Glennon on One Year of Recovery!
November 2, 2023
Glennon Doyle:
Hello everybody. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. We’re welcoming you to our house, because for the first time in 250 episodes, the three of us, Abby, me, and Amanda are all sitting together.
Abby Wambach:
Is this really the first time we’ve ever done this?
Amanda Doyle:
This is the first time.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. We’re all in one place, in one space. This feels so different and cool.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s wild.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, so we’re in what we call the office, but is like a room for books, and also is our oldest son’s bedroom when he comes home from college.
Amanda Doyle:
He’s sort of like a book too.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. He’s a book.
Amanda Doyle:
So it’s a room for all the books.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, yeah. So welcome to our Book Chase Room. We’re so glad to have you here, sister.
Amanda Doyle:
I feel so happy to be here. I feel like this is very special, to be… Well, it’s always special to be in your presence. I feel like I’m at my best.
Abby Wambach:
I’m a little nervous.
Amanda Doyle:
And, yeah. It feels like live stage performance. We should do some live stage performances.
Abby Wambach:
I think we should. The Pod Squad should chime in here.
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, oh my God.
Abby Wambach:
Would they want us to come on a nationwide tour?
Amanda Doyle:
Probably, I should do a dance?
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God, you guys.
Amanda Doyle:
Maybe they want to see me dance.
Glennon Doyle:
Also, we should talk about these things before we bring them up on the pod, okay? This is something that we did not think about, we didn’t plan to talk about today, but we are in the very early stages of considering going out on the road and coming to the Pod Squads’ towns and inviting them and all sharing space together.
Amanda Doyle:
By early stages, you mean like 60 seconds ago?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
That was the very early stages, as in you heard the earliest stage. I feel like, yeah, take this shit on the road.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m feeling frisky right now, so I don’t know how this is going to go.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, it’s an interesting segue, because I have not done any public things, no speaking engagements, no appearances, no nothing, for about a year, right? Didn’t you say, Abby, that I’ve been in recovery for about a year?
Abby Wambach:
One year ago.
Glennon Doyle:
Right, so I don’t know that that’s true. Time for me is just an idea that some people believe in.
Amanda Doyle:
A suggestion.
Abby Wambach:
It is true.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. It’s a suggestion.
Abby Wambach:
It is true, though.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, so that’s so interesting. So when I think about going on tour, it makes me understand how much I have accomplished during this recovery, this year of recovery, because it doesn’t feel horrible or terrifying to me suddenly, which is interesting. I think I have a sturdiness that I didn’t have before, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you all about today, because I haven’t done an update for the Pod Squad, or for you two. I mean, Abby, you see it every day, but we haven’t done an update on how recovery is going a year later, and what we’re talking about, obviously, is recovery from anorexia, which I started talking to the Pod Squad maybe eight months ago, or no, I told the Pod Squad, so what happened for any new listeners, I have been in different stages of recovery from eating disorders since I was 25. I became bulimic when I was 10.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, actually, you went to therapy for, it wasn’t effective or real. You just said you were fine for a little bit when you were quite young.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, that’s true. I was hospitalized, et cetera, but I was not thinking of that. I was not in recovery. I feel like-
Amanda Doyle:
Recovery is when you mean it.
Glennon Doyle:
When you mean to get better. What I was in is breaks from my life. I was like a celebrity who is having exhaustion and needs to go to a hospital for a break, except I wasn’t a celebrity, and I was horrifically bulimic.
Amanda Doyle:
Right, and it wasn’t to some exotic location.
Glennon Doyle:
No, it was actually-
Amanda Doyle:
It was to the local mental hospital.
Glennon Doyle:
It was a mental hospital, yeah, which let’s do a whole episode on that. My time in the mental hospital. I would like to do that, actually, but that’s not for today. Not today. So then, I got what I thought was sober from eating disorders when I got pregnant with Chase. So this was 21 years ago and I was okay for a while or what I thought was okay, but about a year and a half ago, I had a relapse of bulimia, and so after six months of doing nothing about it, I went into some deep therapy. And what I learned when I went back into therapy was that a very short way of explaining this is that what I thought was recovery from bulimia was actually that I had just taught myself anorexia to fix my bulimia. So basically, what I did is I didn’t really do any of the work. I just kind of figured out how to control the bulimic urges.
Amanda Doyle:
Right. You could abstain from bulimia by practicing anorexia, which is harder to quantify than bulimia, so you were like, “I’m good.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I thought I was just really disciplined, which I was, but that can become anorexia. So I entered this whole new level of therapy and it wasn’t just therapy. It was a lot of things, like a lot of doctor’s appointments. It kind of felt like a holistic, over time thing, where I was doing something related to my recovery every day for a long time. The people who have followed the pod know a lot about that recovery, and it’s been very difficult, all encompassing, and confusing, and I think it’s so important to do this kind of stuff, to stop and be like, “Wait. I want to talk about who I am right now today, as opposed to who I was a year ago,” because you can miss it all if you don’t stop. I think about the travelers who used to build those, I think they’re called cairns. You know go walking and you see a stack of rocks?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
On top of each other.
Abby Wambach:
They’re called cairns?
Glennon Doyle:
I think it’s C-A-I-R-N.
Abby Wambach:
Cairns.
Glennon Doyle:
I might be making that up. We’ll have to look at that after.
Abby Wambach:
That’s cool.
Glennon Doyle:
But you stop on your journey, and you kind of build something to show how far you’ve come, where you’ve been. It’s like, “Here’s a moment,” and I think it’s important too, because lots of weeks or days, I feel like nothing has changed, and I’m still exactly the same, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I lose it all. So today I would like to tell a few little stories that make me understand that I am recovering. I’m a different energy than I was a year ago. I’m in a different mind space, spiritual space, bodily space than I was a year ago, and none of the stories have anything to do with food, weight, or body, which is so interesting to me. I tried to think of one.
Glennon Doyle:
They all kind of do. Well, the first one, so do you remember? A while ago I was telling the Pod Squad and you all that I decided that my anorexia in the beginning was just an obsession with appearance, and so how I was going to fix it was become like an appearance monk. I was going to stop doing everything related to appearance. I made all these rules for myself. No more Botox, no more hair, no more makeup. Anyway, that was just replacing one set of rules with a different set of rules, which is what a lot of people try to do in the beginning of recovery, and that didn’t work out. So then I decided I want to be the kind of human being, the kind of woman who doesn’t want to get Botox, but I’m not going to stop getting Botox until I don’t want to. I’m never going to make myself do something just because of the idea of it, that I don’t want to do.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m not going to pick the flower. I’m going to go to the root, and hopefully-
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly, exactly. And I’m going to be so gentle and kind to myself. When I decided that, I felt like “That’s so calming.” I want to want to not dye my hair. I want to not want to, but I do want to. That’s the thing. At the end of the day, I would be disciplining myself to not do it.
Amanda Doyle:
Right. Well, it’s denial of yourself, which is the same thing as anorexia, right?
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
Denying what you want, denying what you need, as opposed to being like, “How can I get to the place where I don’t want or need that thing?” and then it’s not denial. It’s actually gratification of yourself to not do it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, and I have this hunch that if I keep becoming whatever this round of recovery is helping me become, that there will be a time that I won’t want to. I just thought that, but I thought maybe it’ll be in 20 years.
Amanda Doyle:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
So a couple of weeks ago, I get a message that I have a dermatology appointment, okay? So wait, were we together? I feel like we were. Yeah, I was like, “Why do I have a dermatology appointment?” Everything that happens to me is a big surprise, okay? It’s not like I was like, “Oh. It’s coming up.” I have no idea what this is, right? So I call, and I say, “What is this appointment for?”
Glennon Doyle:
And they say, “It’s for your Botox,” and what happens in my body is like, I don’t want to go, I don’t want it. I don’t want to go to that appointment. I don’t have any want in me to go. And so then I did this thing, these words came out of my mouth that would never in a million years, and I say to the person, “I don’t want Botox, but can I keep the appointment and can they make it like a skin test to test me for skin damage or cancer?” You know, like a mole check.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A pre-cancerous screening or whatever.
Abby Wambach:
It’s an annual checkup for the dermatologist.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s what a dermatologist was supposed to be.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
Here’s a question. When did dermatologists become places where they’re like, “Yeah. Check, check. You don’t have cancer, but the primary focus of this is to offer all of these aesthetic things.” Same with the gynecologist. I just had to leave one, because I went in for my, literally, not just, but after Alice was born, I went in to get my six-month checkup after the baby was born, and there were huge posters offering body sculpting.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God.
Amanda Doyle:
And I was like, “Give me my file. What the fuck? This is supposed to be a medical establishment where you check to see if my body’s okay after massive health situations.” So anyway.
Glennon Doyle:
No. That is-
Amanda Doyle:
It shouldn’t be extraordinary. You shouldn’t have to ask for the dermatology appointment to focus on the health of your skin.
Glennon Doyle:
That is such a good point, and I’ve said something to the gynecologists before about that.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, I took my file.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, you left?
Amanda Doyle:
I said, “I am walking into this waiting room with all of these people who are about to give birth, who have just given birth, who you should be focusing on indications of whether they have postpartum depression, whether they have the supports they need for their child and their baby, whether they’re able to breastfeed, if that’s what they choose, and instead they’re walking in postmortem-“
Glennon Doyle:
Postmortem.
Amanda Doyle:
Freudian slip, yes. Postnatal, thank you. And a little bit postmortem, to giant posters of sculpted bellies and saying, “We offer body sculpting”? I said, “This is outrageous. I want my file,” and I left.
Glennon Doyle:
Hell, yes.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s ridiculous.
Glennon Doyle:
Way to blur the line even more in these offices between our own bodies and what we owe the world. So these women are sitting in this waiting room, and they’re trying to deal with all of the emotions and the mental transition to parenthood, and they look at a poster that says right now they should be worrying about their tummy, how it looks to the outer… that is the battle of like, “Wait. It’s supposed to be this hard to figure out how to take care of ourselves as people, and not just as beings that owe this outer shell,” like that quote, that pretty is not the rent you pay to exist in the world. It feels like it is.
Abby Wambach:
I think that you both are very right about this, and the paradox of the world that we live in, there’s a reason why these doctors places and these facilities are offering, is because people are buying them.
Glennon Doyle:
But they have a first do-no-harm oath.
Abby Wambach:
And you think it’s more harm than good?
Glennon Doyle:
I think walking into an office, as a woman, where you want to get your skin taken care of, because your skin is an organ that holds you in and walks you through your life, walking in for your health, and then being told by a doctor, being suggested that you need cosmetic changes, is doing harm. Absolutely. I think there should be a brighter line between cosmetic shit-
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, that’s true.
Glennon Doyle:
… And your actual health.
Abby Wambach:
I get that.
Glennon Doyle:
I really, 100 percent, do.
Amanda Doyle:
I think those services should be available, and I think you should be able to opt into them or inquire about them, and I think you should keep the main thing, the main thing, which is that your doctor is there to, I mean, the myriad things that go uncovered unasked about, I have a whole condition. My belly never came back together after, and I have a hernia, I have all this stuff that was never detected, and I didn’t even know to look for it, and that would’ve been at those post appointments, but we didn’t have time to make sure that was okay, but you have time to check in with me and make sure that I don’t want body sculpting?
Amanda Doyle:
So I just feel like, yes, if those services are for you, awesome. You should have the opportunity to inquire about those, to opt into those, but to have that confronted as if this is the main purpose as to why you’re here feels like complete bullshit to me. And it’s a bigger issue about the medical cosmetic establishment and why these individual providers are being incentivized to go into these cosmetic areas, because the insurance companies are squeezing them, so it’s a bigger thing, but I think if more people were like, “Don’t shove that in my face,” as something that I need to be thinking about if I’m not already thinking about it.
Abby Wambach:
Right, right, right.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, absolutely. And don’t shove it in our daughter’s faces when we bring them in for their things. What are they learning from that? If you’re a doctor who doesn’t do that shit-
Amanda Doyle:
Good job.
Glennon Doyle:
Way to go. Thank you for fighting the fight. Speaking of not doing, I’ve been thinking about what the difference is, why I don’t want it now, and I think one of the reasons I’m just feeling a lot more comfortable in my body, just a lot more comfortable. I just want to look how I look and feel how I feel. And I was thinking, Abby, about how a few months ago you started ordering. So I get home one day, and there’s all of these eye creams at our house, and we don’t know what we’re doing with it.
Abby Wambach:
We don’t know what we’re doing.
Glennon Doyle:
We’re not eye cream people. Every once in a while, someone sends us some, and we’re like, “What’s this?” And then we, whatever-
Amanda Doyle:
Use it for three days, and you’re like, “That should do it.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, exactly. That’s it, right? It’s like a one time use thing. And also, come on. Just come on with this. I know that people are going to yell at me about this, because everyone feels so strongly about skincare, but this shit, really? We’re still buying it? We’re not one bottle away from eternal life. But anyway, which is why I was surprised when I got home and my wife, Abby Wambach, had ordered a bunch of eye creams, and I said, what is this shit? It’s all lined up by her Irish spring. She said, “I just have been feeling bad about my wrinkles lately.”
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, wow.
Glennon Doyle:
And then she said, “I mean, look at my face.” She goes, “You’re going to not age with me.” She goes, “I’m over here aging, and you’re not going to do it with me.”
Amanda Doyle:
You’re peer pressuring her into being-
Abby Wambach:
Well, yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t say it was necessarily peer pressure, but it is noticeable, the difference between our faces. It is very noticeable. I’m just noticing more. And I do think it’s in stark contrast to Botox face, like your forehead. I’m just like, “You’re a little older than me too,” and I’m like, “What am I doing wrong here? There must be something.” I mean, that’s interesting that you picked up on that, that I might be feeling a little more insecure because I look at you, and you’re so beautiful.
Amanda Doyle:
Keep up with the Joneses over here at the bathroom sink.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. It was a microcosm moment that made me understand, very acutely, what we do to each other, what we do to each other in the wider world when we, God bless our hearts, I’m not blaming, I’ve done it my whole life, but two things can be true at the same time. It cannot be our fault. We have been conditioned to do this shit. Some women say if they don’t look a certain way in their business, places of work, they don’t get promoted. I understand all of it, and when we opt into it, people look at our faces and we get used to the way people look, and then we look at ourselves in the mirror. If we have a wrinkle that we have earned by our lifetime, it suddenly looks like a problem, because other people don’t have it. I just suddenly feel so excited to not be a part of that. I am a person who, because of my work, people look at my face a lot. More people look at my face than the average bear.
Amanda Doyle:
Than the average bear. That’s for sure.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I’m just excited to be in quiet solidarity with just resisting the tyranny of, “You are not allowed to be a human being.” When we think about aging, it just means living. It just means continuing to live.
Amanda Doyle:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
So as my daughter, Tishy, always says, “But it’s just proof of life,” and that’s my favorite thing, proof of life. It’s just proof that you’re alive.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I mean, I hear all of this, and it is hard to age. I really think that there’s no shame in people wanting to express themselves how they want to, and I remember telling that to my grandmother when I was young. I was like, “I love your wrinkle.” She was so worried about how she looked, and I remember when I was young. I mean, it’s really easy when you have not a single wrinkle to be found, so I understand, and I think that what is so cool for you is that you have been able to go through this process of your recovery, and figure out maybe what are the things that have been making you sick all along. It’s not just body stuff. It’s the way that you feel about yourself. I love this conversation, because I think that it is full, chalk full of paradoxes, where I can see it in both ways. I mean, if you’re 50, 60, 70, 80 year old woman and you’re listening to this, you’re probably thinking, “These people have no fucking clue what they’re talking about, because their faces have not aged yet,” so I want to-
Glennon Doyle:
But I’m almost 50, and my face has not aged yet, and that’s because I’ve been sticking poison in it. I’m just saying. These things are true, right?
Abby Wambach:
I know, I know.
Glennon Doyle:
But now it’s coming back. I haven’t gotten it for six months, and I’m looking at myself again.
Abby Wambach:
How is it looking at yourself again?
Glennon Doyle:
I think it’s okay. I really think it’s okay. I think I’m okay with it. Anorexia is kind of like a commitment to being steel, to being un-human, to being unmoving, to being a robot, resisting. Whatever the opposite of wabi-sabi is. Wabi-sabi is the idea that everything is decaying, and that’s fucking beautiful. Everything’s out of control, and that’s beautiful. That’s what makes it all beautiful, and then our culture is like, “Freeze it. Don’t show time passing. Don’t show mess. Don’t show love.” The opposite of the velvet teen rabbit. I want all of the wabi-sabiness. And so I guess what, in the paradox, I would say, that if I had to tell women anything right now, it would be just do exactly what you want, and then when you want something different, do that.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Don’t go outside of yourself and think, “I should,” if you don’t want to do that. “I should do it. I should do the Botox. I should do the hair.” No, but if you want to, and you think, “I shouldn’t do it. I shouldn’t do it,” then just do it.
Amanda Doyle:
Exactly. Because another wrinkle, no pun intended, in this, is that I have never even considered doing those things. I’ve never gotten Botox. I’ve never gotten whatever, but it is because I would never let myself think about doing that, because I would be so embarrassed. It’s almost like a pride thing of like, “Well, I can’t be someone who gets Botox.” It’s like that rebellion is just as much of a cage as obedience is. I wouldn’t allow myself to entertain any of those choices, because I’d be like, “That is outside of who I should be, which is a woman who doesn’t do that bullshit.”
Glennon Doyle:
So you know how everyone throws around the term narcissist?
Amanda Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Glennon Doyle:
You know where that comes from? It’s this old Greek myth, where a person named Narcissus goes and looks at himself in a lake, and then falls in love with the image of himself, and he gets frozen, because he’s so in love with the image of himself, and so we now call a narcissist a lot of different things. We’ve done episodes on what narcissism really is, but what people think it is someone who loves themselves so much, but that story is not about someone who loved themself. It’s about someone who became obsessed with the image of themself, not themself. Narcissists didn’t have self-love. Narcissists became enamored with an image, so that’s what that is. It’s not coming from inside of you. It’s not love of self. It’s love of an idea of yourself, an image of yourself that you made.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s the flip of you. Your image of yourself is you don’t show any decay. My image of myself is that I am a woman who would never entertain such tomfoolery.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
But they’re both images.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. And I was always just like, “What kind of person am I? Am I a good enough person? Am I the kind of woman who wears flowy clothes? Am I the kind of woman who wears-“
Amanda Doyle:
Am I the kind of woman who looks comfortable?
Glennon Doyle:
Am I the kind of woman who wears a suit? Do I wear beads? I’ve been trying to find an identity for so fucking long, and it’s like, what kind of person am I? I guess I should check in and find out-
Amanda Doyle:
I guess I should ask myself.
Glennon Doyle:
… Right now, and what I am now might be different than what I am tomorrow, which I feel like is kind of the opposite of anorexia, frozen-ness, or narcissism. So that was the first little thing, was the Botox thing.
Abby Wambach:
Just a little thing.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, and by the way, I have a hair dying appointment tomorrow, so nobody’s going off the deep end here. Only my forehead is decaying, okay? One thing at a time. Like the velveteen rabbit, I’m going to become human, one thing at a time. So then, we had this really cool thing, which the Pod Squad probably already knows about, where we had new pictures taken and the three of us were together.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, so our dear friend, Alex, had a son, who’s a photographer, and Abby and I’s best friend besides sister Dynna and Allison, came to us to take pictures of us. The three of us were together for the pod art. I don’t think there’s many things that I hate more than a photo shoot.
Abby Wambach:
Me too.
Glennon Doyle:
But for different reasons, you just are annoyed and want it to be over. I don’t know how to be. I don’t know what I’m supposed to wear. I don’t know what my hair is supposed to be like. I don’t know how people smile. It’s awful. I was dreading. McDread. Dreader McDreaderton. Yes. I had the most unusual experience, which is that I got up that morning, I took a shower, I didn’t do anything with my hair. I put on my little light makeup, which is foundation, which really has sunscreen in it. So it’s really just like medicine. Not even makeup.
Abby Wambach:
Doctor prescribed.
Glennon Doyle:
And we had a six-hour photo shoot, and I didn’t feel one ounce of stress. I felt very natural and normal the whole time. And when we got the pictures back, I was like, “That looks like me.” It’s the first time I have ever looked at a picture and been like, “Oh, yeah. That looks like me.”
Abby Wambach:
No way.
Glennon Doyle:
I’ve never seen a picture, where I was like, “That person looks familiar to me.”
Amanda Doyle:
And it wasn’t that, because it looks like you.
Glennon Doyle:
It wasn’t about that.
Amanda Doyle:
It was that you were calm and in yourself, and you weren’t performing.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. I wasn’t posing. I wasn’t becoming a different person for a photo shoot.
Abby Wambach:
That’s so interesting, because you have, ever since I’ve known you, I can look through some pictures that have been taken of you over the years, and every single one looks different.
Glennon Doyle:
I know.
Abby Wambach:
That you actually look like a different person, because I think you’re trying to act like a different person, other than who you are, so this, to me, makes so much sense, because you’re feeling a little bit like yourself so you don’t have to act.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s like you were never able to listen to your voice in anything, because your voice maybe was one percent off of authentic.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, god. Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Because you weren’t actually at home, grounded, and coming from that place, so you were so turned off of the sound of your voice, because even that smidge of in-authenticity is staring at the sun, but then you were saying how you can listen to your voice now.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Because the same thing as, “It sounds like me,” is the same thing as when you look at those pictures and say, “That looks like me.” It isn’t what the picture looks like. It’s that when you look in that picture, you see a woman who is comfortable.
Abby Wambach:
It’s familiar.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, exactly. It’s not about what I looked like. It’s about what I look like, I felt like.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. You look comfortable.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I looked like somebody who was not performing or acting a different self, and Alex said that she went home and told her partner, “I just took the first good pictures of Glennon Doyle.”
Glennon Doyle:
I was like, “Oh my God. Also, really? Yeah, that’s true,” or the best. I think she said the best. Anyway, so there was that day, and then another thing that happened is that-
Abby Wambach:
I’m so scared. All of these stories-
Amanda Doyle:
I know.
Abby Wambach:
I’m like-
Amanda Doyle:
I hope they’re not about me.
Abby Wambach:
I’m like, “Did I do something wrong?”
Glennon Doyle:
No, no, no. These are just very little ones, and they have nothing to do. Well, the last one includes you, sister, but so this one is so silly, but for me felt like, “Oh my god. This is recovery.” So I was at a store and I was looking at bracelets, and I really, here’s something that is true about me, I really like sparkly things.
Abby Wambach:
Yes, you do.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, and I don’t like sparkly things because of the way they look to other people on me. I like to look at sparkly things.
Amanda Doyle:
Delight.
Glennon Doyle:
Looking, I’m sparkly on the inside right now.
Amanda Doyle:
Sparkles spark joy.
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, I just like sparkly fucking things. That is true to me. I was not taught this.
Amanda Doyle:
I know three things about myself, and one is that I like sparkly things.
Glennon Doyle:
And it’s a little embarrassing, right?
Amanda Doyle:
No. It’s beautiful. Beautiful.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s so femme.
Abby Wambach:
Why is it embarrassing?
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know. It’s not cool.
Abby Wambach:
Yes, it is. You figured something out. Okay, that shit is fucking cool.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. All right. Even fish, like fish that are sparkling. You know, the ones with the silver? I’m just like, “Ah.”
Amanda Doyle:
It’s all coming out now.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I can’t believe that that got made by God or something. Just all of it, just the sparkles. So I was at a store, and I saw this thing of beads, and it was just sparkly, sparkly, sparkly. It looked so stupid. It did not look good.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. It wasn’t like a sophisticated-
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s not like what someone would choose to wear.
Glennon Doyle:
Nobody would choose to wear this, right? But I was like, “I want this, because I want to look at this.”
Amanda Doyle:
Right. “I don’t think this will look good on me. I think this will look good to me.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. You don’t understand. I was in the store going, “Oh my god. Is that what things are for? Is that what things are for? I should have things that I love to look at on my body, in my life, in my house. Not like, is someone else going to think this thing is cool? But do I like to look at this thing?” Oh my God. I am sure that so many people are listening, and they’re like, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Abby Wambach:
One’s over here.
Amanda Doyle:
No. It’s profound to me.
Glennon Doyle:
To me, profound.
Amanda Doyle:
Congratulations, Abby, that you learned that early.
Glennon Doyle:
I just want things on me and around me that I like and that I like to look at, and I’m not caring so much. Oh my God. One of our daughter’s friends said to her, they were talking about looks. She said, “Well, I don’t care about my face. Your face is more important to me. I have to look at you.”
Abby Wambach:
Isn’t that so good?
Glennon Doyle:
“I don’t have to look at me. My face is your problem.”
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. That is the revolution.
Abby Wambach:
Yes, it is. That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Last thing is that yesterday, sister and Abby and I were on a walk with Allison and Dynna at our house, because we’re all here. We’re all here right now.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
Glennon Doyle:
It is, and actually, we should just have a whole episode on the things that we’ve been making you guys do since you’ve been here. Anyway.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
So we’re walking down, and sister turns to me, and we talk about emotional things, but we don’t have a lot of sincere tender moments between us.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s the Irish Catholic in us.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. It’s like, “Whoa. Being earnest is…” I’m getting better. We’re getting better at it, but sister turns to me and says a very emotional, tender thing. She stops, looks at me, and says, “This is the least fucked up you have ever been.”
Amanda Doyle:
Make it a greeting card, people.
Glennon Doyle:
This is the least…
Amanda Doyle:
That’s as sappy as I get.
Abby Wambach:
It would look good on a fucking sweatshirt.
Glennon Doyle:
I’ll take it. This is the least fucked up I have ever been. I really do believe that
Amanda Doyle:
It’s true.
Glennon Doyle:
I think this is the least.
Amanda Doyle:
I do not speak a lie.
Glennon Doyle:
But what did you mean? It’s not like you’re watching me eat food and thinking, “She’s eating the right amount,” or it’s not like my body’s a certain thing, so what is it?
Amanda Doyle:
I think it’s a sturdiness.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
A grounded-ness. It’s hard to explain, but there’s a centrality in you, that it’s like you are inside of you, and the things that come at you, come around you, or whatever’s going on outside of you doesn’t feel like it disturbs the sturdiness of you, and you have a clarity, I feel like. You’re able to maintain that energetic sturdiness regardless of energies, people, or challenges around you that would normally have been before this, those energies would’ve come into you and would’ve changed the whole ecosystem. You would’ve been affected by other energies, and that would’ve morphed you, but now I feel like you are like, “This is what I am, and I’m not blocking out those other energies. I am able to digest them, deal with them, understand them, but they’re not changing my energy.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. That sounds right.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. It’s almost like, for the whole of your anorexia, you would go out into the world with your representative, your anorexia representative, and over the last year, I’ve seen an eroding of that representative. It’s like this truer, this little kid kind of. I see this little kid. You know how kids are just like, they ask questions, there’s a curiosity to you? But now whole person, the essence of you is coming forward, and you are just becoming more full. I’m not having obviously anything to do with your body, but you’re becoming more of a full human being, and it’s not to say that you don’t have moments of anxiety or internal conversations about your recovery or about whatever, but it’s just been so lovely. In fact, I find myself not being able to be the calm one anymore, because that’s the world I used to live in. You were anxious, and I had to balance the scales, and so now I feel myself healing through this process too.
Amanda Doyle:
You’re able to have a more range of emotions?
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Because her being calm doesn’t mean you always have to only be calm.
Abby Wambach:
Exactly. I mean, we’ve talked about this a little bit on the podcast, where I’m doing therapy. I’m working on my shadow work, and it has completely changed my life. The only way I think that I was ever going to give myself permission to do the work is if I knew that you were okay, and I totally know that.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s so true, that it might not be an anxiety versus calm thing, but that polarization within partnerships is so real.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
If someone is on the certain side of the spectrum, the other person’s humanity is diminished because the polarization just occurs where they become the equal and the opposite.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Because they have to occupy that space to even it out.
Abby Wambach:
100 percent.
Amanda Doyle:
And then, that further polarizes, so it’s like no such thing as one-way liberation. When people expand their range of humanity, the other person gets to too. You know what I think it is that is so different, is that there is a complete lack of defensiveness in your posture. It reminds me of when you were getting together with Abby, and mom was so concerned, and she was asking all the questions, and you were so on edge, so defensive, and so ready to react at all times to what she was saying. I was like, “You only have to be defensive if someone can take something from you.”
Amanda Doyle:
That is your constant posture now, is like, “I don’t have to defend anything. No one can take this piece from me. No one can take this solidity from me. This solidity doesn’t come from other people, so they can’t take it.” It’s like an internal calibration, so I think that’s where the inquisitiveness and the curiosity can come from, because it isn’t like, “Okay. I’m asking where you’re coming from, because It might change where I’m coming from.” It’s, “I can ask you that because it might edify me in some way, but you’re not going to take anything from me.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, and it’s interesting when you say the one-way liberation. Abby and I talk about our family, and what has happened in our family since recovery, my recovery has started, which our oldest went abroad, got himself this little grant, and went to a different country for the whole summer. That is just, okay, and then the middle one really started her music, really got into it, and is off doing it with other people that aren’t me.
Amanda Doyle:
Literally, right now.
Glennon Doyle:
Right now. She’s in Tennessee right now. And it’s just, Abby and I talk about, that’s not a coincidence. It’s like the kids energetically finally understood, “She’s okay. We can do our thing.” That’s how it feels.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. For sure.
Glennon Doyle:
And what’s so important to me about these conversations is if you could have talked to me two weeks ago on a Tuesday, I have moments all the time where I’m like, “This is just all bullshit. What is this? What am I doing? This is not real. I’m not really recovering. I’m just the same person as I was before.” I just have so many moments like that.
Amanda Doyle:
Coming around the mountain.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God, over and over again. But I just got a message from the practice that I’m a part of for this holistic recovery thing, that was like, “Are you going to renew your thing, your membership in this group?” or whatever. There was a part of me that was like, “Oh, no. I’m good. I’m good.”
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, really?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I was like, “No, I’m not going to spend all that money.” I mean, recovery is so expensive.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s such bullshit.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s such horse shit.
Amanda Doyle:
See aforementioned medical complex of horseshit.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God, but then I was like, “Oh, you’re so funny. Of course, you’re going to do this. Look at. Just trust. Trust this process,” so I re-signed up. It’s just so funny, because I’m almost 50, and I’m like, “Oh, yeah. This is who I am.” I was just flipping through one of my favorite quote places, and I saw this picture of Miles Davis, and right underneath it just said, “Man, sometimes it takes a long time to sound like yourself,” and that’s how I feel. It can take a really long time to look how you look. It can take a really long time to feel how you feel, to be who you are. So anyway, thank you for letting me do this today. It feels really good, and thanks for being steady and with me throughout this past year and forever. I just feel like you’re walking me through this, has been what has allowed it kind of, and I love you both so much, and I’m so grateful.
Abby Wambach:
I mean, the gratitude should be also pointed back at you because, like I said, not only has it completely impacted my personal life, like in the day-to-day, the interactions with you and the kids, but there is something so beautiful about watching your partner go through a difficult uncovering, a difficult time, and to watch you continue to do it. This is the first I’ve heard that you had to resign up for the year long membership, and that is something that I would’ve been worried about a year ago, something that would have lapsed, something that I needed to take-
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Something that I know you wouldn’t have done, and so to me, this has been so awesome, because I was ready to go all the way to my grave, just protecting you, taking care of everything, doing whatever I needed to support you, and what a gift this has been for me, because I feel less stressed about having to do the things right. You’ve got you. To be able to know that deep in my bones has softened me, and made me capable of looking at myself and do work on myself. But I said to you last night, it now looks like you are actively wanting to live a really long time, and the decisions, the ways that you’re being, the things that you’re thinking about, and the ways that you’re thinking about stuff, it’s not just like right now we got to deal with this one moment. It’s like you have a long-term plan, and for me, I know that that’s going to affect me the most, and I want you to be around as long as fucking humanly possible.
Glennon Doyle:
I love you. Thanks Pod Squad. We’ll see you next time. Bye. 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. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence13 Studios.