How Abby Survived Her Biggest Loss
August 27, 2024
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome to we Can Do Hard Things. Today, Abby is brave and generous enough to share with us what happened to her and her family at the end of last year, which was maybe the hardest thing that’s ever happened to her. I don’t know, we’ll see. We’ll see how she frames it. But you, Pod Squad, are invited into a very beautiful space today. We’re going to talk about loss and love and grief. To be fair, that’s always what we’re talking about, but we’re diving deep today. Abby’s going to tell us the story. Let me just set the scene.
Abby Wambach:
Great.
Glennon Doyle:
December 27th, 2023, you and me and the kids landed for our family vacation a couple days after Christmas, we landed in a faraway place. We woke up the next morning, we went to breakfast. Would you like to take it from there?
Abby Wambach:
Sure. Often when we travel with the kiddos, they like to sleep in. So Glennon and I woke up and we went down to breakfast ourselves to drink some coffee and explore a little. We sat at the little restaurant and we had a cup of coffee, and Glennon said to me, “I don’t think we’re supposed to be here.” And I was like, “The fuck is she talking about?”
Glennon Doyle:
Information that would’ve been helpful before we bought five very expensive flights.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. And also the kind of planning that goes into and the time it takes to plan for a family vacation, it’s endless and it’s always ever-changing because everybody has opinions, et cetera. And so when she said this, my feelings got hurt a little bit. Because I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve put so much.” I thought we were going to have to get on a plane and get out of there. This is what happens at times in our life, that Glennon has moments where she wants to go home or doesn’t feel right, whatever.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s not just want to go home. It’s an intense feeling of this doesn’t feel right, I feel wrong right now. I feel panicky. It’s not just like I don’t like it.
Abby Wambach:
No. Right, right, right, right.
Amanda Doyle:
Right. But you could understand how others who are sitting across from you after thousands of hours and dollars and planning it would interpret that as, “She doesn’t want to be here. She wants to go home.”
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Because they’re not feeling the intensity of that. But I understand that for you, it’s a dramatic-
Glennon Doyle:
It wasn’t, “I don’t want to be here.” It wasn’t, “I don’t want to be here.” It was, “Holy shit, I feel like we’re not supposed to be here.
Abby Wambach:
Right. And PS, it took us 20 hours to travel to this place, whatever. So I think I said, “Well, we’re here and we’re going to make the very best of this trip.” I wasn’t entertaining any ideas of any other options. So about an hour later, the kids show up, and so we all go through the buffet and we’re eating, and towards the end of our little breakfast session, my phone rings and my sister Beth, who knew that I was on vacation, would only call if there was an emergency. And so immediately my heart dropped and I showed Glennon the phone and she looked at me with this look and she said, “You have to take it.” So I stood up and I walked away because I knew something was wrong. I didn’t know what exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
Did you have a thought about what you thought it might be?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, I thought it was either my mom or dad. I thought my mom or dad. To be fair, every single time my mom calls my phone, now I think something has happened. And this is before this specific moment. So I walk a few steps and I said, “What’s wrong?” That was my first thing I said to her, and she said, “Abby, it’s bad.” And I was like, “What happened?” And she said Peter Jr. my oldest brother, died. And it was like, “Wait, what?” I was expecting it to be my mom or my dad. And immediately my body went numb. And I went into, which is such a weird thing in retrospect, what happened?
I needed to understand what happened so desperately as if that mechanism of understanding would make me feel better in some way. But now in retrospect, I think that that’s just silly that we need to understand and know so much. But the truth is the truth and he’s gone. And also, I want to say here, there’s a lot of people involved, his kids and his family, that I don’t want to compromise them. So I want people to understand that this is my experience through this process. I do not speak for anybody else, and I will try to make sure that their privacy is protected here too.
So I just want to say that, and to me, Peter was, it’s hard to even get used to using the past tense in a way, but I think that he was the most generous of our family. He gave so much of himself. He was the one in our family, and unfortunately, I think this was a role that he was really proud of and probably couldn’t stand at the same time. He was the one in our family that would go to my parents’ house and weed still when he’s 50, he was 52 when he died. He would go clean the pool. He painted the pool during the pandemic and he just always showed up for people, for people in his family. I remember after I got a DUI, seven days after I got the DUI, I had to go on this 10-day speaking tour around the United States to college campuses.
And I was mortified and I thought, “How the heck am I going to pull this off? What the hell do I have to teach to these kids?” Lo and behold, it was actually really important for me to do that. But the first stop that I went to, my brother Peter and my sister Laura showed up. And at the time when I felt so embarrassed and like I scarred the Wambach name, it meant a lot to me that he was there. So anyways, he was just that guy. And when I got the call from Beth, and I don’t know if this was this specific call, but I remember when I spoke, I could hear my mom screaming in the background, and it was a primal, motherly expression of pain.
And it’s a weird shock for sure, is what I was going through because I couldn’t catch up with my thoughts, couldn’t catch up with my breath. So many things were swirling through my head. First of all, the kids, are they going to be okay? And Glennon was amazing because she knew that something happened and she didn’t understand quite what it was yet. So she walked over while keeping the kids away so that we can gather the information so that we know what to tell them. And I was able to tell her, and so she was able to digest that information with them until I got off the phone. And then we just went to this other table and I think I just wept. I just cried so hard. And it was so sweet because our youngest daughter, Emma, she’s just the most empathetic, I think, of all of us.
And I think she was crying as hard as I was on behalf of me. It felt so sweet and comforting because going through something like that, it’s so personal and it’s so individual, and you feel very contained inside of your own sadness and it’s all yours, nobody else’s. And Emma had this ridiculous presence to know that I was feeling that way. And so her show of emotion was such … I just kept looking at her so grateful, A, that she could express herself that way. This is 10-year-old Emma was like, “I don’t know where my feelings are,” and now she’s this 16-year-old kid who’s got a real good grasp on where her emotions are now, which is so beautiful. And just sitting there talking about Peter with my kids and with Glennon. And then we’re 7,000 miles away from Rochester, New York, which is where my brother lived and my family lives.
And so I’m feeling very panicked like I need to be there. I need to be with all of the people in my life that knew him, and I want to be close to everyone. And so that was really hard. And also it was really hard to try to figure out how to get there. We were on an island and flights are not that easy to get out of there. So it was a complication, and thank God for you, Sister, and Dina who is working with us and helped us get back to Los Angeles so that I could get to Rochester. The next 24 hours until we could get on that flight. Were unfortunately riddled with a lot of logistical nightmares, hotel stuff and flight stuff. And Sister, we’ve talked about this before in terms of your diagnosis and how you know, “Oh, I’m going to deal with this at some point. I’m not ready to deal with this all right this second.”
There’s much to do, right? We’ve got to help plan his services, and I’ve got to make arrangements to get there. And there’s so many things that have to happen in order for the funeral services to go off. The amount that I had to learn about funerals and death and all of that, and what happens in the time of grief is so hard and it’s so confusing. And nobody really wants to do that work beforehand, understandably. And so you’re dealing with learning this stuff and you’re also trying to figure out what he would’ve wanted. He died so early that he didn’t have a structured will or anything in place to know what his wishes were. And so that’s complicated. It’s complicated because he’s got three kids and he’s got this big family that he came from, and everybody has opinions.
And trying to manage all of that is I think what I inserted myself into this situation as a bit of somebody who could talk to everybody and say, “Here’s what I’m hearing everybody say.” And it was just the most earth-shattering, the way that you think about yourself now has to be altered in some ways. I am the youngest of seven. Yes, that’s true. And it still to this day, catches me trying to figure out how to talk about, do I say that I have six living and I’m one of seven, but only six are living? I feel like it’s confusing to reorient your brain structure around even just the number of people that are in your family. It’s confusing and that disorients so much. And so that first day I sent Glennon with the kids to go do something outside and I just needed to be alone calling my brothers and sisters, talking to my mom and my dad.
And he was the oldest boy. So the way that our family works is there’s two girls, and then my parents had four boys and then me, so Peter was the oldest boy. And of course in the 80s and 90s, the oldest boy, Catholic Irish family, he holds an important place in the family dynamic. I would say he was a second father. He worked at my dad’s store and often throughout college, if I needed money, I would call the store and he’d pick up and he’d say, “Wambach Farms, how are we doing?” And I’d be like, “Pete, I need some money. Can you put some money in my account?”
Amanda Doyle:
How are we doing? We’re doing poor.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
We’re really poor.
Abby Wambach:
Exactly. And he’d say, “How much do you need?” And so he really did take care of a lot of us, not just me. He showed up for us in lots of ways. And so it was just like, I don’t know, it didn’t make sense to me. I don’t understand. Your parents are supposed to die first. How can this fucking be possible? And I know that it’s possible, but how can this be possibly happening to me?
So the next day, we get on a flight and we fly back to Los Angeles. I have to get different clothing to go to Rochester. A couple days later, we get on a flight and we go to Rochester and sister, you and Glennon’s mom flew up to be there with us. And that was really, really, really sweet. And I remember never having been so nervous, and I was so afraid to go to my mom’s and dad’s house that first time, and everything in my body knew that I needed to be there, but I was afraid because then it would be real. At this point, everything was just in my head.
Honestly I don’t think I’ve ever been in Rochester at my parents’ house without seeing my brother there. And so this reality of what has really transpired was going to truly hit. And I walked in and it was just lots of tears. And interestingly enough, during this time, I don’t know why this is, and I don’t know if this is universal, but everybody was telling the story of how they found out. And I find that to be so interesting. And it was interesting to me too. I was interested to know everybody’s story because now this is a before and after moment.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
And I do think when stuff like this happens, it’s really important to mark and put a flag in the ground and say, “Okay, yeah, things will be different now.” Even though it’s really sad, it’s also really beautiful. We all unfortunately move on without him, and we will. And this moment where we get to, it’s a touch tree that we get to always … I will never forget some of the conversations and the beautiful things that were said about my brother. Some of the most beautiful things that people did or said to me, the stories. One of my friends, Kelly from high school, she had lost her mom a couple of years ago, and she texted me this beautiful text and she said, “Oftentimes after my mom died, people didn’t know what to text me. And they would text me things that, I don’t know, didn’t make sense or it was just the cliche stuff that you anticipate hearing.”
And she said, “The best and most effective things that I found to be helpful to me and to steer me through the grief of it were when people would tell me beautiful stories about my mom.” And so then she went on to tell this beautiful story about my brother, and it was like, “Okay, right. That’s right.” And so there was all of these moments, horrifically sad, seeing my dad choked up and seeing my mom devastated and knowing as a parent, knowing that that devastation is so real for them, and that even though he was 52, he’s still their kid.
And I know that our kids will grow and hopefully we die before them. But of course, I put myself in my parents’ shoes and I just worried about their health. How are they going to deal with this? And honestly, Peter did so much for them that a real worry of all of us was like, “Who’s going to do all the shit that Peter did now? Who’s going to do it?”
Glennon Doyle:
Not it. Not it.
Abby Wambach:
And so we go through the memorial service and the celebration of life after, and it was really beautiful. Peter was always the one in our family that stood up at weddings and did the speeches. And I remember when I was talking to his wife Carol about this, she’s just like, “Well, obviously I think that you need to do this.”
Glennon Doyle:
The eulogy?
Abby Wambach:
At his funeral. And of course I said yes. But I was so nervous because I didn’t think that there was going to be anything that I could say or think of saying that would do him real justice, because I don’t know, it’s like when you have such a big family like I do, everybody has their roles and everybody thinks about each person in that role forever. And I don’t know, Peter was just actually so nice.
He was the nicest one of us. Andy’s also really nice. So I think that the two of them are the nicest one of us, and it’s just so unfair. So I just was so nervous. I was so worried about what I would say in the eulogy. And I talked to his kids and I talked to my mom about their favorite stories and things that they hope that they could hear in the eulogy. And thank God Glennon helped me write it. And I remember that morning just being real shaky. I was real shaky and I wanted it to be really good. And I don’t remember much of the service because I was so freaked out about having to do this eulogy. And in the Catholic Church where his funeral was, they have very strict rules on the timing of the eulogy. So I was stressing about the timing, and I have heard that the priests will literally shut the microphone off if you go over time.
Glennon Doyle:
Not on Abby Wambach in Rochester.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, exactly. You got a waiver. But yeah, it’s like on the Emmys or whatever, the Oscars where they start playing the music and they’re like, “That’ll be that.”
Abby Wambach:
That’s right. I was afraid that I was going to get the music to go.
Glennon Doyle:
But the whole town was there. It was incredible. It was a beautiful big Catholic Church.
Abby Wambach:
That’s where we went to grade school.
Glennon Doyle:
And when we walked in with the family last, I could not believe it was packed to the brim standing room only. Just this man was so beloved in the community, was just a fixture.
Abby Wambach:
And I like to think that our kids look up to us, and I know that they do. And I also know that my brother’s three boys, 22, 20, 16 years old, that their life is forever changed and they will likely have beautiful lives, all of them, but this will forever change their life. And all of the things that I know that Peter and Carol worked so hard for these boys, they’re huge sports kids, athletes playing sports in college. And the time that Peter and Carol spent driving these boys around the Northeast for all their sporting events, I just felt like Peter didn’t do it because he wanted to witness them play college sports.
That’s not why he did it. He did it. His kids loved it, and he wanted to give his kids great experiences. And if they played in college, wonderful, if not great. But his middle kid plays lacrosse and it was a big deal. He was a really great lacrosse player. And Pete would miss him playing lacrosse in college for a D-I program. And I just know he would’ve loved it. I know that he would’ve really loved it. Just he’s going to miss … That’s what I, of course, I’m sad for the people who have to miss him and survive beyond him, but I keep thinking about him.
And how sad I am for him because he really loved having a good time. He really did. He always wanted to have fun, and I learned that. I learned it from him. The night before he died, it was Christmas dinner. So the way that my mom does Christmas night dinner is everybody comes over and there’s 45 people there. And so the kids usually eat in a different room and the adults eat in the main dining room area with the dining room table. And usually the adults sit around and they just chit-chat for a couple hours.
It’s just the way that happens. And so Pete, in Pete fashion went and picked each kid one-on-one and had each kid come and sit at the head of the table, called it the hot seat, and just asked each kid in our family the most embarrassing questions in front of all the other adults. Kids in college that are, he’s like, “So are you dating anybody? Who are you dating? What are their names? Are you drinking?” All of these.
Amanda Doyle:
What are you drinking? What are their names?
Glennon Doyle:
Do you have any extra?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, I got off track. We can go back to the eulogy part. But Peter was just … I just wanted to do him right by the eulogy and I think that I did.
Glennon Doyle:
It was the most beautiful eulogy I’ve ever heard. Absolutely perfect.
Abby Wambach:
And I don’t know, it’s a blur. And then you go to the celebration of life after, and it’s traumatic to be honest, for people who are in the grief of it all. There’s a beauty, I’ve talked to Glennon a lot about this, that I think everybody knows that I have real issues with religion and specifically the Catholic Church, how I was raised. And I remember sitting in that church thinking, “This is good. This is a good thing that they do,” because it’s this ritual that gives you this container for all of the people and all of our energy and all of our sadness to be in the same place, to mourn this person that we loved. Everybody’s allowed to be sad and even angry. I felt so much anger around this experience that was really interesting for me. I didn’t know that anger would be part of my process, but it was.
Amanda Doyle:
Was it later? Was it all throughout, and when did you notice it and how?
Abby Wambach:
It would pop up every once in a while, because what happens is, what was happening for me at least, is in my search and need to understand I started to create judgments around things that I believed were what happened or why things happened the way they happened. And then that puts me in a position of, I don’t know if other people do this, but in a big family, there’s always this comparison thing happening like, “Oh, I’m healthy.” There’s just this way that-
Amanda Doyle:
Differentiation.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, my sister Beth, she’s 11 years older than me, and for whatever reason, as I age a thought bubble that happens in my body that’s like, “Well, I’m always going to be 11 years younger than my sister Beth,” and that makes me feel good. Sorry, Beth, I know you’re listening to this, but it does make me feel good, as I’m sure when she was 11, she was probably looking at me going, “Oh my God, I’m so glad I’m 11.” You know what I mean? So I don’t even know I’m going down on this tangent.
Glennon Doyle:
I know what you’re saying. It’s profound. The anger is safer than the grief. So the anger comes from the judgments you’re making.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s so powerless, death, so you create power in your head by saying, “This wouldn’t have happened if he would’ve done this, or she would’ve done this.”
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And then that judgment about what happens turns into anger, which is easier to deal with than the powerlessness and grief.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right. That’s exactly right.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s exactly what you said in the episode about my diagnosis where you were like, “I’ve come to understand that,” Glennon, “The judgment is fear.”
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s coming out that way. So that’s what you were doing in the-
Abby Wambach:
That’s exactly right. So we get through the funeral service and we do the celebration of life, and it’s just exhausting. It’s just actually so exhausting. And my mom was having a dinner at her house that night that anybody could come to. I think one of the things that my mom is good at is hosting things so as to not deal with what’s going on. And I actually, I wasn’t judging her about that. I understood. I was like, “Good job. You’re doing good things.”
Glennon Doyle:
As far as defense mechanisms go that’s a really kind one.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, totally.
Glennon Doyle:
Very useful to the collective.
Abby Wambach:
Totally. And so we got to my parents’ house, and honestly, I felt terrible. It’s like when the thing finally finishes and now I had this feeling of doom, like, “Oh, now I’ve got to deal with this shit.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
So two of my national team friends showed up to my brother’s funeral, which blew me away to begin with. It was so awesome that they showed up like that. And they came to my mom and dad’s house for this post-celebration dinner. And I looked at all of you, you two, Amanda and Glennon, and I was like, “You guys, I have to go back to the hotel and go to sleep.” And you were like, “Let’s go.” And so I had to then tell my mom that I needed to leave. And that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, because that’s something that we don’t do in our family.
We just suck it up and just do what everybody’s doing, especially in those big moments. But I couldn’t do that and take care of myself at the same time. I had exhausted, we flew all across the world to get there, planning and all of the things that went into that specific day, and then the emotion of dealing with it, of dealing with what was actually happening. And so I told her, and I could tell she was a little disappointed that I was leaving, but I couldn’t be around people.
I don’t know why it was so important to me, but it was like I needed to do this thing for myself that I knew that I needed to do. And so I did it, which felt good. And so the next couple of days are a blur because I get home, we fly back to LA and I think my body shuts down. Do you remember this?
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, yeah, I do.
Abby Wambach:
I’m not the kind of person, I do like a siesta, a nap. We’ve discussed this before. Somewhere in between the hours of two and five. Sometimes it’s three to five, sometimes it’s two to four.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
But I got back and I got into bed after the coffee morning thing, I got back into bed and I stayed in bed all day. And I did this for three days. And I just watched TV, laid on my bed, slept. I just was so sad. I was so, so sad. And I don’t have a lot of ability to handle sadness. So when it stays for a few days, three days, I am like, “Fuck this sadness. I need to start doing something.” So getting back into the life that we live, work, working out, all of that stuff. But it was such a slog. I hated it. I hated having to do everything. I hated having to drive our kids places.
I hated having to create this new reality without Peter. And so that’s when I talked to Glennon and I was like, “Look, I really need to get into some intensive therapy here because I don’t want to hate my life and I don’t want to lose this opportunity to really grapple with some of this grief,” because this is the first real big grief that I had dealt with since getting sober. And what I didn’t know would happen is that grief is an interesting, it’s like a train where each car is a different grief of your life. And to me now being sober, I didn’t realize that I was also now going to have to wade through all of the other griefs of my life that I was avoiding and that I never dealt with.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh shit.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
So if you really face the one, it opens the door to all the rooms.
Abby Wambach:
There’s opportunity for me there. So if you can imagine a train I got on that first train car, and I walked all the way back to the train, and then I was like, “Oh shit, here’s another door.” Because so much of what was happening to me in the grief felt so familiar, but I couldn’t place it. So I got into intensive therapy and I learned a lot of really valuable things in there. And this is ironic, I think because what was it like a year ago now that we had Suzanne Stabile on?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, she told you it was coming, man.
Abby Wambach:
Suzanne Stabile, I love you. And also, god damn it, this shadow side work that you wanted me to attend to, that I did attend to.
Amanda Doyle:
Y’all should have just fired that dog walker like she told you. You could have avoided all of this.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, she said that in listening to and knowing you and then knowing your Enneagram number also, that you embrace the lightness of life and fun, and that you tend to push away this sadness.
Abby Wambach:
The shadow side.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. So she said, your work would be embracing the shadow side.
Abby Wambach:
And so I was like, “All right, I’ll do that.” I get a therapist talking with my therapist. And then lo and behold, the last 12 months of my life have been very shadow-centric. So Suzanne, I’m working on it.
Amanda Doyle:
Na’er is a ray of sunshine to be seen.
Abby Wambach:
I’m working on it. I’m working on it, and I’m working on it.
Glennon Doyle:
Tell her what your therapist told you about the portal of Grief.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. One of the things that was really very interesting to me that my therapist said that I think about even now, because I still feel like I’m in it on some level, is that when some big event like this happens, there’s this portal that opens up for you that gives you greater access to A, getting rid of shit in your life that you don’t want to get rid of. And B, and this is the thing that might sound a little bit woo-woo, but I believe in it, that it cracks you open to your own mortality that allows you to make certain life decisions and organize your life in certain ways so that you can live a more fulfilling life and a more intentional life. And that that portal is open for a time because us average person walking around the world, we cannot stand for that portal to be open for very long.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s a window of time that will close. You make your dramatic changes then because later when the portal closes, you’ll convince yourself that everything’s fine again.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right. That’s exactly right. And that to me felt like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” This is an interesting time and this is a life-changing time. And what in this time am I meant to learn? That’s all I keep asking myself.
Amanda Doyle:
Wow.
Abby Wambach:
What are all of these things showing up? What is this grief meant to teach me? And that’s what I’ve been in pursuit of ever since December 27th when I found out, is trying to figure out like Liz Gilbert would say, what this earth school is teaching us and what I’m supposed to be learning from this. Not that there is a lesson in it, but I do think that experiences in our life happen, especially tragic ones. Tragedy strikes all of us in certain ways. And whether it’s a heartbreak or a diagnosis or losing somebody, whatever it might be, the way that I like to feel like I have more, not control, but that I have gained more of myself or I’m learning more of myself, is if I do feel like there’s something to gain in all of this messiness, because it is messy.
Nothing is black and white. It’s confusing and it’s horrifying in some ways. And I was going through a really terrible time because I was dealing with grief from when I was a little kid, grief from when I was a young adult, grief from all of the drinking years, the heartbreaks that I was experiencing, that I couldn’t find words to manage through it or I didn’t have therapists to help me work through some of that stuff. So all of this stuff was really coming up for me. And what a cool thing, what a cool way to think about this portal opening up as a gift.
I envision it as this literal light that is shining above my head that I have a little bit more connection to the universe because so many of us don’t want to be conscious on a second by second basis in a day that we are going to die. And there is a real true gift in that consciousness. It’s too hard for … Listen, I totally understand. I’ve walked around most of my life going, “I’ll deal with that when I die.” But I’m really trying to deal with that now as a living person so that when I die, I’m more surrendered to what’s happening.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, it’s unsustainable to carry on a daily basis. You can’t carry that on a daily basis. So it’s like in this window. That’s it.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
But there’s also many faith traditions and spiritualities that insist upon keeping that consciousness as close as humanly possible, like the skulls and all of that is just the belief that the more we remember, the more we force that portal open, the more we remember how close death is, the closer we can come to really fully being alive. It is only the consciousness of death.
Amanda Doyle:
But it’s like that poem about learning about grace, not from the rumor of it, but from the experience of it. Those faith traditions and those skulls and whatever, those are totems and reminders that only work as reminders of a lived experience. Abby can now hold a skull in her hand and look at it and remember when the Porter was open and remember that real experience she felt and she knew. But if you just have the reminder, the reminder of what, something someone else told you about life? You have to have a reminder of something that you knew and felt and was real to you in order to have it be a reminder of something that can live deeply in you.
Abby Wambach:
I would also say though, that there are some cultures that celebrate death in a totally different way than we do here in the states. Like the body’s whisked away to never be seen again if it’s going to be a cremation or the body is whisked away so that people don’t have to see it. And some other cultures, dead bodies are paraded through the streets. And when you see that, then your consciousness around the reality of death changes, you’re not as afraid of it because it’s celebrated. In our culture there’s this hush-hush.
Glennon Doyle:
Like it’s shameful.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Like it’s shameful.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. It’s shameful. Don’t speak of that.
Glennon Doyle:
To do the only inevitable thing that we know, that it’s shameful. And I think you and I babe, talked about that a lot in terms of the conversation around shouldn’t this just be a celebration of life? And the idea of that. There was talk of, “Let’s just go to a bar. Let’s just go to a convention center. It’s a celebration of life.” And I think you and I were both surprised with our resistance to that. No, no, no. That is rushing towards the resurrection without going through the crucifixion. People actually need to not pretend that it doesn’t hurt. You and I have so many issues with religion, but when we were sitting in that church with those freaking bagpipe type shit and-
Abby Wambach:
The organ.
Glennon Doyle:
The whatever it was and the incense and the crucified Christ and the stained-glass and the balling, I was just like, “Yes, this kind of grief and pain cannot be in a convention center.”
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
I need this sensory full on grieving, I guess what you said, container to move on. It’s part of the necessary process to first the pain, then the rising.
Abby Wambach:
Absolutely. Yeah. It surprised me probably more than anything that sitting in that church, I was like, “This is exactly where we should be. This is exactly how this should go.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, there’s a role for it.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Can we come right back and then I would love to ask you questions about, I have never seen someone walk through anything with the commitment to staying open and learning and growing. Susan Stabile would be so proud.
Abby Wambach:
I think so.
Glennon Doyle:
Let’s come back and talk about what you have learned that you want to share with people.
Abby Wambach:
Great.
Glennon Doyle:
That was so beautiful. You are so beautiful. You did such a good job. That was amazing.
Abby Wambach:
I know, but I talked a lot.
Glennon Doyle:
All we want is for you to talk more, so we will be back for Abby to talk more.
Abby Wambach:
[inaudible 00:43:45].Glennon Doyle:
We Can Do Hard Things, Pod Squad. We love you and we know that every single one of you has been touched by something like this. And you are not alone in it today. We’re with you. 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 created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle, in partnership with Odyssey. Our executive producer is Jenna Wise Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren Lograsso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner and Bill Schultz. I give you Tish Melton and Brandi Carlisle.