The Unexpected Way Amanda Built Community
January 9, 2024
Abby Wambach:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Wait, hold on. I’m going to do it like Glennon. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.
Glennon Doyle:
She thinks that I whisper. This is the biggest… A lot of people’s fights I hear in relationships are about money and sex, probably. Those are actually some of our fights too. But what I would say the number one conflict in our marriages is is volume.
Abby Wambach:
Volume.
Glennon Doyle:
Volume, just is she too loud or am I too soft?
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s the question of the century.
Amanda Doyle:
The answer is yes. I was an outsider.
Glennon Doyle:
I will tell you that, sister, you’ll love this. So I for 100% think that Abby’s just extraordinarily loud. Excessively loud, megaphone loud. She thinks that I’m too quiet and I’m doing it on purpose to drive her nuts. The other day-
Amanda Doyle:
It’s called polarization in relationship.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, yes. Did I tell the pod squad about when Tig and Stephanie were over?
Abby Wambach:
No, I don’t think you have.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. So Tig and Stephanie were over-
Abby Wambach:
Best moment of my life.
Glennon Doyle:
A couple months ago… They’re just the loveliest people, just the absolute best. We were having them over for there for the first time, and so we don’t have people over very often, so it’s like a big deal for us. So we’re all sitting on the couch, Tig and Stephanie, me and Abby, and we’re talking telling stories. And I’m talking and I can see that Tig just keeps leaning forward more and more and she is leaning so close to me. She’s just leaning in and I’m like, “Oh, my God, I am…”
Amanda Doyle:
I’m captivating. I’m captivating to Tig Notaro.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m captivated to take Notaro. I thought it was a good story, but I was like, “Wow, I cannot wait to talk to Abby about how engaged Tig is.” And then finally she gets so close to me and she interrupts my story and she goes, “Excuse me. Why are you whispering?”
Abby Wambach:
I was like, “Yes.”
Amanda Doyle:
You’re the validation that I needed, Abby.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Y’all, I looked at Abby, I was like, “That’s it. It’s over for me.” That in that Tig Notaro has decided that it is my fault. Welcome to, We Can Do Hard Things everybody. How are you two? Let’s check in.
Abby Wambach:
I’m great.
Glennon Doyle:
But really, how are you today?
Abby Wambach:
I got my morning routine done and dusted.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, done and dusted.
Abby Wambach:
My favorite phrase-
Glennon Doyle:
Pad squatters is important things for you to know about Abby. One of which is that at least seven times a day she uses the phrase, “Done and dusted.”
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And I think that if she can’t find the appropriate context, that was perfect context. She’ll just do it anyway. It’s like a rule she has for life, where she has to say done and dusted five times. Also, sweating to the oldies.
Abby Wambach:
Yes, I do.
Glennon Doyle:
She says sweating to the oldies at least five times a day. If she walk up the stairs, she goes, “I’m sweating to the oldies.” It has to be done. It has to be done.
Abby Wambach:
I say weird stuff for sure. How are you today, this day, this moment?
Glennon Doyle:
I’m good. I’m good. I was thinking this morning about raising teenagers and about how interesting it’s been lately.
Abby Wambach:
It’s been so interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
We’re just going to keep saying interesting. And what I want to say is that it is different than raising young children, in that when you’re raising little kids, it can be un-isolating because you can talk about it so much because they aren’t real people. They’re just blobs of… There’s nothing personal about a toddler. They’re just…
Amanda Doyle:
Well, the Venn diagram of your life and their life is one complete Venn diagram [inaudible 00:04:18]
Glennon Doyle:
Right. And now I feel like raising teenagers, you need more community or talking or ideas or brainstorming with other parents, but you can’t have it. Because there would be too much of a breach-
Abby Wambach:
Of the trust of your children.
Glennon Doyle:
… to talk about-
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, that’s hard
Glennon Doyle:
… what it is. So anyway,
Abby Wambach:
You’ve done a beautiful job. I feel like you’re killing it.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you, babe. It’s so weighted. You’ve lost all control, but you’re still trying to guide. But I don’t know. It is a doozy, man.
Abby Wambach:
I’ve been really trying to learn from you because the truth is, as teenage kids have been more triggering to me than I anticipated.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
And when something happens and it’s upsetting to me, I look at you and you look fine, you look fine. And I’m like, “Wow.” Even yesterday I had an epiphany and I texted you, “I have an epiphany,” And I, especially with teenage girls, trying to detox from the patriarchy is so difficult for me personally for a lot of reasons. But sending our kids out into the world, our daughters, I just feel astonished with how triggered I feel with them becoming individual young adult women.
Glennon Doyle:
You know how Abby was in a different life, she was from Yonderyour from the medieval time, I’m pretty sure.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, for sure.
Glennon Doyle:
I feel like she’s a little bit like that. She turns into her medieval self and she’s like a king on the castle saying, “Thou will not come near Thou’s daughter.” She turns into this. It’s really interesting.
Abby Wambach:
I feel super protective of the girls and that’s at the bottom of it. I love them so much and because I went through life as a young woman in this world, I feel like almost extra protective of them. And I don’t need to be that way because this is my problem. They’re fine.
Glennon Doyle:
They really are.
Abby Wambach:
They’re fine. They’re completely fine. They’re responsible. But I’m just, every little thing, I’m like, “Oh, what’s happening? She’s trying to pull one over on me. She’s lying.” No, they’re just being teenage girls. And it has been the hardest letting go of, or surrender. I’m still not quite there yet. You’ve just been so solid. I keep looking at you. I’m like, I want to feel that solid.
Glennon Doyle:
You just can’t hear me. I’m whispering, “Help. Help.” So that’s it. We wish we could talk more about it. I really do. I wish I could talk to the pod squad about it. I think about that all the time actually. But what I do want to say to the pod squad is, I send you love and solidarity if you too are in this interesting teenage time where I think, here’s what I think. I think it has more to do with dealing with your own shit than anything else. Because it’s so true that you can’t control anything anyway. You’re not really deciding much or strategizing much. Although I would like the pod squad to tell me, what is your kid’s curfew? I want to know this. Just tell me. Just say for example, you had a 15-year-old girl and let’s say for example, you had an 18-year-old. How old is she?
Abby Wambach:
17-year-old.
Glennon Doyle:
A 17-year-old. I just want you to tell me what their curfews are, okay.
Abby Wambach:
Sissy, how are you? You were going to tell us something about the weekend.
Amanda Doyle:
I know I wanted to share a story about the weekend because I had a really cool experience that I wanted to share with you and the pod squad and it’s gotten me thinking all weekend long and I’m curious what you all think about this. So do you remember Glenn and my friend from the law firm Christine?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I do. I haven’t heard from her for a long time. Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. Christine was my law firm colleague and she became a dear friend through that. And we’ve stayed in touch some since the decade since I left the firm, but we don’t see each other really because life. And Christine is married to Chris, so that’s cute because they’re Chris and Christy.
Glennon Doyle:
Chris and Chris.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s fun. But they have been together forever. And a year ago, something really terrifying happened to Chris where they realized that he had a congenital heart defect and he had a huge aneurysm in his heart and it required this very complex, massive surgery. And they are both as type A+ type people as you can imagine. Both Yale grads, lawyers, they do not ask for help. They’re like, “We will solve all the problems ourselves,” And they just have everything locked down on their own. But when this happened a year ago, it was just so overwhelming to them and really scary and complicated.
And so Christine, at that point, she had to be in another state with Chris during the surgery and they have two kids at home and she wrote to me and was like, “This is what I need from you during this time where I’m away.” She didn’t say it like that. She was like, “This is what’s happening. Would you be willing to help?” And she gave me concrete things to do to help. And then now it’s been a year since the surgery happened and they hosted a dinner this weekend. There were six couples at the dinner and them, and they called it Eat your Heart out. Which is…
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, because of the heart, I got it.
Amanda Doyle:
I love a play on words, which is bonus points for that. But so at the top of the dinner they both stood up and they said that the night was inspired by our episode with Priya Parker, How to Host a Magical Gathering. This is 256. If you haven’t listened, you should listen to it. But it was so beautiful because they said the purpose of the night was not to celebrate Chris and his recovery, but it was to celebrate the people that had gotten them through that scariest time of their lives. They talked about how hard it was for them to ask for help and they used the word safety. They said the help that we received from this group gave us the safety that we needed to do what we needed to do. And it was just such a really special space to be in and knowing how they normally operate in their lives. It was really special to hear them talk about how much it changed their lives to know that that help and safety existed if they open themselves up to it.
Christine said, “We just want everyone in this room to know that if you are ever in a position where you need help, that we will be there for you. And we also know from this experience that if you open yourself up to receiving help, that your people will show up and make things okay.” And the just intentionality of hosting an event for that purpose was really, really special. And then it just got me thinking that in a much bigger way, being in that room was a really magical time and I realized that not only would I have missed out on reconnecting with Christine, but I also would never be in that space literally if she hadn’t reached out for help. It suddenly felt like this new frame on that where being open to help is one of the most generous things you can do because it just gives all of these gifts that you wouldn’t have if people were not able to step into that connection. I don’t know. It has me thinking all about a lot of things.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Amanda Doyle:
That I just stop [inaudible 00:13:06] and think about.
Glennon Doyle:
In your own life?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Because we just think of it as such a burden in our culture. It feels like a burden to ask someone else for help. Or a failure or a weakness, and you’re seeing it as the opposite, in that context.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, I’ve been thinking since that event that some of the most sacred moments of my life were actually a direct result of people being open to, quote-unquote “help.” It has me thinking a lot about Wendy. So this is my dear friend Wendy who died in October and the year between her diagnosis and when she passed. Despite how precious she knew every single moment was during that time, she just opened her life up to us to step in and walk her through it. And I remember at that time and throughout the whole thing being, “I would never be like this. I would be pull up the gate. It is just me and a couple people in here and we are…” That I would feel like people were, even in helping me extracting or taking my time, even if I needed the help.
Glennon Doyle:
The scarcer the time, the less you’d be likely to share it.
Amanda Doyle:
Right. And I don’t know if it’s because she actually needed the transport to the places. But it was that generosity of being allowed into her life in that time resulted in some of the most profound peace and wisdom and connection that I have found. Being able to, quote-unquote “help” in that time. So it doesn’t feel like help is even the right word when people invite you in, because it just seems wildly inaccurate. Because her allowing us to be in those sacred moments with her, allowed us to experience gifts and wisdom that aren’t possible to find in other places.
Glennon Doyle:
Wow.
Abby Wambach:
Sacred show up.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, you know I like that. It’s the wrong word. It’s we think we’re asking for help, but is it inviting? If you have a moment where you’re suddenly aware of your need for a connection and you decide to invite a few people in to connect. What is that? It’s not asking for help. It’s like some sacred invitation.
Amanda Doyle:
It is.
Glennon Doyle:
And that’s what you experienced, is the sacred invitation of that. Tell us about it.
Amanda Doyle:
It doesn’t feel like it’s, oh, it’s doing the right thing. Oh, someone needs help. So you sign up to give the food and it’s like, check. A good person would do that. It doesn’t feel like that. It feels like it was stepping into a reality and a wisdom that you don’t usually have access to in the regular street level, daily life. And I feel like whenever anyone really needs help and you’re able to be invited into that, it is like you’re not street level anymore. It’s like you’re tapping into a higher reality of, we’re all actually connected to each other. We’re just on the other plane, we’re acting like we’re not. But when you’re able to accept help or provide help, then whoever’s being helped or whoever’s the helper doesn’t matter anymore. It’s like you’re just tapping into a bigger reality that we are actually all connected and you have the privilege of living on the higher plane there.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s like a new dimension.
Amanda Doyle:
Where you’re disconnected from that on the lower plane.
Abby Wambach:
Yep. That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s another dimension.
Amanda Doyle:
It feels like another dimension and it feels like, the safety piece goes both ways. It’s not just like the person that’s quote-unquote “being helped” that feels safer. I feel safer, having been able to operate momentarily on those planes because I am tapped in to that bigger life.
Glennon Doyle:
Do you think that this is one of the reasons why people who go through tragedy, although it’s horrific and requires all of them and that afterwards they often feel a sense of loss or purposelessness? It was horrific, but it was another dimension that after it’s over, they’re back into the normal world and they’re not in that beautiful give and take, close to the essence of what life and love are.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. It’s like you live your whole life without glasses on and then all of a sudden you get a pair of glasses and you can finally see what it is, what it’s all about. And then you go back into your real life and somebody rips the glasses off and you can’t see.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I mean I have a friend whose mom passed and it was a horrible time. But after her mom passed, she said, “At least I woke up every day of the last two years knowing exactly where I should be, knowing exactly what I should be doing. I knew exactly what the most important thing was and where I was, the most divine place that I could be every day. And now I’m just like, what the fuck do I do? I don’t have that sense of purpose and connection,” I guess.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, I get that. That probably makes sense because if you’re in the middle of those crisis, it’s like a total immersion program of, I’m operating on this plane of life. The rest of the world that’s lucky enough to just be doing daily life isn’t operating on and they’re lucky, right, because they’re not going through a crisis or they’re not on their knees needing help or walking someone through who’s on their knees needing help. It’s like they’re the unlucky ones, but they get to operate on this plane where there is that clarity and there is what I think is actually true all the time.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, the veil is lifted. It’s like that thin places idea, that there are thin places where the veil is lifted between this dimension and the one beyond, and then you live in the other one. What was the dinner like?
Amanda Doyle:
We just all sat around and told stories and they talked about the experience and it was funny and silly. I was sitting by Chris and Chris, there was a woman there, Leslie, that I had never met before, and he said that she told him that she felt the closest she had to God when she was driving his kids around during that scary week.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God.
Amanda Doyle:
And that was such a wild thing to hear, but it makes sense. If this higher plane is this idea of, we are operating in a time where we’re aware that we’re connected. We’re aware that we can step in for each other. We’re aware that other people will step in for us. We’re aware that the farce of us doing anything on our own is blown up. Then that seems like it’s a very direct connection to whatever is happening between us and God.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, it’s probably what Jesus was getting at with all the, the kingdom of heaven is like… If he was doing that, but the kingdom of heaven is like you’re driving your colleague’s car around, you’re driving your colleague’s kids around because they have heart disease. The kingdom of heaven is like you’re sitting around Wendy’s bed. It’s like glimpses, glimpses, glimpses.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s just like a portal of that. And it made me think a lot about my discomfort and unwillingness to ask for or accept help and how… It’s like a humble brag that people do like, “Oh, I don’t ask for help. I don’t ask for it, I’m not into that.” But it really, in really stark contrast walking through Wendy, my life would have been smaller and sadder and scarier had Wendy not invited me into her life. So does that not mean that my not getting over my discomfort with asking for or accepting help is not only making my life smaller, but making the life smaller of people around me?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s selfish in a way.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s not building that thing that you’re talking about, that magic. It’s really interesting to consider just changing the language around it in your own head. Instead of saying, “I’m asking for help.” “I’m inviting these people in. I’m inviting these people in. I’m inviting these people in.” I mean, as you’re talking, I’m thinking about Brandi is mentoring Tish, just their incredible creative partners right now. It’s unbelievable. In the very beginning, Brandi would be like, “Let’s send your music to this person or that person, or let’s call this person and ask for advice.” And Tish would be like, “Wait.” She would feel scared because she would feel like, “Why would I be asking this person for help? It feels so audacious.”
And Brandi just said, “Oh, no, no. Asking for help, asking for advice. That’s how you build your team. That’s how you build your people.” And that was so very weird. And now I’m watching her and all the people who are surrounding her, and they’re all the people in the very beginning who Brandi and Tish were reaching out. And Brandi explained, “This is how people feel invested in you. This is how you create the people who will be your people in 20 years.” I would think of it as the people you do favors for or something. That’s how I…
Abby Wambach:
No, it’s building heaven on earth.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Your own heaven on earth. Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. It’s counterintuitive. There’s so many reasons why we don’t ask for it, right. We’re putting people out, but we put people out all the time. That’s not the real reason, I don’t think. I don’t think that being a burden is the real reason. I think the real reason is that it is so fucking scary to do that. Because A, what if we call for help out into the world and no one shows up. And B, if we do call out for help and someone does show up, then we are putting ourself in the hands of other people, literally, figuratively, spiritually, whatever it is where you’re like, “I don’t have it in me to do this and I have to trust you to do…” Whether it’s a minuscule thing like dropping off food at the house or a much bigger thing. That is a very…
Abby Wambach:
It’s vulnerable.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s a scary leap to be like…
Glennon Doyle:
It feels very out of control.
Abby Wambach:
It is, but it’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy to end up alone with no help nor people around you if you never ask for it.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
I know that I’m talking very esoterically about this theoretically, but it is a practical world changing on the ground thing. When you’re entering that higher plan and you know that help is what’s required, it actually on the lower plane builds things out. With Wendy she wanted to plan her service, and so it was like, who is the person going to be who can do this right? And so my friend Becca from college is this brilliant, amazing, perfect human for that. And I had to call her and be like, “Help us.” And it felt like a giant burden. She’s got her own church, she’s got her own everything, and she didn’t know Wendy.
And now she would say that that was one of the best things to happen to her in her life. The fact that she got to know her for those five months to be with her, and she’s now incredibly woven into our community here. That her quote-unquote, “giving us huge help” has made her life so much bigger. And now Becca and I are so much more connected than we were before. It’s real. It’s actually, I think what might be the thing that builds lives and communities being like, “Help me.”
Glennon Doyle:
Do you think some people are like, “Duh,” listening right now?
Abby Wambach:
No, no, no.
Glennon Doyle:
Some people are good at it maybe.
Abby Wambach:
No, no. I think that there’s a misconception-
Amanda Doyle:
This has all been a fucking revelation to me.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I think what we’re talking about is varsity level intentionality around creating the community that you want. Because so many of us, myself included, I would consider myself a generous person. I’m generous with my energy, my time. And because of that generosity, and I think a lot of us might feel this way about ourselves, that I’m building a life that if I needed something, people would show up. However, I don’t think it would be as easy for me to say, “I need you.” My thought is, people will come if they sense that I need something, rather than me saying, “Will you come to me now? I need you.”
Amanda Doyle:
And that is the thing.
Abby Wambach:
That’s the difference.
Amanda Doyle:
That is the thing, Abby, because what is huge about that is that is the invitation and that’s what I would think. Can’t people see that I’m struggling? Can’t people see that I need help. If they wanted to help, they would show up, if they wanted to.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
Christine wrote me a text and said, “This is what’s happening. This is what I need from you and the dates I need you to do it.”
Glennon Doyle:
Wow, that’s so cool.
Amanda Doyle:
It wasn’t a heroic thing for me. I was like, “Yes. The answer is yes.” And that’s why it’s like a prayer. That’s the connection to me, to the spiritual thing. It reminds me of Anne Lamott when she’s like, “All of my prayers can be boiled down into [inaudible 00:29:37] Help, thanks and wow.” And that is what friendship is, right?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
So you’re praying to other people. You’re sending your prayers to a person instead of just to God. Please bring me a casserole God. You’re like, no, you send your friend one it’s like, “I need you to bring me a casserole on Thursday.”
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. It’s like how vulnerable it is to say to God, “Help please.” It’s that same fucking vulnerability to say to your friend, “Help.” It is a two-way thing. It isn’t that the people will show up if they love you. You have to be vulnerable enough to ask for it. And the thanks and the wow only become because of the help. And I’m beginning to think that the thanks and the wow of friendship only comes because of the help.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, so if you have no thanks and wow, or not a lot of awe and gratitude, it could be because you’re not reaching out enough to request what will result in gratitude and awe.
Amanda Doyle:
I think it might be, and I think that whole idea when you’re like, “I’m building the kind of world where I hope that people will show up for me.” I do that too. And I think there’s a little bit of that that’s a capitalistic game structure, where it’s like I have checked all the boxes to be a good person and therefore should I ever need it, I have this insurance policy that I can show to the world and therefore I will be worthy of being helped. But I don’t think that’s the way it works. I think [inaudible 00:31:10] you get help when you say, “Help.”
Glennon Doyle:
But practically it feels like in our culture, and I don’t even know if I mean America now or the Doyles. I have no freaking idea what I mean by that. Yeah. It feels like the only time it’s legit or valid in our culture to say, “help,” Is if it’s a physical sickness in your family. Is that the problem that when I think back on my church days, it was always only that. It was like, a baby was born or somebody was sick, and that is the rallying times. What are you talking about? And Abby, what are you talking about? When you say, what would happen that we could use as an excuse to invite this gorgeous divine web that we’re all supposed to have to start building the table that you were at last week?
Abby Wambach:
My ego is so big that-
Glennon Doyle:
What would it be?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, my ego feels threatened in this moment because it is true that it would only have to do with something about that.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. What is it?
Abby Wambach:
For sickness.
Glennon Doyle:
When you think about building this for yourself, not just showing up for other people, like for Wendy, for Christine. But when you think about building this web for yourself, and let’s say you weren’t going to wait for a sickness or a baby to be born, whatever the valid reasons are to send that text, what would it be?
Amanda Doyle:
I’m saying that being part of these events and being dipped into these sacred moments has allowed me to see that truth of that magic mix, feels wiser and truer and safer and realer than the way that I operate. I’m talking about very basic. I’m talking about in my own marriage, being able to be seen when I’m suffering. Being able to be like, “I don’t got this.” Even on a… Not show up with a casserole. I’m talking like, I am struggling right now and I can’t even tell you why. There is something there that I think that is… I’m using these other concrete examples of it, but I actually think that that’s a block to connection.
Glennon Doyle:
So you’re saying that you are a person with extreme agency, extreme capability-
Abby Wambach:
Problem solving.
Glennon Doyle:
… independence. I’ve got this. Might think that that’s how they’re earning their worthiness to be at the table, when in fact them seated at that table might have less of joy, wonder, awe and connectedness to everyone else at that table, than the person at the table who was all year a little bit more vulnerable, broken, asking for help when they needed it. And you think that the thing that’s earning your worthiness at the table is actually blocking your connectedness at the table.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m saying I’ve only been at tables when it’s been the result of somebody needing help. I’m saying I’m not even at the table. I think that’s the basis of tables, and I’m like, “How many tables am I missing out on hosting or showing up at, because I am believing the lie that my life is constructed on me being able to get all the shit done that I think should get done and figuring out ways to do it?” As opposed to being plugged into this truer to-do list of our life, which is plugging into the people around us that are there to help us and we are there to help. I think my life has been smaller than it needed to be because of that. And I think my relationships have been smaller because I haven’t been comfortable being seen when I don’t have shit figured out.
Glennon Doyle:
So what do you do when you don’t have shit figured out? What do you do? How do you feel? Where are you sitting? What happens? I want to know. I want to go to the moment. Do you even allow yourself to understand? Do you feel confused and sad and broken because you don’t know what’s going on? Or do you even allow that feeling to arise? This is not a personal thing. This is, everybody has that feeling. Everybody has that experience of lostness.
Amanda Doyle:
I don’t know that it arises intellectually in a fully formed state. I think I usually feel jittery, edgy, annoyed, easily snappy at others. Because I’d much rather feel like somebody else did something wrong that I don’t know what’s going on.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s so honest and lovely. That makes a lot of sense. So your shut offness or snappiness then makes your scared self even harder to reach, because the other person feels like you’re mad at them. It’s like a bulletproof jacket that you put over your tenderness and you don’t even know that you’re experiencing sadness or tenderness. Do you even note the jump to that or you just now go straight to that?
Amanda Doyle:
I think I’ll get low and tired and sad. I didn’t know and don’t know what people can do to help me.
Abby Wambach:
That’s big.
Amanda Doyle:
I’ve always been annoyed at people who need a lot of help.
Glennon Doyle:
You must be fucking mad at me since I was born.
Amanda Doyle:
No, no, no, no, you don’t. You’re exempt from that. But the people who I’m like, “You’re just always fucking-“
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
“… calling for everything and you…” So that’s the big caveat to this. There is some magic middle where we should not have to wait until someone has a horrendous disease to be able to rally the troops around them. And we also don’t want to be the people that wake up every morning and it’s like, “Ask not what I can do for myself. Ask what other people can do for me.” We don’t want to be those people. Where is the middle one where we’re like, “No, when you open yourself up to be able to receive help to ask for it, that’s the right amount.”
Glennon Doyle:
But going back to what we were just saying about you. When you say, “I don’t know how anyone could help me.” With what? What do you mean?
Amanda Doyle:
I mean inside my head.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. So what’s wrong with inside your head?
Amanda Doyle:
Oh shit, we don’t have time for that.
Glennon Doyle:
No, no, no, I’m serious. We’re getting at something. What’s wrong?
Amanda Doyle:
If I’m unsettled or confused or mad, I have always felt like I have to understand that before I share that. I have to… Okay, so here’s the thing I’m mad about or sad about or whatever. And so let me really break it down for three days where I figure out my first step. Is that even reasonable? Is that reasonable? Are you crazy? If it’s not reasonable, then you just deal with it in your own head as opposed to being like, “But it doesn’t matter if it’s reasonable, if it’s how you feel.” So then do you share that even if it’s not reasonable, even if you don’t understand it. I didn’t know that you’re supposed to share your emotions with people just because they exist.
Abby Wambach:
Especially the more, what I would say, the shadow darker side of emotions, the more difficult ones.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. Yes, yes. That’s what I mean.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, and I think that’s just something that I’ve been learning in all of my therapy and I’m baffled. It’s counterintuitive to everything I’ve been taught, everything that I have learned in my life, everything that I thought was true is, I’ve actually been cutting myself off from more intimacy in my most personal relationships because I don’t share that stuff.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. Wait, so what would you do? When it would happen would you just be like, “Okay, I understand you thought that that wasn’t okay,” but would it exist in your head and then you’d just dissect it and then try to-
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
… compost it or what would-
Abby Wambach:
… I would-
Glennon Doyle:
Compost?
Abby Wambach:
… compost it or just shove it down? Because there was a part of me that thought, “Oh, that feeling is weakness, that anger is weakness. I am smarter than this. I can overcome this. I can figure out whatever it is I need to figure out without that emotion.” And so now I’m saying, “That upset me.” And sometimes I don’t have to have a reason why sometimes my-
Glennon Doyle:
Child self.
Abby Wambach:
… child self will come forward and try to explain it in a way that is embarrassing, in retrospect. I’ve said stuff to Glennon recently and I’ve come back the next day and I’m like, I feel embarrassed with-
Glennon Doyle:
And not in a mean way. It’s just very unformed-
Abby Wambach:
Unfiltered.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s wonderful. It’s very childlike. It’s very like, “But I don’t want that and I want something else.” And that’s what would be beautiful for you, is to not intellectualize the emotion, not create a case you’re a lawyer or whatever. You are allowing your… You don’t even know why you’re just saying these feelings.
Amanda Doyle:
That is right. I’m like, “Let’s take this on a court case, let’s look at it.” I’m like, “Hmm, that case does not have legs that would be thrown out of court, so we will not bring that up,” As opposed to, “I don’t like this.”
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
I don’t want this.
Glennon Doyle:
Sister.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, it’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
Do you know that that’s everything. We have talked recently about how you have gotten to a place where you don’t know what you want, in big ways. You know what? You have to practice that shit and you practice it in moments where you don’t like things, going, “I don’t like this. I don’t want this,” And noting that thing. And not having to justify it or explain it or… It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to have a case for those things.
Abby Wambach:
Well, because you can’t intellectualize the emotion away. That is not something that you can do. You actually have to release the emotion and get it outside of you. Realize, I can say this stuff and this person won’t leave. That’s the big thing that I was afraid of. If I say this stuff, if I show this part of myself, the child tantrum, discomfort, whatever it is, part of myself, nobody would stay. And she’s just like, “Okay, I hear you.” The other night I was like, “But I don’t want that. I don’t like this.”
Glennon Doyle:
It was literally like that.
Abby Wambach:
I went into this huge thing and she was just very still, calm. She didn’t escalate. She just stayed neutral. And then the next day I came back and she’s like, “Yeah, I felt that part of you come up.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh. And you’re still fucking here.” It’s like having to have the communication with your spouse or person that we’re even talking about, to have them hold all the parts of who you are.
Amanda Doyle:
And that’s to me what this connects to with the help and the connection and the bigger world you can make for yourself. Which is that, I thought that my job always was to manage myself and my life and manage my feelings and manage my thoughts and that was on me. And if there ever was a case to be presented, then it had to check these 37 boxes and then… Okay, now that’s a legitimate thing. Okay, we will now print out the case. We’ll present the case, we’ll deal with the case, case closed, moving on. The difference there is that it is very childlike and so is saying help and so is saying, “Come near. I need you near. I need help.”
And that is, I think where relationship happens, that same level of vulnerability is of bearing yourself, of putting yourself in the hands of other people, is I think the way that we connect to all the things, to our people to God. And also, it’s all the same thing. It’s the saying, “I am going to entrust to you partner or to you friend or to you world, this thing that is unpolished and unfinished and that I think us coming together on this thing will make it okay.” Instead of keeping it for yourself.
Abby Wambach:
So good.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s probably why every spiritual tradition is based on, “Oh, that’s so cute that you think having your shit together is what’s going to bring you joy.” Having your shit too much together, being too independent can really get in the way of being human and love. It’s like all the, when you’re weak, you’re strong, all those dichotomies and it probably drives crazy the person who has spent their life trying to perfect their way to love, because it feels like, “Oh my God, all I had to do is be more weak the whole time?” And then all those people who are always asking for help and annoying you, you’re like, “Wait, they’re on the right track?”
Amanda Doyle:
I do think there’s a fucking line.
Abby Wambach:
There’s a middle.
Amanda Doyle:
Because guess who I don’t show up to help? The people who wake up every morning and ask for help.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh God, no. Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
I do know-
Glennon Doyle:
No, it’s a way of being.
Amanda Doyle:
… there is something there, we’ve got to figure that out at some point.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, that’s dependent. We’ve got independent, we’ve got dependent. We are interdependent. We’re in the zone of interdependence. I show up for me sometimes, you show up for you sometimes. You show up for me sometimes, I show up for you sometimes. Not every day I wake up and call you and say, “How will you show up for me?”
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. And I do think that there is also just this part of it that’s like, I have lived really independently for chunks of my life. Also putting aside the whole idea that independence is like a patriarchal capitalist fiction, all of that. But purporting to be like, “I can do my little world on my own,” And it is just way less interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, there’s no juice in it. It’s dry.
Amanda Doyle:
There’s no juice in it. The only juice in it is the juice of your own making.
Glennon Doyle:
Hand squeezed juice all on your own in the kitchen, just squeezing out your own juice all by yourself. So sad.
Amanda Doyle:
I don’t know. I just think this little experiment into thinking about this and just the few times I’ve been a part of it recently, I think there’s more juice there. There’s a more interesting way there.
Abby Wambach:
And I think a lot of us listening, we have the people that we know we would call and that those people would drop everything for us. We have those people. I think we’re also talking a little bit about growing or getting to the next concentric circle outside of that family or whatever. Growing our group, our community of people that we can rely on and that might absolutely take some proactivity of intention and saying, “Hey, I need this and asking for it.”
Glennon Doyle:
And is it also not just that, but it’s a way of being. It’s not just intentionally like, “Oh, and now I need to intentionally create this community.” I’m thinking it’s also just being at the store and not being so focused on the one realm of life where you have to get back and you have to do the thing and you have to do the thing. But dropping into the next realm because somebody has just dropped their thing on the ground and you stop and you turn around and you pick up that thing, and you hand it to them and you have this moment where you’re in the other realm.
Abby Wambach:
I live there.
Glennon Doyle:
Right, you do live there.
Abby Wambach:
I live in that realm.
Glennon Doyle:
And sometimes I’m like, “Can we get back to the realm where we have to get back to the house?” But-
Abby Wambach:
It’s my jam.
Glennon Doyle:
… I think it’s a way of being, where you drop into that other part of connection above productivity too, and interdependence with everybody as opposed to just we’re all living our little independent day.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s right. And I think that it’s all so cyclical because with Wendy, what she did, inviting us in and us seeing that bigger truth of life and what’s most precious and how we’re all connected is that the community that she built through her generosity in letting us in that way, is the community that will be there for her 12-year-old son. Not because it’s the right thing to do, but because we can now see and feel the reality that we are connected, that he is ours and we are his.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. I think the whole reason why we’re talking about this is because there was a celebration of it. There was an acknowledgement, a party of some sort. Now I believe, and we don’t do this enough, I think that celebrations are about tapping into the next place. I think celebrations are like this sprinkle of fairy dust of this aboveness component to it, and that is what they were doing. They were inviting you to this dinner, showing you what the next place, this other dimension, this thing that you all tapped into is.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s making the invisible visible. We were in fact all connected to each other in that group. We just didn’t know it.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
We were connected to them to help them through a very scary time, which reconnected us to them over and over. But we were also connected to each other in this web that we didn’t see until they put us at that table.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
And that’s what I think the whole thing of help is actually doing. It is like you can’t see that you’re connected until we do this super fucking obvious thing of helping each other that makes the invisible visible. It shows how you’re dependent on me and I’m dependent on you, but we don’t get to access that gift unless we are in that tangible moment to see it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. You’re not creating a web at all. Nobody’s creating a web. You’re just throwing invisible ink on the web that is already there, so we get to see it.
Amanda Doyle:
Exactly.
Abby Wambach:
Visible ink.
Glennon Doyle:
Invisible ink.
Abby Wambach:
What’s invisible ink?
Glennon Doyle:
You’re throwing some ink on the web. It was a freaking brilliant thing and then you just went with it invisible.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. That’s exactly right.
Glennon Doyle:
The web is already there. We’re not creating shit.
Amanda Doyle:
We’re tapping into something that has always been there and we get the privilege of tapping into it. No one’s creating anything.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
Bam.
Abby Wambach:
Yo.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s remembering.
Abby Wambach:
Well, guess what folks? We had a whole different plan to talk about today.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s what we’re going to do today. That’s what we’re going to do this year.
Abby Wambach:
What are we doing?
Glennon Doyle:
We’re going to show the invisible.
Abby Wambach:
Ink.
Glennon Doyle:
We’re going to throw visible ink on the invisible web so that we can see a visible web. Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
Wow. Write that down. She’s real good with words, y’all.
Glennon Doyle:
But you can see it in your mind, can’t you? I know you can.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, we’re all connected.
Glennon Doyle:
We love you guys. We Can Do Hard Things. We’ll see you next time.
Amanda Doyle:
Bye.