My Hardest Thing
February 15, 2022
Glennon Doyle:
Hi.
Abby Wambach:
Hi.
Amanda Doyle::
Hi, sister.
Glennon Doyle:
So, if that welcome sounded a little bit dramatic and dread-y it’s because we are going to talk about something pretty serious today. And that topic… I actually haven’t even spoken directly to sister about any of this. Abby and I, we have been in light conversation about this situation for the last couple weeks, at least. But what we’re going to talk about today is something serious and sad, but really important and hard and that’s what we do here, is we talk about things that are important, even when they’re hard or especially when they’re hard. So what we’re going to do is talk about the fact that over the holidays, I had an eating disorder relapse. And that sounds way too simple for what happened and has been happening, but I only have words to describe things, so I can only use words. So that is what happened over the holidays, and so today I’m going to talk about it here with all of you. And I’m going to just try to use words, which is all I have, to describe what I’ve been going through for the last bit of time.
Abby Wambach:
Well, before you get into it, tell us how you’re feeling right now.
Glennon Doyle:
I feel nervous to represent things accurately. I feel a big responsibility to speak about something that so many people suffer from. I feel scared because whenever anyone, I don’t think it’s just in the public, speaks about what the world would consider a failure, it feels like you’re making yourself vulnerable to people discounting you. So I feel that that’s a risk, but I also feel a little bit grounded in a way I never feel as grounded on this podcast because I know how to do this. I know how to tell the real truth of things, even in scary ways. That’s how I’ve survived. I feel like I know what I’m doing, but I also know that it’s risky.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. Well, it feels like you’re just opening yourself up, which I just find so freaking beautiful. And it’s just, I can’t…
Glennon Doyle:
How do you feel? You’re nervous. You’ve been nervous, you asked me a million times, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Abby Wambach:
Well, I’m-
Glennon Doyle:
You’re twiddling your thumbs in a way you never do.
Abby Wambach:
I want to protect you, and I also… I think you’re perfect and I know that we are all imperfect. I truly do. And yet I still want to make sure that you understand that, no matter what, we are ride or die, and this is why. This is a reason why I love you, not something to not love about you. And I think that, I find you to be… This isn’t courage or bravery. This is exactly what I feel like I was made for, such a time as this, and you are doing great.
Glennon Doyle:
And it’s what you said this morning when we were just leaving the bathroom to come down here to do this, and you asked me one more time, “Are you sure that you want to do this?” And I said, well, one of the reasons is because of my unshakeable belief, whether this is true or not, that I’m not about to explain to everybody why I’m fucked up. I really truly believe that we all have these weird, swirly, dark, whatever this weird wild self inside, and that one of my jobs, gifts, whatever, is to just really talk about that. But I feel like there’s part of what I’m revealing that is true about all of us, regardless of how it manifests in my life.
Amanda Doyle:
This part feels dramatic. It feels dramatic to say, because the whole word relapse is dramatic, but if something is true, it’s true all the way through, and if we say we want to show up with our mess and that we’re still worthy of love, it’s true whether we’re talking about our house is a mess, or we’re talking about our insides are a mess or we’re talking about… It’s got to be true all the way through. It doesn’t make anything about who you’ve become less valid, it actually proves that you truly believe in what you say that you’re willing to show up like this.
Glennon Doyle:
I do. I had this feeling this morning of… This is going to sound so weird, this isn’t the right word, but pride, or I feel I have been hiding again, this part of myself, and I don’t feel ashamed of this weird side of myself. But because of the hiding, I have been acting like I do. So in talking about it, I feel like this part of myself is a friend and I’m standing up for her right now, as weird as that sounds. I’m like, no, no, no, you can speak.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. You’re allowed to show up at the table. We’re not hiding you when the people come visit.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right. That’s right. Because this part of you that makes your life so hard sometimes is also the part that in a swirly different way that people celebrate this weirdness, that shows up in different ways. So we don’t get to just love her when she’s shiny and whatever, we love ourselves even when we’re hurting. Maybe more importantly then. Right? So that’s what we’re doing today. And-
Abby Wambach:
Buckle up, folks.
Glennon Doyle:
The why we’re doing it is for all of the reasons we just talked about. It’s not… It’s interesting because, my friend Nadia Bolz-Weber says we don’t write from our wounds, our open wounds. We write from our scars. Meaning we wait, right? Until pain has turned into wisdom because otherwise things just seem like a cry for help instead of an act of service or a piece of art. And I think that all rules, you have to learn them and know them and get them in your bones so that you know when to break them. And you also have to have enough, I guess, success at recovery and human-ing behind you so that when you’re in the middle of the open wound, you still have a grounding beneath you.
Glennon Doyle:
Like, I know how to do this. I am someone who’s been to rock bottom a few times in terms of alcoholism, in terms of mental illness, in terms of all of it, eating disorder stuff. And I kind of… Although I feel very scared because when you’re in the middle of it, you kind of forget that you’re going to get out. I can look back on my life and know that I will because I have, because I trust myself. So I am speaking from an open wound, but also one that I’ve seen scar over so many times that I trust the process enough to speak right now. I’m also with my wife and my sister. I’m with my two people that I trust most in the world, and I’m speaking to this pod squad that I really do trust. I feel safe here in a way I don’t feel on social media or whatever. Also, I have been thinking for the last few days about how mental illness is discussed in the world. And it just always feels like it’s being discussed by someone who has it all figured out or who is talking about it, but not from it.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
Which… I don’t know. There’s something weird about it. And I get it because when someone is in the middle of a low, or when someone who struggles with mental illness… I used to use the metaphor of being swallowed by the whale. When you’re in the whale, you can’t really speak clearly. So how are people going to speak from it? But it still makes you feel all the time like people are talking at you that don’t even understand it. It’s always like, here’s your 10 steps on mental, but you’re not hearing from somebody in it, which is how you feel less alone. It’s like before or after, but not the middle, you never hear from the middle. So I think there’s something important to speaking in the middle if it’s possible.
Glennon Doyle:
Then the how I’m going to do it, is I am going to say whatever I want to say for the next hour. So I’m just going to tell the story of the last month or so with words that match as closely as possible, the experience. I’m not going to worry about sounding crazy or triggering people. What I need you to do, loves, is if eating disorder talk, mental illness talk, all of this sort of traumatic talk is triggering to you, please skip this. Okay? Because I’m not going to worry about it, starting in a minute, okay? So I need you to take care of yourself so that I don’t have to take care of you for the next hour, okay? So does that sound okay?
Abby Wambach:
Sounds wonderful. I mean…
Glennon Doyle:
How are you doing sissy? Do you feel nervy?
Amanda Doyle:
I mean, I feel so many things. I feel curious, I feel sad. I feel proud of you. I feel unhelpful. I feel that… It’s wild because I first learned about this right after we left from the holiday break and we had just been together for two weeks and I felt a little like, “Oh man, she was going through all of this and I was right there with her, but I was not right there with her at all.” I’m proud of you for doing this and I want to support you for the next hour and then all the hours after that.
Glennon Doyle:
So looking back, I feel like… And you please tell me, because I’m not always good at when I’m in something, I can’t always remember what I was like before in any way. But I do know that I remember at the beginning of COVID, which was a strange time for everybody, and for us, it was strange in the way that Untamed was blowing up and I had 70,000 interviews a day and all of that. I do remember spending a lot of time talking about having untamed myself in many, many ways in terms of sexuality and our family and marriage and gender stuff, even, and talking a lot about how frustrated I was that I still have not broken free from compulsive thinking about body and food. Right? So the reason I say that is because when I try to trace back this relapse, and I say, “Oh, it was two weeks ago or a month ago.” I’m like, well, okay. We can trace the getting weird, as we call it, the slow fade into this. I remember feeling compulsive thoughts come back right around a couple years ago because we would talk about it too, right?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. I mean, I think that if you want to know the logistics of it. You were preparing… Less we forget, you were about to go on a nationwide book tour.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. So it was before then.
Abby Wambach:
And so it was before COVID hit. And oftentimes before you go on the book tour, there’s a huge to do. Your whole team has planned for a whole year, this book tour. You have a whole situation of clothes, and so-
Glennon Doyle:
You’re going to be on stages.
Abby Wambach:
You’re going to be on stage and you are about to go talk about this art that you’ve just created. It’s now going to go out into the world. So when we talk about getting weird or getting weird again, I just want to talk about all of the context that was and is a part of those times when you start getting… We talk weird, but you start to obsess, I think a little bit, about your body.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. There’s an element of, okay, things are about to be so out of control and I’m going to be so vulnerable because people are going to be staring at me and I’m going to be on stages and I’m going to be talking about pouring my heart out. There’s a feeling of what can I do to make myself invulnerable? And I think that comes with a lot of, in my compulsive twisted thinking, well, I can make myself like a robot, in terms of body, face, all of that. I can make myself completely un-juicy, inhuman, because the way that a woman looks in the world is a vulnerability all the time, because anybody can say shit about whatever. So when you’re about to go out into the world and say things that are controversial in themselves, and you know people are going to have a whole shit ton to say about what you’re saying and who you are, if you can control one part of it. They can’t say this, they can’t say I’m whatever. So controlling your physicality, that’s interesting. Yeah. That’s true. That is true.
Abby Wambach:
And you were also about to deliver this love story. So everything that was in the book… I don’t know. I just think it’s really important in terms of the context of it all. You are literally turning your insides out and letting people read your insides.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And when I look back on pictures of then, I was really fucking skinny. It was something, when I look back on those pictures. So, interesting, okay. So then that happens and then the tour gets canceled and then we’re home and then the pandemic happens, right?
Abby Wambach:
Yep.
Glennon Doyle:
So you are right. I was probably already in that way of thinking.
Abby Wambach:
For a few months before the pandemic started.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And also I would say for anybody, there’s an anxiety controlling. If you have some anxiety going into a big thing, working out, sweating, all of those things are anxiety. You feel like it’s going to take the edge off. If you just exhaust yourself, you exhaust the anxiety out.
Abby Wambach:
Just do something, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
So I was probably working out too much. Yeah. So what I know is that at some point, the overthinking about food and body just felt like it was getting more and more intense. The next marker I remember is the scale came back. I must have found a scale somewhere in our garage.
Abby Wambach:
I hid it, yeah. I hid it.
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know why it was even still in the house. But that’s just like a marker for… The scale came into our bathroom. Over months and months, I just… I was, “Oh, I’ll just weigh myself once a month.” Then it was once a week, then it was once a day. Most recently it was like eight times a day, every time I went into the bathroom. To give you context, at the one point I remember being like, “I’ll just do this without my headband on. I’ll just weigh myself without my headband.” That kind of level of obsession.
Abby Wambach:
I just want to remind you that at the time too, we were trying to do things to keep ourselves busy during the pandemic, so I hired a trainer to come and train us on the driveway.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
This is what I thought, because at the time we were having open conversations about, “I’m starting to obsess,” and I’m like, “Okay, I think that what we should do then is we should work out so that your body is strong, so that you know that your body is strong.” But I think that that was like gas on the fire.
Glennon Doyle:
The fire in me.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
And I knew that. I mean, I looked at that lady one day and was like, “I’m never coming back to this driveway. I don’t like this. This isn’t the right vibe for me.” And didn’t come back. But that’s what happens, you try all these things. So I think that I did actually throw up a couple of times or maybe two or three times over those months. And then the two weeks-
Amanda Doyle::
Did Abby know about that?
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Amanda Doyle::
Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Abby Wambach:
You did tell me.
Glennon Doyle:
I did?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. You told me that you were getting weird and there was just a couple of ice cream incidents, milkshake.
Glennon Doyle:
I did? Wow. Good for me. Well, okay. So that, and then right at Christmas…
Abby Wambach:
This Christmas?
Glennon Doyle:
This Christmas, yeah. The whole family was here, and I think that… We have had some family stuff come up over the last year that has been mostly good in terms of talking about things that our family hasn’t talked about, bringing up some old stuff, dynamics in our family that probably for sure, originally contributed to an environment that would’ve been…
Amanda Doyle::
Allowed this to-
Glennon Doyle:
An eating disorder.
Amanda Doyle::
To flourish.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Amanda Doyle::
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
That stuff has been brought up, but I don’t know… People who are listening, when you’re dealing with stuff with your family of origin, it’s brought up, and that’s an amazing, ridiculously brave step that most people don’t do at all, is bring up dynamics that may have been harmful in one way or another, especially in a family so full of love and so full of goodness. It’s hard to bring up the stuff that wasn’t good enough. But then there’s this period where nothing’s taken care of, really. It’s just this weird time, this weird in between where the elephant in the room has been pointed out, but it’s still there.
Abby Wambach:
No resolution.
Amanda Doyle:
No one ever talks about that part of the elephant in the room. You’re like, but now we just got a fucking elephant in the room. Like-
Glennon Doyle:
That’s how it feels.
Amanda Doyle:
Not that helpful. It’s not like, well… It should be excusing the elephant from room, but it’s not.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes!
Amanda Doyle::
It’s just calling out the elephant in the room, but it’s still trampling over all your shit.
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, shout out to all the family therapists. Is there… Because I feel like that’s a part you’ve missed.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. How do you resolve the problem you’ve just pointed out?
Glennon Doyle:
There’s no elephant removal crew. So then there’s the canaries in the coal mine, or whatever, the families who have the elephant pointer outer. But then when you point it out, then you just feel like a jackass, because then everybody’s like, “Well, thanks a lot, yeah. You pointed out the elephant, but now we’re all staring at an elephant. Way to go.” So anyway, the context is that Christmas happens, and all of this is to lead up to the last week of Christmas, the last week of 2021. Is that what it just was? I was throwing up every night, right. So New Year’s Day. You guys leave. Sister, you and John leave on New Year’s Day.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
So you and the kids and John left New Year’s Day. Our dear friends, Katie and Cam, texted us a few hours after you left and were like, “We’re in your town. Can we come say hi?” And literally if it was anyone else, we would’ve pretended that we couldn’t find our phones, because we were de-stressing and getting the quiet house back. But it was Katie and Cam, so we were like, “Get over here.”
Glennon Doyle:
And so I had this moment… Because at this point I’m still just keeping this all to myself, and that’s a tricky place for me because I think I know I’m keeping a secret from myself and that’s my definition of my own sobriety. A break in sobriety is when I’m keeping a secret, even from myself. That’s it. But that’s even tricky for me because so much of my life, since I was 10 years old, was this life of eating and throwing up and whatever. And so it kind of just feels like life to me. I can very much switch back into like, “Oh, this is just what life is. This is how I can… Some people go for walks. Some people go to a therapist. This is how I deal with myself.”
Amanda Doyle:
It’s a well-trodden path for you.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s familiar, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s familiar, yeah. So Katie and Cam sat down and I think somebody said, “Well, what are your intentions for 2021?” You know, they’re lesbians, we’re lesbians. There’s no small talk. We get right into our deepest… Right.
Amanda Doyle:
And it’s 2022, incidentally. There’s no demarcation, but intentions for 2022 is what you intended, right?
Glennon Doyle:
Is that what I said? Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
You said 2021, but it’s the groundhog year, so it’s fine.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. And so Abby said something and, awesome. And Cam said something, and they all looked at me and I had no… I had nothingness. I had nothing to say. I could not think of one true thing to come out of my mouth. And so I kind of panicked and just said something about work, which is I never, ever… If anybody asked me about, what is my… Work is not what I go to, but I had. And so I don’t know how to explain why that was such a red flag to me other than, “Oh, I’m lying to myself. I have nowhere true to start.” That blankness, that nothingness, that looking at three people on my couch, who I trust, top 10 people in my life, the three of them were on that couch. And I had nothing. I had no there, there anymore.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s the opposite of the there she is moment. It was like, where’d she go? Like, where am I? I have no… I have lies blocking any truth. Anything that I could say is bullshit because the truest thing I know is I’m fucked again. And I’m not saying that. Why am I not saying that? So, since the truest thing I know is that I’m scared because I’m back in this scary place, then why am I not saying that? I’m not saying that because I am deliberately hiding, and that means I’m fucked. Not the fact that I’m throwing up again or whatever. It’s the fact that I’m sitting here with these three people that I love and know and trust, and I’m not saying to them what my thing is.
Amanda Doyle:
I get that completely, because it’s the verification. It’s like, we live so much in this conflict within ourselves of what is true, what is not true? What is the inside of me? What is the outside of me? There’s never any black and white in what is a lie between what I’m presenting to the world and what is my internal reality. It’s such a gray swamp of what is real and what isn’t. But in those rare, rare moments like that, where you know what is true and you know what’s most important and you know what is clear, but you are not saying it, that is the explosion where you’re like, “Oh, we’re in the deep now.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes!
Amanda Doyle:
This is it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
I remember being on the couch, looking at you like, “Wow.”
Glennon Doyle:
Really?
Abby Wambach:
She couldn’t come up with a thing. I don’t even know if you said it. You were like, “I don’t know.” You just…
Glennon Doyle:
I couldn’t do it. I could not conjure up anything.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. That has never happened before.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Abby Wambach:
We talk, we talk a lot. When you-
Glennon Doyle:
Gone.
Abby Wambach:
Don’t talk…
Glennon Doyle:
I was gone.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
You were gone because you weren’t bringing you. That’s why you were gone.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s not that you couldn’t access it-
Glennon Doyle:
I was blocked.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s because you weren’t ready to bring it forward.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. That is why at the beginning of this, when I was saying there was a level of… Pride isn’t the right word, but maybe it’s relief, that I’m talking today. It’s the opposite of that moment on the couch. I don’t care. Fine. Say I’m crazy. Say I failed, say I’m relapsed. Say I’m whatever, but I’m still here. Whoever that I is, is still here and is going to speak.
Glennon Doyle:
So Katie and Cam left. I didn’t say anything for the rest of the day. And then, I don’t know if you remember this and I’m not going to use any names, but the next morning you had a friend call you who was in their second day of sobriety. And the truth is that I sat there. You were on speaker phone or something, and I sat there listening to a very early in sobriety person, say all the very early in sobriety stuff with all the hubris of early sobriety and all the beauty and things you can hear them say that they’re going to crash and burn about. I don’t know, I actually found myself feeling a little bit judge-y and annoyed. By myself, doing the dishes, listening to this beautiful human who has reached out to Abby, who is in their second day of sobriety and feeling judge-y and…
Amanda Doyle:
Like jaded?
Glennon Doyle:
Jaded. And they hung up and I put one more glass in the dishwasher and was like, I’m fucked. I think those were my words. “Babe, I’m fucked.”
Abby Wambach:
Because the kids were still with us, they were going back to Craig’s house that afternoon, you said, “I was going to wait until the kids went to Craig’s, but I’m fucked.” I was like, “Okay, okay.” And then you just told me.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And then I told you, and then you were completely amazing.
Abby Wambach:
I was?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
Oh.
Glennon Doyle:
Because you were undramatic you were un-shocked. You were soft and loving and huggy and there was no flick of terror. There was no, “You’re not who you said you were,” in your face. It was just like a, “Of course. And now we will get through this.” So you were amazing. And then we had told the kids we were going to go for a hike that day.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
So here is where I try to explain this thing about food and body and eating disorders and mental health and mental illness. So I have always felt like, there’s all these science words and there’s depression and there’s anxiety and there’s eating disorders, and there’s mental illness and all these things. But the way it manifests inside of me at times is like, there is this black hole or like a canyon of murkiness that exists inside of me, and I could jump in. Okay? But my job is to stay on the land side of this manhole or canyon of swirly, dark energy. But there is something seductive about the canyon. It’s not all terror and weeping and gnashing of teeth. It’s a little bit purple and swirly and sparkly too. So it’s like…
Abby Wambach:
It’s like Vegas.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s not like Vegas at all.
Abby Wambach:
Just kidding.
Glennon Doyle:
Fuck, I hate Vegas.
Amanda Doyle:
But Vegas may well be Abby’s canyon. So let’s just-
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
Table that for a second. That’s another episode, Abby.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right, that’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s like the opposite because Vegas is all like lights and man-made and bullshit. This is spiritual in a weird way. Okay? I don’t know. It’s not-
Abby Wambach:
That’s the seductive part, maybe.
Glennon Doyle:
It might be the internal tendency to glorify this thing.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, right.
Amanda Doyle:
I was going to say your story about it is that it is spiritual.
Abby Wambach:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
That may be true. It may not be true. But in your story, when you look at the canyon, it is seductive-
Glennon Doyle:
My image of it.
Amanda Doyle:
Because it is maybe a higher or deeper reality than the actual tangible reality of the shore.
Glennon Doyle:
It could be, yes, that, but also it’s because it is so hard and it requires so much work to stay on the land.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s because-
Amanda Doyle:
Not being the land is part of its seduction.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. It represents not having to work so damn hard, like a succumbing. So what I’m trying to say is that when eating food, body stuff, is my way of getting closer to the canyon, it has nothing fucking to do with the eating and food. Okay? It’s like my friends who are cutters or my friends who… All of the different things, those are their ways of inching closer to the canyon. It has nothing fucking to do with the eating. So when I get weird about eating and food, and it’s like, “Oh, we’ll get a personal trainer,” or it’s like, “Well, let’s talk about nutrition.” It’s like the equivalent of saying, “Okay, I have once again set myself on fire,” and someone saying, “Well, what we can do to explore that is let’s just sit down and talk about pyrotechnics.”
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Have you taken a fire prevention course?
Glennon Doyle:
Fire safety class.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. It’s like, no, that’s elementary, baby.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s like, no, no, no. We want to know, why cosmically am I an arsonist? It’s not how fire works.
Amanda Doyle:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay? I’m talking about the canyon of swirly, dark… I’m not talking about fricking nutrition, okay? So we have to go hiking and I actually decide we’re going to do that. There’s no point in… We’re going to continue. What could be better than going on an easy hike with the family and staying in the light and being outside and all the things?
Abby Wambach:
I wasn’t so sure. I think that you had to convince me that that was-
Glennon Doyle:
That was going to be okay?
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
I was like, “Um… [crosstalk 00:35:57]-“
Glennon Doyle:
So we go, and we are just going to this place that’s 25 minutes away or whatever. And on the car ride there, it was just so interesting. First of all, I was in a bit of trauma because I had just told you. To take yourself out of the secret place to where someone can see it in the light, it’s like, there’s no turning back. Now it’s real. It doesn’t always feel like it’s real when it’s inside of you, even though it’s happening and you can see yourself throwing up. It’s like, it could still be not real. So in a bit of trauma. I think the best way that I can describe this part is that this is when I really feel crazy, whatever that means. We’re driving there, I notice that my breathing is so shallow. I can’t take a deep breath. I’m sitting there in the passenger seat. Abby’s driving. The kids are in the back. I think we had the dogs with us. It was just like utter chaos. Like everybody… Happy chaos.
Glennon Doyle:
And I can’t catch a breath. And I realize I’m being as still as humanly possible and not breathing deeply. And it’s so interesting because it is the same way of being that you would be if you were hiding, because there was a killer in the room. Okay? So you’re like, trying not to be found. It’s like being paralyzed, not being able to breathe because there’s a stalker. And then you’re thinking hard about why you’re behaving that way. And then you realize, oh no, no. The stalker for you, honey, has always been inside of you. The call is-
Amanda Doyle:
The call is coming from inside the house.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s… Yes. So this is what I’m thinking about. And then I realize, I look around, and I think everyone’s listening to like Taylor Swift or something, the cognitive dissonance between what’s going on inside of me and what’s going on outside of me is so… It’s like all light and happiness on the outside, on the inside it’s this swirly thing. And I realize that I am holding so tightly to my arm that I mean, for sure, I’m bruising myself. I’m holding so tightly.
Abby Wambach:
You do have a grip. That’s just a general state that you get into.
Glennon Doyle:
Koala bear grip.
Abby Wambach:
Sometimes we’ll just be holding hands, watching TV, and I have to actually move my hand, because she’s now completed and gotten the grip into a vice grip
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
And my circulation is being cut off. You have a tendency to just do it.
Glennon Doyle:
Would you say that not sometimes, but every time?
Abby Wambach:
Every time.
Glennon Doyle:
Every time. Every time we’re holding hands, you have to…
Abby Wambach:
I have to kind of wiggle and you have to say sorry.
Glennon Doyle:
Sorry, sorry. Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
You don’t have to, but that’s what you do.
Amanda Doyle:
I have a question about that cognitive dissonance. For the week prior, when you were actively purging, you did not feel that cognitive dissonance, and only after you had told Abby you had that cognitive dissonance? Because theoretically, you could have had that the whole time that you knew this was happening and the world was just unfolding around you obliviously, but it’s only after you told Abby that you had that?
Glennon Doyle:
I think it’s phases.
Amanda Doyle:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Glennon Doyle:
I think it’s like…
Amanda Doyle:
It’s real now.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s real now, yeah. No turning back, no turning back.
Amanda Doyle:
No take backs. No take backs-
Glennon Doyle:
No take backs.
Amanda Doyle:
We’re here.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. So I’ve realized that I’m holding myself so tight and I remember looking around and they were all dancing. They were dancing and singing and I’m looking at their hands and their hands are all flailing around. And my thought was, it is so beautiful how much they trust gravity. And then I was like, what the fuck does that mean? Like what? Why don’t you trust… I’m holding on in the car. I am holding so tightly so that I do not fly away. And these fools are just… It is as if gravity is real to them. They do not even have to hold themselves down or in or together.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m just telling you what my thoughts were at that time. Right now, sitting here on this couch, I understand how bat crazy that sounds. But in the moment I was like, “Wow! Look at this magic trick they’re all doing. They’re all just so loose.” So we get to this hike. We’re walking. It’s really, really beautiful. And we’re in Palos Verdes, okay? We’re going around this cliff and we come across…
Abby Wambach:
Oh my god.
Glennon Doyle:
This staircase. Okay? Do you remember…
Abby Wambach:
I now understand what you’re..
Glennon Doyle:
Do you understand now, what was happening to me during that time? Do you remember how I stopped at that staircase and stared for so long and then walked down it, which I never do? I’m like the least adventurous person in the world.
Abby Wambach:
No, I was so… I was like, “Is she nervous?” Because Chase had walked down there, I was like, “Is she nervous that Chase is going to fall? Why is she going down there? That’s so weird.”
Glennon Doyle:
No. The second I get out of the car to go to a hike, all I’m thinking is like, how long will it be to we get back in this car? If I don’t trust gravity in the car, I’m sure as hell not going to trust it on a cliff. It’s all very precarious. So we’re on this cliff overlooking the ocean and there’s this staircase and it’s wild. It’s the longest staircase in the world. It goes from the top of this cliff and it’s cut in-
Abby Wambach:
Not really, but it looks like it, yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. It looks like it. And it somehow goes all the way down to the water, but you can only see the top half of it. You can’t see the bottom half of it. Then halfway down, the whole top of the staircase is in the light. You can see it. And then there’s this platform, this bigger part of the staircase. And then that’s all you can see. So I was like, “Okay, I have to walk down and get down to that platform.” So I walk down the staircase and there’s that platform, and then the staircase turns and then the rest is just all down to the ocean and it’s all dark. It’s out of the sun. So that’s when I walk back up to the top so I can see the whole thing, right? And I realize, that platform, which I had to Google because I could not freaking think of what that was actually called in a staircase, it’s called the landing.
Abby Wambach:
I was going to say, a landing.
Glennon Doyle:
A landing. The landing is where I was that day.
Abby Wambach:
Ah, yes.
Amanda Doyle:
I feel that. Yes, yes, yes.
Glennon Doyle:
The landing is where I still am today.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Weeks later. Okay? But here’s what I’m saying. The landing is where you stand and you can go either way. You look down, and the down is so seductive because it’s easier and it looks like it’ll take less effort and it’s in the dark. You can get lost in it. Nobody can see you. You can just keep descending one step at a time. Or, you turn and you look up at that motherfucking staircase again, right? Just one step at a time, and you think about your freaking poor little legs who have done this so many times. And you think about the sun that’s so freaking bright and everyone can see your struggle and it just looks so steep. And so for a minute you just stay on the landing. And so, that’s where I am right now. I’m on the landing and I only know, which I’m really delighted about, that I’m not going down. I’m not-
Abby Wambach:
How do you know that?
Glennon Doyle:
Because I know myself and what I know about myself is that once I get to the landing, I will not go further. I trust myself completely to not descend further, when I know where I am. I trust my weary little legs. I trust the light. I trust the climb.
Abby Wambach:
When you were throwing up, were you below the landing, in the darkness or on the landing? I feel confused.
Amanda Doyle:
Walking down, right?
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know. I mean, I think this is where metaphor kind of breaks down a bit, babe. I don’t know exactly where I was fucking on this staircase.
Abby Wambach:
Well, I just want to know! No, listen. I just want to know because this is, as a partner, this is important knowledge.
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, the landing is day zero. The landing is when you look at yourself-
Abby Wambach:
I see.
Glennon Doyle:
And there are no lies between you and you anymore.
Abby Wambach:
Got it.
Glennon Doyle:
Right? It doesn’t feel like a staircase until the landing. It feels like a free fall of-
Abby Wambach:
Oh, interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
Nothingness. It doesn’t feel… You’re not deliberately stepping down and down and down. It only feels like the staircase… That staircase wouldn’t have made any sense to me the day before.
Abby Wambach:
I see.
Glennon Doyle:
You have to be on the landing to recognize the landing.
Abby Wambach:
It’s like acknowledging it actually forms this staircase.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
It’s like a forming of it. That’s really interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, a landing is a platform that allows you to change directions, or allows a climber to rest. So there’s a graciousness of the landing too. There’s enough space to rest, right, to gather your strength up for the climb again.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. So that’s where I am now. I’m on the landing. And what that means to me, in practical terms, is that there will be a next, there will be a climb. There will be… It will probably include therapy and all kinds of different things. But I will say that I have a confidence about me this time. I really do. I think the climb will be different, it will feel different. But I’m 45 years old, and I know myself and I trust myself. And I also have been through this enough times to have a level of curiosity because I think what was annoying me about that conversation you were having with that person in their second day of sobriety, was that that person sounded the opposite of jaded.
Glennon Doyle:
There is an awe, a beginner’s mind, that returns to you when you realize that we’re all on the fucking landing all the time. There is a returning of awe when you start that first step, that feels a little bit magical that isn’t as present when you’re feeling really big and bad about yourself because you’re on step 409,000. I have a positive anticipation about the magic that will come as the climb begins again. And I’m just being super tender and careful and gentle with myself as I wait on the landing. And that is what I wanted to say today.
Glennon Doyle:
And so with that, I just want to say directly to you, sweet listener. It is true that we can do hard things and we will keep doing them together. See you back here in two days with more love notes from the landing. Bye. I give you, Tish Melton and Brandi Carlile.