Is it Real Love or Spider Love? With Martha Beck
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. We are not going to waste a moment because, as promised, the Martha Beck, the world’s favorite life coach, is back with us to, God, just work her magic in response to some of our pod squaders challenges.
Amanda Doyle:
She life coached the hell out of me, if you missed that episode, go back and listen to it. She coached the shit out of me.
Martha Beck:
You were perfect in every way, Amanda.
Glennon Doyle:
So what we’re recording right now is three bits. We’re three bits. You, sister Abby, and me, and then Martha is our self.
Martha Beck:
She’s okay. No pressure. Yeah. You have to listen to the last episode to know what she means.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right. That’s right. Go back and listen to the last episode. And then I feel like now we can have our big bonfire where everybody’s raising their hand and asking Martha questions and then getting Martha’s brilliance.
Glennon Doyle:
Dr. Martha Beck is a bestselling author, life coach, and speaker offering powerful, practical, and entertaining teachings that help people improve every aspect of their lives. She’s known for her unique combination of science, humor, and spirituality. For over two decades, she has been, in the words of NPR and USA Today, the best known life coach in America. Her published works includes several self-help books and memoirs, including New York Times and international bestsellers, Finding your own North Star and Expecting Adam.
Glennon Doyle:
Martha’s most recent book, The Way of Integrity, Finding the Path to Your True Self, was an instant New York Times bestseller. Let’s get it started. Let’s start the bonfire with Heather.
Heather:
Hi, my name is Heather and I’m 47 and I’ve been divorced for, I think, 13 years, and my kids are all raised and out of the house, and I don’t think that I’m going to find my person in this lifetime on earth. And so I am trying to figure out my purpose for the next phase here, how to proceed and to find meaning and value in myself and in helping others, and I don’t believe that it is in what I’ve done since I was 21 and graduated from college.
Heather:
My question is; how do you find your next steps that are the best steps for you to grow as a human and to be able to help others when you’re really pretty sure that is not going to be time invested in another singular person? I think that’s my question. I hope that makes sense.
Martha Beck:
Yeah. That sounds so sad and it doesn’t feel like she is grandstanding with sadness, but I hear that I’ve accepted that I won’t have another person. So how do I best serve others? Again, it’s that self-sacrificing thing that is very big in our culture, especially for women, and the whole idea, it’s like she’s bidding farewell to the hope of love and then saying, how much fuel can I add to the fire of others’ happiness? And it’s the same trap that we get caught in over and over and over. Toni Morrison said, “The function of freedom is to free someone else and you actually can’t free someone else unless you’re free.” So this is what we were talking to everybody, all of us here we’re talking about in the last session.
Martha Beck:
And what I said then, and what I’ll say again to you is, the longing that you feel for another’s love is not something you should discount. It means there’s a part of you that is conscious of being separate from love. Anytime there’s a part of you that feels separate from love, you are an illusion. Hear me now and understand me later. When you come to the truth of your nature, you will find that you are love to such an extent that everything around you is bathed in the light of that love and becomes the lover. And you’ll also find that improbable things happen to you.
Martha Beck:
I have not discounted you having a romantic partner, if that’s what you’re mean for the rest of your life. Like Glennon, when you were married and you were busily out promoting love warrior and then you met Abby, did you sit down at some point and say, well, yeah, I’m going to stay in this marriage forever and if I fall madly, madly in love with an improbable person, I’m never going to do that. What was your reasoning? What was the feeling that said, in the middle of this book tour, I am jumping ship, I’m going to a partner that I never thought I would find. What gave you the courage to do that?
Glennon Doyle:
The first word that comes to my mind is just recognition. It was recognition of a truth that was indisputable inside of me.
Martha Beck:
And in the light of that recognition, could you feel the part of you that had been starving?
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, my God, I was Heather. I decided that I was not meant for-
Martha Beck:
Exactly.
Glennon Doyle:
Romantic love. And I told myself that was fine that I remember saying, “Maybe I’m like Gandhi, I just don’t need to have.” And I remember my therapist saying, “I don’t know a lot, but I know you’re not Gandhi.”
Martha Beck:
So I wanted you to say that to Heather because I also see you as being very similar in that sense.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Martha Beck:
And the thing happened to you that you couldn’t have predicted.
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Martha Beck:
And it’s wonderful. And so what I would say to Heather is allow your longing. I believe that our longing is the thing that has already happened to us, but we haven’t caught up to it in time.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Martha Beck:
It’s loving something before we believe in it.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Martha Beck:
And not being. Thank you. Abby knows what I’m talking about.
Abby Wambach:
I do.
Glennon Doyle:
She does. She does.
Abby Wambach:
I do. From the time I was a little kid, I had longed for Glennon.
Martha Beck:
Say more, Abby.
Abby Wambach:
And I kept looking for it and I kept getting my heart broken. And I’ve just come to realize I just couldn’t realize that the people that I was with before Glennon, God bless them, but they just really weren’t that into me because I was really into this longing and I was like, this has got to fit this round peg in a square hole or round, whatever. And then when I met Glennon, I was like, oh God, this isn’t even close.
Martha Beck:
And you were right to long.
Abby Wambach:
And I was right to long and I kept telling you.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
I knew it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, you did. She says it all the time. I knew it. I knew it.
Martha Beck:
I love what Abby just said. It is right to long. It is right to yearn. It is our yearning that takes us forward toward our soul’s desire, and the mind is always saying, “No, I’ll commit to this person who I don’t really care about, or I’ll commit to celibacy forever, or I just will.” It’s always trying to make a big pronouncement that will fix everything in time. And I think the only real map of our lives is in our yearning. So it’s hard to say I’m at midlife, I’m yearning to be a positive force in the world, but also to be loved. That hurts to sit in it. And if you can sit in it and say, you know what, yearning? I believe you. I believe you are meant to be fulfilled. You’ll feel a piece of truth come into your heart and there will be freedom in that moment that you believe your yearning can be fulfilled.
Martha Beck:
And I’ve done it both ways. I’ve lived with yearning that was totally unfulfilled for years, decades. And I’ve finally given into the yearning and said, this is really what I want and I believe it’s going to happen, and it happened. I couldn’t control the timing, but the yearning, you can’t control it, so embrace it and know that it is your path through life and it is meant to be fulfilled. And if you get to the end of your life and it hasn’t been, you can call me and punch me in the face, but I’m telling you, this works. Let yourself long.
Abby Wambach:
I love that.
Martha Beck:
And that’s the way you can add the most to the world because somebody who’s living that way radiates that and then other people get in touch with it and you change the world. Yes.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right. Oh, That’s beautiful. Let’s hear from Lindsay.
Lindsay:
Hi, this is Lindsay and I’m calling from snowy Minnesota. I moved here in the last year from Michigan where I was born and raised, but my parents and all of my family are from Minnesota. Four years ago, right before the pandemic, I got divorced and made it through that process and healed myself and through therapy and friendships and support. And then the last year, I met a man that lived here, in Minnesota, and we fell in love. So I decided to move out here both to be closer to him, but also to pursue creative and professional opportunities and just build a new life for myself.
Lindsay:
Much to my dismay, my parents are extremely unsupportive. I have lived here almost a year, now, and they don’t really talk to me. They see this move, despite the fact that I’m 35, as betrayal. They say that it’s like I’ve died, and they are ignoring the fact that I’ve chosen my own happiness, not just with my partner who I love, after experiencing such heartbreak and then healing, but they aren’t allowing me to spread my own wings. And at the same time, it’s so hard because I’m grieving a loss that I’m not choosing. I want them in my life, but they have excommunicated me.
Lindsay:
And my question is, how do you let go of people or family that you want in your life, but you’re realizing aren’t the best for you? And how do you choose yourself when those that you love are choosing themselves?
Martha Beck:
Okay, so as I talk about how our culture forces us to work, I also want to talk about how it defines love. Now, if you ask a spider, how do you feel about flies? The spider will say, “I love flies.” And it will be telling the truth. I love the way it crunches, I love the way it tastes, and the way I express my love is that I wrap it up alive, and then when I want a little hit of life force, I go suck some juice out of it. I love flies. I call this spider love, and that is how people often define love in this culture, whether it’s I love my parents and I want them to always give to me, or I love my child and she can never leave my web.
Glennon Doyle:
Yep.
Martha Beck:
So one thing I believe is that here’s how you can recognize true love. True love always has, as its first priority, the freedom of the beloved. The freedom of the beloved. So Rilke says, “We are the guardians of one another’s solitude. The highest form of love is to guard another’s solitude.” So when you’re talking about your family acting this way, that’s not love. They’re using attachment as a lever to bring you back to feed a hunger in themselves, which is not being met by life. As long as you feed that hunger, you allow them not to fill that with the life they were meant to have.
Martha Beck:
And I know a bit about this. I was raised Mormon, left Mormonism when I was 29, and didn’t speak to any of my seven siblings or my parents since. Also, my friends from high school, I grew up in this really Mormon community, so when she said, “I’ve been excommunicated,” I had to smile because
Amanda Doyle:
You literally, literally.
Martha Beck:
They would’ve excommunicated me if I hadn’t quit. And it really was, I would walk down the street in Utah and people would turn their backs to me, friends. So it’s a very literal thing for me. And I can tell you, you have to be free. You cannot feed enough spiders. If you give every ounce of energy in your body, you cannot make the spiders happy. They need to stop being spiders, and the way you help them do that is to stop being spider food.
Martha Beck:
So it’s hard, hard, hard. But on that note, the Buddha often said, “Wherever you find water, you can tell if it’s the ocean, because the ocean always tastes of salt.” And wherever you find your awakening, your enlightenment, you can tell it because it will always taste of freedom. So not of coziness and not of we’re all the same or we’re all together. Freedom. Then when you’re with each other, you are free to be with each other and you set others free. So we were talking earlier about all the little parts of ourselves, set them all free, love them all as they run around doing whatever they do, and watch how love organizes it all perfectly.
Glennon Doyle:
Once she figures out, okay, they’re calling it love, it’s not love. So really, in terms of being careful of the stories you tell yourself when you say, my parents aren’t loving me, or they don’t love me, or they’ve pulled away their love, that’s actually not true because it wasn’t love. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about codependence.
Martha Beck:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
But how do you help people deal with the grief of that? Because-
Martha Beck:
You have to grieve.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, shit.
Martha Beck:
You have to grieve.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, damn it. I was hoping Beck had a shortcut.
Martha Beck:
I know. I know I had to grieve. I had to grieve every one of them, and it was brutal, and it took a long time. And I used to carry around this poem by Naomi Shaheem Knight, it says, “Before you can know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.” And I walked around with enormous amounts of sorrow blended with this unbelievable liberation. So if you just get your freedom in little bits and pieces, and then you run back to serve spiders, you actually don’t have enough access to the good things in the world to handle the grieving.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Martha Beck:
And that’s how they get you.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s how they get you.
Martha Beck:
That’s how it gets you. Attachment gets you when you want to be free, but here’s the thing, you would be grieving for the rest of your life if you didn’t go. You’d grieve the life you were meant to have.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, you’re saving either way, aren’t you?
Martha Beck:
It looks like a no-win situation, but actually it’s win-win, because all negative emotions are the raw material for their opposite. So if you want courage, you have to have fear and go through it. And if you want compassion, if you want love, if you want freedom, you have to go through grief, and that’s the nature of the world. But once you’ve gone through it and you understand that love holds it, it’s not so scary anymore. It’s just growing pains.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s just growing pains. So Lindsay, it’s just the right kind of hard. Either way is hard, and this is the right hard, it sounds like.
Martha Beck:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my goodness. Lindsay’s brave. Let’s hear from Sarah.
Sarah:
Hi, my name is Sarah. After my husband passed away a few years ago, I was blessed to find the most amazing partner, and we’ve been together for a couple of years and are deeply in love and committed. He also has three kids around the same age as mine, and it has all the makings of a wonderful Brady Bunch story, except for one thing; he’s very close to his ex-wife, and we spend a lot of time with her and the kids. Now, she’s a lovely human. I enjoy her company, but I don’t know what to do with the strong feelings of jealousy I often feel around her. It’s not at all romantic or sexual, and I trust my partner 150%. He’s amazing. It’s just a jealousy of their shared history and connections with their amazing kids, which I know I’ll never have with him since they were married for almost 20 years, I guess.
Sarah:
And also, I’m just so in love with him, I guess I want him all to myself. I hate sharing him. He has really good boundaries and so does she I keep hoping the feelings of jealousy will fade, but so far, they have not. Any guidance appreciated.
Martha Beck:
Right. Tough situation.
Abby Wambach:
Softball.
Martha Beck:
But you guys know because in another episode, my partner, Rowan, and I came on and talked about our other partner, Karen. So we’re in a throuple. So Karen and I had been together like 20 years, and then Row came in and we all three fell in love, and we were like, this is bizarre. It is not something I set out to do, but there it was. That’s how we felt. And naturally, Row was like, you guys have been together 20 years. I’m going to feel some jealousy.
Martha Beck:
And so we talked about it a lot, and what we found is that in all of us, jealousy is a result of wounds that came very early in life. So wherever we were wounded and we were trying to plug that wound by getting someone to be our love object, that part was vulnerable to jealousy. But when we addressed the little parts, and we did this with Amanda, you find the parts that are sad or that are jealous, and you listen to them, and you love them, and you ask them how they came by these feelings, and it will turn out, it was long before you met your wonderful dude. And you can talk to him about it. You can start to heal those wounds.
Martha Beck:
And what happened with us is that I used to say to Row when she was jealous, I’d say, “Watch, just watch what I actually do and watch what Karen does because nothing that we do will add up to abandoning you in any way.” And eight years later, going strong, that issue went away in a year and a half because we addressed the childhood stuff and we learned to love ourselves.
Glennon Doyle:
So is that how the jealousy goes away? Because I understand what Sarah’s saying. It’s like Sarah’s listing all the logic of it, and then she’s like, so how come I can understand all of this in my brain, and yet, I have this little homicidal self that wants to… So is that?
Martha Beck:
I couldn’t hear that part. I think that’s more you, Glennon.
Glennon Doyle:
Right, right, right. Maybe Sarah’s not quite as, yeah. I also noticed the word lovely. That is the most passive aggressive description.
Abby Wambach:
She’s lovely, isn’t she?
Martha Beck:
She’s lovely.
Glennon Doyle:
You never say anyone’s lovely, who you actually think is… Okay. So how does she, if she were to identify the abandonment, is jealousy the threat of abandonment?
Martha Beck:
Yeah, I think so.
Glennon Doyle:
Is that what that is?
Martha Beck:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Martha Beck:
The threat that I can’t, I won’t get enough.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, yeah. So if Sarah figures out where that originated, then the idea is that, that is an arrow that she has to figure out an arrow where it came from.
Martha Beck:
Kind of. I would actually tell her check out part psychology. We just had this conversation, too. Because what you’ll find is that the logical part of you is very different. It’s really a separate self from the part that’s feeling jealous, but they both need to be loved and understood. Where does that come from? Your husband? No, it comes from self with a capital S. It comes from the part of you that is connected to so much source love, like the love of the universe, that the idea of being separate from anything becomes frankly laughable, and the idea of needing something that won’t be fulfilled becomes bizarre. It sounds bizarre from that perspective.
Martha Beck:
And then that part of the self holds the part that feels jealous, holds the part that is logical, is compassionate to all of them, has group meetings inside your head. It’s about giving each part; the jealous part, the logical part, the tired part, whatever, the dignity and respect that every human deserves. And if you listen to those parts, sit down and write them letters. Okay, jealousy, I’m going to write a letter to you. What do you want? What do you need? What makes you afraid? And it will tell you, this is what I’m afraid of. And you’ll say, “How old are you?” Seven. It’s never an adult. And as you love and communicate with the different parts of yourself, you become free to recognize yourself as infinite. And that’s really, you can’t have, oh, my infinite is lacking something infinite. No, you are the field of love. Nothing can be taken from you.
Amanda Doyle:
And that makes sense. If she had a part of herself that was jealous of wherever the wound came from, but jealous of a shared history that you get to revisit in a decent relationship, which it sounds like her partner and ex-partner have together, that’s a loss.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
That is a real thing that you could grieve that you don’t have.
Martha Beck:
Yeah, it could be a loss. It’s more like a fear, I think. A fear that they have something you don’t have. And the way we dealt with it in our relationship was one thing I tried never to say. Karen used to say it at first, but she learned not to, is, “Don’t be jealous. I’m completely here for you.” That just negates the other person’s feeling. So I will give you a little script that you can use every time you feel jealous, sit down and say, “Why are you jealous?” And the part will say, “I’m afraid that they have 20 years together and I,” and you go, “Tell me more.” This is what I’ve… Tell me more. And then we would say this to Row, “How are you feeling?
Martha Beck:
And just, of course you would feel that way. They had 20 years? Of course you’re going to be anxious and nervous. Anybody would. Heavens, that’s a really difficult situation. And I really see you in that and what you’re feeling is sane and wonderful, and I love you, and let’s just see where this goes.
Martha Beck:
And so never, never deny your feelings, the dignity of what they’ve been through. It is real. But if you listen to them, they talk themselves out and then they’re like, oh, I feel better now.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Martha Beck:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
And it’s so clear because you can know that it’s internal because I’ve done this before many times where I say, okay, I’m jealous. So let me figure out if the problem is really them, that they’re making me jealous. I’m going to figure out how I can rearrange their behavior. What should they do so that I’ll never feel jealous and it’s bat shit crazy. I move them like they’re on a stage. There’s nothing they can do to untrigger me.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And if you can’t arrange it outside of you better, you know it’s inside of you, that’s the problem.
Martha Beck:
Yes. And you can’t even control the inside of you.
Abby Wambach:
No.
Martha Beck:
I can’t control anything with my thoughts, including my thoughts.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Martha Beck:
So what you do instead is say, “Tell me everything. Tell me what you’re feeling. Of course you’re feeling that way.” That’s what humans do. They feel things and we’re meant to feel things, and I want to hear about how you feel things. And then if somebody really genuinely listens to how you feel, those feelings, at a certain point, go, “And furthermore, I feel better and would like a snack.” And the energy comes down when you don’t resist it. The magic of non-resistance.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. I love this one from Hattie because I think it’s going to be a really good tie together of our last episode and this episode, and I can’t wait to get both of your takes on it. Okay. Let’s hear from Hattie, which I love that name so much. That’s also our dog’s name. Go ahead.
Hattie:
My name is Hattie, and I have a question for Amanda. I’ve just been listening to your latest episode about de-stressing, and as an Enneagram three, I’m identifying so strongly with sister’s explanation of how she operates in the world. And as someone who is relied upon by my people to spin all the plates and carry all the things, and someone who has always identified my worth as a person who can do all the things for all the people, I am wondering if Amanda feels that her value to the people around her is tied up in her ability to achieve and produce. And if she has thought about looking into that Enneagram conversation or tools of reorganizing that thinking so that she can begin to understand how much of her worth is tied up in herself and her being and what she brings into a room, not what she achieves by being in that room.
Hattie:
My heart was breaking hearing this podcast because I identify with it so strongly, and I’ve been so blessed by the tools of the Enneagram to re-understand how people value me in their relationships and how my biggest success, the thing I can best achieve in the world and do the best is be with my people.
Martha Beck:
How does that strike you, Amanda?
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. It strikes me.
Glennon Doyle:
Square in between the eyes.
Amanda Doyle:
With great velocity is what it strikes me. Yes, yes, yes. I was sick this week and I have so much trouble being sick in my house because I feel like so useless and worthless, and I feel apologetic to everyone around me. So I was just noticing that, especially this week, too, of like, oh, I feel embarrassed of myself being sick in my house, which is interesting. But I think that she is onto something really beautiful with that, if it’s, that’s the worth that I think that I’m bringing. But I am gunning so hard for that to be the worth that I’m bringing, that I’m usually very heavy-handed with it, and then it isn’t actually received by the people as the love that it’s brought with.
Martha Beck:
It’s brought with love, but it’s driven by fear.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Martha Beck:
It’s driven by fear of worthlessness.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Martha Beck:
Fear of pointlessness.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Martha Beck:
Fear that you’re not worthy in and of yourselves. And I know that all of you, over and over, have said on the podcast and in print and everywhere else, you are worthy just because you are a being. You are a being that feels and loves, and that makes you enough. I’ve heard you say that. And Hattie is another example of someone taking a really analytical approach to trying to fix someone, in this case Amanda, by intellectually analyzing, okay, I’m an Enneagram three and it’s great. It’s a great way to find out more about yourself. But if I understand it correctly, the whole point of the Enneagram is ultimately to bring all the types together. And so in this, it’s similar to IFS, the self is all the types together. It can go in any direction because it’s incorporated the wings and then the opposites and everything.
Martha Beck:
So what I see Hattie doing is what I saw on the Amanda Should Relax episode, somebody working very, very hard from an intellectual and systematic way to set someone else free from thinking intellectually and systematically to a state of pure love, pure being, pure joy. So I love the way she reached out trying to heal you, and I love the way you reach out trying to heal others. And all three of you are constantly reaching out to heal other people, and to the extent that you let yourself be free, it works. And to the extent that you do not let yourself be free, it won’t work.
Glennon Doyle:
Can we pull up the notes that Martha wrote to us?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, the letter, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Because I just would like to end with this because as you say that, I’m thinking about all of the pod squatters who are desperately trying to manifest the truest, most beautiful lives they can imagine for their people, right?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, for other people.
Abby Wambach:
Right. Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
And so what Martha heard when she listened to our podcast was us, Abby and I, just helping sister to death. Right?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
So I just, podsquad, want to read you these directions that we got because I think it might help you going into any conversation you have with your people. I know it helped me.
Glennon Doyle:
So Martha says, “Hello, lovely people. I so enjoyed listening to Amanda’s Relaxation episode. It sounded to me as if Amanda May be quite significantly tired and burned out.”
Amanda Doyle:
Well, she is a genius.
Glennon Doyle:
Just a little bit. It’s Martha. “Yet, Abby and Glennon are obviously committed to her wellbeing. By the end of the conversation, it felt as if everyone was a bit exhausted from trying to help Amanda stop feeling so exhausted. Tell me where I’m wrong. I mean that.”
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. She says this to Amanda, “My practice is to connect wherever you are in the moment. No preparation is necessary or even possible. The only thing I want Amanda to know is that I have zero interest in changing her. She is the only person who can know what she’s supposed to do in any given moment or in her life as a whole. My only intention is to help her connect deeply and comfortably with her own wisdom.”
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, my God, what have we thought of that every time we went to talk to our children? Okay, this is what she had to say to me and Abby, “I’d love Glennon and Abby to put their focus on themselves. All three of you are helpers and fixers. You want so much for everyone to be happy. The problem is,” listen, pod squaders, “the problem is that any advice given from a desire to help and fix ends up feeling like a control strategy because it is.”
Amanda Doyle:
Because it is.
Abby Wambach:
Because it is.
Glennon Doyle:
“Wanting to fix something, is wanting to control it.” Now, listen to this. Blew my fucking mind. “A healthy person’s natural reaction to ‘I will fix you’ energy is to shut down and resist, even if they genuinely want to stay open and receptive.” Pod squaders, when your people try to fix you, if you feel like you want to shut it down, that is not because you’re stubborn and broken. That is because you are healthy.
Martha Beck:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
What?
Martha Beck:
You are in touch with your actual wisdom which says, don’t let anyone else put their sticky mittens into the asses of my life.
Amanda Doyle:
Into my bits.
Martha Beck:
Yes. Don’t touch my bits. I touch them myself. You have to listen to the last episode to get that.
Glennon Doyle:
Wow.
Martha Beck:
Yeah. That’s a healthy response to somebody trying to fix you. You’re just like, sure.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Martha Beck:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. So listen to this last paragraph, pod squatters, and then take it into your day. Okay? “So, Glennon and Abby, while we talk to Amanda, I’d love you to notice if you feel compelled to jump in and fix things to make them go faster, to make her life perfect, or to achieve serenity now! If you notice this happening, see if you can relax until the compulsion goes away. Untroubled presence helps people thrive. Anxious advice, even when it’s accurate and loving, tends to create stalemates. Can’t wait to talk.” And then I’ll let you know that her last sentence is, “Love you all to pieces.” Which I feel like you did.
Martha Beck:
Oh, bits and pieces. Yes.
Abby Wambach:
Amazing.
Amanda Doyle:
God, that was a sermon right there, that little feedback email.
Glennon Doyle:
Nice.
Martha Beck:
I don’t remember that, it’s giving me a little chill up in my bits.
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, Martha it’s so good I want to keep that. So true every time I go into wanting to help. It’s a dynamic. We have a dynamic, and that is it.
Martha Beck:
If you feel the compulsion to set someone else free, go find the compulsion and free yourself from it and it will work. It will do what you thought working on them would do.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, my god. Okay. Is there anything else you want to leave Martha Beck with our pod squad? They’re sitting right now in their houses or in their cars or in their whatever, what is the one thing you’d want them to do today or know today?
Martha Beck:
There’s a part of us that sometimes we hope will awaken. There’s a part that is infinite love, that is infinite presence, that is infinite knowledge of the worthiness of self and everything. And what I want you to know is, it’s not something to be attained. It is already in you. It was born in you. It cannot be extinguished. It can be covered over by your training, by your traumas, by your beliefs, but it always burns bright inside.
Martha Beck:
My son, Adam, who has down syndrome. I had a near death experience where I saw that light that comes. And when it touched me, this feeling of absolute freedom from everything except love was overwhelming. And then later, years later, I was driving Adam home from the funeral of his best friend’s mother, and he said, “I didn’t cry.” And I said, “Well, Adam, it’s okay if grown men cry at sad times, and this is very sad.” And he said, “Well, it’s not so bad after the light comes and opens your heart.” And I said, “What, a light came and opened your heart?” And he was like, “Mm-hmm.” And I said, “When?” And he said, “May 10th.” And I was just like, “This year?” He was like, “No.”
Martha Beck:
It was when he was 13. He said he was feeling sad and a light came to his room and touched his heart, and nothing has been as hard since. And I said, “Wow, I’ve seen it, too.” And he was like, “Really?” And I was like, “Yeah. And it told me that even though we can’t always see it, it’s always with us.” And he said, “Oh, I can see it.” And I said, “Now, right now you can?” He was like, “Yeah.” And I was like, “Well, where is it? Is it up in the ceiling? Is it in your heart? In your head?” And he just shook his head at me and he said, “Mom, it’s everywhere.”
Martha Beck:
It is everywhere, folks. So sitting in your car, nursing your sick baby through the night, grieving the loss of your marriage, it is everywhere. It’s inside you. It is around you. It is through you. And you will see it and know it. Now or later, okay? It’s just the truth. So watch.
Glennon Doyle:
Watch. Thank you, Martha Beck, we love you.
Martha Beck:
Thank the three of you so much for the beauty you are in the world.
Abby Wambach:
You too.
Glennon Doyle:
I got you.
Glennon Doyle:
We’ll see you next time, pod squad. 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 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.
Glennon Doyle:
We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios.