How to Finally Forgive with Nadia Bolz-Weber
November 9, 2023
Glennon Doyle:
Okay pod squad, get ready for today. I am so delighted, already full of energy and wondering what’s going to happen in the next hour. Because we have one of my faves, Nadia Bolz Weber here today. Nadia is an ordained Lutheran pastor, founder of House for All Sinners & Saints in Denver, host of The Confessional podcast and author of three New York Times bestselling memoirs; Pastrix, Accidental Saints and Shameless. All of her books are so flippin good. She always sits in the corner with the other weirdos, one of the many reasons we love her so much. She can be found a couple of days a week inside the Denver women’s prison, where she is a volunteer chaplain. Nadia, welcome.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Hello.
Amanda Doyle:
And The Corner Substack. Don’t forget The Corner Substack.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh yes, absolutely. Yes. If you want to get her writing now, you have to subscribe to the Corner Substack, which we’re going to talk about in a minute. Because it’s interesting what’s going on with you right now, Nadia. First I want to tell you a little story. The first time I met you in real life was at something called the Wild Goose Festival. Abby, I’ve explained this to you as like a Jesus-y Woodstock, like a mini Jesus-y Woodstock. So the first time I went to Wild Goose, I was referred to in the community as the one who wore heels. Okay? Because it was in the mud, rain, like a festival type thing. So people kept saying, “Oh, is she the one who wore heels to this?” And that is true, that I did.
Abby Wambach:
Why?
Glennon Doyle:
I didn’t understand. It was like camp, I didn’t understand. My mom’s friend lived in the town, so I would go all day and then pretend I was going to camp. And then I’d have my mom’s friend pick me up in the secret in the back and take me to her house and put me in a room-
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
… and pretended that I camped.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I’d pretend I was going to camp. I don’t think anybody thought you were probably going to camp.
Glennon Doyle:
So I was fooling no one? Nadia, I brought my baby Chase, he was like 10, to Wild Goose. I was obsessed with you. You did a speaking event in a tent with Krista Tippett. You and she were recording an On Being and the whole wild goose was all, it was like … Nadia is doing On Being, so the whole Jesus-y camp, Woodstock-y festival went to listen to you two. You talked a lot in that about gendering God as just he, and the damage that has done and continues to do. The next week I’m minding my own business at home and I get a call-
Abby Wambach:
Oh, my God.
Glennon Doyle:
… from my son’s Christian school.
Abby Wambach:
This is why that happened?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
I never knew this.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. My son is in fourth grade at this time. He’s in the principal’s office, okay? He’s in the principal’s office. I’ve been called a few times, okay? Like they’ve said, “My mom doesn’t believe there’s a hell,” principal’s office. “My mom has tattoos and does yoga,” principal’s office. Okay. But this is the last straw. My son has stood up and said to his Christian teacher, “I think we should be done with calling God he. Let’s think about how this is making everyone feel.” He quotes Nadia Bolt-Weber, that’s it. So I go to the principal’s office. I’m sitting there with the principal, and we just agree that we have to leave the school. That day I take Chase out of the office and I’m like, “I guess we can’t go here.” I go-
Amanda Doyle:
All three of them? You had to pull all three of them?
Glennon Doyle:
I pulled all three of them. I went to Tisha’s class, I went to Amma’s class, pulled them all out. We walked out. We started public school the next day because of you.
Amanda Doyle:
So you might want to be careful listening to this podcast, because it might have large ramifications for your life.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I don’t know whether to feel more proud of that, or how many middle-aged lesbians are in seminary now because of me.
Glennon Doyle:
How would you pick what to be proud of-
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I know. I know.
Glennon Doyle:
… being Nadia Bolz Weber?
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I know. Yeah. That’s amazing. I’ve never heard that story.
Abby Wambach:
Me neither. It is so good.
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, it saved us.
Abby Wambach:
I knew the kids left school.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
That’s so funny. I also remember in 2016 … maybe it was early 2017. You and I were texting about something and I was like, nobody knows I’m in the middle of a divorce. And you’re like, nobody knows that I fell in love with a woman, Abby Wambach. I’m like, girl, you can’t be blamed for that.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, my god.
Amanda Doyle:
Nadia is like, phew, heat’s off me.
Glennon Doyle:
I see your divorce and I raise you a lesbian.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Exactly. Exactly.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. We’ve been through some shit, haven’t we, Nadia? So I’m getting this sense … I could be making this up, but I feel like you seem to be carbonated. You seem very alive. We have spent decades in this trying to figure out how to do what we love and also be in the grind. It feels to me lately like you are living a little bit … you know how campy people live off the grid? You seem to be living off the grind.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I am living off the grind. You’re totally right. The way I put it is, I think that all my ambition left with my estrogen.
Glennon Doyle:
Say more.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I was driven, my whole life I’ve been this driven person. I’m entrepreneurial, so I create stuff. I make stuff. I have new projects, I get people excited. I’ve just done that for so long and I don’t care anymore. I don’t want to create. I don’t have it in me to create anything else because I am very busy cooking and going for walks. And doing what I’m really obsessed with, my new hobby, which is sacred harp singing. So every week I gather with this small group of people and we sing colonial era music.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God, Abby, you would love that.
Abby Wambach:
That’s so fun sounding.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Yeah. I’m obsessed with it and it brings me so much joy. So my best friend in the world said, the most grace-filled thing to me … a few years ago when I was like, it’s hard to get off the carnival ride of book publishing. I was like, “Oh, I should figure out what my next book is.” She said, “Nadia, if you never write another book and you never preach another sermon, and you never publish another essay, you will have already done enough. More than enough.” Yeah. It made me teary because that’s what I needed someone to say. I think when you do work that has a positive impact on people, it creates a weight around, I have to keep doing it. And we don’t have a lot of words of grace. That’s why I’m so obsessed with grace. It really cuts us free a lot of times. Anyway, so there have been moments in my life when somebody has said something so grace-filled that it really reoriented everything for me, and that’s what happened.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
So I don’t know, maybe I’ll write a book someday but the drive, I don’t have anything else to prove, I think is what I feel like. Oh no, I need to write a fourth New York Times bestseller.
Glennon Doyle:
That’ll do it.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Who cares? Who cares?
Glennon Doyle:
That’ll fill the God-sized hole in my soul.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Exactly. Exactly. So part of it is, I’m so extraordinarily well-loved for the first time in my life. I am in a very deeply, I’m so in love with Eric. It has softened everything about me. So I don’t do CrossFit obsessively anymore. I mean, I weigh more than I’ve ever weighed. My hair is longer. I spend my time more slowly and I like it.
Glennon Doyle:
How is this relationship different than any other that you’ve had, that is having this effect?
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I think that Eric and I have this thing where we get that our relationship is a huge treasure, so we try to value it every day like that and not take it for granted. We’ve both been through a lot and we were together in ’93, ’94. He was the boyfriend who broke my heart, just destroyed me. It was a whole thing. It was part of my story. If I had a new friend and I was telling them about who I am, I would tell them the story of having my heart broken-
Glennon Doyle:
Wow.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
… decades later. I’ll just tell you the story real quick-
Glennon Doyle:
Please.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
… which is this. We both got sober in ’91. So in ’93, we’re very young. We’re newly sober and I was so in love with him. I remember loving how his hands looked.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, Lord.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Do you know what I’m saying?
Amanda Doyle:
You were gone.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I had nothing going for me in my 20s. I had good abs but really, that’s it. That’s all I had. So I thought, oh, this really handsome, sexy guy who’s in this big alternative band wants to be with me. That must mean that I’m worthy of desire, that I’m worthy of love. It means I’ll have a future. It means I’ll have some kind of security. I attached so many things to being with him. So when he broke up with me, I was destroyed. Okay, fast-forward to 2016. We’ve had various marriages and degrees and children and careers and whatnot. I was in a coffee shop and I bumped into his roommate from back in the day. He goes, “Hey, you and Eric are both divorced. You should have dinner.” I was like, “Yes, we should have dinner,” and we’ve been together since then, August 2016. He went with me on a gig like three weeks in, or a month into our relationship, and we’re on the airplane. He just looks at me and he goes, “When did you forgive me?”
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I said, “When I realized how much of the suffering that I had experienced from our breakup was my fault, was about how much I had attached to the relationship. My suffering was from that, so much more than from what you did. And that’s when I forgave you because it was more mine than yours.” Anyway, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
How many people think that their first breakup is still breaking their heart because of the other person, when really it was because that first thing is when you decided you were worthy of anything, so if they leave, you’re unworthy of anything?
Nadia Bolz Weber:
That’s right. Because he met somebody on the road that he fell in love with and I was like, okay, now all those things are true about her and not me. Now she’s the one who has security and who has value and who’s worthy of desire and not me. It’s been transferred. We’re both 54. The great thing about being in a relationship now, I don’t need anyone for me to have value, and to know that I’m worthy and to have security and financial security. I don’t need him for anything, except that love connection. And that’s it, and that makes it have a buoyancy.
Glennon Doyle:
How did you get there? What do you most attribute becoming a human being who has all the worthiness, the security in herself so that she can choose love instead of desperately need it?
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Yeah, just a lot of pain.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, that’s why I love you. That’s why I love you.
Abby Wambach:
It’s so hard. Why has it got to be so hard? That’s it. That’s the way.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
On Substack … Liz Gilbert, she just started a Substack. In honor of that I posted a note, which is like a Twitter feed type of thing on Substack. It was a picture of myself at 10, and I was like, in honor of Liz Gilbert’s new Substack, I’m writing my 10-year-old self a little note here. So it was before all the pain. It really was. It was before bullying and sorrow and sickness and addiction. I was like, part of me just wishes I could protect you from all of it, from the betrayal and the sorrow and definitely the cocaine and all of it. I want to tell you, never go on a diet and all of these things. Yet if I did, you’d be boring as fuck now.
Abby Wambach:
I think about my 10-year-old self a lot. I also think about, there was also a knowing I would get here, deep fucking down. Because we didn’t let all of that shit take us out. So it’s like, hey, you’re going to have a long road ahead of you. Yet, you know you got this,
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Abby, why do you think it’s 10? Why do you think it’s 10?
Abby Wambach:
I don’t know. You said 10 and I just went, vroom, right to that number.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s always around that, every girl says that. It’s 10, it’s 11, it’s 12, it’s nine. It’s right in there. It’s like, that’s where the split happens. You’re living as a subject. You’re thinking about what you’re seeing, and then suddenly you have this double consciousness. You become the object. You think about how you’re being seen and that split-
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Yes, that’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
You become aware of your body. The awareness of your body as this thing that’s being understood separately from you, creates this dissonance in you that now you have two things. You have your self and you have your body, and then you have to choose which one to protect and which one to preserve. So you become bisected, I think at that time.
Glennon Doyle:
You become kind of an actor. And then suddenly we’re all like 50, and it’s just this beautiful recovering of-
Abby Wambach:
Of the subject.
Glennon Doyle:
… this original self who had to go through so much shit to just be back in the same place.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Because eventually you become old enough to become unselfconscious again.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, and it’s this interesting thing. I don’t think men do this as much. I think that this road that we take, it’s self-exploration. It’s hard as shit. It’s a journey. It’s suffering. But we come back to I think ourselves, where I think a lot of men in this … obviously it’s very generalized, but I think it’s a little true that they don’t do all of the self-expression in the middle, so they just stay without maybe as much pain. I don’t know.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Well, I think they aren’t companioned in the way women often are with each other, right? I’m in conversations about all of this stuff with my closest friends all the time. I think they’ve really shown that men tend to not have those really deep, intimate friendships where they’re companioned through that process.
Glennon Doyle:
I was a third grade teacher, so I also got to watch this process happen-
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
… from a teacher’s perspective, and I saw it happen just as severely with boys. I could see it in my mind right now more clearly, the boys have to act out masculinity. They have a bisecting also. Imagine if men got together and talked about how when they were 10 years old, they were feely and soft, and then they had to put on this masculinity armor and they just never get to take it off.
Abby Wambach:
They have to pretend they’re not suffering. That’s terrible.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. So Nadia, you’re in love. You’re living a little bit off the grind, doing all of your-
Nadia Bolz Weber:
It’s so good.
Glennon Doyle:
What’s hard now, really, when you think about … whenever I choose a new way, things get better but there’s still fucking something. What is your hard thing right now?
Nadia Bolz Weber:
My ego didn’t love this.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I wondered.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Yeah, and that happened with the pandemic. So in 2019 I was on 90 airplanes in seven countries. That’s how much I was touring. And then in 2020, I was in my apartment and there are no upgrades in my apartment.
Glennon Doyle:
Minimal applause.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
There’s no United Club, nobody sending a car service. I wasn’t special in my apartment. I was sort of sickened when I realized that I’d become accustomed to being treated a certain way. I didn’t notice it had happened until the world changed so much that it was taken away. I thought, oh my God, I can’t do this. I can’t stay at home. I’m used to traveling constantly, being in front of adoring crowds and … you know what I mean, being treated a certain way. And what I discovered was, it wasn’t that I couldn’t do it. It’s that I had not yet met the version of me that could do it, and that’s who I met during that year and a half of mostly being at home. I met a whole different part of myself. And then when I started, the first time I got on a plane again, I had this meltdown. I forgot how to pack. I didn’t know what I was supposed to take. The thing I was so adept at suddenly was just gone and I thought, I can’t do this. I was like, no, I just haven’t met the version of me who can, and that’s who I’m about to meet. So I think to not be publishing and doing quite as much as all that … because to be clear, I got off the book-publishing bandwagon, but that does not prevent my friend’s new books from arriving at my house-
Glennon Doyle:
That’s the thing.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
… every few days.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s the thing. People keep grinding.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Then I have feelings. I’m like, oh God, why am I … I’m so lazy. I’m too self-involved. Or, oh, if I don’t capture it again, it’ll be gone forever.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s the it.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
So that’s the part though that has been difficult. But I think I’m old enough, I do see it when it’s happening. This little dialogue in my head is pretty short before I go, oh, I know what that is. That’s just my ego and it’s okay, and that’s not the thing I want to be leading with. And then I just go for a walk and figure out what I’m cooking for dinner.
Amanda Doyle:
That is such a vital skillset, because you don’t have to be a New York Times bestseller to understand that phenomenon. I live in a very type A, hustle, parent raising little mini people to do whatever it is the hell we think they’re going to do. It’s like, when you decide to be like, actually I’m just going to let them be whatever they are, you can feel good about that in your house at night when you go to sleep. And then when you wake up and see everybody else doing all the things that they’re doing, you kind of have a panic attack. It’s like, it’s all well and good. What do you say to yourself to bring yourself back to peace about what you’ve decided when this scarcity like tornadoe is happening around you?
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Well, I have Eric and my best friend Jody. I will tell them exactly what I was thinking. I tell them things I just would never tell other people about terrible thoughts about others. My friend Jody and I spend four or five hours a week on the phone together. She lives in St. Paul.
Amanda Doyle:
Also a 10-year-old self throwback. You’re like, what we need to do-
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Totally.
Amanda Doyle:
… is spend four hours on the telephone.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I’m like, I need to wind a cord around my finger. Anyway, we go on walks and we talk for hours every week. So I’ll just go, “Hey, can I just tell you something I really hate about my personality, just real quick?” She’ll be like, “Yeah, go for it.” I can say the most honest, not spinning it, not filtering it things to her about myself, and things I think and things I fear and jealousies I have or whatever. She never thinks less of me, because she really knows the whole so well that I’m never at risk of that turning back on me. So I think having that in my life allows me to metabolize that stuff pretty quickly.
Abby Wambach:
I have a question about this connection between ego and self-esteem because I’ve been on this exploration since retiring.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Of course.
Abby Wambach:
I think that I have attached so much of my physical output with self-esteem and love and worthiness and enough-ness … and all of that, all of the playing and the things that I do. I’m trying to figure out how ego is good for me and not, because I think we all have one. It’s all there, and how we can balance and keep it in check. What are ways that you, in this world of being off the grind, how are you finding self-love and your worthiness or your self-esteem without overplaying the ego and tapping into the shadow side of ego?
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Yeah. I think I know when I’m in ego in a way that doesn’t serve me, when I feel defensive. If I feel defensive about something it’s always, that’s not my truest self. If I feel like I have to justify something, that’s not my truest self. There are these signals that go, oh, that’s not, and it’s okay. There’s no escaping it. I think that’s so important for us to get, you cannot escape the shitty parts of yourself. You can’t do it. I have been in subcultures that like to pretend you can, and they’re toxic as fuck. So evangelical Christianity, oh, I’m just living in victory with the Lord. It’s just like, it doesn’t even mean anything. And they believe in progressive sanctification. If you have quiet time with the Lord and you’re a good disciple, you can … Actually, I think it’s a form of atheism to be honest, because it’s this-
Abby Wambach:
Oh, my gosh.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
… idea that you can sanctify yourself so much that you never need to call on God for help. You never are standing in the need of prayer. You’re never somebody who needs mercy or compassion or forgiveness. That’s for other people. So I don’t trust it in Christianity and I don’t trust it in the yoga, New Age spirituality scene either. These are two faces of, to me, the same thing. I love yoga, but I do not trust yoga teachers who are affected. When they have that, oh, they’re painfully good … they talk with the passive-aggressive half whisper and they really try to act like nothing ever fazes them, I just assume they’re a monster. I do. I’m like, oh God, stay away from that person. But I had this yoga teacher who came in once and he goes … late, which is rare, right? He’s a couple of minutes late. He goes, “I’m so sorry, but I was having a fight with my teenager and I threw my yoga mat across the room before I got here.” I was like, oh my God-
Glennon Doyle:
I will follow you anywhere.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
… exactly, what do you have to teach me? So it’s sort of smeared all over us. It shows up in really sneaky ways through different influencers, this idea of, we can somehow transcend the shitty parts of ourselves. I don’t think so, or at least I haven’t yet. So everything is still there and it’s part of the whole package of me, and the whole package is pretty great. The whole package is pretty good, and has managed to survive some stuff and be of aid to others and make some pretty good jokes. You know what I mean? But also can be very self-centered in ways that other people don’t realize, and can be kind of sneaky about getting what I want and making it seem like I’m being generous, whatever. I mean, I have all the things.
Glennon Doyle:
I know that one.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
They’re all still there. They’re all still there and my self-esteem is intact. I have pretty good self-esteem and boy, I really don’t mind telling people the kind of awful things about myself. I actually think these two things are related because some things can be a little embarrassing I guess, the shittier parts, but I’m not ashamed of them.
Amanda Doyle:
In fact, it would be evidence that you do not have a solid foundation of self-esteem if you could not tell those things.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I agree, totally.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s right, because it’d be fake. And if you didn’t tell those things and you had a solid self-esteem, it would be quite a precarious feeling all the time. Because eventually someone’s going to find out those things and goodbye to that façade.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Exactly. That’s right. That’s exactly right.
Glennon Doyle:
I also think when I look at Nadia … and you say, “Ego is not the thing you’re following the most,” right? I see the fact that Nadia is still doing what she’s made for. She’s just not doing it in a ‘look at me, I need everyone to pay attention to me’ way. You’re a chaplain at a women’s prison and you’re writing beautifully. You’re just not begging the world to pay attention to those two things constantly, is how it feels to me. But you haven’t stopped doing what you do so beautifully.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Yeah. I mean, I do have a very particular calling. I have a lane that I stay in. But yeah, I think I just don’t need the adoration of all the people anymore. And also, it’s so mean out there. There’s so much unkindness towards people who put themselves out there, and I just don’t really want to be exposed in that way anymore.
Glennon Doyle:
What is it about the women’s prison that’s so important to you?
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Oh, I just love them so much. What you see is what you get. They’re not pretending life is something other than what it is. And boy, you learn a lot about our society, spending time in prisons. There’s an underclass that we warehouse, I don’t know how else to put that. But most of the women are profoundly undereducated. They come from poverty. They don’t have any education in their families at all. They have learned to survive with a certain set of skills within systems of addiction. And yet, there are these complete humans who have their own stories and their heart and their humor. I kind of feel like, if it doesn’t float in a women’s prison you shouldn’t say it. You know what I’m saying? There’s so much bullshit out there. If there’s something that I wouldn’t say to them, then maybe it’s not worth saying in the-
Glennon Doyle:
Like what? I think about what you say about, the opposite of fundamentalism is not atheism, it’s humility.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Right. Okay, here’s something that will not fly with them. There’s a lot of stuff out there about manifesting; power of positive thinking; manifesting this idea, name it and claim it. Well, the woman who I sat next to on Sunday, I said, “Oh, you had your babies.” Last time I saw her she was pregnant with twins, last month, and now she’s not. She had two little boys and then handed them over half an hour later. So you want to have a conversation about manifesting with her?
Glennon Doyle:
Who is your community now?
Nadia Bolz Weber:
My community has just always been in diaspora. I mean, I have a couple of friends here in Denver, but my community is a group of women who have been by each other’s side for years and years and years. We’re going to be in Nashville next week for Lenasia’s art opening. I think there’s eight of us getting together. So I have extraordinary individual friendships that I value very highly, but I don’t have necessarily community, although the sacred harp scene is kind of a community. I mean, I just show up and I’m part of a group which I like, and I’m not special.
Amanda Doyle:
I am just obsessed and want to talk to you about this. So all the signs and the kitchens and the influencers selling the programs about the, ‘you are enough.’ And honest to God, I’m not even judging, I just don’t know what the hell it means. I don’t just intellectually understand what anyone is talking about when they say, you are enough. Your concept of wanting to preach the good news that you are not enough makes so much more sense to me. So can you just take us down that train a little bit about how we’re not enough and that’s quite all right?
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Well, I think where it comes from is just the constant messages about how we should be something that we’re not throughout our lives, and that feeling we have of shame that comes from living in a culture that’s saying that constantly. So I think that’s where your ‘enough’ thing is. But for me it’s related to the thing where I think progressive sanctification is a form of atheism, where I wanted to write a anti-self-help book called You’re Not Enough. But there is enough and it doesn’t have to be you. Foundationally, the longer I’ve been out of seminary, the more simplistic I’ve become as a theologian. So this is my basic sort of cosmology, it’s simple. Have you guys been watching these Webb telescope photos and paying attention to them?
Glennon Doyle:
No, I watch Bravo.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
You watch Bravo? Okay, close.
Amanda Doyle:
Same-same.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Same-same. I mean, the universe is like 13 billion light years across. There’s no way for our human brains to really conceive of it. I would have been a pretty good medieval person just believing in the dome, just what we could … I’d be good with that. I’m fine with this, but apparently it keeps going for real far. So you think about how far that is and the only place that we know for sure has the conditions to support life as we know it, is here. This one weird little blue speck is the only place where there’s puppies and pizza and Beyonce. Just here, that’s it. That’s the only place and we get it. We get to have it, which is just mind-blowing. Okay. So I think that all of the cosmos creation, everything is an act of divine love. I think there’s a source from all of it, which is divine and ineffable. We can’t really understand it totally, it’s so big. But I think it’s almost like God wanted to be known, and that’s what creation is. So we all come from the same divine source.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
And then while we’re here living our lumpy lives, that we’re also full of inconsistencies and desperately in need of grace and mercy all the time … and fucking up and being extraordinary and all of that. When we don’t have enough, when I don’t have enough compassion to be the kind of person I want to be, there is enough. That source I came from is available to me to draw upon. I get to draw upon my own divine source through prayer or meditation or whatever it is, and that is enough. So I don’t have to be. I don’t have to have all the love, all the compassion, the mercy, the understanding, the companioning, because I have access to this unlimited source of it in the divine. And then when we die, somehow we return to the source. That’s all I know. I mean, I could get into a gazillion other things because I’m a Lutheran theologian, but basically that’s what I believe. So when people go around going, “I actually don’t need access to anything other than myself,” I’m like, well, that’s awesome for you. I desperately need more than just me.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Because I feel like, if I am all I have and all there is, I feel fucked. I just do.
Amanda Doyle:
And the way that that plays out in community I also love so much. Because you can take that macro huge approach and then also look at even your little community you build around yourself of friendships and be like, today, I have no patience. I have no tolerance. I hate everything. And your friend can show up in your threads and be like, I’ve got it for you today. It doesn’t mean that yours is superfluous because yours is absolutely critical for the next time-
Nadia Bolz Weber:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
… around when you have it for the next person.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
There’s a story in the New Testament where there’s a whole crowd and Jesus is in a house, and these friends brought their friend who’s sick and needed healing. So they opened up a hole in the roof and they lowered their friend down to Jesus to be healed. I’m always like, sometimes we’re the ones lowering our friends down, and sometimes we’re the ones being lowered. But it’s a team sport. So we do, we need each other. Actually, this might be weird, but you know Anne Lamott?
Amanda Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
She texted me … I just want to look really quick. She sent me, she goes, do you have one minute? Can you say why community, which is so unnatural for some of us narcissistic loners, is so necessary for our souls slash humanity slash healing? This is the text that I get from Anne.
Amanda Doyle:
Just one minute. Two minutes.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Here’s my answer to Anne; because giving and receiving is the economy of our souls. We must give and receive help and love and forgiveness. And because the Lord in his mercy created us as fleshy musical instruments and no matter how hard I try, I cannot sing harmony alone. By ourselves, we are unreliable narrators. We need the eyes of the other in order to have a halfway accurate view of the world.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. I want to read to you the text that Anne Lamott sent me; which season of Love Island should I start with? So that’s what she thinks of us, Nadia. Same thing.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s what you call the power of community.
Glennon Doyle:
Community. Do you still have anybody to forgive?
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Oh, I wish I could say no. I still do 12 step work. 31, how many years is it, 30 …?
Abby Wambach:
33.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I don’t know how many years.
Abby Wambach:
33, ’91 was the day.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Okay, thank you.
Amanda Doyle:
32. Wow.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I still do that work, and yesterday I was having this long conversation with Eric about the stuck-ness that I’m feeling in a particular area of my life. He said, “I think you need to finish writing your resentment inventory that you started last month,” and that felt like an act of aggression against me. But I do think he’s right. I do have these resentments that, they almost always have to do with me feeling betrayed by someone. I know I need to do it, and I just am fighting it. I know he’s right, I have to process that stuff. It’s not great to hold onto. So I would love to say, oh no, I’m free from all of it, but I still have work to do.
Glennon Doyle:
Can you explain to the pod squad what the resentment work … what you’re saying, for people who aren’t familiar? Because I think everybody would benefit from this step.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Well, okay. I’d say one of the worst lines in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous is when it’s talking about people who’ve hurt us. Because what the program tries to get you to do, even though it’s the last thing you want to do, is to look at how you participated in something that hurt you. Because it’s the worst. It’s so gross, and yet it’s the only freedom we’re going to get. I’m like, I’ve never gotten free by detailing over and over what someone else did. Those stories-
Amanda Doyle:
Try as I might. Try as I might.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Totally, and I’m a fairly good rhetorician. So the thing is, if I tell you a grievance story of mine, I promise you at the end you will feel the same way. You will be like, how dare they? But I think my ego … back to that, my ego thinks that’s the path, is by getting more and more hostages to my story. Yet, I have a situation in my life … I won’t go into the details but I had this story locked. I had it locked down, and this is how you know you’re trapped. If you’re telling the same story the exact same way … the grievance story the exact same way to multiple people, you are trapped. You are in a maze that you can’t get out of. Actually in the court system, the way they know somebody is a reliable eyewitness is that they actually change the way they tell the story a little bit, right? If you tell it the exact same way over and over without varying, it’s manufactured on some level. You might have been there but you’re not a reliable witness anymore.
Amanda Doyle:
Because you’re reporting your own story. You’re not reporting what happened. Because if you report what happens, memory is valuable but your story can’t be memorized.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
You’re no longer in active memory. You’re in a rehearsed thing. Okay? It’s the same with us. If I am telling the exact same story the exact same way over and over and over again, and I don’t even ever vary it, I’m locked down. I’m in the maze and if I want to get out, the only way is to go, how do I tell the story differently? So we can, I found for myself, if I can manage to tell the story a different way … using the same set of fact but to tell a different story that’s equally true, I’m on the path to freedom. And normally the retelling of the story in a different way has to have me as not just the innocent victim. I know, it’s the worst. So here’s the worst line in the big book. It says, looking at people who have hurt us and our resentments, if we look back far enough, we will find that at some point in the past, we made a decision based on self that put us in a position to be harmed by them.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Does that stand up in women’s prison?
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Yes, 100%. A 100%. The ones who were free … because I do some stuff in men’s prisons too. The people who are the freest inside are ones who have been able to go through a restorative justice program. Where in restorative justice, the people who were the victims of the crime and the perpetrators of the crime have to sit with each other’s stories, even if they conflict. You have to honor where that person’s coming from. Do you know what’s interesting about the restorative justice thing? Liberals and conservatives both like it. It’s very unusual to find this. Conservatives like it because there’s personal accountability, and liberals like it because there’s so much humanity in it. It’s looking for the humanity, right? So yeah, it does stand up. But you have to do it in a way that isn’t the ‘blaming the victim’ way. It’s not saying, it’s your fault. I think fault and participation or involvement are different. So I just want freedom and I get really very, very attached to my grievance stories. It never helps me. It just doesn’t. I have a situation in the past, I had that story, it was worn smooth through telling. It was really locked down.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Four years after, this one situation completely blew up. Four years, I, to myself, was willing to admit what I had done to help create the situation. Four years, to myself. And then I was like, oh, you know what? I was not honest in this situation at the beginning. I was manipulative in this way at the beginning, and that really set it up to go the way it did. As soon as I was willing to do that and I admitted it to someone else, all the resentment I felt about the people involved, it was gone by like 80%.
Amanda Doyle:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
Wow.
Abby Wambach:
My mind is blowing right now because … I’ve just recently got into therapy trying to really go after my dark side. I’m like positive Patty over here for the most of my life, but I just haven’t really paid any attention to my dark side.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I just want to be there when she comes out sideways.
Abby Wambach:
She’s coming out-
Amanda Doyle:
We’re gonna need a new blessing Nadia.
Abby Wambach:
… Nadia.
Abby Wambach:
She’s coming out right now.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s not a lot of fun over there.
Abby Wambach:
Glennon’s like, what the hell is happening? Can we just be happy again? So one of our kids’ been going through a little bit of a heartbreak, and this particular situation with our kid has actually been really hard for me. I’m going to start crying now. It has broken me in a way. I’m so fucking mad and I’m like, this is too close. I shouldn’t have this experience for my kid’s heartbreak. What the fuck? I’m now understanding that watching our kid go through this, has completely brought to the forefront the way in which I contributed to all of the heartbreaks of my own life. It has fucking floored me. I watch the way that the world is and the way that … and it’s like, fuck, you did this to you. It wasn’t about that person. It was me.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Well, okay, here is the advanced course, is forgiving yourself, is forgiving yourself.
Abby Wambach:
I was just like this little scared person and I didn’t know, and I just wanted to be loved.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Of course. That’s right. And having so much compassion for that and going, and I was participating in this thing that ended up hurting me. And, I have so much compassion for that version of myself and why I felt like I had to do it. I’m really happy for you. I know that sounds horrible, but I’m really happy for you because you’re doing the real shit.
Glennon Doyle:
Every time I talk to you, there’s just magic. That’s all I’ll say. I’m really grateful for who you are in the world, and I just love you. Thank you for this hour that’s been so healing for the person I love so much. A lot of the people that surround Nadia, these are people, maybe like a lot of the pod squatters, who have been hurt by church. A lot because of queerness, but for a lot of different reasons. Nadia, what would you say to all of the love bugs who because of-
Abby Wambach:
Like me?
Glennon Doyle:
… queerness, yeah, have really been sort of told that they are not part of that community that you’re talking about.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Here it is. Here’s that blessing I wrote for Abby, do you remember?
Abby Wambach:
Yes, I do.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
So I’m going to read it. Is that okay?
Glennon Doyle:
Please.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Because I feel like, I mean, it’s specific to you, but I feel like it’s also … Okay, here it is, a blessing for Abby.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Abby, you said that when you got hurt, your body let you down and you felt mortal for the first time. I get that mortal refers to being subject to death but there’s another definition I really love, which is belonging to this world. So for you, Abby, I offer a blessing of that belonging. I bless the young queer girl who felt she did not belong in the pews of a church that told her she was an abomination. Because the real abomination is an imaginary hell created by anxious men, unconvinced of their own belonging. But you, you belong here. I bless the athlete who did superhuman things on the field, who collected more goals and trophies and titles and wins than anyone else. When you tried to buy your belonging with excellence, that deep loneliness was proof that you are so much like the rest of us and you belong here. I bless your divorce, which is no more a curse than marriage is a reward. I bless the pain that you tried to medicate away. I bless you for holding so tight to what you thought made you lovable. I bless that moment in jail when you sobered up enough to realize that no, the breathalyzer wasn’t broken and you were just a very drunk, very dangerous woman.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Even when it sucks, you belong here. So I offer you a blessing of belonging, Abby, may you luxuriate in your ordinary humanity. I’m so glad you are here with us in it. So may you wake up each morning, stretch your mortal body and hear love whispering, you belong. Amen.
Abby Wambach:
Amen.
Amanda Doyle:
Thank you.
Abby Wambach:
I’m crying again over here.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you. Did you hear that she said that divorce is no more of a curse than marriage is a reward? Holy shit.
Glennon Doyle:
Pod squad, I mean, obviously go to Substack and follow this woman. Thank you. I’m so glad you’re happy. I’m so glad that you have this love for Eric, but just also for you.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that.
Glennon Doyle:
We’ll see you-
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I wish I could give you a hug, Abby.
Abby Wambach:
My wife will. Thank you.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
I’m really good at them.
Abby Wambach:
Thank you. I want a hug. I don’t know, there’s just something about … I mean, I’m going to keep crying. But I just think that there’s something so important about somebody who sees queer people and who is of God, like the real one, not the one I grew up with. I just feel like I could just pour myself out to you, so thank you.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Well, you have my number. You’re welcome to call it.
Abby Wambach:
Thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
Thanks, Nadia.
Nadia Bolz Weber:
Thank you so much.
Glennon Doyle:
Bye, pod squad. We’ll 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 these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you’ll never miss an episode, and it helps us because you’ll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you’re there, if you’d be willing to give us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios.