Abby Asks, “Why Can’t I Love Myself?”
November 14, 2023
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Today, especially Abby, can do hard things. Pod Squad, we have tried over time to share with you what kind of the personal journeys each of us is going through and give you updates about that. Mine over time has been recovery from anorexia and embodiment. This last couple of years, Sister has been on an ongoing journey to determine the role that joy and peace and relaxation and full humanity will play in her life as opposed to-
Amanda Doyle:
Spoiler alert, it’s not much.
Glennon Doyle:
Yet.
Amanda Doyle:
Minor. Yet. Very minor role.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s a journey. It’s a journey. The longest journey starts with a single… well, spreadsheet in your case. Abby has recently been… I actually think many things led to this, one being our episode with Suzanne Stabile who told you that since you’re a seven, maybe you don’t dive much into the harder sides of emotion, that you tend to stay on the sunny side of things, that you’re a Positive Patty, that you are constantly trying to mold situations to look at the bright side.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
The episode is 226. It was the Enneagram episode we did with Suzanne Stabile. It’s amazing. Go back and listen.
Glennon Doyle:
She convinced you, along with many other things at that time in your life, it wasn’t just that, but convinced you that maybe you would benefit from exploring the harder emotions and the other side of being human. You have started therapy and started to explore other emotions than positivity, like sadness and anger and pain. We just want to know how is it going? Has it been worth it? What are the benefits? Why did you decide to do it? Where are you right now?
Abby Wambach:
Well, I think for some context, when you decided to go down onto the road of therapy, I had a front seat to kind of watch you explore that part of yourself and dedicate yourself to the consistency of therapy week after week. Because I knew what you were doing and how vulnerable that was and how hard that was, it gave me confidence to even want to think about think about going to therapy.
Abby Wambach:
I’ve been in therapy many parts of my life, just different. I just have never really had a consistent practice. It was always I was having a big issue that I needed to deal with, and so I would go to therapy, talk about it. But watching you kind of go through this experience over the past consistent 12 months, I’ve seen a considerable benefit.
Abby Wambach:
There have been a lot of things going on in my personal life, professional life, in our life and our family life that it felt like it was just becoming unmanageable. I think a lot of us use our marriages in some ways to work through a lot of our problems. You’re very good-
Amanda Doyle:
That’s a thing.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I know that you and I are very good at processing and working through stuff, but I also know that that has limitations. Not only because neither of us are clinically licensed to do this, but I think having these conversations with somebody that isn’t involved in any of my drama is really important.
Glennon Doyle:
You were having challenges in the professional realm, family of origin realm?
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Raising young adults realm?
Abby Wambach:
Yes, yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Are those pretty much the realms?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I don’t know if there are any other realms in my life. Friendship realms.
Glennon Doyle:
Friendship realms. Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Friendship realms.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
How was that different, Abby? Because I’m interested in a couple of things you said, like how you had been to therapy other points in your life. And then you used the word, all of these things happening, making it manageable. Was that a new feeling for you?
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Because you are like, I got it, I’m on it, nothing can phase me, here I go kind of a human, what did that feel like to feel like it was unmanageable, and was that a new feeling for you?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. Well, because for more context, the times that I had been in therapy, before my life had fallen apart. I was an addict. I had a heartbreak. My life not only was unmanageable, I was unable to actually live in it. And so I felt like I had to. It was like a forcing.
Abby Wambach:
This circumstance was different because everything, not only on the outside, but even on the inside was like, it was fine. It was fine. I was doing everything I needed to do. Bills are paid, kids are off to school at the right time. It was okay. My life was okay.
Amanda Doyle:
It was like the other things, when you have the divorce or the addiction, you can point to that thing and be like, “That’s the problem.” And now I need help dealing with that little tangled web. But when you’re in it and you’re just like, “Ugh, everything is fine, but everything is terrible,” that’s a very different thing.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, there were just a few crises, but they were minor in the grand scheme of what I thought therapy was for. I think that for me that’s really important. But watching Glennon go through this last year, yes, maybe hers was a specific crisis and her life was hard to get her into that therapy, but for me, I was like, “Well, I don’t think it could hurt.” And when we had that podcast with Suzanne, I don’t know, she just put this little nugget inside of my heart. It was like as soon as she said it, I just had this sinking feeling in my stomach.
Glennon Doyle:
What did she say that gave you the sinking feeling?
Abby Wambach:
She said, “Well, you need to really work on and get into your shadow side.” It was like the truest thing that anybody has ever said to me because I’ve known it, I’ve known it all along. I deep down have been avoiding it at all costs on purpose.
Glennon Doyle:
What did that mean to you when she said your shadow side? Was that uncomfortable feelings? What did that mean to you?
Abby Wambach:
I think that I interpreted it as my anger. I think that for every reason, for every good reason, the life that I have lived in, I didn’t have a lot of time or space or the financial stability to… This is how I thought. This is not true, but this is what I believed. In order to create the life that I created, I could not focus my attention on my anger.
Abby Wambach:
I think that I was afraid. I think it has everything to do with attachment. I have been very afraid to touch anger because I think that to me, it threatens my attachment to the people that I love. When I was growing up, we were not allowed. We were told not to cry. We were not allowed to bring a kind of energy into the fullness of a room and change the energy of that room. We had to assimilate, I guess in a way.
Abby Wambach:
And then I go off into locker rooms after locker room after locker room. That is a very similar mentality around don’t be the one that rocks the boat, fit in, kind of deal with whatever happens. But you have to make the best of it because it was my life.
Abby Wambach:
By virtue of necessity, I think that I have buried all of my anger. I think that it definitely has made me a half person. I have felt that way a lot in my life. I have felt split, and I thought it was because I’d lived two lives. But I think the more therapy that I’m doing, it’s because that I never really lived into the fullness of myself.
Abby Wambach:
It’s like every therapy, the beginning of therapy that a lot of us get into. You don’t think anything’s happening. The first couple of weeks, I’m like, “I don’t know.”
Glennon Doyle:
You’re like, “I’ll talk to you.”
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. Well, because I feel like-
Glennon Doyle:
You won’t charge me. I can just talk to you. You say good stuff.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. Not only do you say good stuff, but you know more about me, so getting-
Glennon Doyle:
But that’s why we can’t do it with each other, right?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
We know each other too well. We think we know each other. Our son told us that he has an artist friend, and the artist friend told him that you can’t paint a portrait of someone you know super well well.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
You don’t do it right.
Abby Wambach:
Totally. But I think it’s frustrating having to tell a stranger the whole of my story because how can they understand all of the complexities? But that is the reason why it’s so important is because they don’t know the complexities. The complexities are beliefs that I have brought to the table.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
They’re like all of the trauma and the beliefs about the things that happened-
Glennon Doyle:
The stories you’ve told yourself.
Abby Wambach:
… is what I feel, what you know because told you. She doesn’t have these.
Glennon Doyle:
I know.
Abby Wambach:
And so she’s been able to listen and I’ve had to, over the many, many months I’ve been in therapy with her, try to relate my story to her. She’s very good at being like, “Okay, is that true? Do you believe that?” We talk a lot about nonviolent communication in terms of setting boundaries because a lot of what I struggle with is confrontation and having a hard conversation with somebody around something that I feel or some hard emotion that I’m feeling around whatever’s happened. That to me feels like, nope.
Glennon Doyle:
Is it because of what you learned when you were little? If I bring them a hard thing, why would they stay?
Abby Wambach:
Of course.
Glennon Doyle:
If I bring them a sad thing, if I bring them an angry thing, if I bring them something, a preference, a boundary-
Abby Wambach:
Of course.
Glennon Doyle:
… they’re going to leave.
Abby Wambach:
Of course.
Glennon Doyle:
Why would I be more trouble than-
Abby Wambach:
Of course. And so I guess just going back to the two weeks after this therapy started, I started to allow some of the anger, some sadness, just the not popular emotions.
Glennon Doyle:
The not pleasing, the people pleasing.
Abby Wambach:
Pleasing.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, I remember those early weeks very well.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. Actually one morning you said to me, “Babe, are you okay?”
Glennon Doyle:
That was not a good moment of mine. Let’s explain why.
Abby Wambach:
You can explain that part.
Glennon Doyle:
I’ll set the scene. It was like for a few weeks I would wake up and it was like I went from living with Little Miss Sunshine to living with the devil in the sweetest way. I’d wake up in the morning and upstairs she’d be like, “The coffee machine-
Abby Wambach:
Goddammit.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, yeah. That’s you, Goddammit. I think I was scared. I understood that something important was happening, but I had a moment that I think happens when two people are surrendered to a growing experience. It’s like, I want you to get better. I, your partner, want you to get better and experience the full humanity, but hold on a second. Not like that. And do I? Tamp this shit down because where’s my sunshine? With my are you okay, I was trying to control you. I was like, oh, no, no, no. This has gone too far. Let’s get back to Little Miss Sunshine.
Amanda Doyle:
And reinforcing her fear thing, which is that if I act in a way that isn’t sunshine, it is going to alienate me from the people that I love.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
Right into the heart of that.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. Interestingly enough about that, I knew what you were doing. I knew you were covertly trying to get me to be happier or whatever. You were trying. I knew what your intention was by that question, but it actually forced me to really ask myself, “Am I okay?”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
Though I know maybe the design of the question might not have been perfect, it was really important that you asked me that with the undertones underneath it because I had to be like, “Wait, what is this work for? This is complicating my living situation. Am I okay?” I guess I had never experienced feeling the anger of my life or myself inside and then asked myself, “Wait, I’m okay.” I think that I equated anger with not okayness.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, like if the evidence is in, if you were okay, you wouldn’t be mad.
Glennon Doyle:
What did you notice?
Amanda Doyle:
You can’t be both mad and okay.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I was like, “I am okay. I am able to feel anger, and I am also in the same breath able to be okay. I’m okay with this.”
Amanda Doyle:
That’s so huge.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
You were able in that moment to say, “I am both angry and okay. I have anger.”
Abby Wambach:
Yes, that’s right. That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
Not I am anger.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right. That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
I have anger right now and I am something else, and I am okay. I was able to be like, “Oh, I am living with anger in my house and I’m okay.” No, there’s a reason why I have chosen partners who don’t show anger. I grew up in a house that had a lot of anger in it. And so when anger is near me-
Abby Wambach:
It’s triggering.
Glennon Doyle:
… I-
Abby Wambach:
You’re not okay.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m not okay, except that I am.
Abby Wambach:
So did you-
Glennon Doyle:
We both realized we were okay.
Abby Wambach:
That’s really fascinating. Yeah. I think that throughout my life I felt like I was going to have to do this on my own, and being okay, that was it. That is all I needed to be. I needed to be okay. I think that the belief that I had around if I’m angry and that equating to not being okay, it was like, well, I can’t do that. That’s a no-fly zone for me. That was a really important moment.
Abby Wambach:
And then to just go a little bit further, because I haven’t over the whole of my life really accessed anger as much, I would bury it down because it was there, I was feeling it, but I was not expressing it. And so I’d bury it, and then it would start stacking and stacking and stacking, and it would lead me to blow up very rarely, but I would blow up and it would take me down.
Glennon Doyle:
And at odd times.
Abby Wambach:
Very odd times. It would be the weirdest thing. It would be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Glennon Doyle:
You’d take the wrong exit off of a highway, and it was like the end of the world.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, and I’d be pissed for the next-
Glennon Doyle:
Or you were hungry.
Abby Wambach:
Yes, ooh, hunger.
Glennon Doyle:
If you were hungry-
Abby Wambach:
That’s a whole different story.
Glennon Doyle:
… you’d get so angry.
Abby Wambach:
That’s I think a whole different psychological-
Glennon Doyle:
Different episode.
Abby Wambach:
… discussion. But yes. And so now that I’m starting to express my displeasure or distaste or unhappiness or anger or sadness or whatever, I’m saying some of these things more vocally, I still am probably not perfect, but I’m trying my best to say things.
Abby Wambach:
I realize now that when I say them, they don’t last. It comes up, I experience it, I vocalize it, and then it goes away, where before I’d let it pile up. Something would set me off and then I would stay angry and upset and I’d be mad at myself because here I am now not okay.
Abby Wambach:
So it was like the shame cycle and spiral that I would experience when in fact I would blow up in a rage of some sort. That’s been really interesting because I’m able to say it and let the emotion kind of move through me.
Amanda Doyle:
Can I say one thing about the background of this? Because the Suzanne piece that you’re mentioning is so interesting. When you say the shadow side and the dark emotions, the way that she described it to you, that your face turned 14 different colors of recognition.
Amanda Doyle:
She was talking about how folks like you, specifically in this context sevens, just learned very early. And your natural inclination is anything that happens, even if it looks to other people disappointing or tragic or upsetting or whatever, that your instinct is to immediately reframe. You’re just constantly reframing. Oh, that thing, oh, here’s the good part about that. Or this is why it looks like a bad thing, but here’s why it’s a good thing. And constantly this cycle of that over and over and over.
Amanda Doyle:
No one ever wants you to change that because it’s very convenient for the people around you. But then you don’t change that until the one thing that you can’t reframe. And then she said, “And then all of everything falls apart and you have to go back and grieve all of that.”
Amanda Doyle:
Are you having a process now or are you yet at the period where you are grieving all of it? She said that it’s not just forward-looking, that when you accept things in your life and you’re like, “I’m not trying to reframe that. That thing that happened that’s shitty and I’m going to name it as shitty and I’m going to let it flow through me.” Are you still at that phase or are you yet feeling like you’re going back and grieving all the shit that you never were able to because you were constantly reframing it as something kind of good?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I think I’m still in the process of pulling up all of the things that I have a story around that was hard, sad, angering because I think in the process of the reframe and then in the process of the analysis of that reframe over the whole of my life has made me, I think, skew the truth.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, interesting.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I think that the truth is what I’m after. As a kid who’s 17, 18 years old and has to go out into the world and now feels like I have to make my own life for my own self, there are really good stories I think that I have told in order to prop myself up as the hero of my story.
Abby Wambach:
There are really true stories that also make that true. There are some hard truths of my story that I think in the end I will understand as the truth. But I am trying to go back and examine all the relationships that I’ve had in my life that have impacted me.
Abby Wambach:
What I am realizing in the last session I had with my therapist about my relationship with my parents, my parents getting older, all of the things that go along with having a full life with two parents, I think it’s been fascinating because the expectations that I have had on my parents have been unmet, and those were expectations that I levied on them. They have been the same people all the way through. I am hurt because I think I hurt myself.
Glennon Doyle:
You were brightsiding them.
Abby Wambach:
I was brightsiding my parents.
Glennon Doyle:
That caused a gap between what is and what you were wanting them to be with your positive spin on them. And that gap was suffering.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. I think the responsibility in my therapy and for myself and for my future is to claim what I own in the way that my relationships, whether it’s my parents or friends or past people I’ve dated, whatever, I haven’t held as much responsibility as I needed to in the way that those relationships have unfolded because I have put expectations on these people that were impossible for them to meet. It’s a really fascinating way to protect yourself.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. It’s also the shadow side of being a Positive Patty because it’s that thing where hope is dangerous. Hope is what we put on. I put on you because I think you can be better than this. I see your best self. I see you’re this thing, and they’re not meeting that. You did that to them.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right. It’s on me. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy of being alone. And then I get to create the story around why that all happened. This person was this way, that person was that way. I think it was just impossible expectations because people were telling me all along who they were. My parents have been telling me all along. They have never deviated from themselves.
Glennon Doyle:
They didn’t sign on to your improvement plan.
Abby Wambach:
No. That is fine for them, but I have been carrying this. Look at me, I’m over here self-help myself and pushing myself and ambitious and wanting more for myself, and I cannot put that on my parents. They have chosen the life that they have and the life that they wanted. But I have put on a hope for love, a hope for my relationships with my parents that for whatever reason was just not possible. That is my responsibility to own.
Glennon Doyle:
Do you feel angry about it now? Now that you’re letting go of the brightsiding of your family of origin, you’re not pushing them to be something that they are not, is there a process of looking at the truth of things and grieving what actually always was?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, I’m not at that stage yet. I’m trying to go through this process of thinking about myself as that eight-year-old little girl where I think a lot of this was imprinted on me in terms of what I needed to do to survive. There was a part of me that needed to do all of this to survive, and I have to honor that little girl inside of me that was so scared and was trying her best and didn’t know and wasn’t really educated about this stuff and didn’t have the capacity and was fighting for her life.
Abby Wambach:
I mean, being a professional soccer player, there is a selfishness and a narcissism that I thought I needed to have in order to be the best at it. Whether that’s true or not is irrelevant at this point because that’s what I thought I needed. That’s the person that I had to create in order to be in that world.
Glennon Doyle:
You couldn’t ask too many questions and you couldn’t have too many needs and you couldn’t have too many feelings because there was somebody behind you-
Abby Wambach:
Exactly.
Glennon Doyle:
… that would do the job, that would show up if you didn’t have needs.
Abby Wambach:
Very true.
Glennon Doyle:
The same thing happened in your family. When you have a huge family like that that’s not deeply into emotions, you walk into a room, you can’t start telling your needs.
Abby Wambach:
No.
Glennon Doyle:
You can’t start crying. You will get sent to your room.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
So it was a very real, if I show up with needs, I will be banished, which is what attachment is based on.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. This is probably the biggest work of my life that I’ve been avoiding for a long time. I know that I needed to feel really stable and grounded. I mean, one of my therapy sessions, you know the story, but it makes me chuckle every time because she just asked me, “Well, do you trust people? It seems like with your childhood and the life that you lived and the way that you are operating, I’m curious about trust and how you trust people.” I’m like, “Oh yeah, I trust people.”
Abby Wambach:
She’s like, “With your life, with everything to know you completely?” That was a really confronting question to me because I haven’t touched this part of myself to really even know if somebody would accept all of these parts of me.
Glennon Doyle:
Wow.
Abby Wambach:
I mean, it still makes me laugh. She’s like, “Okay, so who do you trust?” I’m thinking in my head, I’m like, well, of course I trust Glennon. And so I was on a Zoom with this woman and I’m like, “I, um, I trust, um I, I trust my wife.” She’s looking at me weird. I’m like, “I can’t say it out loud. What the fuck?” Because it was too vulnerable.
Glennon Doyle:
Too scary.
Abby Wambach:
I was too scared to say it. Not to you, to her. I was like, “What the fuck?”
Glennon Doyle:
What felt so vulnerable about it?
Abby Wambach:
If I said it out loud, it was real.
Glennon Doyle:
And if it was real?
Abby Wambach:
Then it could be taken.
Glennon Doyle:
Then it could be taken away.
Abby Wambach:
And so I got off the call with my therapist and I came upstairs and I sat down and I said… Do you remember this?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. I was doing an email, and she sits down next to me. I didn’t even know she’d just had therapy. I’m just trying to get through my day. I’m sitting at the computer. She walks up, she sits down next to me, she goes, “I trust you, Glennon.” I was like, “Me too, babe. Me too, babe. Just finishing this email.” She’s like, “No, I trust you” and starts crying. I’m like, “What is happening?”
Abby Wambach:
It was just such a big deal to me.
Glennon Doyle:
Trust can mean so many different things to so many different people. In that moment, were you defining trust as I believe I could bring to you my anger, my shame, my weakness, all the things, and you would stay?
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I will also be super honest that four seconds after I said it, look, I’m early in therapy folks, so don’t judge me for this, I said, “But you’re not going to leave me, right? You won’t ever leave me, right?”
Glennon Doyle:
I was like, “I don’t even know what’s going on. I’m just on Zillow over here.”
Amanda Doyle:
She’s like, “I just made this incredibly disruptive confession that I trust you. I need you to tell me that you’re not going to leave me.”
Glennon Doyle:
You know what I was just thinking, babe, is when I think about all the ways that you used to allow your anger to come out, none of it had to do with people. You only let your anger come out about things, about machines that broke in our house, about car situations-
Abby Wambach:
Inefficiencies.
Glennon Doyle:
… traffic, food. But if I brought up anything with a person or relationship and said, “Doesn’t that piss you off?” you’d be like, “Oh, yeah, but they’re trying to…” blah, blah, blah. It was always a reframe if it was about a person, because things can’t leave. You can bring your feelings to things because they won’t go.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I mean, this is the truth. I want to be the kind of person that doesn’t have these problems.
Amanda Doyle:
Amen.
Abby Wambach:
But I also want to be the kind of person, more than that, that has these problems and can have the most grace for myself.
Glennon Doyle:
Aw.
Amanda Doyle:
Aw.
Abby Wambach:
That is what I’m trying to bridge. I’m trying to bridge that gap because I know all of us have so many problems that we work through on a daily basis and the world is throwing shit at us every single day. I guess this whole path I’m walking right now is truly about loving my whole self and not being afraid of myself.
Abby Wambach:
I think that there’s a part of me that is afraid not only of losing people, but that I am unlovable. God, I just want to once and for all feel like I love myself and that I am not in jeopardy because of that love of anything. That is my dream for myself.
Abby Wambach:
I’ve just learned so many fucked up messages throughout my life about humanity and people. We all do, but my God, that should be something that is just innately in me, and I feel like such a failure. I know I’m a good person, but how could I not love myself? Why is that so fucking hard for me? It’s not fair.
Abby Wambach:
I just feel disappointed because it feels like the work of my life and I don’t know. I don’t know when I die, I don’t know if I’m going to just know that I have this love. I think that this has a lot to do with my fear of death because it feels like such an impossible mountain to climb. It’s like, how do you do that? I love so big, and how can it be impossible? It doesn’t feel right. It feels like there’s a glitch in the matrix for me that I don’t have the makings of being able to actually love myself enough that I am not afraid that people might leave me, that I am not afraid of dying, that I am not afraid of existing in some ways. It’s just so fucking annoying.
Abby Wambach:
I don’t know. I mean, I do understand therapy is so fucking expensive, and that is a huge privilege that I get to have to be able to go and talk to somebody for 50 minutes, and it feels strange to be in this body and to have this spirit and to feel like I don’t have that part of me that other people have, feels like I was born without it or something. It’s been like this thing that’s eating at me for my life. It’s frustrating and sad. I’m so angry because I feel like I have something wrong with me.
Glennon Doyle:
Tell me what the thing that’s wrong with you is? The self-love goal, which is so beautiful when you’re talking, I’m thinking about that Raymond Carver poem that says, “And did you get what you wanted on this earth? And what was that? To feel myself, beloved.” You just want to feel yourself beloved on this earth?
Abby Wambach:
By myself.
Glennon Doyle:
By yourself, yes.
Abby Wambach:
I want to feel beloved by myself.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. When you worry about something being wrong with you, it’s so interesting because this is what very well has always been my challenge, like something’s wrong with me, do you see how it would be possible that a kid who’s born into a family where their emotions are shut down, which by the way was allowed in that generation and you were not allowed to bring your full self to the table, so part of you was banished?
Glennon Doyle:
And then you entered the spiritual realm, which was church where you were told by the people in charge, just like you were told by the people in charge in your home, that the part of yourself that you weren’t showing was bad, and if you showed it, you would be banished and sent to hell. And then you got into sports where only strength and only power is allowed to be shown, and if any weakness or vulnerability is shown, you’re banished and you’re kicked off the team.
Glennon Doyle:
Do you see how it would be not just possible, but inevitable, that having lived that life, you would believe over time, you would’ve had to be an insane not to believe that there was a part of yourself that was unacceptable for public consumption and that was bad and evil and unlovable?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. I get why I am the way that I am.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, so you don’t think that it’s something wrong with you, but you do think that it’s something wrong with you because that’s what you were taught?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, but here’s the thing. This is where I kind of go in circles around this concept because I understand the landscape. I get it, but it feels like the one thing you’re not supposed to lose. It feels like breath. And how could I be doing this all with no breath?
Glennon Doyle:
Self-love feels like breath. That is right. We all lose it. We all lose our breath.
Abby Wambach:
I don’t know. We can scratch the surface of all of these things. We can even go deep down, but at the end of the day, that’s what this is about for me. I am scared to feel anger. I’m scared to be in confrontation. I’m scared to threaten my attachment. I can go through all of the things.
Abby Wambach:
At the end, it’s like, what is going to give? What do I need to do? Because I don’t hate myself. That’s not what we’re talking about. I don’t know if it’s something you can develop.
Amanda Doyle:
What would it feel like to you, Abby? If we don’t know how to get there yet, and that’s fine, can we cast a vision of what it would feel like? If you knew you were beloved to yourself, it would feel like this. You would know it because of this. What is the world of your future that you’re living in look like when you know you’re beloved to yourself?
Abby Wambach:
I don’t know. I think the only thing that I can think of is just being held in my little blankie when I was a kid, that feeling of complete security. I have a lot of codependency things that I’m also working on in therapy because of this. I have always felt like there was somebody else that would make me love myself, that would make me feel love so much so that I would love myself, and I found you.
Abby Wambach:
What I have realized is we found each other not only to express ourselves and love each other and have a beautiful family but to also figure out how to really love ourselves. And I think that that might be part of your therapy, but I really hit a brick wall because I’m like, “Yes, I’m ready. I understand all the whys. I’m here.”
Glennon Doyle:
But why can’t it sink in?
Abby Wambach:
Why can’t I just feel it?
Glennon Doyle:
I get it.
Amanda Doyle:
That is what you mean earlier when you were saying it is a great strategy to protect yourself and keep yourself alone by making sure that you are dreaming into the other people’s version of what they can be, because as long as they are failing to meet your standards you’ve set for them, it will always be about them. It will never be about you.
Amanda Doyle:
Now you’re in this relationship where you’re like, “I’ve set all these highest of hopes and you and our relationship are meeting them, and yet I still have this thing.”
Glennon Doyle:
Well, that’s the absolute beauty of getting everything you’ve ever wanted is that you figure out that it didn’t do it. That is the absolute gift of our relationship is that we thought that we were going to save each other, but what happened is that you steadied the boat enough for me to feel safe enough to save myself, and I steadied the boat enough for you to feel like you were steady enough to save yourself because I mean, I remember when we first got together and you were like, “I don’t think you’re going to have to take your meds anymore.” I was like, “Oh, isn’t she going to be surprised in about a year.”
Glennon Doyle:
It’s terrifying. It’s a terrifying gift to get what you want and have it not fix everything and realize that it’s all up to you. We’re going to come back in the next episode and talk more about this, but what I think you just did is I think that you think that you just revealed your dark personal situation, and I think what you just did more beautifully than I’ve ever seen anyone do it and more honestly and more crystal clear, is that you just revealed the human condition.
Glennon Doyle:
What you did is reveal with unbelievable beauty, the human condition of why can’t we love ourselves and what did the world do to us to put us in this situation? I thought it was absolutely stunning. If there’s something wrong with you, then that’s the thing that’s wrong with all of us.
Amanda Doyle:
And you’re more advanced because you’ve identified it.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m sitting here this whole time being like, “Wow. She got to the place where she knows that.” I’ve never even asked myself that question if I love myself.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. It’s about all of us. So thank you, babe. So beautiful.
Amanda Doyle:
Wow.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m just imagining you for your whole life, I’m envisioning it and I’m going to keep thinking about it, the Abby that has access, no matter what’s happening, no matter what anger, no matter what conflict, no matter what relationship she’s in, to always be able to return to the touch tree inside of you, secure under that blanket and that you’ll always, always have access to that.
Abby Wambach:
That’s what I want. Yeah. I think that this goes to part of what we were talking about earlier too. It’s like that’s what I was trying to create my whole life while creating the madness here and the insanity. I was trying to be okay and I was doing it incorrectly. I was managing it wrong. I was drinking.
Glennon Doyle:
You were managing exactly as you needed to. You were right.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
You were right that you couldn’t bring the needs to your house. You were right that you couldn’t bring yourself to church. You were right that you couldn’t bring your full self to the sports world. You were right. It’s just that now you’re suddenly in a place in your life, in your mental health, in your family, where you might not have to use those things anymore. But you did have to. It got you to where you are now. You were taking care of yourself.
Abby Wambach:
But how will I find out for myself once and for all? What will be the thing? What is the way? I’ll do anything.
Glennon Doyle:
Pod Squad, we’ll be back next with the way. See you next time.
Glennon Doyle:
If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you’d be willing to take 30 seconds to do 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.
Glennon Doyle:
To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audacy, 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 Cadence13 Studios