Glennon: Learning to Love without Control
September 12, 2024
Speaker 1:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. I might need you to listen to the last episode y’all for this episode because the last episode was an in-depth conversation about this last era of recovery for me, which involved going off of medication for the first time in 30 years.
And so in short, what we discussed was that I decided as an experiment and after a year and a half of this new realm of therapy to go off meds and see who I was and what the world was without that in me and between me and the world is how it started to feel. What I discovered was that when I got through the hellscape of withdrawal and got to the other side of that and started to try to learn how to navigate myself in the world without anorexia or medication, both of which were tools that I use to survive, I ended up experiencing a lot more conflict.
So where I want to start? When I decided to go off the medication, I don’t know why the world works like this, but this last six months for our family has been unbelievable, like a relentless. It’s been a time of big things happening to and with and between every person we know who we love. So we’ve had death. We’ve had Amanda’s cancer. We’ve had major shifts in our co-parenting situation. We’ve had older kids doing brave, amazing things that scare the shit out of us.
We have had what has felt like just really destabilizing situations, and there’s some combination of the fact that all of these events have been happening. But also, I don’t have my normal coping mechanisms to hide from them that created this kind of perfect storm of hardness. Okay.
So recently, what happened was that I truly would just during this time just wake up every day. And Abby and I would just stare at each other like, “What the fuck do we do now?”
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it was a 15 minute to 15-minute experience of just like, “Did something happen?” I feel like we were in such a traumatic state and stage that things just kept coming at us. And so, it was like every 15 minutes, I would go, I don’t know, to the bathroom. And I’d come back, and I’d say, “Has something happened?” because I was so afraid. All of it was such an intense time.
Speaker 1:
Every time the phone-
Speaker 3:
It’s like when you wake up when something horrible happens, and you wake up in the morning, and you have that moment where you’re like, you don’t remember it again, and then you remember it and you’re like [inaudible 00:03:38].
Speaker 1:
Yes. Exactly, or if Abby looked down at her phone for longer than five seconds, I would go, “What? What?” because I felt like it just was constant news or something happened every day, and I was struggling. And everyone was just making their God-damn choices, and I didn’t think that everyone was making the best choices for themselves or for the family unit or for the world unit. The world was making me as crazy as the people in my life, and I kept saying, “I feel like I’ve lost control.” Okay.
Now, what I had lost is the illusion of control that I was happily living in for so long. All I can say is without anorexia and without meds, the world just seemed like fucking anarchy.
Speaker 3:
[inaudible 00:04:43]. It was a crisis of confidence in everything in everyone.Speaker 1:
Yes. And I didn’t know what my place in it was like the world was being horrific, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to live in it and also have any modicum of peace or joy. I didn’t know how to love my people and also love myself. I had no concept of how involved am I supposed to get? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to show up?
Speaker 2:
I think your definition of love was getting a jumbled. I think that you were coming into a new definition of love, and that was really a confusing time
Speaker 1:
Yeah. And I kept waking up thinking, “I’m going to get myself in trouble.” I wish I could explain to you. I kept saying it to Abby like, “When you feel like you’re…” I felt like I was on a treadmill, and I couldn’t get off of it. And I knew I was going to go down. I knew I was going down. I knew I’m going to do something, I’m going to fuck something up, and I knew it. But I felt like I was doing all my shit, I was doing my breathing, and my walking and my activism, and I was doing the things. And i-
Speaker 3:
You were aware enough to say if we would get on a call, you would say, “I need you. If I start to get in a fight with someone, I need you to know I don’t want to get in a fight with anyone. This is just where I am right now. So please help that situation.” You were aware enough to know you had your fight up, and you weren’t even when it wasn’t-
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 3:
… didn’t want to exercise it, but you were like, “It’s there. It’s coming.”
Speaker 1:
It’s not personal is what I meant.
Speaker 3:
Right.
Speaker 1:
It’s not personal. So I knew I was going to fuck something up. I kept thinking, “I need to leave my life for a month, get my shit together and come back.” That’s not going to happen. I couldn’t even leave my life for 12 minutes.
Speaker 2:
We tried. I was like, “Let’s go somewhere for a few days.”
Speaker 1:
But we literally could not.
Speaker 2:
We couldn’t. Things started happening again.
Speaker 1:
It’s also a new phase of parenting for me. It’s like when kids are little and, I don’t know, they’re just in your grasp. All their problems are so solvable or it feels that way, at least. They look at you like you know everything. So you kind of feel like you do. Their problems are there’s adults around them.
Speaker 2:
They need you.
Speaker 1:
They need you. I don’t know. And then it feels like they get to a point. And for me, it’s not just like, “Oh, they’re out in the world making decisions, and anything could happen.” There’s that, which is the most terrifying thing of it. But there’s also this shift in the relationship where I don’t know if some people listening have had this experience where, this is just one example of it, but it’s like your kid. You create this world for them. You have made it for them.
So by default, it’s the best you can do. You’re like, “This is the best way.” This is the best life. This is the best family. This is the best spirituality. This is the best set of morals. This is the best whatever. You don’t say that. But because you’ve done it, your kids believe you.
Speaker 2:
And that your kids also believe that you are God, in some ways.
Speaker 1:
They believe you know.
Speaker 2:
Yep.
Speaker 1:
But then they go away, and they learn that all these different ways. And they start to develop their own ideas, and they start to look at you. Your kids come home, and you just look… I should say I, not you. Other people might handle this better.
But I start looking at myself and my family, my decisions and my life through my grown kids’ eyes. And suddenly I don’t know shit. I don’t know if I’m doing anything. I think I’m probably not. I think that they’re judging me, and they should. And I don’t don’t know if I’ve ever made a good decision in my life. All of these things. And I would say also when you put all of your identity and faith in the basket of good mom, and then your kids grow up, and just have any questions, I just don’t know who the fuck I am.
Whatever sturdiness, steadiness needs to happen during that time, I mean Abby’s therapist said… It’s this beautiful thing which is like that all of this is very Freudian, and it’s like the adolescent’s job is to kill their parent, and the parent’s job is to not die, which is so beautiful to me because it’s like the job of the teenager or young adult is to… We want them to look at us and create their own ideas. Hopefully, that’s the work of what we’ve done, right? If all they can do is replicate what we’ve done, then maybe we haven’t even given them the strength and the freedom to question and pioneer their own lives. We want that.
Speaker 2:
That’s right.
Speaker 1:
And there’s and both of celebrating that, allowing that while also not making it so about us that we believe we are wrong.
Speaker 2:
But there’s a grieving in it all because it’s like, first of all, where the older ones who are starting to move off into their own existences and create their own path and chart their own path, there’s a grieving of losing them. There’s also this grief that’s coming in for me right now. And I think you could relate, and I would agree this questioning like “Did we make mistakes,” because they might decide or say something that is obvious that they will do things a little differently. And so, it’s hard to manage the taking it personally I guess.
Speaker 1:
I’m like, “Oh, well, we live in the wrong state. What’s wrong with our house? Why don’t we have more pictures up of them?” I’m like, “Any parent I think who has a kid come back as an adult” and you start to see everything through their eyes. It can be a crisis, is all that I’m saying.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
And I don’t have a lot of answers for it. I’m just saying it’s been difficult.
Speaker 2:
That’s exactly right. What is happening?
Speaker 1:
So all of this and then your sickness and then death in Abby’s family and then the unbelievable state of the world, and I truly forgot. I forgot. I remember taking walk with you and you brought up a challenge in our family and saying, “I can’t decide what to do.” My decision fatigue is such that I’ve never experienced this level of… And it’s not just decision fatigue. It’s decision unconfidence.
I don’t know what we should do. I am at a loss. I am at an edge of what I know to do anymore, and then one night, I was… It’s like I used to think all of my problems. If I felt any problems, I would just restrict and that would get things back to under control for me.
Speaker 3:
Which is another word for rigidity. The restrict is one side of the extreme, which is being rigid. And when you’re rigid, there is comfort within the rigidity, even if it ends up being the wrong decision or whatever. If you have confidence, this is what’s happening. I know what’s happening, I have it under lockdown. You don’t even think, “Is this right or wrong?”
And so when you get to the place where you’re even entertaining, I don’t know what the right thing to do, is do we go left? Do we go right? Do we go forward? Do we get up? That is necessarily outside of rigidness, and it is so deeply uncomfortable if your coping mechanism has been rigidity.
Speaker 1:
Yes. So that for me is the psychological level of it. I’ve been thinking about the spiritual level of it too, and this is so probably too weird to utter out loud. But I think that eating is a spiritual yes to life. It’s yes, more of this. Yes, I so badly want this experience that I’m having on this planet to go on and continue and to have more and more that I’m going to ingest this thing-
Speaker 2:
To keep you alive.
Speaker 1:
… that guarantees it goes on. I’m not so sure. I’m voting agnostic, and I’m laughing about it. But it does feel like that. It feels like the J. Alfred Prufrock poem that they’re like, “Do I dare eat a peach?” Just being about do I dare to enter life this juicily.
Speaker 2:
Indulge.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I’m not sure.
Speaker 3:
Psalm 34 taste and see. Taste and see. Are you going to see what this world has to offer? Are you going to see that’s taste and see the goodness of the Lord? It can also be taste and see what the hell life is all about. Taste and see what you’re here to do and to experience. That’s risky. It could not satisfy you. That goes back to the whole insatiable-ness. Is this world not meant for me, because if you’re supposed to taste and see that you belong in this earth and I taste it, and I’m still insatiable, am I wrong and broken? And I don’t know what-
Speaker 1:
Yes.
Speaker 3:
It’s a spiritual real situation.
Speaker 1:
It is. It’s a spiritual thing. If I look at a table full of food with a bunch of people around it being gregarious and whatever, I think that, “Fuck that.” And I don’t mean fuck meatloaf. There’s some sort of relaxing into this earth or something that everyone’s doing that I am unsure of. Okay.
Speaker 3:
They think that’s what’s going to keep them safe. They think the people around that table, the fullness that they feel in them, the joy that they’re experiencing, the bonds that they’re making are what’s going to keep them safe. You look at that, and you think, “That is unwieldy.” Those people, how do you know you can trust them, that what you’re putting in your body, how do you know you can trust that whatever, and you’re like, “I will keep myself safe by having none of it, and being my own little island.”
Speaker 1:
Yes. None of them are on guard. Suckers on guard against what? I’m not sure. So what happened is that one night, I knew I was going to lose it. Every day, I tell myself, “You’re going to lose it. I do my breathing.”
Speaker 2:
Do you actually tell yourself you’re going to lose it every day?
Speaker 1:
Yes.
Speaker 2:
That’s something.
Speaker 1:
I had an image of treadmill down on my face. I can’t run this fast. I felt like a container that was so full that clearly if one more thing happens, it’s going to overflow, and that’s fucking science or something, is how it felt. And actually, that’s kind of how trauma works, is that suddenly everything feels traumatic. If it’s too much too fast, if it’s not processable because of the relentlessness of it in a certain time, you do end up feeling that way.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. And also something that is normal, average, something that happens in a normal day can feel traumatic because there’s unprocessed trauma. So it’s [inaudible 00:17:03]
Speaker 1:
Right.
Speaker 3:
But it’s also just overwhelmed when you have yourself together by a fucking hair, when you’re like, “Look at me, I’m managing. Look. Oh, I’m managing.” I’m at 99%, here I go, here I go, look at me. I did a great job at that drop off. Didn’t yell at anyone.” Okay, I did a great job. And then that’s when you always know you need to take yourself out because it is a matter of time before that one tiny little bump, and then they’re going to get the whole thing, and all of your pride over the past five things, you didn’t lose your shit over. It’s coming out there. I did it last week. It was not pretty.
Speaker 1:
I want to hear about yours too because I’m about to tell you mine.
Speaker 2:
So tell us yours.
Speaker 1:
Well, so I found myself, I started to obsess about Craig and that I felt like he was not making good decisions. And what that means is decisions that I think are better for him and our family. And I do want to offer great compassion to everyone who is co-parenting because it is not for the faint of heart.
I think that because people see our family and we do love each other, and we do try very hard and that they might think it’s easy and it is not, that is not the case, and it’s not because anybody is right or wrong, or good or bad. It’s because it is hard enough to have a family when you’re all contractually obligated to be nice to each other, make similar decisions, have shared values, have all of those things, but when those bets are off, I don’t know.
Speaker 2:
It’s difficult to come to the center on the Venn diagram when everybody has their own way and has their own systems and their beliefs and whatever. Getting the crossover in that Venn diagram is difficult, and there’s a lot of love I have for folks who are co-parenting.
Speaker 1:
Me too.
So we were in this little week long hell of, I don’t know, me just trying to figure out, well, this thing is happening, and it’s not what I think should happen. And so, what am I going to do? That’s the only way I thought about these things, is what am I going to say? How am I going to say it? How is it going to have most [inaudible 00:19:45]-
Speaker 3:
How do I right this ship?
Speaker 1:
Yes. How do I right this ship? Exactly.
Speaker 2:
Can I stop you right there before we go on?
Speaker 1:
Yes.
Speaker 2:
Can we go back before the fixing of it? What’s happening in your body?
Speaker 1:
So what’s happening in my body is that I am feeling like my co-parent is making decisions that I feel scared to death are going to make our family less unified or safe, and it’s going to affect the kids, and then I’m going to have lost control of this situation.
Speaker 3:
But that’s what you’re thinking. What are you feeling in your body? When that’s happening, when you are thinking that this is a dangerous decision, this is not going to help the kids, this is ruining all of the great plans you have laid and painstakingly executed and here comes this Mack truck, just fucking it up, what is your body experiencing?
Speaker 1:
Heart going faster, chest tightening. My mind likes to turn that into anger. I think it’s just utter existential terror. I think it’s fear, but it’s easier for me to call it anger. But I think it’s fear, and I think it has to do with maybe it’s all tied together. It’s like as our kids get older, everybody is going in their own direction, and that is so scary to me. My whole thing is keeping everybody.
I lost my shit. Well, one day, I decided this is the time. Now, it’s when I say all this shit, and basically really what I’m doing is making sure that you feel as bad as I do. I think if I was really trying to solve something, I think I actually am smart enough in my brain to know how we get people to a certain place. Even if I was still trying to control it, I think I’m tricky enough and clever enough-
Speaker 3:
You could have manipulated it.
Speaker 1:
Yes, or I know even the more bees with honey shit, I know I could have done it intellectually. So looking back on it, I know that was not my goal. My goal was I am suffering, and you are not. And why are the decisions you’re making everybody’s suffering and you’re not? And I need you to suffer. Right. That’s-
Speaker 2:
So honest, honey.
Speaker 1:
… what I needed to happen, and I did a fucking good job. Yeah. Mission accomplished. Suffering equity was established that day. And then because I’m a terrible person at heart, okay-
Speaker 2:
No you’re not.
Speaker 1:
I said horrible things.
Speaker 2:
Are they horrible and accurate or just horrible?
Speaker 1:
I don’t know. I think everybody’s awful and wonderful. It’s just what we point out.
Speaker 3:
Fair enough. Fair enough.
Speaker 1:
So I said horrible things. And then later that day, I found myself I was out of my body on the phone. And then I was not talking to someone that I was trying to lead with. I was in a trauma. I was fighting for my life. I was using one conversation to ask the universe to stop making people grow, to stop making time pass, to make sure nobody dies anymore, to make sickness not be real, to make the world not be in the war. It was like existential and putting it all on this one person. I can’t control anything. But I can fucking control how you feel, and this is all your fault somehow. Okay.
Speaker 3:
Or you can at least be as scared as… In fairness to you, there is this suffering equity thing which we do. That’s the hot potato that you talked about here. I can’t handle this pain. You share this with me. That will make me feel better if we’re both holding this thing.
But it is also this idea of if you are not as afraid and as aware of the dangers out there that I am, you would look like you’re not afraid of this. And the way I can tell you’re not afraid of this is you’re making all these decisions that suggest that you’re not afraid of going exactly where we’re headed if you keep doing that.
And so you’re like, “That is scary.” You want to shake the person and say, “Look at that mountain where we’re careening towards.” Why don’t you see it? I’m mad at you for not seeing it. I’m mad at you for not orienting your entire life and all of your thoughts so that we avoid careening into the mountain, which is what I’m doing. So why should I be the only one pulling on the wheel?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. Hold on a second though. I hear you, sister. But that presupposes that your vision is correct, that you-
Speaker 1:
Or the same as other persons.
Speaker 2:
Exactly. That your vision is this mountain and that they see it as clearly as you do, and that there’s a whole host of assumptions that we’re laying into this, which is I think the big-
Speaker 1:
Totally.
Speaker 3:
But that’s what I mean about that-
Speaker 1:
Totally.
Speaker 3:
… the volume and the anger, and that is what the fear’s about when you see the mountain that clearly, you can have a little more compassion for yourself for the strength of that emotion when you’re trying so desperately not to careen into it. I guess the work then is that mountain real? Am I absolutely sure of this? Is there any universe in which it isn’t?
Speaker 1:
Or am I even in charge of making sure people don’t run into mountains?
Speaker 2:
That’s exactly right.
Speaker 1:
And what mountains am I trying to protect everybody, from death, sickness, having the relationship that they should have because that’s what they’re having?
Speaker 2:
That’s right.
Speaker 1:
I’m trying to change somebody’s decisions so that he has the relationship with our children that I think he should have-
Speaker 2:
That’s right.
Speaker 1:
… instead of just making his decisions. And then I’m always rushing in to say, “Here’s what the consequences are going to be of that. Here’s….” Instead of just letting the consequences be whatever they’re going to be-
Speaker 3:
Natural consequences-
Speaker 1:
… tying to.
Speaker 3:
You go outside with a coat, you’re cold. You make that decision with your kid, your relationship’s going to suffer. But I’m not running out and giving a coat to a 55-year-old man every week.
Speaker 1:
Right. I don’t actually, in this point of my life, yell at people. I don’t. You lose my shit. I don’t.
Speaker 3:
I think that’s a good call in life. I feel like we could be proud of ourselves to not be yelling at people in their 50s-
Speaker 1:
I’m so proud-
Speaker 3:
… or 40s or whatever the hell it is.
Speaker 1:
Are you kidding? I’m so proud. I don’t say that. I don’t say that as a bare minimum. I say like, “Wow, good for you.” Yes. So since I don’t do that, I could recognize… I was actually in my pantry. Okay. This is actually now that I say that, that’s interesting. Okay. So I was fighting with Craig also by myself. Okay. Craig doesn’t even… He’s sweet. He’s like, “What the fuck?” He’s not suffering. Okay. I am suffering. So Abby had already gone to sleep. I was hiding up in the pantry in order to send mean texts because-
Speaker 3:
Oh, you did it over text?
Speaker 1:
No, no. First was the phone call. Then, I just had to make it worse. I had to stick to the thing.
Speaker 3:
Double down. Double down.
Speaker 1:
Yes. Because, and let me open a window to my situation of what it’s like to be me in this skin is for that day, I wasn’t upset because I lost my shit and hurt someone’s feelings. I was upset because I had so clearly seeded the moral high ground, because I-
Speaker 3:
I see what you’re talking about. You’re like, “Maybe, I didn’t do it right, but I’m still totally right. I’m still totally right.”
Speaker 1:
I was like, “I was golden before.” He was making bad decisions. I was over here just minding my own business, clearly being the good one. And then I had to insert myself. And now, I’m the bad one, which I was. And so clearly I had to fix that somehow. And the only way I could fix that was by sending long texts, explaining why, in fact, that tirade was necessary and important in fact, and one might say even evolved.
Speaker 3:
And predestined really. We had to go through that to get where we are now. So I think we can all agree everything happens for a reason.
Speaker 1:
And so, of course, there are some people with more levels of sanity when they lose it, which as human beings we do, understand that the next step is to humbly say, “I am sorry.” But I don’t go down that easy. Okay.
So when I was in that pantry hiding from Abby, because I knew if she asked me what I was doing, she would know that I was spinning out, and I didn’t want to get caught spinning out. I just wanted to send one more text. So out of my body, when I look back on the text, I was not punctuating correctly. I was skipping words in sentences. This is not me. This being irate, losing it maybe, but using bad grammar, that I was clearly dissociated, is what I’m saying.
It was a rock-bottom for me. After many, many months of losing the illusion of control that I thought I had, I realized I woke up the next morning and thought, “Okay. I don’t know how to love people and love myself.”
I actually am willing to admit that I do not know how to live amongst people who are going to do whatever the hell they’re going to do and be myself and not lose it and not panic and not hurt people by jumping in. Even if I don’t see any of those people, I don’t know how to peacefully exist in my own skin knowing that’s happening around me. I don’t know how to spend a single day not in misery about all of it.
And so here’s what I did. I went to my first Al-Anon meeting because over time, I have heard that that’s where people go with this particular situation of not knowing how to love the world and loving other people while also maintaining your own serenity. And I don’t want to get into details about that because an anonymity-
Speaker 2:
An anonymity.
Speaker 1:
… is so important.
Speaker 2:
It’s anonymous,
Speaker 1:
Right. But I love it. I’ve probably gone to, I don’t know, nine meetings in the last 10 days. It’s a place for people who have had drug addicts or addicts that they have lost their sanity around trying to fix, trying to control, trying to whatever, so then they have to find a way to have serenity in the face of that and still love their people.
But it’s also for anyone who I guess, and this is all just my words, so this is not representing that organization at all, but who has any quote, “qualifier in their life,” meaning somebody who helps them qualify for this program. And a qualifier can just be anybody in the world whose my inability to control them or fix them or heal them or really distract myself from my own issues by focusing on theirs is a qualifier.
So for me, right now, that’s everybody including the world at large. And I don’t know, it’s just like people talking about that. It’s just people talking about that and people tell stories, and then you can kind of see yourself in it, and you’re like, “Huh.” It’s just like if there’s a pressure cooker, it just releases the pressure 20% enough for me to… And it is just this relentless reminding of people to focus on themselves, which I am so confused by.
Abby’s laughing because I just walk out like, “What the fuck.” The first meeting, somebody had a little thing on their screen that said, “Don’t fight it. Don’t fix it. Don’t figure it out.” And I took a picture of it, and sent it to Liz and Alex, and was like, “Excuse me. What the fuck am I supposed to do all day?” This is my to-do list. Figure it out, force it, fix it.
Speaker 2:
Fight it.
Speaker 1:
Fight it, right? Anyway, there’s just a lot there for me, I think. And I also think that regardless whether it’s like Al-Anon or Buddhism or anything that helps you loosen your grip a little bit and love in a way that doesn’t require attachment or controlling is such a beautiful thing for people with children who are growing up.
It feels like every phase of their childhood or I have tried to figure out what’s needed right now, not necessarily for them, but for me as a parent of them in this stage. And I cannot think of anything that they need from me more now as they’re becoming young adults, is to figure out how to be a steady place for them to come back and forth from, not going into them and not panicking, and not worrying and not whatever, but just being okay so that they can even go out and be not okay, and then come back to someone who is, and figuring out deeper than that, that’s even beyond how they relate to us.
But I think when you’ve created your whole life and purpose and goodness and identity around mom of these kids and then they enter a phase where they’re like, “You’re not the most important thing,” I don’t know. I just always thought there would be this… Anyway, we have to create a life is what I’m saying. I have to create a self. We have to create a life that isn’t just their moms.
Speaker 2:
Don’t you think it’s interesting? I think it’s interesting, at least. You said a lot that Chase saved your life because when you found out you got pregnant with him, you quit all the things. And he was the reason why you came back to life, and that is just not true.
You are the reason why you came back to life. And so it’s this story that I think you’ve told yourself around Chase and the girls and what they mean and how they’ve kept you alive all these years. And I think it’s really appropriate given the therapy and the work that you’re doing right now to I think rewrite that narrative a little bit because it’s just you are the one that has guided this family for all of these years.
And a mother and a parent’s role just undoubtedly changes as they get older, and they start to question some of the ways that we parented them. And that is hard to accept, and they start making different decisions, and they want to live in different cities, and they want to go do and experience life differently. That doesn’t mean we have to change who we are to fit into their mold now.
Speaker 1:
I know.
Speaker 2:
That’s not what’s happening.
Speaker 1:
And that’s what I tend to want to do.
Speaker 2:
Yes.
Speaker 1:
I think because I didn’t have a steady self when I had Chase, I’ve been an addict since I was 10. I didn’t have time to be steady or figure out who I was before he was born. So I just tried to be what he needed.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
That’s all I did ever, is try to be what I thought he thought was good, which is a ridiculous.
Speaker 3:
But I don’t think it is ridiculous. I think that’s what we’re all trying to do. Raise your hand. Anyone who’s like, “Well, happily for me, I got my sturdy ass self really nailed down before I had my kid.” And so I knew exactly who I was. And so when he came into the world, I could really, not only did I know how to raise that kid up, but also could see where I ended and he get his needs where they were in conflict with my pre-established sturdiness. I was able to compensate. That has never happened once.
I think we’re all just trying to be what each other needs and that’s how we’re figuring out where we end and other people begin. That is the process. That’s why recovery is interrelational. That’s why you find out all of your limitations in relationship because that’s where it comes up.
And so, what I think is so fascinating is that it is like what I hear you saying about this time of your life relates to all the times of life because even with my little kids, whenever I hear people say like, “You have to work on yourself, you have to invest in yourself,” I’ve always thought of it in the way of like, “Because your kids can only be as healthy as they see you being,” or they will model what you do. And so you need to be healthy so that they can see that and emulate that, or know that’s the goal or whatever.
But it feels like that might not even be the most important part. It feels like you need to be okay so that they know that your okayness does not depend on them being whatever your definition of okay is, because if they know mom has a panic attack every time she looks at me trying to scan to know if I’m okay or not every time I come home with a report card trying to figure out if I’m okay or not, every time I do anything that, A, I don’t know if I’m okay because she’s always trying to figure out if I’m okay. And also, I’m not just trying to be okay for me. I’m trying to be okay so that our entire family will be okay, and that’s not-
Speaker 1:
No.
Speaker 3:
… fair. And it’s also mom’s okay and child’s okay are very different things. Exactly. You being okay is so you take away the job from your kid of making you okay, and so that you actually aren’t looking at your kid and waiting for them to make you okay-
Speaker 1:
Exactly.
Speaker 3:
… so that you can actually just be with them.
Speaker 1:
You are not doing that with everybody. Oh, sorry, ex-husband who I’ve been divorced from for eight, 10 years. I just need you to behave this certain way and make these certain decisions so that I can be okay. So kids, I just need you to do all of these things because what I’m saying that it’s for you, but it’s really so that I can be okay. I need you to be okay so that I can be okay. So it’s a skipping of all of that control and just figuring out how do I be okay just myself without controlling other people to get me to that okayness.
Speaker 2:
I just want to say too, if we really think about the kind of psyche that you had when you had Chase and then you started the process of continuing to have children, I think it’s important to remember that you have parts of you that are still so young. And I think now that Emma our youngest who will be going to college in a couple of years, I think what is on the horizon of this empty nest is all coming to the surface, and so are these super young parts that do feel like I want to just pound you a little kid would.
And so I just want to say that for especially anybody whose kids are about to go off to school or you are an empty nester, there’s so much that we don’t allow to come to the surface as parents in the idea of protecting our children.
And I think what you’re doing right now is so interesting and beautiful because you’re letting it all come up. You’re scanning the horizon going, “Oh, shit, this is really interesting.” And yeah, you are probably doing and saying some stuff that you might in retrospect, regret or feel bad about. And those are still some young parts. I think of little 10-year-old Glennon never really having been able to express some of this stuff for a various slew of reasons.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. So it’s like how is this all connected? These two episodes we started with the decision to go off meds. And now, I’m in Al-Anon every day. How are these connected? And I actually was talking to my therapist at one point and said… It’s like I heard in the meeting, it’s like a new level, a new devil. So this control of other people are trying to figure out how to love because, truly, the most important thing to me in the entire world is how do I love in a way that feels like love to my people and to myself?
And so I presented it as, so I got sober from anorexia and blah, blah, blah. And now, and then I got off the meds. And now interestingly enough, I have this new problem that’s emerged, which is that I control people, and I lose my shit about not being able to control them. And I don’t know how to stay focused on myself, but I heard in a meeting that it’s like a new level, new devil.
You just keep on and you find new things. And my therapist said, “Oh, no, no, no. This isn’t a new thing.” This has been your thing. This was the thing since the first time we ever met. What is love? What is control? What is yours? What is not yours?
All of that has been from the very beginning. So what I think is cool and what I’m proud of myself about is that I accepted the challenge of this little adventure of seeing what life was like without my medication and without the tool of medication, it became clear to me that I had some challenges that were causing un-peace inside of me.
And I realized I still needed a tool. I needed a tool. And so I found these groups, and I’m proud of myself for having that moment of rock bottom and then immediately recognizing that as low as I wanted to get and not continuing on until it got worse and worse and worse.
And I keep thinking about this Rumi quote that everybody knows because it’s on memes all the time. It’s that your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
And I resonate with that so much because eating disorders, all the seven trillion medications and control and anger and distance and coldness and all of these things are barriers within me that I have built against me in the world, me in love. And the really cool thing you guys is that whenever I know a Rumi quote, I know that I just know it from a meme. So I actually go back and read the poem and figure out what it actually was. And there’s more to that. The quote says, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it, and embrace them.”
Speaker 2:
Oh.
Speaker 1:
So there is this way of looking at everything that’s like, “I was bad and now, I’m good. I was lost, and then I’m found,” or why did I need all those things, or I’m stripping this armor and taking world off and none of that feels real to me. I feel so grateful for every barrier that I had because I needed them all. They were just so necessary. And so I don’t think of any of this as black and white or good and bad. That’s it, you guys. That’s all I got.
Speaker 3:
Were you able to repair with Craig?
Speaker 1:
Yeah. He’s just such a sweetheart that I woke up two days later after my first two meetings, and he had written back a long text to my dissociated ridiculous text. And I want to say this, this is really funny. So my text was justifying my tantrum. So that’s all that it was.
Speaker 3:
Right.
Speaker 1:
And so I wrote a long text about how his behavior or decisions or whatever made me suffer and stew and spin and lose it and blah, blah, blah. And basically, what I thought would happen was that he would write back and focus on the fact that the part where I said that what he was doing was causing me all of that, but that’s not what he focused on. He responded and basically said, “That sounds awful. It’s not my problem.”
The problem was my mental situation. It was so embarrassing. I felt so embarrassed by that text because I was like, “Wait, you’re supposed to understand that it’s you’re causing the suffering.”
Speaker 3:
Yeah. That’s obnoxiously evolved of him. You’re like, “I’m the emotionally clever one.”
Speaker 1:
I didn’t even know what to say because what are you going to do? No. You focused on the wrong part. That’s not whatever. So I didn’t say anything. And then in these meetings, I kept learning. You don’t have to always do the thing. You can just let time take care of some things. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. But when I was my best self first thing in the morning, a couple days later, I just wrote back and said, “I’m really sorry. You’re right. I should never have talked to you like this.”
Speaker 2:
Oh, I didn’t know that.
Speaker 1:
I know. I’m as embarrassed about doing the right thing. I am more embarrassed by doing the nice right thing that I am doing the wrong thing, and I’ll work on that too.
Speaker 2:
It’s interesting that you didn’t clue me in on any of this in real time. You told me after.
Speaker 1:
Because I knew this was my stuff. When I’m talking to you about something, I’m usually just trying to justify something that I’ve done or I just knew that I needed to figure this out. And a day later, he’s over totally fine. His ability to let go of a grudge is far beyond mine. So that’s where we are.
Okay. Thank you all if you made it through those two episodes.
Speaker 3:
Thanks for being so vulnerable.
Speaker 1:
And if you didn’t like it, I’m okay with that. I am not going to spend my day worrying about whether or not you liked this or not. I’m going to focus on myself and at lease you to do the same. Just kidding. We love you. Bye-Bye.
Speaker 3:
Bye.
Speaker 1:
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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.