Glennon: Is it Insanity or Life?
November 14, 2024
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. It’s been an awkward start for us. Abby keeps making jokes. How are you-
Abby Wambach:
And nobody’s laughing.
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Abby Wambach:
They’re funny, but nobody’s laughing.
Glennon Doyle:
I think if they’re funny, that’s when you know if it’s funny is when people laugh.
Abby Wambach:
No, it just means that your guys’ sense of humor is off.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s true. And first of all, welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Did I already say that?
Abby Wambach:
No.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Welcome to you, Pod Squad. Today, this is one of those episodes that is coming to you from weird Glennon, okay?
Abby Wambach:
Oh, fun.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. So, here’s what I have decided. I’m going to give you an update about my life experience lately.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, shit.
Glennon Doyle:
Because God knows, the world needs another update of my life experience. Okay?
Abby Wambach:
Well, we’re doing it. Okay. This is fun.
Glennon Doyle:
Now, everything that I’m about to say during these 50 minutes makes perfect sense to me. Okay? I do not know if it’s going to make sense to everyone, but here’s what I have learned.
Amanda Doyle:
Is this like Abby’s joke?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, it might be.
Amanda Doyle:
How her joke is very funny. She doesn’t know whether people are going to experience it is funny.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
Is this why this was a good se-gue?
Glennon Doyle:
Se-gue. Okay, the reason she’s saying se-gue, y’all, is because-
Amanda Doyle:
It’s like a legume, but it’s a se-gue.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. I have spent my entire life thinking that people were making se-gues in their conversations in my books, and I just learned that there’s no such thing as a se-gue maybe a year ago.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Also, I will remind everyone-
Amanda Doyle:
It’s a segue, by the way.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s a segue.
Amanda Doyle:
If people are like, what the hell are you talking about? It’s also not one of those things that tourists do-
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Amanda Doyle:
On sidewalks that appear very dangerous. It’s a cross between a scooter and a bicycle, and it looks like it’s from Mars.
Glennon Doyle:
Right, but I knew that there was a word called segue in the world. I say that in my life, I’m like, let’s make a segue so we can get to another topic.
Abby Wambach:
Did you just think se-gue and segue were the same?
Glennon Doyle:
I thought se-gue was a completely different word. I’d never heard anyone say it in real life, but I-
Abby Wambach:
What did you think the meaning of se-gue was?
Glennon Doyle:
I thought that a se-gue was very similar to a segue.
Abby Wambach:
This is so…
Glennon Doyle:
Just like I didn’t know that nothing goes aw-ry.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Everything just goes awry, whether it’s in a book or in real life. There is no going aw-ry. Okay?
Abby Wambach:
You’re such a book nerd. It’s so cute.
Glennon Doyle:
Shout out to all the kiddos who spent their childhood in books instead of listening to human beings because we have a confusion-
Abby Wambach:
You’re so cute.
Glennon Doyle:
About words. Okay, what I was going to say is, what I’ve decided is, that it’s not that it doesn’t make sense or not, it makes sense to me, it might not make sense to everyone, but two things can be true at the same time.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay? I did shoot this whole concept of this episode, and my experience, to my therapist the other day and said, “Do you think that people are going to resonate with this situation?” And she said, “Glennon, as always, I think we just have to try and see.” I don’t know what that means. All right.
Abby Wambach:
Like, the rest of us have to try to understand.
Glennon Doyle:
She said I think that I just have to try and see.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, you have to try. Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm. She understood it, but I do pay her to understand it.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
So, I’m not sure. When I was little, maybe not so little, maybe like in elementary school, middle school, maybe, okay, we lived on this street, and then there was this bike path that was a mile away, okay. We lived on this main road, and then the intersection was another highway. So we would put our bikes in the back of our van, and then drive the 3-quarters of a mile to the beginning of this bike trail. And this would happen every once in a while. Okay.
And then we would all get on the bike trail, as a family, and ride a couple miles. I don’t know. It wasn’t a big deal. Now, what I remember from these times is that it was a beautiful trail through the woods, but to the sides there were cliffs. Okay? There was like drop-offs to either side. And I just could not believe there were no fences, it was just a trail, a little bit of trees, not much, a few feet, and then just death. Okay? So just-
Abby Wambach:
So, you went mountain biking?
Glennon Doyle:
Well, no, it was like a asphalt trail. There was three-year-olds walking on the trail. Okay?
Abby Wambach:
Okay, so it’s proper concrete, okay?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, concrete for sure. You don’t think I was like… I was on a little 10-speed.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, okay.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, when you said “cliffs” and “death”, it did indicate a little more rugged terrain-
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I see.
Amanda Doyle:
Than a community bike path.
Abby Wambach:
I was excited, I was like, shit, we’re going to get you a mountain bike today.
Glennon Doyle:
It was cliffs, though.
Abby Wambach:
I believe you.
Amanda Doyle:
Your perception was it was cliffs.
Glennon Doyle:
It was cliffs. All right? Do you not remember this? It was horrific cliffs, and I used to ride my bike, and the whole time-
Abby Wambach:
In Virginia.
Amanda Doyle:
No.
Glennon Doyle:
Sister, do you not remember this?
Amanda Doyle:
It’s suburban Virginia. I’m struggling to figure out where we’re talking about.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, remember Interstate van lines?
Amanda Doyle:
Yes, I do remember.
Glennon Doyle:
Each building?
Amanda Doyle:
So for all of you, we’re placing you in Burke, Virginia-
Glennon Doyle:
Burke, Virginia.
Amanda Doyle:
On the intersection of Burke Road and Rolling Road.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Amanda Doyle:
Interstate van lines where they used to have those letters, they would say something, it would change every month.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Okay. Close to West Springfield High School.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Actually, equidistant from West Springfield High School and Lake Braddock-
Glennon Doyle:
Lake Braddock.
Amanda Doyle:
Secondary school.
Glennon Doyle:
Go Bruins.
Amanda Doyle:
Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
Bruins, Bruins, hats off to thee, to thy colors true. [inaudible 00:05:59] for Bruins strong, fight the battle all [inaudible 00:06:03]. Cheer forward, purple and gold. Go Bruins.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
Anyway, there were horrific cliffs to [inaudible 00:06:10], and if you don’t remember it then I don’t know. Okay? So all I would think the whole time… I would squeeze my little handlebars and I would think, I hope I don’t turn myself and plunge myself into the cliff.
Abby Wambach:
Solid intrusive thoughts.
Amanda Doyle:
Certain death. Certain death.
Abby Wambach:
Intrusive thoughts. Yeah, I get it.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s what my therapist said, intrusive thoughts. Interesting. Okay. I wasn’t thinking. I hope I don’t accidentally fall off.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, oh, you are like, I hope I don’t do something absolutely batshit crazy.
Abby Wambach:
All of us do that when we’re driving the car. They’re like, what if I just turn the wheel and I go into the oncoming traffic? We all do that.
Glennon Doyle:
So when you’re on a balcony, are you thinking, I hope I don’t jump off this balcony?
Abby Wambach:
Every once in a while I’ll have an intrusive thought.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, that makes me feel better.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Abby Wambach:
Same. It’s like a little fun game. We play with ourselves to not do it.
Glennon Doyle:
Sometimes I’ll be speaking when I used to [inaudible 00:07:11] and I’ll be standing up at a church and I’ll be like, what if I just scream, fuck you all? Fuck you, fuck you all. I hope I don’t do that. I might.
Abby Wambach:
One of my intrusive thoughts is when we’re driving in the car, and you know how people don’t stop short with me.
Glennon Doyle:
Seinfeld.
Abby Wambach:
Seinfeld. Don’t stop short with me. I have this intrusive thought that I do the don’t stop short with me, but I hit you really hard.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, that’s nice.
Abby Wambach:
Isn’t that so bad?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, no, that makes me feel better because I do like if I’m holding a child… it’s one of my favorite things about myself is that people will just hand me babies, and when I’m holding baby, I’m always thinking, don’t drop the baby, which I would never do.
Abby Wambach:
Don’t on purpose, drop the baby.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
Do you know my worst intrusive thought?
Glennon Doyle:
What?
Amanda Doyle:
The one that bothers me the most is I would travel with the babies when they were very, very young on planes. We always had business meetings across the country when my babies were like three weeks and four weeks old.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, you did. We did.
Amanda Doyle:
Always. And so I would be traveling with them and you know how the airplane bathroom, where they have this tiny little thing where you change their diaper on the bathroom. So I’ve done that a thousand times. And only in the last couple years, I’ve realized, oh my God, that little thing was right on top of where the toilet is, where it just goes through the toilet into the sky, and oh my God… and so it’s in the past. I’m literally never going to do it again.
Abby Wambach:
Hold on a second.
Amanda Doyle:
But I wake up in the middle of the night once a week thinking my baby could have fallen off the diaper thing into the toilet, into the sky.
Abby Wambach:
Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Amanda Doyle:
Into outer space.
Abby Wambach:
No. Hold on a second.
Glennon Doyle:
Don’t be logical about it. It’s just a fear that she has.
Abby Wambach:
I know, but I need to. I fly enough. Our shit and piss does not go out into the sky.
Glennon Doyle:
No. They keep it in a container and-
Abby Wambach:
Okay, but you’re saying out into the sky.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, I don’t know. None about it is logical, but I’m going to find out when we get off this [inaudible 00:09:12].
Abby Wambach:
Okay, I didn’t know if you knew something.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s a really good point, Amanda.
Abby Wambach:
I didn’t know if you knew something.
Glennon Doyle:
Poo isn’t flying out.
Abby Wambach:
It’s going into a bin.
Glennon Doyle:
Either way, it wouldn’t be great for the baby.
Abby Wambach:
Also, the baby’s not fitting down that little hole.
Glennon Doyle:
I do not think that these lies are logical.
Abby Wambach:
We’re really yucking your intrusive thought here.
Glennon Doyle:
I need to know this. Do you guys ever just lay in bed… I think this usually happens to me in bed, but do you ever just lay in bed and think of a scenario and then lose your shit about that scenario that is definitely not happening, but you go through the whole thing?
Abby Wambach:
For example.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, I’m always in a home invasion.
Abby Wambach:
Oh yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Every night I’m in a home invasion.
Abby Wambach:
I do, too. I’m thinking, what I’m doing.
Glennon Doyle:
Fire, home invasion.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. What am I going to do? What door am I going to lock myself behind? Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And then do you come to and it’s like 10 minutes later and you are full-on so upset about that thing. And then you have to remind yourself that didn’t happen and you’re just in this bed still.
Abby Wambach:
You’re not the hero of your little story you’re telling?
Glennon Doyle:
Zero times. I’ve never been that. I’m just fucked.
Abby Wambach:
You’re the victim in your story. I’m always the hero. That’s interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
Huh. That must be nice.
Abby Wambach:
What about you, Sissy?
Amanda Doyle:
I always figure I need to pressure test the plan a thousand times and then that’s how I ended up what ordering another… well, another fire ladder or something. Because I realized I have a soft spot in my plan of what I’m going to do.
Glennon Doyle:
Fire ladders.
Abby Wambach:
Hey, you want to know something-
Glennon Doyle:
Always fire ladders.
Abby Wambach:
I just saw the other day on a real. If you keep a bat by your bed, because a lot of people don’t believe in guns and stuff, which is great, I don’t either if you keep a bat by your bed, put a long sock on the end of it because if you go to hit somebody with it, because if you go to hit somebody with it, an intruder, and they go to stop it, the sock will pull it off and then you can hit them again. You get two whacks at them.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, that’s good. And then also in my head, I make up the scenario. I go through the scenario. Lots of horrific things happen. It’s just, it’s endless. Then I wake up sweating, but I’m not even ever asleep. Now back to what we were talking about.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, yeah, the cliffs.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Abby Wambach:
The cliffs of Virginia suburbia.
Glennon Doyle:
It was freaking the woods. It was an epic landscape.
Abby Wambach:
Got it.
Amanda Doyle:
Okay.
Abby Wambach:
I believe you.
Amanda Doyle:
We’re there with you.
Glennon Doyle:
With the toddlers and their parents walking. Yeah. Anyway, that is a memory that is seared into my mind. And as both of you know, I think that that actual situation morphed with kind of a way that I see myself in my life, which is as you know, I’ve told you many, many times, I always feel like I’m kind of walking on the edge of a cliff. That’s what I’m doing. I’m walking on the edge of a cliff and I feel an abyss to my side. And the abyss is the sea of purple, swirly, silvery, sparkly, dark purple, kind of scary, but also a lot of depth and a little bit of magic in it. And the abyss is what I have always thought is insanity. It’s kind of like alluring. It’s like calling. Okay, it’s calling.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s like a siren calling to you.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, yes, yes. But it’s my job as I have understood it, is to stay on the motherfucking cliff, okay?
Amanda Doyle:
Stay the course. Stay the course.
Glennon Doyle:
Glennon, do not jump. Are you going to jump, Glennon? I hope I don’t jump. I don’t know who gave me the power to decide. That’s what pisses me off. We just make these balconies and we just assume that people aren’t going to use their own volition. Anyway, all the things that I have employed, all the strategies, eating disorders, alcoholism, anorexia, medication, controlling other human beings with my brain, these have all been strategies to keep me on the cliff. This is what I have told myself I have to do. I’m white-knuckling the handlebars, whether I’m parenting, whether I’m working, whether I’m just taking a walk, whether I’m in a friendship, I am just white-knuckling the handlebars so I don’t veer off into the abyss of insanity, even though it looks kind of great. Okay?
Abby Wambach:
That’s interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
Now, lately, I have one at a time taken away all of my white-knuckle handlebar strategies, okay, and it kind of feels like I just let go of the handlebars completely. It feels a little ridiculous and stupid and reckless, okay? Lately, I have felt like I’m in the abyss.
Abby Wambach:
So you’ve jumped.
Glennon Doyle:
I feel like I am in the abyss. And what I would like to explain a little bit is I don’t know how to describe it, so I’m just going to tell some stories about what it feels like to be in the abyss, okay?
Abby Wambach:
This is fun.
Glennon Doyle:
Nothing is good, okay?
Abby Wambach:
Is that true?
Glennon Doyle:
It’s not that nothing is good, it’s that I am overwhelmed all the time.
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm-
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Maybe I shouldn’t say I am overwhelmed all the time. I feel overwhelmed all the time. I feel like everything is too hard or too much or too good or too bad or too everything just, it’s just so much muchness. Here’s how a few things that it feels like to be in the abyss. I have no distance from things anymore. It’s like all the things that I had to protect me from life or from being human are gone. Just gone. All of my protections, all of my little armor, weapons, all the things. And so now it’s just me and life, okay?
So a few little things. We took this trip to Seattle because our kid was in a soccer tournament, and I do not know how we’re supposed to handle our kids in soccer tournaments. These children are young teenagers. This kid plays at a high level so all of these freaking college coaches are watching them. All of their parents are gathered around staring at them. You can feel the stress and the love and the hope and the control and the pressure, and they love each other so much, but they’re kind of competing against each other. I just feel like I’m going to die from the vulnerability of it.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. It’s like so much is riding, a lot of how they do it isn’t just perception is going to affect the opportunities they have because they’re trying to get recruited, right? So it’s like it really is that kind of how you play matters and not just to us egotistically.
Abby Wambach:
So the vulnerability or experiencing is the vulnerability on behalf of our child, or it’s just the vibe of the totality of what’s happening for all of these kids?
Glennon Doyle:
It’s an abyss. I sit there and you can feel that so many of them are doing it just to make their parents happy and their parents, you can just feel the muchness of all of it. So I’m handling it. I’m doing okay. Sam is a coach from UF. She’s so wonderful. She walks over… she and Abby are friends-
Abby Wambach:
Go Gators because I went there, so I know them.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m half watching the kids, half just sometimes I just try not to, I try to distract myself. She’s telling me about her kids and they sounded so wonderful. I asked about one of them and she’s like, let me show you this video of my kid. And her kid had just gone through this season of, I think it was soccer, and their team had won no games and they had kept trying. And then they won one game at the end of the season, and this video was of the game ending and Sam was holding the phone and her little boy, they blew the whistle and they had won.
And this kid, you could just see his face, he can’t believe it. And then he just takes off from his friends and runs to his moms. You see him running at the camera and then you see the camera go down and she’s hugging him. And then he quickly hugs her and then he runs as fast as he can back to his friends and his fist is in the air and he’s hugging his friends. She’s showing me, I just start bawling. And Sam is like, what’s wrong with your wife? What?
Abby Wambach:
No. She really appreciated that you were so touched by it because it is a touching thing, A, to have your kid run to you and then B, to get it on film. And then C, after he hugs her and he’s running back, he’s kind of like jogging back to his team to go celebrate again with his teammates. He looks up and has this take-it-all-in moment that finally they did it. Finally, they had this moment. He finally had it. And as a parent, she caught it all on video. Get out of here with that.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s beautiful beyond. Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
So then that night, Emma goes off with her friends, and Abby and I are in this random city, we don’t know in Seattle, and we wander into this tiny little restaurant. It’s like the size of a kitchen. It’s so small and there’s these little tables. There’s probably 10 tables in the whole place. We walk into the restaurant and there’s this couple, this man and this woman, young, maybe lower thirties, I don’t know. And they’re eating and the woman looks over at us and her face just… you can see she’s recognized us in a very meaningful way. You can tell when it’s somebody that is very connected to our work in the world.
I can tell that she’s just about to melt. So I just walk right over. She stands up. It all happens very fast. She’s hugging me. The man that’s sitting with her, no time has passed enough for her to explain anything to him or to make any explanation of what’s going on. The man waits patiently for us to hug. And then says very gently, he turns to me and says, “Would it be okay with you if I got a picture?” Now, I don’t know why that made me so… I felt like, oh my God, he is so in touch with his partner that he knows. She didn’t say, get a pressure. I’m watching the whole thing. There’s no way this guy knows exactly who we were. He just was so in touch.
Amanda Doyle:
He’s attuned to her.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And he knew that she wasn’t going to want to ask me because she was so respectful. But he knew that it was going to be important to her and that he should step in for her and get what she’s going to want to leave this with. And so we take a picture. Abby and I go sit down, and then of course I’m all emotional about the whole thing. And then they come over when they’re leaving and I say, “I just want you to know what we’ve been talking about is how beautiful that was. That you didn’t have to ask that. He knew that. He asked so gently that you all two are so attuned.”
She told us that the reason she was so emotional is that they live an hour away. That she’s going through a very hard, interesting time, that she has listened to every single podcast and read every single word we’ve ever written. And that has gotten her through the hardest times. That she’s been relying more heavily than ever on this podcast lately. And that that night, something was just like, go to that restaurant an hour away from their house.
Amanda Doyle:
Whoa.
Glennon Doyle:
And she came. We leave the restaurant and we’re walking home. And this woman, she’s in this-
Abby Wambach:
Different woman now.
Glennon Doyle:
Different woman.
Amanda Doyle:
A different one. Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
She’s in a big SUV and she’s got 17 kids in the car. And she is driving by and she just screams out the window, Glennon, Glennon, we love you, Glennon. And she’s waving and all the kids are waving. And I just thought I cannot believe this. I spend so much time being scared. I’m so scared of the internet and people hating me and people… I feel so constricted all the time because I’m scared.
Amanda Doyle:
The world is a scary place.
Glennon Doyle:
The world is scary. Yeah. And so I have to be constricted and on guard and white-knuckling all the things. And I’m always white-knuckling public things too. I don’t exactly know how to handle it. I don’t know what’s appropriate. I don’t know what I should protect our kids from. I don’t know how to do it. And so I always feel constricted. Andrea Gibson tells the story about how they went to the Grand Canyon when they were really fucked up and really in their depression. And they came to the Grand Canyon and they looked at it and they were like, eh, I mean, whatever. I guess it’s a big hole. I’m glad I drove all this way.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, it’s so funny.
Glennon Doyle:
And then after-
Abby Wambach:
If you’ve ever been to the Grand Canyon, that’s hilarious to me.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. They were in a different spiritual place in their life and they went back to the Grand Canyon and they just thought, oh my God, is this what it has always been? This is the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen. And they talk about, of course, the Anais Nin quote that we do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. And that experience in Seattle, I was like, is this how it’s always been? Am I just not afraid? I don’t know. I felt overwhelmed by the beauty and love of it.
And then a week later we go to the Noah Kahan concert. I’m standing there with the girls and one of our kids has her girlfriend with her and the other kid has her good friend. And Noah is just like, he does this divorce song. It’s about divorced kids. And he says, “Shout out to all the kids from divorced families.” And he sang All My Love. And they were, all the kids are just, the whole Hollywood Bowl is just bawling and screaming and dancing and losing their minds.
And I’m looking at my kids and they’re bawling and I’m like, oh my God. I was seeing them for the first time. They are children of divorce. They had their family separated. They have two houses. One of my strategies of gripping my handlebars is just to tell myself stories about how everything’s okay because I dah, dah, dah. And it’s not a broken family because we’re a whole family, because we’re fixed, we’re fixed. We’re not broken. We’re fixed.
Amanda Doyle:
We’re the exception. We’re the exception.
Abby Wambach:
Mm-hmm-
Glennon Doyle:
It’s kind of sad, but not really. It’s fine.
Abby Wambach:
It’s kind of sad.
Amanda Doyle:
It would be sad if it wasn’t so magical and unique and extraordinary.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. So I was seeing them for the first time, and it did not kill me. It overwhelmed me to the point of explosion. I was bawling with them, but it did not kill me. And I realized these narratives that I make are another strategy to keep me on the thing. I will tell you what it is. I will arrange all the chaos into a story with characters. And this is your character and this is my character.
The other day we went to see our son in New York City and being in the abyss while raising adult children, because this has been the biggest doozy for me. We walked around New York City for two hours and then we went to a dinner. We took our son to dinner with two of his best friends, him and two girls, and they go to college together and they talked about their adventures and their lives for two hours at dinner. I’ve never seen our kid so alive.
They just love each other so much and they take such good care of each other. And he just had this sense of you could just see the belonging and the joy. And I think I thought that I was supposed to make everything so perfect that he would always just want to have that with us. That our house and our town and our [inaudible 00:27:43] would be his place of belonging and joy and connection. But when I saw that, I thought, okay, I felt such relief because I felt like he has it. And then I felt relief that I was relieved because it made me know that I don’t need it to be us. I just need him to have it in general.
So on the way home, I have this new fun thing that I think is from early menopause. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s a really good time. And what it is, is that I have constant motion sickness. Okay? I used to be able to spin around in circles for fun. And now if I’m in a car for longer than five minutes, if I glance at my phone, I can get motion sickness from watching a movie that’s moving too fast. It’s just ridiculous. And I know this, I know this.
But we get in an Uber, one of those big Ubers in New York City, and it’s 11 P.M. and Abby and I are going back to our hotel and we’ve got the kids. The kids, they’re 21, but they’re in the back all lined up, the three of them just chattering, chattering, chattering because they’re about to go off and do whatever. This is-
Amanda Doyle:
This is the beginning of their evening.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. This is lunch for them, right?
Abby Wambach:
This is pregame.
Glennon Doyle:
Right? But they’re talking about relationships and one of them turns to Chase and says, well, you’re securely attached so you’re good. But I almost died. I just almost exploded. I’m like, wait, no, it’s all I could do just to not stop them and say, did you say he’s securely attached? Do you think that’s because of me? Can we talk about this more?
Amanda Doyle:
Wait, did he agree? Did your child agree? Was your child like, yes.
Glennon Doyle:
He did.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh, Jesus. Just retire. That’s the closest you could get to an A+ Valedictory address.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, as a parent, you know how much that meant to me to hear, because it has been… I’ll talk about this in another episode, but I have felt like maybe I did everything wrong. Maybe I have started to see myself from his eyes in a way that has freaked me the fuck out and made me lose myself a little bit. And I think it might just be something that happens as they get older, but it’s been hard. It’s been the hardest phase of parenting for me, and it’s all been internal. Nobody else has done anything. It’s just been internal. So-
Abby Wambach:
I’ll never forget that moment as long as I live, because Glennon and I got to do the look. Even though she was experiencing insane nausea, she looked at me and I looked at her and our eyes were like, we’re going to talk about this later.
Glennon Doyle:
Is he securely attached? How does he know about secure attachment? Oh my God. Oh my God, can I get this in writing? Okay, so I’m there in the back. Abby and I are in the two seats and I am looking at them, sister, and I am so sick. I am close to throwing up. I cannot stop looking at them. I cannot. I was like, I don’t care. The three of them were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I could not stop looking at them.
We get to the hotel, I get in my room, I throw up for two hours. I’m sick for 24 hours, okay? I would do it again. It was too beautiful to look away from. Being in the abyss is much, much messier than being on the top of the cliff. I feel out of control all the time. I feel overwhelmed all the time. I feel very messy. I feel confused. I feel so much more. And what I figured out just about a week ago is that the abyss, the purple swirly, silvery, sparkly abyss that has been calling to me since I was 10 is not insanity. It is life. It is life.
It is being fully human and present without all of the things that we put in our lives to protect ourselves. And the reason why being in the abyss is so overwhelming is because it’s supposed to be, is because it’s just love. It’s like to be really alive with a wide open heart and to be that present with things you love and things you’re afraid of and all of your messy mistakes and all of it, it’s not insanity. It’s like the truest reality, right? There are definitely times where I feel like I enjoyed being on the cliff better. It was easier to have some distance between me and everything.
And I kind of feel like I’m annoying now. All of the things that kept me on the cliff also gave me this kind of cooler detached thing where things didn’t affect me as much, so I wasn’t so desperate. I feel very desperate lately. Desperate to, I don’t even know for what, for the kids to understand me in every way, for everyone to know I love them. I just feel desperate all the time.
I think I’m more annoying. I think I’m more needy. I think I’m less efficient. I’m more confused. But you know how if you’re having dinner with somebody and they have a couple glasses of wine or pills they don’t need and they act a certain way and you don’t know who they are, really? Their reactions might be a certain way and you take it as who they are. But the thing is between you. You can’t really know who they are because it’s not their natural reaction.
Amanda Doyle:
Or you wonder is that their actual reaction, who you deal with normally is not them. There’s like an alter like, oh, now I’m dealing with Betsy 2.0.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
There’s a 1.0 and a 2.0 version of you. Which one?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. So I feel like even if I now am say to the kids or less together, less held together, less pretending that I know what I’m doing, less detached, less cool and calm, I do feel like they can feel my love more probably.
Amanda Doyle:
It makes perfect sense to me when you’re talking about the cliff, right? The cliff is so much simpler because you only have one job. Your job on the cliff is very, very clear, and clarity is very helpful. And so your one job is to keep your ass on the path. And so you might have constant fear, but the only thing you have to metabolize is fear. That’s the only emotion.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
You just have to keep feeling the fear. Only emotion coming in, and your only job is to control your direction. So I’m controlling my direction. I’m only feeling the fear. That’s all I have to do. And so that’s simple. And the promise of that is that it’ll keep you safe, but the highest upside reward is remaining in fear and control for the rest of your life. But when you go off the cliff, you have to metabolize everything no matter what, it’s coming at you. It’s like the Rikle quote, let everything happen to you.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. No feeling is final. Mm-hmm-
Amanda Doyle:
You just have to let everything happen to you. And so you’re up and down. You can’t even anticipate what your job is. Because every moment is going to either make you buckle to your knees in the glory of the Shakespearean moment of the five-year-old on the soccer team, or break your heart because you realize your baby’s never going to be a baby and whatever. It’s just what letting everything happen to you, which is the promise and the reward and the terror.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And it’s like when you’re on the cliff, you are driving, you’re in control. And then the swirly abyss, you are surrendered to the swirling. I do just feel like I’m taken over by a swirly situation, and every once in a while I’m just popping up and yelling something. I don’t even know, I have absolutely no control.
Abby Wambach:
Well, I think what’s happened, because with everything new, this jumping into the purple swirly abyss, it makes sense to me that it feels uncomfortable. It makes sense to me that you feel confused and overwhelmed and everything is happening all at once, seemingly. But I think part of what you’re going through is that you’ve brought a little bit of the cliff, dare I say, rigidity and control and trying to apply some of those mechanisms that you learn into this purple swirly abyss. And so I think that that’s why it feels uncomfortable. So makes sense. Of course, you would do that. You bring what you know into new experiences. And so to me, it feels like it won’t be as uncomfortable forever because you will learn how to flow with the purple swirly glittery mechanism that’s in the abyss.
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm. Well, it’s interesting that you use the word metabolize. How do you metabolize it all? Because I think it’s another version of… like the word anorexia is sort of ridiculous because it implies that it’s all about food, but it’s not. It’s just a complete way of life. It’s the person on the cliff with the handlebars. I did not know that I could metabolize food like everyone else and just keep going. That was a unbelievable discovery for me.
And I think that I also didn’t know that I could just metabolize feelings, that it wouldn’t kill me. The feelings that have come up in the last six months, two years, I can’t believe. I’ve had days where I didn’t think that it was okay, how strong they were. But all of the mechanisms that I used were to protect myself from big feelings because I felt like I would not be able to metabolize them and go on. And the discovery that I had with physical things and food is the same as the discovery that I’m having with emotional things that I can, in fact.
It might not be pretty. It might not look like a day I used to have where it’s just one thing after the other on the to-do list. And I can handle all of it because I’m not in any of the things, but I have survived.
Abby Wambach:
Yip.
Amanda Doyle:
Do you know what you’re talking about reminds me a lot of Dr. Dan Siegel’s model of healthy minds, because it’s a different analogy from the cliff and the water, but he talks about how there are two banks on a river and one bank of the river is chaos? And a lot of people live there. And that’s this idea that we feel all out of control in our life. We are caught in this turmoil. We have no control over it. It’s like instability, anxiety, fear, all the things.
And then the other side of the river is rigidity. And that is this idea that if we impose enough control over everything and everyone around us and we just never try to adapt anything going on, but we stay the course of where we are, then we will just maintain control and nothing bad will happen to us. So one side of the river is pure fear and anxiety. The other side of the river is utter stagnation because all you’re trying to do is have control. And where you want to be is in the flow of the river between.
Where you are finding the balance between some chaos and some rigidity where you’re like, I do have some ways of living that I want to have, I do have this canoe to keep me afloat, but I’m letting it flow. I am letting the river take me where it’s going. So it’s like I don’t know exactly how we’re going to get there. I trust we’re going to get there. I am flowing. I’m not fighting the rapid, I’m going.
And so it’s a really interesting way to think about it. And also I think it’s a good clue when life is full of chaos, we’re probably hugging one of the banks too much. And when it’s just full of stagnation and we feel threatened by the idea of being flexible about anything, we’re probably on the other side.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, that’s what I’ve got for you today. I feel-
Abby Wambach:
But I feel impressed by you.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah?
Abby Wambach:
Because I have watched you experience a lot of this discomfort over the last many months, and as the person in your life, it does not sit very well when you’re uncomfortable. I like to fix problems. It has been difficult to watch. But I think slowly but surely, there’s this confidence that’s brewing inside of you that you’re like, I’m not going to be killed by my emotions. The world is not going to kill me. Yes, this is a lot. Yes, this is overwhelming. And I think that the courage that it’s taken for you to do this, especially because it’s making you look at your whole life, all of the relationships, your children, me, your family, all of it, and you’re like, I’m going to survive this. I feel this, I’ve got me energy. And boy is it really scary for me because I like to be the one that’s got you.
Glennon Doyle:
Hmm. That’s interesting.
Abby Wambach:
But I’m sitting on my hands and I am doing my time also. But I just think that you’re coming through this extraordinary period of your life and it’s just been really beautiful to watch.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you, babe. I think I was thinking last night about how all of these things that I have had to discover through this work and actual embodiment and actually taking things away that I was using as protection from life. I was writing this in Untamed. There’s whole chapters about feeling it all, about not being killed, about the ache and entering the ache and how that is life. And the ache is where the bravest people meet each other and how the only thing worse than feeling at all is missing any of it.
And I was writing all of that while severely anorexic, heavily medicated. I didn’t know that, but it makes me emotional because it feels like my writing self is just me five years ahead of me. It’s like an arrow pointing me towards, this is where we’re going. And your brain knows it, your spirit knows it before your body does it, but you cannot, Glennon, learn anything but the hard way. You cannot. It’s just going to be a doozy of five years. But this is where we’re going. I feel like a lot of people write and it’s like this is where they were. And mine is always like, this is where I hope to be soon.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
You’re imagining the truest most beautiful life.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. So anyway, thanks for listening you all. And yeah, I actually just feel like thanks for listening.
Abby Wambach:
You’re welcome.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
Thank you for sharing. And on another day, I want to know how you think you slid into the water, how you got yourself off the path, and was it just removing… I don’t mean just as if that wasn’t a Herculean effort, but was it the removal and the not relying on the coping strategies that got you in the water? You know what I mean? Because that would be if you know that you’re a person on the path and you want to submit to the swirl.
Glennon Doyle:
I think it’s the Rumi thing, it’s like our job is not to seek for love, but to remove all of the obstacles that we have built between ourselves and love. And those things are different for everyone. So it’s one at a time removing the walls that you needed, that you built. Look, we were all raised by human beings, which means that our first environments were places where we learned what was going to threaten our attachment to them. And so in our situation, everybody has different situations with their parents.
But when we were in a situation where our muchness, big feelings, big appetites was absolutely disallowed. And it didn’t always have to be in words. It was in body. It was in energy. I learned very early that messiness, bigness, gooeyness, juiciness, confusion-
Abby Wambach:
Indulgence.
Glennon Doyle:
Indulgence, big feelings, big whatever, was absolutely a threat and not what we’re doing here. This is not hard to put together, okay? Eggshells, keep it small, keep it quiet. Of course. So how do you do it? You figure out what was disallowed, what part of your humanity was disallowed in your earliest environments is still disallowed in your culture. You figure out what part of you threatened your survival in the first half of your life and you’re thriving in the second half of your life is reclaiming that thing-
Abby Wambach:
It’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
That threatened your survival in the first half. And it’s different for everybody because everybody has a different family and culture and life, time, they’re here. It’s always different. But we all have things that we have built up to protect ourselves from life. And I have a few more, and the adventure of a lifetime for me has never been like, go see this place or go bucket listy things. I’ll do it because Abby wants to do it, but I’m just like, okay, here’s another hotel. Like, okay, that’s a mountain. It doesn’t do it for me.
What the adventure of a lifetime for me is to experiment with removing blocks between me and life. Because for me now, the more walls I remove… I am as moved to tears taking a walk and seeing a dad with his kid playing rock, paper, scissors on the sidewalk as if no one else is around and lighting each other’s faces up. There’s no way I would be more moved by the Grand Canyon. It doesn’t matter where you are. If you have nothing between you and life, life is everywhere breathtaking. You don’t have to go anywhere. It’s like God. So, yeah.
Abby Wambach:
I think that that’s a perfect way to end.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. I love you, all. Thanks. I don’t know. I don’t know.
Amanda Doyle:
Beautiful. Thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
Bye. We love you, Pod Squad. Bye.
Abby Wambach:
Bye.
Glennon Doyle:
If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you’d be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you’ll never miss an episode. And it helps us because you’ll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do hard things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audacy, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod.
While you’re there, if you’d be willing to give us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle, in partnership with Audacy. Our executive producer is Jenna Weiss-Berman. And the show is produced by Lauren LoGrasso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.