, I have a cat. I have a relationship with my cat. I love my cat. I can feed my cat. I can discipline my cat. I can pet my cat. What I cannot do in this situation ever is have the experience of being a cat. I can love the shit out of my cat. I can have a relationship with it, but in that framing, by definition, I am not catting. I am not being a cat. I am not inside the cat, being a cat, having the experience of being a cat, looking out the cat’s eyes, catting. The cat is the object. I am the subject. We are separate beings.
Glennon Doyle:
So, when we say love your body or have a relationship with your body, we are also saying you and your body are separate beings. If we are separate beings, if I am a separate being from my body, if my body is the object, then not me, then I’m supposed to be in a relationship with, then who or what is the I? Do you see what I’m saying there?
Amanda Doyle:
I do.
Glennon Doyle:
If I’m supposed to love my body, my body is the object, what’s the I? So, for example, I’m going into couple’s therapy with my body. We’re all supposed to be loving our body better. Clearly, we’re two different beings. So, I’m going into couple’s therapy with my body and we’re going to sit down on the couch and my body’s on the right. Who’s, what’s on the left? I guess my mind, right?
Amanda Doyle:
I have so many questions. This is fascinating.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, go.
Amanda Doyle:
I hear exactly what you’re saying, but just one little thing. So, I’m tracking with you. So, would you be able to say, “I love myself”? Is it just about the body or do you have an understanding of self when you picture yourself? Then secondly and we need to get deeper into this because I am tracking with you, but if you were in therapy with yourself, could it be like you were rubbing your leg, you were putting moisturizer on, you were laying down?
Abby Wambach:
Well, is there a way to become one? How do you become mind, body, and spirit in one?
Glennon Doyle:
Well, I think we have to figure it out. Here’s my question. How do you know your mind, body, and spirit? I don’t fucking know that. Some dude just said that. Eventually, we want to get to one, but I think we have to work through this process that I’m taking us through first. When we are saying love your body, here’s what we don’t have. We don’t have a lot of mind positivity programs. We don’t have a lot of love your mind, have a relationship with your mind, pro-mind, mind positivity. We don’t have that. She has a mind image problem. We don’t have that because we believe we are our minds, because we don’t objectify our minds like we objectify our bodies.
Abby Wambach:
Interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
We need to love our bodies and have bodies image things because we believe the bodies are like our purses. They’re like an object that we carry around. Where did we get this idea? We go way back. Is this philosophy? Okay. This is philosophy shit. Like Plato said, “We are body, mind, spirit.” Descartes said, “I think therefore I am.” All of his philosophy said, “We are our minds first and our bodies are these other parts of ourselves that are a little bit lower and have all kinds of weird limitations and desires that we should overcome. That the real path to God, that the highest being was the mind.”
Glennon Doyle:
That philosophy has trickled into and permeated every single minute of our lives. So, now we believe we are minds that have bodies, that we should go into relationship with, that we should therapize. We used to think we should tame, we should beat into submission. Now we’re like, “Oh, but now we’ll love it. Now we’ll love it now. We won’t tame it. We’ll honor it, but it’s still just a thing that’s hanging.” Mine’s in meat suits.
Amanda Doyle:
What’s fascinating is that where that all started, even the motivation to try to figure out which one is more real, which one is us, the mind or the body, which is this theory of dualism where there’s two, it was all about both. Descartes’ whole work on that was about the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. They needed to ask these questions because there’s a material world where everything, at the end of the day, desecrates. When you die, your body decays and goes away. We can see that in the material world. So, if that were true, then there was no possibility of immortality.
Amanda Doyle:
So, that’s why they came up with this idea that we are not actually that body that goes away and decays. That is not us. What we are is this mind, which is transcendent. The body is the prison house for the spirit, but the spirit, the conscious thought, all of that, that is the place where we can live endlessly. So, when this body decays, the mind does not. That transcends. So, all of that was a justification of not being able to live and to tolerate the possibility of our mortality-
Glennon Doyle:
Of death.
Amanda Doyle:
The possibility that it all goes away.
Glennon Doyle:
Fear of death, right? Fear of death. That’s why it’s all tied into religion still. The flesh, the flesh, the flesh is just this terrible thing we have to overcome and mind is who we are. Scripture, that’s how we touch God is through the mind. I am my mind. I have a body is what every bit of body image, of body positivity, of all of that presupposes. That is the problem for me is the framing. What I think this shift is for me is that I am no longer interested in loving my cat. I am no in longer interested in loving my body. I am only interested in bodying.
Glennon Doyle:
What if all that was wrong? What if every single thing that we have learned about who we are is wrong? What if it’s not I think, therefore I am? What if it’s like I feel, I see, I vibrate, I hug, I eat, I rest, I orgasm, I smell, I touch, therefore I am? What if I do not have to learn to love my body because my body is not separate from me? It is me. So, what if the only thing I have to learn how to love is having the experience of living out through this body? I don’t want to love my body. I just want to body. I want to be. I want to look out from in here and experience it. I don’t want to have a body anymore. I want to have an experience of being a body.
Amanda Doyle:
You want to be alive.
Glennon Doyle:
Be alive. I just want to be alive.
Amanda Doyle:
The difference between being alive and dead, there has to be a difference. So, if the experience of being alive is a truly unique experience, then you want to fully inhabit that experience by being.
Glennon Doyle:
And not self-objectifying anymore. I think I’ve been trying to get at this for freaking decades, but I hadn’t lived it yet. I was still intellectualizing it. Okay, listen to this shit that I wrote a while back, because if all of this has sounded crazy, this won’t. Your body is not your masterpiece. Your life is. It is suggested to us a million times a day that our bodies are projects. They aren’t. Our lives are, our spirituality is, our love is, our relationships are, our work is. Stop spending all day, obsessing, cursing, perfecting your body like it’s all you’ve got to offer the world. Your body is not your art. It’s your paintbrush. Whether your paintbrush is a tall paintbrush or a thin paintbrush or stocky paintbrush or scratched up paintbrush is completely irrelevant.
Glennon Doyle:
What is relevant is that you have a paintbrush which can be used to transfer your insides onto the canvas of your life where others can see it and be inspired and comforted by it. Your body is not your offering. It’s just a really amazing instrument which you can use to create your offering each day. Don’t curse your paintbrush. Don’t sit in a corner wishing you had a different paintbrush. You’re wasting time. You’ve got the one you’ve got. Here’s the thing, I just don’t want to go to any more classes where everybody is learning to fuckin love their paintbrushes. I just want to paint.
Glennon Doyle:
So, I believe that what we’re trying to say when we talk about embodiment, that what I am learning in my life right now is that it wasn’t just like MTV and magazines and porn that objectified my body, that it was the very Western philosophy and religion that everything is based on, that everything we’ve ever been taught is objectifying of the body. That considering our minds are real selves and our bodies are not our real selves is objectifying just as it is.
Glennon Doyle:
Why do I think that my mind, that honestly has done some incredible things, but led me astray many, many times has more wisdom in it than my hands? My hands are how I love and touch and how I’ve connected with every single thing that I’ve ever loved or done or made art or my feet or my belly or my thighs. So, to me, embodiment is like you know how if you go get a certain test at the hospital, they make you drink this shit and it lights up?
Abby Wambach:
Contrast.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, it’s called contrast and it lights up something inside you.
Abby Wambach:
You drink this stuff and then you either take an MRI or CAT scan and it lights up the part in you that they’re trying to get a picture of.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, if I drink aliveness embodiment contrast, a bottle of it, anytime over the last 46 years, I would have drank the aliveness awareness contrast and they would’ve put me in a little tunnel and the only thing that would’ve lit up would be the top half of my brain. That is the only place I have been alive. What embodiment for me now is if I drank a bottle of aliveness contrast, I would be lit up with the exact same level of brightness from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes. I am no longer thinking with just my mind. When I go for walks, my mind tends to be the loudest part of me. So, when it keeps going, I remind myself, let’s think in our toes now, let’s think in our feet. Let’s rub our fingers. Let’s think in our hands. Let’s think in our belly.
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t think I’m more my body than my mind than my spirit. I think for at least this moment for me, that it might all be horseshit that I’m just like this one thing that this one being. When I remember to scan all of myself, like I’m a house and in the attic is just as beautiful and wonderful as all the other places, but it’s a little loud up there. I don’t want to stay up there for too long. I just want to visit it, get some work done, and then come back down to the arms and the stomach and the toes. I am as alive in all of those places as I am in my mind.
Abby Wambach:
This might be the most clarifying thing that you’ve ever explained to me about me trying to manage our otherness. As somebody who’s never struggled with eating disorder, it feels daunting to understand and this is for those listening could be one of the most helpful things to help walk somebody through a part of their life no matter what you’re recovering from.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, you are someone who’s been alive in all of your parts your whole life and the things that we know are true about me in the world. I’m amazingly clumsy. I fall down a lot. I’ve run into things more than other people. All of these things are making sense to me because I have not learned to live. I don’t have a lot of agency in this body because I have not lived here.
Amanda Doyle:
What I hear you saying is there is a spectrum, the intimacy with which and the internalization and adoption of which we experience our bodies. On one extreme is this view that Plato had, that Christianity had, that basically the body is a source of endless trouble for us. Desires are evil. We only escape the wickedness of the body when we die. Okay, that’s on one side of the spectrum. On the other side of the spectrum is love your body, be sweet to your body, pamper your body. What I hear you saying is those are two polarized views of the body, but they are based on the exact same presupposition.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
Which is that your body is something to reject or embrace as opposed to your body is you and you are she. So, even if you are being body positive, you are still alienated from yourself on that spectrum.
Glennon Doyle:
I think what you’re saying is important in terms of it annoys me when people are always saying your body’s good. What do you mean? That’s just saying my body’s bad. I think that a lot of people are circling around this in terms of body neutrality. What does that even mean? I am experiencing life out through this body. It’s a neutral experience.
Amanda Doyle:
It is adopting your body to go back to our last podcast. It is responsibility for yourself. You are this thing. So, you are either alienated from it or you are in it and of it. There aren’t a lot of options there. So, if the opposite of your body is wicked and you only escape it in death, the only reasonable corollary of that is you are either in and not escaping your body in life to be living. So, I think what’s interesting and not to get too philosophical about it but-
Glennon Doyle:
The whole thing’s very philosophical.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, exactly. She said apropos of nothing but the whole idea that Aristotle had, which is that your body and your mind are inextricable. He used this analogy of wax imprint, where your mind and your body is the wax and the imprint that they cannot be separated. So, the soul is inherently part of the body. So, it’s very cool to take that all on because then you’re not divorcing yourself from any of yourself and you’re actually completely widening your opportunities to live when you’re like, “Wait, so this toe is me-“
Glennon Doyle:
I feel it.
Amanda Doyle:
… just as much as this thought is me.
Glennon Doyle:
I feel it. I just want to get a little bit concrete because this is what’s been really awesome for me is I have found ways to make this concrete in my life. First of all, what I believe the oozing was was the liquid going into my body.
Abby Wambach:
The contrast.
Glennon Doyle:
The contrast going into my body. What I now believe I was up all night experiencing was embodiment for the first time was like, “Wait, I have thighs. I’m being thighs right now. I’m calves. I’m arms.” I seriously believe that what those up all night oozing things were was my awareness sinking, becoming alive throughout all these different parts of my body. If we are not going to objectify our bodies, if we do not want to be objectified, meaning I just want to be the subject of my life, I just want to be in here looking out. I just want to be concerned with how I’m feeling, not how I’m looking. I want to be concerned with what I want more than being wanted. I want to be alive in here, experiencing life, looking out.
Glennon Doyle:
This means I have found all of these parts in my life where I am self-objectifying. Why suddenly could I not speak on stages during my recovery? Now I understand why, because when I am preparing to speak on a stage, I’m thinking about, “What am I going to wear? What am I going to say? What are they going to think when they’re looking at me? I’m going to be on a stage. They’re all going to be looking at me.” I am suddenly out of the experience of life and thinking of myself as an object. Why can I not be on social media right now? I don’t think this is forever. This is just this part of my recovery. I am so practicing living from the inside out being the subject. I’m so practicing just being in my life, looking, tasting, breathing, living.
Glennon Doyle:
When I take a picture to go on social media, that’s the moment that I can express that’s clearest that I’m living outside of my subjectivity and switching to objectivity. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Now, what is this picture of me, this literal object? I am now out of the moment of living of subjectivity and I’m switching to objectivity. Now I’m putting this image out. I’m not saying it’s good or bad. I’m just saying it is for certain objectification. It’s not me anymore. I’m over here and I’m not laughing anymore. I’m not eating anymore. I’m not celebrating anymore. I am objectifying myself to put this picture of celebrating or laughing or eating out for then you to comment on.
Abby Wambach:
That’s really interesting. It’s like putting your consciousness in the world or the people out there looking back at you.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re making yourself an object literally.
Abby Wambach:
So many of us are doing that on social media. I mean, I do that sitting in the living room watching you do something and I get my camera out. I take a video or I take a picture of you because I don’t want to forget this moment, but I’m looking at you through this screen. I’m not actually experiencing you. I’m taking this picture to experience this moment at a later date with not even having really experienced the moment in real life.
Glennon Doyle:
I think that that maybe is what you’re objectifying me in that moment. I think this is one of the reasons why my kids when they were little are like, “Stop taking pictures of us.” I think that they sensed the objectification. You’re taking a picture of me to put it out there that you’re making me into an object.
Abby Wambach:
Parenting is all that, I feel like.
Glennon Doyle:
There was a moment recently where I was invited to go to this thing that actually, it’s a good thing. It’s an event. It’s a thing that I didn’t even have to speak at it, but what I realized is I can’t go to that thing because I’m immediately thinking about, “What am I supposed to wear to that thing?” Because it’s a thing where you get photographed and it’s not a bad thing. It’s just objectifying in itself because what’s important was who was there and in support of this thing. So, then you have to decide, “How am I going to objectify myself to be seen at this thing?”, which means that I have to get out of the clothes that I feel comfortable in and that I have to stop living to plan the image of myself that I’m going to send to that thing.
Amanda Doyle:
I think what you’re highlighting here is really important in the process of any recovery that you need to be very, very tender with yourself in those little micro things that six months from now, a year from now, you will be so practiced in what works for you and what doesn’t, what feels good and what doesn’t, but you just won’t be at first. Paying attention to those little things that put you off balance, whether you’re trying to do things that actually you learn what feels right by not doing anything that doesn’t feel right, even if it seems absurd, even if it seems crazy, even if no one understands it.
Amanda Doyle:
But those little micro things that seem perfectly reasonable for everyone else, but right now, you need so much to stay in touch with a part of you that feels an integrity, that feels like you’re trying to train yourself to feel that thing and continue to go after that thing that you have to avoid those things that take you off track even if other folks don’t understand.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, and I would also argue that what folks learn in recovery is special things that are usually affecting everyone. I think it would be a real miss here to think that it’s just because of my recovery journey that social media is not healthy for me. We are all fucked with social media, our teenagers, our kids.
Amanda Doyle:
I don’t even have it.
Glennon Doyle:
Sister, the self-objectification of social media, this is not just a little weird thing that is because of my eating disorder. This is something that’s killing us and I’m trying to take the judgment away from it and be like, “It’s because of the shift we do. It’s because we stop living. It’s because we stop living and start creating these objects of ourselves and put it out there.” The tragedy in that is just that we’re not embodied anymore. When people keep asking me, “Am I writing now?” I’m like, “It’s just the podcast is what I love.” I think it’s because writing is self-objectification. I think it’s because I think about these conversations. I get excited about original thoughts about these conversations. I come into these conversations.
Glennon Doyle:
I have a lived experience with you three. I never listen to them again. Once it becomes an object, it’s over for me. When I’m writing, I write a thing and then it has life in it. Then I edit it, and then I revise it, and then I perfect it, and then I put it out as here I am. I’m actually still in this body, but here’s this version of me that is perfected and shiny and you guys get to comment it on it forever. I’m not saying that won’t be it forever, but it certainly is self-objectification. If somebody asked me a while ago, “What’s your dream self?”, I said, “My dream would be just writing poetry, writing, writing, writing, and then burning it all.”
Glennon Doyle:
Why? That was so weird to say. I know why, because that’s living in complete subjectivity. I’m thinking this shit, I’m writing this shit, and then I’m burning it knowing that I’m not even objectifying myself during it because I’m never going to show it to anybody. I’m never going to let myself become an object.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s why dancers are the ultimate embodied, because it’s only while you’re doing it that you need to use your body and your mind and your spirit to do it. When it’s over, it’s over.
Glennon Doyle:
Why do you think the freaking thing that’s all over the pillows is dance like no one’s watching? Because even dancing, even dancing is like, “Well, you still have to create a version of it that everyone’s watching if you’re a professional or whatever.” But one of the ultimate embodiment exercises that people do is they get together and they freaking dance, not choreograph, not they just move their bodies in weird ways, and that’s part of embodiment recovery. It’s a lot, but it’s also so unbelievably simple. The framing doesn’t work for me. I am my body. This is it. This is me. I don’t want to love my body. I just want to love with my body, and I want to live as much as possible in subjectivity. I want to live out from in here. I don’t want to live out there looking at me.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. There’s so many of us who are not having the experience of being human beings. It’s like the part of us that our beings are the inextricably vital part of us that are bodies. We could live a whole life just in our minds and just exploring our minds and there’s a hell of an adventure to have there, but we’re not having that experience because we are disassociated from our bodies that we think they’re not ours.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, and what I would suggest is that that’s not our fault. It’s our responsibility, but it’s in the philosophy that we’ve been taught since we were born. It’s in the philosophy that we are our minds and discipline in itself is overriding the body to this higher power, which is the mind. When in fact every single time I’ve gotten into trouble or gone down a path I didn’t want to, it was because I was overriding the wisdom of my body with something that my mind said I should or shouldn’t do and my body actually never leads me wrong. So, I don’t know why I have been putting it in the second seat except for the fact that my culture told me to.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m very interested and this is another conversation that we should be having, but I would be very interested in what the disabled community says and feels about this.
Glennon Doyle:
Part of it could be, I don’t think this is it, but people who struggle with mental health issues. It is a liberating message to hear I am my body.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. I think there is something there because I do hear a little bit of more trust, gaining trust in your body and suspicion of your mind. I wonder if that’s just an ongoing pendulum where we’re trying to be present in both.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I’m just not working on my relationship with my body anymore. If anything, I’m my body. If we need to go to therapy, we’re just going to bring our mind to therapy.
Amanda Doyle:
Your body is yourself.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. All of that was to say pod squad, your body is yourself.
Abby Wambach:
How’s recovery going? How’s recovery going, hon?
Glennon Doyle:
It’s a remembering. It is a remembering of what we talked about in the last podcast of bringing my child self to the table and letting her remember. It’s a remembering of bringing my body back to me. It’s the opposite of dismembering. It’s a remembering. Pod squad, we love you. Good luck with that. See you next time. 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.
Glennon Doyle:
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