This is 46: Why I’m Pumped About Midlife
March 22, 2022
Abby Wambach:
I just feel giggly.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, Abby’s going to have fun. Okay, good luck-
Abby Wambach:
I just feel happy and giggly, and I’m just so glad to be home.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. So welcome-
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
… to We Can Do Hard Things. We also hope-
Abby Wambach:
Hi.
Glennon Doyle:
… that you are glad to be home-
Abby Wambach:
Here with us
Glennon Doyle:
… pod squadders-
Abby Wambach:
… today.
Glennon Doyle:
… here with us today. I don’t know what’s going to happen, because Abby’s being very weird.
Abby Wambach:
Well, we are talking about something that is my favorite thing in the whole world.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, what is that?
Abby Wambach:
It’s the day you were born.
Glennon Doyle:
Aw.
Abby Wambach:
Aw. I can’t believe how lucky we all are and I can’t believe I get to be in close proximity to you. So this is just like my favorite episode to talk about your birthday.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. If I was Adele, I would name this episode 46, okay? So maybe that’s what we’ll call it. We’ll call it 46. This is the month-
Amanda Doyle:
46.
Glennon Doyle:
… that-
Amanda Doyle:
Very good.
Glennon Doyle:
… of my birthday. I was born on March 20th actually, the first day of spring, pisses me off to no end when people say that March 21st is the first day of spring, because it is not, okay? Pisces.
Abby Wambach:
Ish.
Glennon Doyle:
Nope, nope. You don’t want to have that fight today, Abby Wambach. I am on the cusp.
Abby Wambach:
Think you’re an Aires.
Glennon Doyle:
I might be astrologically fluid, but just like I’m sexually-
Abby Wambach:
You-
Glennon Doyle:
… fluid, but I-
Abby Wambach:
Are you sexually fluid?
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know what the hell I am.
Abby Wambach:
I know. I mean-
Glennon Doyle:
Can we talk about my birthday and not my sexuality just for one day?
Abby Wambach:
I know. You’re the one that brought it up. I’m just saying, if you’re going to talk about it-
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, when you’re 46-
Amanda:
You should know by now.
Glennon Doyle:
46. Yeah, so that’s interesting, because when we talked about what to do for a birthday episode, I think my sister was like, “Maybe you could talk about some things you know, some things you’ve learned or lessons.” And I tried. I really did. I tried to think hard. I thought hard and long about what do I know and blankness, okay?
Abby Wambach:
It’s like we spend our whole lives trying to know things. And then, when we get to our 40s, we’re like, “I don’t know shit.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. The longer I live, the less I know.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
Right? And it’s like God help those people who think they do now, because they don’t know shit. They know less than people who admit they don’t know. So anyway, I am not in a place of knowing right now. I have decided that I am in a place of feeling, and so what I’m going to share today is how I’m feeling at 46 at this particular moment in my life.
Abby Wambach:
Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, I’m 46. That’s amazing. I’m close-
Amanda Doyle:
That is amazing.
Glennon Doyle:
… close-
Amanda Doyle:
Good job.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you. Closer to 50 than I am to 40. That’s wild. If you’re looking for any sort of like, “Woe is me. I’m getting older,” I don’t have any of that. I keep getting awesomer and awesomer every year.
Abby Wambach:
I can attest.
Glennon Doyle:
If you offered me all the Twizzlers in the world, if you offered me-
Abby Wambach:
That’s a big thing.
Glennon Doyle:
… all the coffee, if you said, “You can be in charge of all the coffee forever,” I would not go back to 20s, 30s, hell no.
Amanda Doyle:
It is so funny when people are like, “Now, I’m 43. Now, I’m 44.” I’m like, “The alternative to aging is not aging.”
Glennon Doyle:
It’s dead.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s dead. That’s so odd.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s so odd.
Amanda Doyle:
Everyone should be pro-aging, because if you’re not pro-aging, you’re pro-dead.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re pro-dead. There’s two options.
Abby Wambach:
That’s so funny.
Glennon Doyle:
There’s two freaking options.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
So here’s how I feel. We live by the ocean now, okay? And by the Pacific Ocean.
Abby Wambach:
That’s correct.
Glennon Doyle:
It took us a while to nail.
Abby Wambach:
Took us a few months to get that one down.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, it is for sure the Pacific Ocean. And I remember that by saying, “Glennon, it’s a specific ocean.” And Pacific rhymes with specific.
Abby Wambach:
Oh my gosh.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, that’s how I get there.
Abby Wambach:
That’s so good.
Glennon Doyle:
So I have this moment each day where I can stand and look at the ocean, and I see the shore and I see the waves coming onto the shore, and I see the ocean as far as I can see. And I have this feeling that makes me peaceful, which is I have gone as far as I can go. I love living here, because that’s it. I’ve gone as far as I can go. Unless I’m going to walk into the Specific Ocean, I have gone as far as I can go. At 46, I feel that way about a lot of parts of my life.
Abby Wambach:
Huh.
Glennon Doyle:
I feel like I know my capacity, okay? So I’m not saying that no one else could do better at these things or do differently. I’m just saying I know myself. I know my capacity. I know where I came from. I know what I started with. I know my own particular battles and my own particular challenges and fears and all of that. And given the package of life that I’ve been given, I’ve gone as far as I can go-
Abby Wambach:
Interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
… with love, with romantic love. There’s nowhere better, bigger or further or different than I want to go. My children are still growing, but they’re baked. The oldest one is off to college. The middle one is herself, ’tis herself and always has been. The youngest one, she’s baked. Now, we’re more dealing with her dealing with the world rather than helping her shape her. I have poured into them what I wanted to.
Abby Wambach:
That’s interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
With work, there’s no dreams that I have that haven’t. In terms of who I’ve gotten to work with my family, Allison and Dynna, what we’ve gotten to do in the world Together Rising. Now, I’m just like, “What?”
Abby Wambach:
“What do I do next?”
Glennon Doyle:
Or not.
Abby Wambach:
“How do I keep doing this?”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And this is not an acceptable thing for women to say, so I understand that this might feel hard to hear for women to say it-
Abby Wambach:
If you’re not sharing this experience.
Glennon Doyle:
… but I feel like I’m proud of myself-
Abby Wambach:
Cool.
Glennon Doyle:
… with what I’ve been given and what I’ve done, and all the privilege that I have and all of it. I feel like I’ve done my best. I did my best.
Abby Wambach:
That’s, I think, a better way of saying than maybe like, “I’ve gone as far,” because it feels like such an ending. “I’ve gone as far as I could go,” but-
Glennon Doyle:
Well-
Abby Wambach:
… doing your best.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I want to talk about that part too, about it feeling like the ending, but I remember… And the sentence, I’ve done my best, might sound not too revolutionary to people, but to me it’s really revolutionary, because I was drinking for so long. It is an awful feeling to look at your life and think, “I can do better than this, but I’m not doing it. I could do better than this at love. I could be doing better than this at sharing my particular talents.” And so, for me to be able to say, “I’m doing my best now-“
Abby Wambach:
It’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
… “I’ve done my best. I’m doing my best,” is a huge moment for me.
Amanda Doyle:
And the flip side is true. If you know you’re not doing your best and something is stopping you from doing that, that is a grief, but the same is true on the flip side. If you’re doing your best, but you’re still telling yourself, “It should be better. It should be better. You can do it, work harder and be better than this,” that is a different kind of anguish. So being able to say, “I did my best and it’s good,” is a beautiful thing on either side of the spectrum that you’re on.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, because it implies, I think, an idea of enoughness, too. And enoughness is culturally not even… We don’t even understand what is enough. I think that is also something that I’m feeling strongly. Abby and I have been talking about what that means, what does enough mean, over and over again for really the last year. There’s a lot of people who are exactly where I am in work, exactly where I am and don’t feel like it’s enough, right?
Glennon Doyle:
They wouldn’t say, “I’ve done my best.” And I work with people like that. I work with that idea all the time like, “If you’re where I am, you’ve just begun. You have so many other things to do. Imagine what else you can do. Imagine what-“
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s not because of what I’ve done that I feel. It’s because it’s an approach that I want to bring into the second half of my life, which is the idea that I feel like this is an intermission time, okay? That’s how I feel about 45.
Abby Wambach:
Two halves.
Glennon Doyle:
Two halves, right?
Abby Wambach:
And now, we’re in the middle halftime.
Glennon Doyle:
The first half was like I lived hard, man. I haven’t breathed for decades in terms of being very sick for a very long time and then recovering, and then starting the second I recovered from or began recovering from alcoholism and food addiction, starting life, becoming the mother of three children and becoming a wife, and then having the career, and then the divorce and the remarry. It’s been fast and hard and a lot, and I feel like all of us spend the first half of our lives just building.
Glennon Doyle:
We’re just striving and we’re trying so hard, and we’re building things. And then, we’re feeling like, “Oh, wait, this isn’t exactly right. This isn’t what I wanted. This is what somebody wanted for me.” So then, we’re unbuilding and we’re unlearning, and we’re deconstructing and we’re fighting to make this outer life that matches us.
Abby Wambach:
That’s why I think it’s so important to have the conversations that we’ve been having, what really is enough, because had we not started those conversations, the only thing that we were considering is what’s next and that what-next piece always had to be more than what we just did. And that is a real fast way to misery.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s the carrot that you can chase your whole life. If you don’t not believe in enoughness, there will never be enough. If enoughness isn’t a spiritual practice, really figuring out what is enough-
Abby Wambach:
Contentment.
Glennon Doyle:
What is enough ambition? What is enough accomplishment? What is enough money? What is enough relevancy? All of it, right?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Then, you just keep hamster-wheeling forever and ever, amen.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s like if all of life is anything is possible, right? That’s like through all of life and your happiness really depends on your precise posture toward anything is possible. So I feel like it’s like the first half is like, “Anything is possible. Here we go. What can we be? What can we build? What kind of life can we have?” And then, that seems like a really positive attitude, but it makes us the unhappiest. And this is research-backed, but then the second half of our life, it’s like anything’s possible.
Amanda Doyle:
You really know the impermanence of things, and that you could lose these things and these people and everything you cherish, but it’s precise. That is the paradox, that that is the time that you are happiest. It’s facing and accepting the inevitability of loss that makes us happy.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s so interesting.
Abby Wambach:
I see the way of a person’s life as a bell curve. So physically speaking, it’s like and it can apply to this. You’re attaining all of these, whether it’s labels or things or-
Glennon Doyle:
Roles.
Abby Wambach:
… roles or goals or whatever, and you’re always building and you get to a point, and I feel like maybe we’re here is we need to enjoy. And so, maybe we’re ready for that bell curve to go down, but I also think about it spiritually-speaking. And then, I think that that bell curve is inverted spiritually.
Amanda Doyle:
It is.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s what I think.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s a happiness-
Glennon Doyle:
I do not-
Amanda Doyle:
… U curve.
Glennon Doyle:
I think that the curve, the hill you’re talking about, is the bullshit. Okay, because here’s what I think. Where we get over the hill and all of that, that is a visual for life, if you really only believe in the first-half bullshit. If you believe that our joy and our peace and our power comes from accumulating things and roles and power and relevance and all of that, then it is a curve, right?
Abby Wambach:
Then, it curves down, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Because that stuff, you gain, gain, gain, gain, gain in the first half of life, and then it starts to go away. When I’m looking past 46 and I’m looking at, literally got… looked at my neck the other day and I was like, “What is happening? Oh.” The wrinkles are coming in the neck, or I see a picture of myself without a bra and I’m like, “Oh my God, is that my-“
Abby Wambach:
You have a picture of yourself without a bra?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did. When I took those pictures in our living room the other day with Alok actually.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, with a shirt on.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I had a shirt on-
Abby Wambach:
Okay, I see.
Glennon Doyle:
… for God’s sake.
Abby Wambach:
I mean, look, you said… I was just excited that this was possible. I didn’t know we were doing that.
Glennon Doyle:
No, but I was like, “Oh my God, look at my boobs. They’re at my belt. That’s so interest…” What I’m saying is if I continued to believe what the first half of life tries to teach women in particular, so just one version of first-half philosophy, that your body and your youth are your power and your peace.
Abby Wambach:
Ooh.
Glennon Doyle:
Right? Your cultural idea of beauty and the way your body looks youthful are your… If I still believe that, then yes, the second half of my life will be a down spiral.
Abby Wambach:
Sad.
Glennon Doyle:
If I believe what culture tells me, that all of my relevancy as a woman comes from the roles that I play, comes from momming, comes from my status in the neighborhood, in the community, comes from where… Then, as my children grow and don’t need me as much in the same ways, it will be a bell curve down. Relevancy in terms of work, we all know how that goes, the amount of energy and just blood, sweat, tears and almost manic hamster-wheeling you have to do to maintain what your work will tell you keeps you relevant. If I continue to do that, it’ll be a bell curve, right? So there’s this other way of doing it that I really am wanting to do and I feel like the intermission right now is-
Abby Wambach:
The Selah.
Glennon Doyle:
… a time where the Selah, the holy pause-
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
We love that word. This is a holy pause in life. The Selah is the symbol in holy scripture that appears between scripture when it’s a signal to the reader to stop, and really take a moment to take the music or the scripture from the previous part sink in. So a holy Selah in our lives, we consider those moments where things slow down for a minute, and you’re allowed to actually take a breath and be intentional about what you just learned and how it’s going to change you for the next part, and that’s what this is.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
And I think there’s a way to make your life not the up and then the down, not the over the hill but a continued up. But in order to do the continued up, you have to let go of believing what the first half of your life taught you. You have to actually believe that your power and peace does not come from the power of the first half, the accumulation of roles. You have to move into soul territory, from believing in your roles to believing in the soul, which is like actually we know none of that’s true. If all of that were to make a person happy, I’d be the happiest damn person on Earth, right?
Abby Wambach:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
I’ve got a lot of roles. There’s this way that I see people doing the second half that I worship so much this way, which is just the power in stillness and the power in actually allowing yourself to become irrelevant in the ways of the world. It’s like that Ram Dass idea. The first half of your life is becoming somebody and the second half of your life is becoming nobody. And when you can finally become nobody, that’s when you actually find peace and power.
Abby Wambach:
Yes. And God, that feels so hard.
Abby Wambach:
This might not ring true to everybody listening, but it rings true to me, because I do think that there are some things in my first half that I know have been… And it’s a lot spiritual. It’s a lot internal. It’s like the soul part of me that I’ve been trying to curate. I think that the build of that is giving me confidence in the exploration of the second half, because I think so many of us get stuck in the belief system that there is going to be a over the hill, and now everything is just going to be hard.
Abby Wambach:
My body’s going to hurt all the time and it’s going to start sagging in places, and I’m going to lose all the roles that I’ve built my life on, but part of me knows that the roles that I have attached myself to was building a kind of soul to be able to do that next half. So the way that I think about is our Women’s National Team. I know that this is weird to bring a sports metaphor, analogy or story into it, but we always said, “The last 20 minutes of every game of the second half is where we will thrive.”
Abby Wambach:
And it had nothing to do with that specific game. It had everything to do with all the stuff that we did mentally to prep for those last 20 minutes. And wouldn’t you know, a lot of the biggest games we ever played were one in the last moments of the game, because we were mentally preparing ourselves for the inevitable things that happened in the second half. You’re more tired. You’re-
Glennon Doyle:
Isn’t that interesting-
Abby Wambach:
… exhausted.
Glennon Doyle:
… though? It’s like the mental fortitude-
Abby Wambach:
That’s it.
Glennon Doyle:
… yeah-
Abby Wambach:
That’s it.
Glennon Doyle:
… of the last… I mean, because when you think about it, and another way I think about this intermission, is it’s a beautiful time to take a breath and fortify, get ready, because I think the second half of life, the way I watch it in other people, it is more challenging in many ways.
Abby Wambach:
In some ways, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
You do lose. We’re going to lose parents. We’re going to walk each other through unbelievably difficult things. Our children are going to grow and have real adult problems. We’re going to get sick. We’re going to have friends that get sick. You know how it feels like, in parenting, the first half is so physically exhausting that you can’t even see straight, and then the second half is completely mentally exhausting? It feels like it’s going to be like that, you know?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. And I think that, if we can get outside of what the world tells us the second half is going to be like and, “Oh, we’re going through a midlife crisis,” no, we’re in a Selah right now. We’re in an intermission. The way we want to approach this is not with a crisis mindset.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, let’s talk about that. When you guys are talking about the curves and the crisis, the good news is I have two sets of good news for the good people. First of all, you don’t necessarily have to be thinking through all of these things and as deep in it and prepared as you are, Glennon. Life does this for you. Happiness is a U curve, as you said. Happiness reaches its peak at the end of life. And so, there’s high happiness at the beginning, but the highest is at the end. So women are happiest between the ages of 65 and 79. And one survey even found that women are most likely to reach their peak happiness at 85 years old.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God.
Abby Wambach:
What?
Amanda Doyle:
So what is happening is that you’re going to get there, right? Life is going to do it for you, because it’s going to teach you the impermanence of things. And you’re going to treasure those moments, because you have let go of all the striving you’re talking about, right? So-
Glennon Doyle:
Do we call that running-
Amanda Doyle:
But-
Glennon Doyle:
In our culture, we call that women running out of fucks to give, right? That’s what we call it, right? When we stop trying to please everybody, when we get outside of being defined and controlled by our roles of caretaking, of all of that, when we finally get to stop and live and notice our own life, that’s probably that time, right?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, we become less dependent. We become less self-critical, more confident and more decisive as we age. That is true of women. The average woman becomes more of those things as she gets older. And so, you’re coming into yourself at that time, but I have another piece of good news, which is that, if you are not feeling in this moment of life the way Glennon feels about this moment in her life, that is normal. In fact, midlife is the hardest. That is where you get a drop in life.
Amanda Doyle:
So you have the highest at the end, high at the beginning, and then midlife is generally the most stressful period in people’s lives, because they have the work-performance demands. They have caregiving demands of their kids and their parents. They’re still striving so freaking hard and that is when dissatisfaction peaks. It’s during the 40s and it’s actually at its worst at 45-
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Amanda Doyle:
… on average. And I am in a period like that right now, so I just want to shout to the people that, if you’re not feeling this deep sense of peace and preparedness, that’s totally normal. You’re doing it right and you will be happier. Literally, the best is yet to come, for sure.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
That’s amazing.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s interesting to bring up the crisis word. That’s what we used to always call it? This is a midlife crisis and I was-
Abby Wambach:
So weird.
Glennon Doyle:
… thinking about that on my walk this morning, and I was thinking about, first of all, what we see as a midlife crisis. Of course, when you think of midlife crisis, of course we only get to think of men right away, right? That’s what comes. It’s a man with a red Ferrari, a man trading in his wife for younger versions or whatever. It’s like a midlife crisis, what I think of it is it’s approaching the second half and doubling down on the first half’s values.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
To me, this is how I’m seeing it right now. Wise midlife is a look at what’s coming, inevitably coming, which is that we are going to… Maybe lose isn’t the best word, but it’s the best word I have right now.
Abby Wambach:
Like-
Glennon Doyle:
We’re going to lose a lot of the things that we cherished in the first half. We’re going to have to stop worshiping a lot of things that we worshiped in the first half. We’re going to have to find our identity and our groundedness in other things other than the things that we did in the first half. You can either look at that inevitability and figure out how to jive with it, figure out how to turn that way directionally, or you can use your intermission to turn back towards the first half and go kicking and screaming, and doubling down on all of those things, right?
Glennon Doyle:
Being bound and determined to keep yourself young, keep yourself looking young, thinking young. You can buy a bunch of cars. That’s the crisis that our culture shows us. It’s a doubling down on the first half’s life values, but also this is an interesting thing about the word crisis. I wrote about this in Love Warrior. I remember learning from Kathleen Norris in one of her books that the root of the word crisis is a Latin word that means to sift, okay?
Glennon Doyle:
So a crisis is, if you want to think about one of those kids who goes to the beach with one of those sieves and digs up the sand and holds it out in front of them and just watches all of the sand fall away, hoping that there’s treasure left over, that is what crisis is. A midlife crisis is the time where we scoop up the sand of our lives and we let everything fall away except for the treasure that’s left over, which is the truth.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
We don’t try to keep the sand sieve. We don’t, right? We let it all fall away, that which actually never mattered. And by the way, that which never brought us the peace it promised. That’s the other thing to remember. If you are buying more Ferraris or whatever people do, you’re doubling down on something that never worked, because don’t tell me that anybody ever got a car and was like, “Now, I am the man I always… Now, I see-“
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, you can never have-
Glennon Doyle:
“I can sleep good at night.”
Amanda Doyle:
You can never have enough of what you don’t really need.
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Amanda Doyle:
And so, trying to get more of it to see if that’s enough is not a wise plan, but that’s-
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Abby Wambach:
I agree with you.
Amanda Doyle:
I love that vision of that being the crisis, crisis meaning an evaluation, being willing to morph and change into the next thing, like you have, by the way, 17 times before. We act like midlife is the first time we have this transformation, not even close to true. I mean, remember adolescence, remember your early adulthood? We’ve done this a thousand times. Why is this different? I think because, in part, we attach this idea of a midlife crisis to it, which is a myth.
Amanda Doyle:
That is not even a real thing. Very few people report having some kind of definable crisis that’s related to their age at all. That term wasn’t even a thing until 1957, and it was this guy who studied composers and thought they got less creative in their 30s, by the way. That was the midlife crisis, in the 30s. And so, he decided that people had years-long depressive periods in their 30s and that is where we got midlife crisis.
Abby Wambach:
Interesting.
Amanda Doyle:
So it’s not a thing for… You don’t have to wait for it to spring on you. You’re just-
Glennon Doyle:
You can just decide-
Amanda Doyle:
You’re just changing-
Glennon Doyle:
… if there’s-
Amanda Doyle:
… and evolving.
Glennon Doyle:
There might be a moment, though. There might be a moment where you get to catch your breath, and you look at the thing you’ve built and you say, “I think I’ve done my best.” And you might think, “I’m finally at a point where I don’t want things to be different. I just want more of the same.” Let’s talk about the other way it could go, because I think about, what if you get to your intermission or your Selah, and you don’t like what you’ve built?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, it’s a good question.
Amanda Doyle:
Or that’s why you don’t take a Selah.
Amanda Doyle:
Or you don’t-
Amanda Doyle:
If you don’t like what you’ve built, you don’t stop to assess it. That’s why people go, go, go, go, go. That’s because you know in the back of your mind it’s easier to keep sprinting, no matter how hard it is, than to stop, rest, turn around and acknowledge that it isn’t good enough.
Glennon Doyle:
Because Abby and I were talking this morning about how, five years ago, it wasn’t good enough for me. Five years ago-
Abby Wambach:
Same.
Glennon Doyle:
… had I… I mean, I guess I sort of did, but I did not even have close to the life that I wanted and needed.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, you had just turned 40 and-
Glennon Doyle:
I was in a marriage that I didn’t-
Abby Wambach:
And same with me. I was 35, 36 and I was fucking miserable. I was at the worst point in my life. I’m almost six years sober. I have had the best six years of my life because of that one-day-at-a-time approach.
Glennon Doyle:
I think that sobriety does help actually, because I think that sometimes, whatever you do to take the edge off, the edge is what makes you change things. I think when you-
Abby Wambach:
It’s good info.
Glennon Doyle:
When you, at 6:00 each night, start to check out, it’s like you don’t sit in the misery of the life you don’t want long enough to actually-
Abby Wambach:
So good.
Glennon Doyle:
… freaking get to the point where you can’t take it anymore and you have to change it.
Abby Wambach:
Do something, yes.
Glennon Doyle:
You can live your whole life and just take the edge off every single night. It’s that-
Abby Wambach:
That little bit of time.
Glennon Doyle:
… that keeps you from the misery that demands change. If you are numbing your misery, you’re putting out the fire in you that is your fuel.
Abby Wambach:
It’s good, so good. It’s like, if you can stand a little bit of that misery, it will point you directly to changing the things in your life that you want to change that are making you miserable.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, you must sit in the misery. You have to. That’s where you get your fire.
Amanda Doyle:
I think it’s just hopeful. It’s just exciting to think about that there’s a whole different part of life that we haven’t started. There’s a whole different way to think about it. It’s just funny how, you know how, there’s insults we say about people as they get old like, “Oh, they’re really starting to slow down.” That’s an-
Abby Wambach:
Like-
Amanda Doyle:
That’s an insult? I am desperate to learn how to slow down.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, it’s like what we talked about, that the first half… This is oversimplified, but it does feel a little bit like the first half is for building a house, and then the second half is for living in it. I do not want to be building a house until I die. I want to learn how to be.
Abby Wambach:
Yes, especially knowing how much you want to keep changing things in our house. Can we just be in our house, please?
Glennon Doyle:
I think a lot about that song. All I do is listen to Joni Mitchell. Poor Abby, it’s over. It’s all we listen to in the house, literally the same songs over and over again.
Abby Wambach:
I love Joni, though.
Glennon Doyle:
I know you do.
Abby Wambach:
She’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
But there’s this song that talks about midway. She says, “I’m midway down the midway and I’m slowing down.” And then, she talks about the other way of life. I think she’s talking about looking back at the first-half people or the first half or the people who bring the first half into the second half. And she says, “Always playing one more hand for one more dice.” And she says, “I envy you, the valley that you found. Was it hard to fold a hand you could win?” And I feel like that’s the lore of-
Abby Wambach:
Damn.
Glennon Doyle:
… bringing the first half into the second half, because it’s like when do you fold? When do you say, “Enough, I’m good”? Because you can keep saying, “Just one more year, just one more,” whatever that is, “just one more,” whatever it is, but-
Abby Wambach:
Seriously.
Glennon Doyle:
I envy you, the valley that you found, the idea of sitting down in the valley and just-
Abby Wambach:
Your name is Glennon.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, my name does actually mean girl from the valley. So anyway, I’m just Joni right now. I’m midway down the midway, slowing down. I just think that looking forward and being intentional, there’s a lot of things that I’m thinking about in this intermission that I know are going to fade and shift, and a lot of the things that I’ve built are going to fade and crumble and shift. And it’s like that time where you realize that you are not the sandcastles in the sand that you built. You are the builder of them.
Abby Wambach:
Ooh.
Glennon Doyle:
Right? You do not change. The you that is the youest you, that has been you since you were born and will be you on your deathbed, changes not at all. It doesn’t change through passive of time. It doesn’t change through what you lose or gain. It is exactly the same, nothing lost from the moment you’re born to the moment you die, that you are the builder. You are not the castle. So how do you spend this intermission finding that treasure that reminds you constantly that all of those things you’re going to lose weren’t you anyway?
Glennon Doyle:
And so, you can just stand there and watch the tide with deep dignity. And you can show your people how that’s done, because that’s what’s really important to me, too. I’ve done my best to show my kids how you keep learning and unlearning, and building and unbuilding and building, and trying to get truer and truer and truer and truer to who you are. And now, it’s time for me to show my kids how to do the second half. I have to, with how I face losing, show them how to lose me.
Abby Wambach:
Oh God. I’m not ready.
Glennon Doyle:
I think that the second half is going to require a grace and a dignity and a power and a fortitude and a philosophy and a real perspective to do it with the peace that I want to do it with, and I want to be completely prepared and celebratory about losing the things that the first half promised me I couldn’t live without, career, relevancy, beauty, all of that stuff.
Abby Wambach:
So beautiful.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s why I have the freaking tattoo on my wrist, be still. The only reason why I allowed myself to get that is that I knew that it would be as true on my deathbed as it was true the day I got it. That is one thing, be still and know, because it’s like the stillness is the opposite of the striving, right? And it’s time now to find some peace in the stillness. Even the opportunity for striving goes away, right?
Glennon Doyle:
Let’s hear from some pod squadders.
Brittany:
Hi, my name is Brittany. A lot of times, you guys talk about slowing down, not doing too much or putting too much on your plate, or really prioritizing the things that you need to. And I’m wondering if you could speak to those of us who have the opposite problem, those of us who would rather just lay on the couch all day and watch TV, and who struggle to get the motivation up to really do anything or do it really, really well. I don’t know if any of you struggle with that, but how do we push through to do the things that we need to do, let alone all of the things in life? Thanks guys, bye.
Glennon Doyle:
Who could possibly answer this one?
Abby Wambach:
Brittany!
Glennon Doyle:
Babe, you’re up. You’re up, baby.
Abby Wambach:
My girl.
Glennon Doyle:
You were made for such a time as this.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, I giggled as she started talking, because listen, people might not know this about me, but if I had it my way without my best-life mindset on, my shit would be on a couch all day long.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Abby Wambach:
And I feel no shame about it. I love sitting. I love laying down.
Glennon Doyle:
You love laying even more than sitting.
Abby Wambach:
Much more. Laying down and watching shows and just hanging out with the dogs, and I think part of it was because I lived such a weird life that I would basically just be sprinting or laying. That was the whole life that I lived.
Glennon Doyle:
No in between.
Abby Wambach:
I’d playing soccer, and then part of my job was to rest and recover. So I actually was forced. It was part of my job description to lay.
Glennon Doyle:
You told me once you were recovering, a year into our marriage. You were laying on a couch, watching another freaking vampire movie and I was like, “What has happening?” And you said, “I’m recovering. I’m in recovery.” And I was like, “From what?” because also-
Abby Wambach:
From 30 years-
Glennon Doyle:
Because yesterday-
Abby Wambach:
… of playing soccer, goddammit.
Glennon Doyle:
… you also were watching vampire movies. So what are we recovering from?
Abby Wambach:
I was recovering from 30 years of torture.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. So what do we say to sweet Brittany? What do people who don’t need… They don’t feel that their greatest need is to slow down. They actually feel like their greatest need is to speed up.
Amanda Doyle:
Speed up, right, right.
Glennon Doyle:
First of all, I love them. They’re my favorite people.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s not like, “I do too much.” It’s like, “I really do too little.” I feel like Brittany is comparing herself to the people that are like, “Go, go, go, go, go.” And she is feeling like she’s a very different type of person than that kind of person, but to me, continuing to go and not be able to stop is the exact same thing as not going and not being able to start.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s not like one is better than the other.
Abby Wambach:
I love that.
Amanda Doyle:
Socially acceptable, yes, but that’s Newton’s first law of motion, right? An object at rest tends to stay at rest. An object in motion tends to stay in motion, so it’s like-
Glennon Doyle:
Sweet Brittany. Sweet Brittany at rest tends to stay at rest. Sweet sister in motion tends to stay in motion. So what do we do with Brittany and sister, who are two sides of the same beloved coin?
Amanda Doyle:
First of all, stop beating yourself up, because it’s literally a law of motion, okay?
Glennon Doyle:
It’s science, Brittany.
Amanda Doyle:
So-
Glennon Doyle:
Brittany, it’s science.
Amanda Doyle:
What, you going to go tell Newton that he’s wrong about that? So I just think stop beating yourself up and I just think it takes a big change. It’s a big change. You’re not going to just get a planner and watch a new inspirational video, and suddenly you’re going to start getting your shit done, Brittany, just like I’m not going to do a morning meditation and start being very present in my life and letting go of the things I have to do. It’s going to be a big fucking change, Brittany, okay? Check back in a couple months.
Glennon Doyle:
Brittany’s going to be Brittany and sister’s going to sister.
Abby Wambach:
That’s so good.
Glennon Doyle:
I will just say one thing, since everyone asked me. I do feel like there’s an element of should in all of this. Brittany feels like she should-
Abby Wambach:
Should.
Glennon Doyle:
… do something different than what her natural self is telling her to do. Sister, you’re feeling like you should do morning meditation or whatever. I don’t know, maybe. You’re probably not even, but you know what I’m saying. If we should remove should completely, because neither of those things have anything to do with desire. If Brittany desires to do some stuff and she’s not doing them, that’s one question. If busybody people desire to rest and they’re not doing it, that’s one thing, but let’s start with desire instead of just should or momentum, right? What do you want? And then, go there, because I don’t know.
Abby Wambach:
Brittany, while you’re sitting there on the couch, download or whatever, The Notebook. Come to the-
Glennon Doyle:
What do you want, Brittany?
Abby Wambach:
Come to the scene. What do you want?
Glennon Doyle:
She loves The Notebook. Okay, let’s hear from Libby.
Abby Wambach:
Love it.
Libby:
Hi, Glennon, sister and Abby. My name is Libby and I am wondering how… Is there a way to be too honest? Can you be? Sorry, my heart is beating really fast. Can you be too honest with your kids, I’m talking like ages 13 and above, about your past, about things in your relationship? Where do you draw the line, or you just lay it all on the table and hope that it makes them bigger, better people than you, that won’t make the same mistakes? Or if they do, will know how to deal with them. Thanks.
Glennon Doyle:
I have thoughts about this, sweet Libby. Libby, Libby, Libby. When she said hope it makes them better people than you, that makes my heart hurt, because I just don’t think anybody’s better-
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
… than anybody else at all.
Abby Wambach:
They’re just going to human.
Glennon Doyle:
I just can’t imagine anyone being better than Libby.
Abby Wambach:
Except maybe Brittany.
Glennon Doyle:
Except Brittany. Brittany’s crushing it.
Amanda Doyle:
I like them both.
Glennon Doyle:
So it goes Brittany, then Libby. Let me just tell you my thoughts about this, because I think about it all of the time, as someone who’s set my life up in such a way that I don’t have a choice that my kids know all my shit, right? And I’m not talking right now about little, little ones. I know that’s different, and things have to be developmentally and age-appropriate in the way they’re shared, but Libby asked specifically about ages 13 and above.
Glennon Doyle:
And what I just want to say is that what I found over and over again is that what our culture teaches us about what makes a good parent is that we are perfect, whatever the hell that means, that we present a version of ourselves that is robotic and plastic, and has no pain and has no regret and has no shame and has no anger and has no fear, and that we present this plastic version of ourselves to our children and that, somehow, that will protect them from something. I don’t know.
Glennon Doyle:
It is such a disservice. We show this version, this plastic version of ourselves, this nonhuman version of ourselves to our children who are human, who are fully fucking human, who have all of the angst and terror and rage and all of it. They have all of the swirly stuff inside of them that we have, and then we show them no model for how to navigate that in any way, because we hide all of ours from them. We are the only ones who can make them feel less alone by showing them that we are exactly as human as they are.
Glennon Doyle:
And even if we let them see all of our mistakes, they’re still going to make their own. They’re just going to make different ones. And I think a lot about I saw this tweet the other day about how mothers with eating issues, that their kids notice everything and see everything. And no matter what you do, they always… And then, I’m-
Amanda Doyle:
I think about that all the time.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, my whole heart just clenched, but then I thought, “No, it’s okay.” Even though I am still fucked up with food and my kids see a million things a day, that they see me bite a cookie and then put the rest in the pantry, they see me do all of this, but they also see me saying, “I have eating issues and this is not normal, and I’m working on it. And I’m going to be working on it until the day I die.” I talk about it overtly, right? They know, “Mom’s got… This is an issue.”
Glennon Doyle:
They don’t think, “My mom’s trying to show me this is normal.” They think, “That’s her struggle,” when they see it. I just think, when we hide ourselves, we might make our kids feel like, “My mom’s perfect,” but they’re going to feel inversely bad about themselves as they feel shiny and admiration about us, because they know in their bones that they are fully human.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s kind of the whole conversation about first half of life and second half of life. It’s almost as if, in the second half of our life, we stop suspending reality. It’s like, the first half, we’re pretending as if we’re immortal, and we can keep going forever and go, go, go. In the second half, we let it go. With our kids, it’s like we’re so afraid of their own humanness that we pretend that they’re not human. Like she said, so that they will become better people than me. That isn’t putting yourself down. That’s pretending that your kids are not going to be human, right?
Glennon Doyle:
They’re not going to be. They’re not going to be-
Amanda Doyle:
Bad news, Libby.
Glennon Doyle:
… better than you. They are not going to be better than you.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly as human, exactly as human.
Amanda Doyle:
They’re going to be exactly like you. And so, it’s just odd the way we do that. Even with little kids. She asked about big kids, but very recently, Bobby brought home something. One of his friend’s parents got divorced and he doesn’t see a lot of that, and so he was like, “So and so’s friends got divorced.” And he was a little bit worried and scandalized. And I was like, “I’m so sorry for them and also that’s real normal, real normal.” And I was like, “I’m divorced.” And he was like, “What?”
Amanda Doyle:
And I just sat them both down and told them everything. And they asked all kinds of questions, “So why did you break up and did you love him? And what happened?” and all of that. And it was a way of saying, “We’re all normal. We’re all the same. So those parents you’re worried about, same as me. They aren’t bad parents, unless you think I’m a bad parent.” And they can handle all of it.
Glennon Doyle:
They can.
Amanda Doyle:
They can handle all of it, except it was so amazing, because we talked about it for one hour and they asked all their questions, and then we were done. They were like, “I’m good now. I’m good. I have all my questions.” And Bobby got, goes oh, one more. “When you were married before, did you have any kids?” And I was like, “I probably would’ve led with that, Bob.”
Glennon Doyle:
Come in, little Kaley. Meet your siblings.
Abby Wambach:
I feel like Glennon and I, we’ve had this conversation a lot. You live your life out loud, Glennon, so the kids know a lot of this stuff, but there’s also stuff that they don’t know that you… And through that conversation of you telling them who you are, you give them the space to tell you who they are. That’s a dynamic that’s hard, I think, for parents, because it’s like parents put themselves on this pedestal. And the expectation is to either become exactly like me or don’t be like me at all, because I had such a horrible adult, childhood, whatever.
Abby Wambach:
And at the end of the day, it’s like, actually, we just want our kids to know everything so that they’re equipped when they start feeling these hard feelings like, “Oh, I had this big breakup. Oh yeah, remember that time?” whatever it is. So I don’t know. Age-appropriate for sure, but-
Glennon Doyle:
But honest.
Abby Wambach:
Completely honest.
Glennon Doyle:
And not in hopes that they’re going to become anything other than as fully human as you are.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
And that’s beautiful.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Let’s hear from DJ.
DJ:
Hi, Glennon. Hi, sister. Hi, Abby. This is DJ. I’m wondering if you all might talk about how you are dealing with the existential dread, big-picture dread with climate-change realities and whatever the next pandemic is, the direction it feels like we’re all plummeting? How are you avoiding just daily paralysis from it all? How are you avoiding complete hopelessness? How are you keeping the light in believing just any of this matters? It just feels harder and harder every day, doesn’t it? Anyway, sorry for the downer. Anyway, thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. So it goes DJ, then Brittany-
Amanda Doyle:
Brittany, you’re bumped.
Glennon Doyle:
… then Libby.
Abby Wambach:
That’s funny.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Can I take this one? Because it’s about existential dread.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, girl, yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, because I just feel like this is my time to shine. This is the album cover for 46, yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Existential dread.
Glennon Doyle:
Existential, yes. Okay. I know that there are many experts who tell us not to dress-rehearse tragedy, okay? I think that’s a lovely thought. I am going to for the rest of my life, because it helps me to do that. I need to think through what is worst-case scenario all the time, every day, every minute. And that’s when I can relax, okay? I have a plan for when the thing inevitably goes to shit, okay? And everybody will be, “It’s not going to go to shit. It’s not going to go to shit.” That’s fine. I hear you and your toxic positivity. What I’m saying is we can both relax now, you because you’re delusionally happy and me because I have a plan, right? So I, DJ, have actually-
Abby Wambach:
This is the story of my life.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
Literally.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. I have actually thought this all the way through to the end, okay, DJ? So I have thought about what would I do if the world were actually ending tomorrow. Okay, because existential dread is does it matter, climate change. All the things are coming. The world’s going to end. Okay, great. What if, next week, we find out that the world’s ending, okay? Two parts of this, number one, here’s the two things I can control with that. I can keep trying to make it not end, okay?
Glennon Doyle:
I am not going to be the person who just says, “Fuck it,” eat, drink and be merry. That’s not going to be me, because that’s not my main-character character trait. I want my main-character character trait to be the sort of person who continues to work for the world not to end, even if it inevitably is going to, number one. Number two, when it ends, if it does, if it’s next Tuesday, I fucking know what I’m going to do, okay? Okay, it’s a little bit close to Don’t Look Up, spoiler alert.
Abby Wambach:
In the end.
Glennon Doyle:
In the end of the movie, there’s a scene, okay? The world’s ending and you see what this family does, okay? If the world ends, I am going to be amazing about it, okay?
Abby Wambach:
That’s one of us.
Glennon Doyle:
I am going to sit with my family around a table, my entire family. We are going to talk. We are going to hug. They are going to see nothing but love and peace in my eyes, okay?
Abby Wambach:
Not me.
Glennon Doyle:
Also, I’m going to be on Instagram Live.
Abby Wambach:
That’s true.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m not kidding you at all, okay? I’ve thought this all the way through. I am going to have my phone on a stand at the table for anyone else who is alone the night the world ends so that they can be with my family and my family can be their family, and I can look at them with my peaceful eyes, because not everyone in the world is going to be as prepared and Lexapro-ed up as I am at the end of the world, okay?
Abby Wambach:
I will not be peaceful.
Glennon Doyle:
What I’m saying, DJ, is that I have decided that we do not get to control the plot of this freaking life in any way. So we get to control what we can control, which is the main character. What am I going to do until the world ends and what am I going to do when it ends? And nobody’s-
Abby Wambach:
Because it’s going to end for all of us.
Glennon Doyle:
… going to steal my fire before that and my care, and nobody’s going to steal my peace at the night of it. And my kids are going to look in my eyes and see, even though nothing’s okay, somehow everything’s okay. If I see a spider, I will lose my shit and run out of the house, but I can handle the end of the world, DJ. So if you can’t, you just get on-
Abby Wambach:
She’s not lying.
Glennon Doyle:
… your Instagram Live.
Abby Wambach:
I will be losing my shit. So she thinks that this table’s going to be nice and sweet, not a chance.
Glennon Doyle:
I want to say thank you for my birthday episode before we get to the pod squadder.
Amanda Doyle:
Happy birthday, sister.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you.
Abby Wambach:
I’m so glad you were born. It’s my favorite day.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you.
Abby Wambach:
Seriously, it’s more favorite than my own birthday.
Glennon Doyle:
Of everything in the world, I am most grateful for you, two.
Abby Wambach:
Same.
Glennon Doyle:
I love you both so much.
Abby Wambach:
Same.
Glennon Doyle:
My sister and my wife, my best things, my best things.
Pat:
Hi, this is Pat. Hi, Abby, Glennon and sister. I’m going to retire next week after 32 years in a very traditional environment and people keep asking me, “What are you going to do? You’re not going to be able to slow down.” And my response has been, “Do I have to do something?” And they’ve thrown me off. Yes, they see me as somebody who has been very structured and has training programs planned two years in advance, but I’m ready. You know what? I am ready. I have survived cancer three times. Last year, I lost two sisters.
Pat:
And so, it is time. The universe is telling me it is time. I’m going to hang out with my husband, spoil my kids and grandkids, volunteer travel, get into some good trouble, which is probably going to end up in some civil disobedience and some strange encounters with my soon-to-be former coworkers, if you get my drift. I’m ready. I don’t have to do anything, be anything.
Glennon Doyle:
If you catch my drift.
Pat:
I just can redirect my pace and my journey in retirement. So thank you so much for all you do and the heart prints that you have left on me and on the rest of the world. Love you all.
Abby Wambach:
That seems like somebody who knows what they’re about to go do.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. So it goes Pat, then DJ-
Abby Wambach:
Then Brittany.
Glennon Doyle:
… then Brittany, then-
Abby Wambach:
Then Libby.
Glennon Doyle:
… Libby. It’s just-
Abby Wambach:
We love you still.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s just these people. I don’t know what to do. Y’all, we just need to be like Pat, okay.
Amanda Doyle:
“I don’t have to do anything, be anything. I get to direct my pace and my journey.” Hey, girl.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s not just for retirement.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Let’s say it again. “I don’t have to do anything, be anything. I just get to redirect my pace and my journey.” That’s your next right thing, y’all. Okay, we love you. Thank you for being with me on my birthday.
Abby Wambach:
We’re going to see you next time.
Glennon Doyle:
We’re going to see you next time on We Can Do Hard Things.
Amanda Doyle:
Bye.
Glennon Doyle:
We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Odyssey or wherever you get your podcasts. Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn’t, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.