Post-Election Family Meeting
November 7, 2024
Glennon Doyle:
Hi everybody. It’s Glennon and Abby and Amanda and we are recording on the morning after the election. We actually planned to get on today and to have a expert on elections be on with us and to discuss what was going on and give you information. And then this morning we decided that perhaps more information is not what’s needed right now. And we talked about not recording at all because we are so sad, but then we thought maybe what’s best is to just show up and be sad together and be here together.
So that’s what we’re going to do and we are here today to just share how we’re feeling and how we’re reacting to all of this. And whatever we share today might not be where we land. We are reserving the right to feel however we feel and share whatever we want to share and need to share. And as we know during these times, we might land in a different place eventually, but today is one stop along the way and we’re going to keep showing up as we are. So Amanda, how are you?
Amanda Doyle:
I am grateful to be with you two and grateful to be with our community today. I have been trying very hard to ground my nervous system every minute and a half when I start to think about what this means for today, for next week, for next year for my state and country and world. And it’s very easy to fly into a bit of a tailspin about that, but I am trying not to. But for me, I was feeling very hopeful and optimistic yesterday. The first half of the day on election day I was canvassing and it was a gorgeous, sunny, beautiful day. And I just felt so goddamn thankful to be out there going to doors and encouraging people to vote and I felt a hundred percent sure that this is where we were going to end up, with Kamala Harris as our president-elect.
And I kept walking around going, “This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and madame in it.” And I was so excited for myself. I was like, “We’re going to get Madame President for the first time, and she’s brilliant and good and so thankful that she has taken on what she’s taken on to get us there.” And then at 7:30 last night, we’re still very excited and about to settle in to watch everything. I got a text from a good friend that asked me if I wanted to know something that she knew about. Our other good friend had told her how she voted and that she had voted for Trump. And that kind of began the unraveling for me because for me, I just thought anyone within a single IQ point or an ounce of decency that there would have been…
There’s just innumerable reasons why there would’ve been like, “No, that’s not what we’re doing anymore.” If it’s for your kid’s choice or your body or for the fact that he’s a convicted sexual predator and that he couldn’t get an entry-level desk job at the CIA because he’s so compromised. And with his debt and his impending imprisonments and that he’s going to have access to the highest level of decision making impacting the globe. I thought, “Well now I’m scared for us.” Because if that person is a litmus test to what people all over the country are doing, I’m not so sure this is going to go well. And it also started for me this really internal shakeup of this person I thought was in my community.
And what is the purpose of community if not to protect each other? And this is not protection of me and this is not protection of the people that are also in community with us, including Black children. It made me really start thinking about community and that thought about what is community and about this might not go the way I thought it was going to go, just got me thinking about how will this go down? How will the next four years go down if Trump wins? I can’t stop thinking about Black women since that moment until now. I just keep thinking about I am stomping my feet so enraged that this system is not fair and not just and not protecting my rights and not protecting my daughter’s rights and how this is just so utterly incorrect and unjust and that this government is going to be against us.
And I was like, “Oh wait, it’s been eight years of that.” The four years of Trump and then the threat of the return and now it’s going to be at least four more and how that feels so excruciatingly long and unacceptable. And then I started thinking about history and Black women and Black families. And thinking, “Oh, I’m so pissed about this moment.” But there or hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years and generations and entire people lived and died with a government that was against them with the purpose of which was to deny their humanity and the official actions of which was to ensure that the law did not respect their humanity.
I mean we’re talking about Black families who were in hundreds of years of enslavement and then pseudo enslavement through sharecropping and then the government saying Jim Crow was the way and then state sanction lynchings of which there was no justice or retribution. We’re talking about the actual compromise that is the founding of our country that said that Black people would be three-fifths of humans. And that Dred Scott saying the Supreme Court saying that no Black person could become a citizen of the United States. We’re talking about poll taxes, we’re talking about Black kids being shot up in the streets and people being acquitted after acquitted after acquitted up to this day, up to the Supreme Court in 2013, 2018, saying again, “Voting rights are not protected for you.”
Over and over. The shock to me that this government is not set up for me and to protect me and is against me in the recent history of my life has been the reality for hundreds of years of people and they weren’t spending their whole lives holding their breath, waiting for someone to affirm their humanity. They weren’t saying, “I will live when this government says that I have a right to live. I will have joy when this government gives me any reason to have joy.” They were saying, “I’m not going to them for that. I’m not looking for safety in the court system, in the federal government, in the state government, in the police.” The only place I’m going to have safety, if at all, is in my community where I create safety, where I create joy, where I affirm my own humanity and the humanity of people around me.
Where people had to raise Black sons that would walk out and get lynched with no retribution after. You’re talking about lynches, you’re talking about Trayvon Martin. We were talking about over hundreds of years. And they just had to continue to believe that their children were worthy of dignity and celebration and rights and they had to create that for themselves while they continued to push for the government to catch up with them. And that if there’s any way through this, it is going to be that. It is not going to be holding our breath saying, “Oh, we got to wait four years and then wait till we can elect someone else so that we can have humanity and rights and justice.”
Glennon Doyle:
Hell no.
Amanda Doyle:
The only place where it’s reliable to do that is with each other, is the people that we can touch and see and create that for each other and push for the government to catch up with us.
Glennon Doyle:
I keep thinking about so many people have texted me or said to me in the last 12 hours this feeling of almost like embarrassment or self-flagellation for allowing the hope again. Everyone from my kid to the wisest person I know who texted me is like, “I feel so stupid for feeling hopeful and allowing that again and allowing myself to be crushed again.” And I feel that way a little bit, but I also think it is not that we should not be hopeful. Hope is not the wrong idea, but we just have to be more wise about where we’re putting our hope. Our hope is not in these huge political systems. Our hope is not in empire. Our hope is in each other, in community, and we, I guess, got to figure out how to create community that is more honest, where we know people better than we know them now.
We’re clearly not doing it right if we are surprised as shit by each other, every time people reveal who they are and what they believe. We do not know each other. I went to one of my meetings this morning, it was really good place to be this morning discussing what we can control and what we can’t. And I was just thinking so much. I know I’ve talked to both of you a lot about how I feel like I have functioned a little bit like the codependent, complicit, panicky wife of an alcoholic. It’s like America is my very sick husband and I am this woman who continuously cleans up the bottles and make sure the neighbors don’t hear and repeat a million times, “This is not who we are.” And I’m constantly covering for him and I’m believing in the potential of him and not living in the reality of him.
And I do feel and did feel this weird, very sad, peace-less somber, but deep acceptance. Abby will tell you even before the last few days, something about the air outside and the people’s faces and what I see, I just thought, I don’t know, that this is going to go our way. And I think what’s interesting about what happened in the results is that nothing new happened. Nothing happened except that once again, America was revealed for who America is. This is who we are, this is how we were founded.
Amanda Doyle:
This is who you’re married to.
Glennon Doyle:
This is who we are married to. And I do know that from my recovery that there is a power in being still with that for a bit. We are as divided as we seem to be. We are in many ways two countries. We are not the United States of America. We were not founded on equality and freedom and liberty for all. All of that has always been propaganda and we have always been who we are, who were revealed to be once again. And the other thing that I was thinking about in my meeting this morning is that so many of us are just feeling so deeply unsafe and afraid right now. And I was looking at everybody on the screen on my meeting and thinking about so many of us grew up in volatile families, with parents who for whatever reason had various levels of erratic behavior and then complicit behavior.
And we spent a lot of time wondering if we were going to be protected, wondering if we were going to be safe, wondering if anybody was going to come save us. And I think that right now there’s probably a lot of people who are feeling deeply unsafe in a way that is a little bit of PTSD, that is old. That is, a lot of us are feeling like children who are not going to be protected and who have an erratic dad and complicit women. And the leadership of this country feels a lot like our nervous systems did when we were little. And I think that that brings us back to your point, which is that we are not children and we are adults and we do have some agency and we don’t have to wait for mommy and daddy to get their shit together.
We get to create the community and the safety and the grown-up belonging that we seem to be waiting for mommy and daddy to do with our politics.
Amanda Doyle:
Which is false from the beginning, even if… It is such a good analogy because it’s like, “As long as mommy and daddy are calm, we’ll be okay.”
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
And that’s never… If mommy and daddy are throwing shit around the house, that’s scary. But also if mommy and daddy aren’t throwing the shit around the house, it doesn’t mean you’re safe either.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
We feel this from our homes and our whatever, but as white women, it is new to us to feel like, “Oh wait, my government’s not there for me. That’s weird.” That’s a new feeling and it’s not new to the centuries of people who lived before to the Back people and brown people of our country. They knew very clearly their government was not for them.
They pushed for it to be and used hope as a discipline to continue to push it to be, but weren’t waiting on that safety. I think the only safety that has ever existed is real like, “I can rely on you and you can rely on me.” Which is why I felt so betrayed by that vote because I’m like, “Oh no, that’s how you take care of me.” You take care of me by voting for our protection.
Glennon Doyle:
I want to stop there and ask you what made you… Because this is what so many people are going to be dealing with today. What made you assume that that friend would vote differently than she did?
Amanda Doyle:
Because she’s smart and because she has a daughter and because she’s a decent, good person. So this is the problem. We have been trusting “decent good” people to create a decent good government. That will give us the safety we deserve but decent good people aren’t voting for a decent good government. And even if we had a decent good, government that was never going to give us the safety, that is actually only possible when you can really rely on someone. What I’m trying to say is on my walk this morning after I was like, “We don’t get what I thought that we got.” I started walking around my neighborhood and I walked by the house of a woman whose husband is dying and has asked me to try to help get her kids a therapist.
And I’ve been so busy trying to get this person elected that I haven’t done that yet. I walked by another friend’s house who later texted me and said how petrified she was, that her husband who works for the government because Trump has promised to eviscerate the federal government jobs, is going to lose his job, therefore they are going to lose their house. Therefore, her child who has special needs will lose his insurance and access to resources. So she came over to my house for us to try to game plan. That is the community. I walked by another friend’s house who just learned that this country and the community that she thought were decent good people did not put the priority on the protection of her Black children at the top of their vote.
These are real… We can’t do anything about the government right now. That government is going to be that government and we can and should continue to push it to catch up with us. But also there are people right now on your street who have very real problems that you can be there for. I mean you don’t have to. That is what I’m going to do with my energy. I am not going to rail against the machine. I’m going to quiet my heart and give myself dignity and peace and know that I’m the only one who gives me peace. And then I’m going to look for the ways to counteract what this government is going to do to the people in my life that I can touch and feel and make their lives actually better.
Glennon Doyle:
This is the beloved community. This idea is what activists have been talking about for so long and it intersects with my spiritual thinking about this because what you’re talking about is the codependency of “I will be okay if we just get the right government in place.” There’s always a middle man. “I will be okay. We will be okay if Kamala, this.” What I hear you saying is we really must remove the middle man.
We make ourselves okay and we make each other okay and we are hoping and praying and working and canvassing and voting for this idea of what we think our country could be. And right now, and I know it’s not all a distraction, we will land further down the road I’m sure at a different day, but right now it feels a little bit insane that all of that effort could have gone into loving our actual neighbors directly.
Amanda Doyle:
And I do believe that fighting for people who will protect your neighbors is loving your neighbors. And so for me, it’s not either or, but it’s like I wasn’t doing the or. I was just doing the either. I was just like, “As long as this is okay, this will be okay.” And so the wound from finding out that my community was not my community because I think of community as protection and safety and love. And you voting for that person is not protection, safety or love for me. Then I have the wrong idea of community and I have the wrong idea of… Then I need to diversify my safety, protection and love and I can’t have it on something as shaky ground that it is susceptible to one night every four years to find out if I have a community of care.
I need to create that community of care because guess what? We think it’s bad now. We don’t know how bad it’s going to get and that is why we need to be outside of this system to care for one another. This is why we need the trickster energy that Tricia Hersey talks about. To figure a way around and through these things that for generations, people who have been billion times more marginalized than us have had to do. That is a survival tactic and there’s a few survival tactics here. One is how we are going to get through this intact in our personhood and another is how we’re going to help the people around us get through this with the very real, very tangible realities that this administration is going to impose on them.
And we can’t just scream at Trump for the next four years berating him for doing these things to the people we love. We need to actually activate and start helping the actual people in their actual houses to do these things. I feel like I need to stop and circle back because I can’t start talking about Black women as the model of survival and resilience and the alternative trickster way of surviving in a system not meant for you and not talk about in line with the misconception of faux community that I have relied upon and not talk about the fact that 55% of white people voted for Trump. 59% of white men voted for Trump. Those men looked around over the last eight years and said, “Yep, this looks good to me.” Only 2% of them changed their mind with all of the horrors that we have seen.
52% of white women voted for Trump. They looked around and said, “Looks good to me.” That went only down by 3% from the last election. It doesn’t matter. There is not a line. They voted for them. And also I’m not going to pontificate about anything, but I just need to say one thing about the things that everyone choose your own adventure here, but no one come to me and say a goddamn word about the Black vote or the Latino vote. Why on God’s green earth do we keep talking… First of all, let’s just put that to bed because the exact same number of Black people voted for Trump this time as last time, which means the exact same number voted for Democrats. Black men went up by one for him, but Black women went down by two.
They are the ones that are holding the community line and they are the ones that have been making real community out in the world and taking care of each other. And the Latino vote, that’s fine. That did change. That went more for Trump. But also do not look at the speck in someone else’s eye without looking at the log in yours. We are 66% of the vote and Latinos are 13%. And so we’re going to say, “The Latinos voted for Trump. That’s why he got elected into office.” Fuck that. We are 66% of the vote. We voted Trump into office.
Glennon Doyle:
White vote. I would love to hear from you. What are you thinking, my love?
Abby Wambach:
Well, I just am listening to you both and I’m so grateful for your honesty and all the beautiful things that you’ve said. I’m sure so many people are listening and really relating. And I also think that there’s probably a sect of people who aren’t even close to getting through the feelings enough to be even able to establish the what-ifs and to think about a plan. Because today I feel stuck and stuck in this weird way because we have children and I have lived through a time when gay people couldn’t get married and now we can get married and what does that mean? And I think everybody’s kind of playing out these possible things, but I think we might be skipping over the real deal.
And to me, I have extraordinary rage and confusion around why people hate women so much. Even women. I went and worked out this morning and I’m not going to be the person that stays in my house because I can’t do that. I’m not going to be as afraid. I’m going to go and face the shit. I’m going to put my fucking body in the world and figure out how to live within it. And I cannot tell you the solidarity that was energetically felt between all of the women inside of this gym. And I am sorry for all the men listening because you are allies and I love you, but I have a kind of rage that is directed towards men right now. And I know that this election is beyond gender and I think it’s more about race.
I understand that, but I can’t understand. I feel silly only because our country has only shown us this. Why did any part of me think that there was a possible different conclusion that we could come up with? And they say progress takes a long time and I am just dumbfounded and sad and I feel rage and that’s the only place I can get to because I’m stunned. The men in the gym couldn’t look me in the eye.
Amanda Doyle:
As they fucking shouldn’t.
Abby Wambach:
And I was looking for it. I was like, “You fucking look at me. You fucking vote that way. You fucking eat it because what you’re going to get is you’re going to get fucking rage eyes today and tomorrow and the next day because I don’t give a fuck.” That’s what I have to say.
Amanda Doyle:
You want a dude, bro on your ballot like you’re a badass and you can’t even make eye contact and own it after.
Abby Wambach:
Fuck you little fucking man. Stupid little man.
Glennon Doyle:
I do want to say this.
Abby Wambach:
But if you’re listening to this, you’re probably one of the good men, so thank you.
Amanda Doyle:
You’re not a stupid fucking little man. You’re probably a big great teddy bear of a-
Glennon Doyle:
[inaudible 00:30:59] On my meeting this morning, three different older white men were absolutely broken down and bawling. Legit. And that was important for me this morning. That is why you go to 12 step meetings instead of the gym.Abby Wambach:
Exactly. Can you imagine [inaudible 00:31:25]
Glennon Doyle:
The right pie and tell.
Abby Wambach:
I did grab just on principle heavier weights than the two gentlemen in my gym.
Glennon Doyle:
I bet you did baby.
Abby Wambach:
Fucking stronger than you.
Glennon Doyle:
Good job.
Amanda Doyle:
Don’t you think though Abby, what you’re describing, if I was a Black woman, that’s exactly how I’d be looking at every white woman I saw?
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
Abso-fucking-lutely. Look me in the eye. Look me in the eye. Me of the eye was a 98% vote for Kamala Harris. You want to fucking look me in the eye that you have literally nothing to lose you middle-class white woman by voting for Kamala, except that you’re afraid that you’re going to off your daddy. Your tribalism is so ingrained in you that you’re willing to let the ship go down. You are actually probably hoping that I kept it up and look me in the eye.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
And I just think we have to be… That same rage that I feel about men, six out of the white men you walk around and see today they voted Trump into office.
Abby Wambach:
Six out of 10, right?
Amanda Doyle:
Six out of 10.
Abby Wambach:
59%. But also five out of 10 white women you see today did. This is what I mean about community. Where is it? Where can we find it? Where can we build it? Because it isn’t this, whatever this thing is. And the rage, they must feel. I don’t know. I don’t know.
Glennon Doyle:
I sensed the community that I want to build and be a part of and spend all of my energy and time and love in over the last 14 hours through the people that were texting me, specific people. I could feel it in who I wanted to reach out to and I could feel it in who was reaching out to me. And I feel it in the energy of, “We are in apocalypse times. This is an apocalypse.” Which just means to reveal. It’s just nothing has happened except for it has been revealed what is, and I think for me, I’m not going to have fake community anymore. I’m not going to have bullshit. What is that? Because you’re all in the same neighborhood or you’re all in the same team or you’re all in the same… Even the whole decent good people.
What does that mean because I don’t agree with you? I don’t think that person is a decent and good person. And hello, maybe I’ll land somewhere else eventually. I’m just saying today love is as love does. Decency as decency votes. What the fuck does that mean? She’s nice. I don’t know what it means other than when it comes down to it, I will put my vote on the line to protect my community. What I’m saying is that’s my version. That is what the community I want. That’s my version of trust and care and being cared for. So shame on us for having fake community where we actually don’t know each other’s hearts because I kind of feel like that’s a version. That’s whiteness. That is whiteness. Just keep it surface.
Call everybody decent. Don’t get under the hood. Don’t ask the hard questions. Don’t have the hard conversations. If I don’t know you well enough to know your values and whether or not you are for people who are hurting and whether or not you have my family’s back when it comes down to it. 100% we’re not in community. You are not my people. And I think we have to figure out what really constitutes community because it’s not a zip code or a convenience thing, it’s intentional. It’s knowing each other. It’s knowing each other’s values. It’s feeling the way you felt on election night. Feeling the fear for your family and knowing who you want to reach for. That’s them.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s like Lovey says, it’s accountability. People who are friendly become friends, but there’s not an accountability there. That is what community is. This affects you. I see it. I am part of it with you. You are part of it with me. And there’s no going rogue. There’s no lack of accountability without breaching the community. For those of us who are new to this, which is most of white people who are even getting in this game and trying has been in the last… Statistically our consciousness was shaken up by Trump. The white people who have gotten in it have mostly gotten in it since then. And we continue to be shocked by each other.
Glennon Doyle:
And how convenient of us.
Amanda Doyle:
We continue to be shocked by, like you said, Abby, that the reason 2016 for me was so fetal position, bawling, stabbed through my heart is because I didn’t know the country hated women. Until then. I didn’t. I didn’t know they hated us. I didn’t know the country hated women so much that they would vote for a sexual predator, six-time, bankrupt, xenophobe, misogynist, racist because he wasn’t a woman. And this time it was easier in a way because I already knew that. I already knew we hated us and it was harder in some respects because everyone knew exactly what they were getting and bought it anyway, but that’s the shock.
And the first term, I think part of it is creating the community of people that you can actually trust in this world and building it on that more solid ground of each other rather than this world out here that we can’t control. But I think part of the answer is how are we going to get through the next four years? Because the first four years, it was every day he does something, reaction. His craziness were equal and opposite crazy. We are everything. We have to respond and that took time off our lives. That was giving him our lives and we can’t opt out of this because too many people who are much more precariously situated than we are need us not to opt out of this. But also I’m not doing it like that again.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, that’s not doing it. I mean that’s not doing it. That has nothing to do with doing it. I mean as I told you last night, I’m drastically changing my life in terms of what I expose myself to and what I waste my energy on. And if we choose to turn on our TVs every day, do the doom scroll. If we choose to do that, then we cannot call ourselves victims of it. We are volunteers of it. We know now that being hyper tuned in to the media machine does not work. It doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t help anybody. It doesn’t do anything except pay the bills of those media companies and jack up our nervous systems and trick us into thinking we’re doing something. It does nothing.
So if we choose to live that way, then we do not get to call ourselves victims of it. It is not the hardest thing to do to decide I’m not letting that in my house. I’m going to stay clear. I’m going to stay engaged. I’m going to make myself… I’ve one life and I am going to give myself a calm nervous system, not in a way that helps me check out, but in a way that actually helps me check in. I just wanted to say that, and this is dangerous territory and it’s not for me. All this is just swimming in my mind, so I might not say it exactly right, but I don’t believe that we know what we think we know. I don’t believe this as much of a binary as we are even presenting it today.
I’m not saying that to be correct in any way. I actually don’t believe that it’s true. I don’t believe that it’s bad guys versus good guys and the bad guys won. I think our whole system is bad And I think that the MAGA party is horrific and I think that there is a lot of problems with the Democratic Party as well. I think that there’s something that is not true to the core. I think that when you are setting yourself up to be the good guys and to be the ones who are protecting human beings while actively funding genocides, while actively having foreign policy all over the planet that does not jive with what you are presenting yourself to be when there is rot at the core of anything. You’re going to see that in the fruit.
And I believe that we are now raising generations of people who aren’t buying it anymore. I’m not discounting anything we’ve said up until now, but I am saying this is not a clear case anymore in my eyes of good guys and bad guys. We are in the Hunger Games and the only way that I see… I just texted a good friend this morning and was like, “I just want to be out of the fucking arena and I want to be at fucking bonfires outside the capitol with people who have ejected themselves and are just taking fierce care of each other and are just fucking lawless.” I just wanted to say that I do not think that there is any purity or rightness even at the center of either political party.
Amanda Doyle:
And I think that if we go back to starting it with the model of survival and perseverance of the Black community in this nation, none of them would say that there was ever an ounce of purity in any of these parties. Even that idea of there’s a really good guy and a really bad guy is not a luxury that has been entertained. It was who is the least likely to kill us? The idea of politics being a notion of harm reduction. We’re not counting on you to keep us safe. You weren’t built for that and you’re never going to do it.
We are going to keep us safe is their model, but we’re going to vote in the people who are most likely to reduce harm against us. So I think that that is an idea that has been around for a long time and I think in some… When we’re talking about whiteness throughout this whole thing, I think we have not thought that. We have thought there’s a good option for me because we’ve been less confronted with the daily truth that nothing was made for us.
Glennon Doyle:
The good guy, bad guy is a white progressive idea.
Amanda Doyle:
And so that in some ways helps me to be like… If there’s no one coming to save you, your only choice is to save yourself and the people that you love. So find people that you love because it might not be the people that you think. Who are you going to put in that boat with you when it’s time? You got to know who those people are and who’s going to do that for you. And I think the other way to survive this, I was thinking about it, I’m like, “The answer is not opting out. That is too much privilege, but how do we keep our sanity and keep our life?” Because I’ve been thinking about what Trisha Hersey says about white supremacist, capitalism and how she just says over and over, “I don’t belong to that. You can’t have me. I’m not the one you’re going to get.”
And I keep thinking about that for the next four years. You circus, that you’re making over here, you can’t have me. I’m not the one you’re going to get. I’m not trading the next four years of my life and my joy and my nervous system to your circus. I’m not going to do it. Y’all, it is a riptide. MAGA is a riptide. What I have done up to now is the force of that riptide pulling us out to sea, I have just conjured every bit of my strength and my rage and my endurance and I have fought like hell to have an equal and opposite swim back to shore against the tide. And that is not right. If anyone who does that literally exhaust themselves to drowning, that is how you die in a riptide.
It isn’t. You’re not trying hard enough. It isn’t because you don’t have enough passion. It isn’t because you don’t want to live enough and you don’t want to save the people around you. It’s that you’re moving in the wrong fucking direction. To save a riptide, you move a few feet in the opposite direction and you just swim out of the riptide and that conserves your energy. And you swim back to fucking shore where you can pull people in because when you’re swimming in a riptide, you can’t pull people in. You can’t save yourself, you can’t save anyone else. You have to stay calm and can conserve your energy. You have to get off of Twitter. When you are in the current, you don’t have any hope of helping yourself or anyone else.
It is not a question of effort. It’s not a question of belief, and it is a question of direction. Which direction are you moving from and are you on solid ground when you’re trying to help people out?
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
And it’s not your own human failing to stay calm when you actually have jumped in the riptide. It’s not that you just don’t have the strength. It’s what the riptide is made for.
Amanda Doyle:
The only two things a riptide does is push you out to sea or drown you through exhaustion for you to swim to the shore. That’s the only thing a riptide does. That’s the only thing MAGA does.
Glennon Doyle:
I just want to leave us with a few thoughts and ideas. First of all, as I can tell you a hopeful thing, which is that if you do decide to not ride the riptide, so not to opt out, but so you can actually opt in effectively. And you decide to cut off whatever it is that is the riptide to you. Whether it’s the news on your phone or whatever. I did that 90 days ago or 60 days ago, and I’m here to report to you that I am a different human being two months after I stopped all social media. I am telling you that I am clearer. I am less terrified all the time. I am braver. I am saner. And I am telling you this not as a braggy thing because I actually am treating it now like a very important part of my sobriety.
I am sober from social media. I am not being hyperbolic. I have been trying to avoid admitting that I was powerless over social media for the last seven years, 10 years. I have found myself deleting it and then days later frantically asking people for my password so I can get it just like I used to hide booze from myself behind refrigerators and then a day later get chairs and try to find the booze again. I am powerless over social media. It is designed to make me insane so that I will stay on it and buy shit. That is not just me. That is all of us. You have that power. When we are choosing what we can control and what we can’t control, that is something that every single person is choosing. It is an addiction.
It takes a minute, but there is hope. I’m telling you that my life is different. Secondly, when I got up this morning, I went upstairs, turned on the coffee maker. When I tell you, I looked outside the window and saw that the sun was rising, and when I tell you that I was surprised. I had a moment of surprise that the sun was rising. Because it was unbelievably beautiful and the rays were coming over the path in front of our house and it was gorgeous. And I kept thinking, “Nature is voting.” The sun has risen again. Some force that is nature has decided, and yet, yes, we are still going to go on and yes, there is still beauty, and yes, there is still light. And that force is not manmade.
I am looking at two different… There are different realms that we can live in. The one that brings us the great despair is the one that’s created by the middle men, but there’s one beyond that and there’s one within me. This might sound crazy, but I can feel it in my bones. There are two sanctuaries that I have right now and they’re the truest ones. And one is this deep inside of me. When I go deep inside of me, there is a part that is beyond all of this madness, that is a low level of river of peace. And there is one outside of me and that is nature. It is not touched by racism or misogyny or any of this shit that we have built.
It is what has been consistent from the beginning of time and it is the same today as it was yesterday. And so when you are finding yourself in despair in that second realm where everything is shit, go to nature today. Just look, walk. It is the living manifestation of hope, of the idea that somehow much is untouched and there are places to find peace and beauty and joy, and we do not have to wait for anyone to give us those things. We can have them now in the first or third realm.
Amanda Doyle:
I would love to add my things to that too, of things to get through. I set up three monthly donations. One is to the Southern Poverty Law Center that does a lot of anti-hate crime work and monitoring of hate groups, my local abortion fund and the ACLU. Find the places that are what you care about. That is your equal and opposite response. It isn’t your rage, it’s your dollars and your time. Also, the people that are most hurt by this are the people who are going to be impacted by the policies, but also the people who are shaken to the core about who is actually standing with them and for them. I was seeing a meme go around that was like, “If you don’t understand why your trans friend is scared right now, you don’t have a trans friend. You know a trans person.”
If you don’t understand why your Black friend is scared and enraged, you don’t have a Black friend.” I’m going to be reaching out to those people in my life and sharing my sorrow and figuring out what I can do to learn to be with them in community just like I’m learning to find the people in mine. I didn’t really cry this time. I think I just… After 2016, it was all of the tears and all of the times and I just was kind of dumbfounded again, except when I realized I had to wake up and tell my kids this morning what happened. And I think that is just so fucking sad. None of this is pontificating about isn’t this a nice little bow? Here’s what we do.
It’s really fucking sad to have to tell your kids that this is the America that they live in, and we can also do the same thing with our kids. In this neighborhood, I know we have groups that are looking out for and standing with immigrant populations who are right now sitting in their houses trying to figure out whether they take their kids with them back to war torn countries or whether they live their lives without their children or can find anyone that they trust enough to take care of their children in this country. We can show up in our communities. These are national issues, but they are people. We’re saying, “The country did this.” No, the country didn’t do this.
The individual people in our country did this, and the individual people in our country are the ones that are being affected by it. We can show up in our communities and that is stepping outside of the riptide.
Glennon Doyle:
And there are a lot of us. I mean, that’s the other thing. When I say this is who we are, what I mean is both sides. We are also almost half the country who showed up and didn’t vote for Trump. That is also who we are. We are both.
Amanda Doyle:
We need to expand what we think about when we think about showing up. It’s not every four years. It’s for the people who are in our communities right now that are terrified, our friends who are going to lose jobs as a result of this, our community members who are going to be separated from their families as a result of this. We can show up in the way to give each other the safety in the only way that safety has ever existed, which is in reliance on people where there is accountability between you.
Abby Wambach:
And if you’re a little bit like me and you don’t have the capacity to even go there quite yet. Sister, I love how you’re thinking about this. I think that’s giving me a lot to think about. I’m just trying to get through this one day and I don’t think I even have the capacity to do all this beautiful thing that you guys are even thinking about. I’m just sad and I feel like I just want to reach out to the people out there who need a second to just let this simmer. Let this settle. I’ll speak for myself. So that I can feel a little bit more strength in whatever I choose to do going forward.
Glennon Doyle:
I think that’s the bravest thing. I think a lot of the jumping to action or next-ness or hope or even, “Now we don’t put into this, we put it in this.” It’s also just a lot of times that flurry is trying not to just have the first, the pain. It’s like jumping to the rising and [inaudible 00:57:11]
Amanda Doyle:
That’s not what I’m doing. This is how I channel my pain. This is my new…
Glennon Doyle:
I’m just responding to what she’s saying that I don’t think that that’s a lack of courage to stop.
Amanda Doyle:
Right. Totally.
Glennon Doyle:
And sit with the sadness and I think could be world-changing, actually. If everybody just sat with it for a good long minute.
Abby Wambach:
I love you, three, two. I mean there’s… Actually, I do love me too.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes, you do.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re the most [inaudible 00:57:44]
Amanda Doyle:
Keep it up.
Abby Wambach:
I love us three.
Glennon Doyle:
Y’all we love you so much. I know it feels like… A lot of people feel like nobody’s got them, but we do have each other. We’ve got each other. We’ll see you soon. 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. The show is produced by Lauren LoGrasso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.