Are Old Women Really Irrelevant?

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Speaker 2 Hey, everybody. We're getting through, aren't we?

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We hope that we can help you brave the everyday. That's what you help us do.

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Speaker 4 Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.

Speaker 4 We have missed you. Here's what we're doing today.
We have had so many amazing conversations with so many brilliant experts, and we do love those episodes.

Speaker 4 But our favorite episodes are the ones where it's more family meeting vibes, right? It's like the three of us and some pod squatters. And so that's what we get to do today.

Speaker 4 We are absolutely delighted. We are taking your questions and we are going to give you our responses.
Now, please hear that we are not giving you answers.

Speaker 4 We don't know answers, but we are going to respond and be together, right?

Speaker 1 Yep, that's my goal. I'm right here with everyone.

Speaker 4 You're right here with everyone.

Speaker 1 That's nice. Good for you, babe.

Speaker 2 I'm also right here with everyone. Yes, I'm excited because as fun as it is to talk to all the people, it's very, very fun to talk to our people.

Speaker 2 And I love when they call in. It's such a delight.

Speaker 1 Me too.

Speaker 4 You're a damn delight. Let's start with Georgia.
I love that name, by the way.

Speaker 2 What a good name. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Hi, my angel. My name is Georgia.
My query, quandering, thought.

Speaker 5 you know, thing is I'm in my 20s. I'm 26, almost 27.
And the thing that comes to mind a lot is that

Speaker 5 I'm really dreading becoming irrelevant. I'm actually super excited to age and go into my 30s, and like that feels like a big gift, especially with so much shit going on in the world, just to age.

Speaker 5 But it seems like women from 40 to 65 are considered irrelevant in the society. How do we integrate them into our world? I'd love to hang out with some 40-year-old women.

Speaker 5 Like, they actually seem really cool. They just seem overlooked.
I'm not excited for that part of my life. I'd love to, I don't know, make it more fun or not irrelevant.
Okay. I love you guys.

Speaker 5 That's all.

Speaker 1 ASO.

Speaker 1 Georgia, Georgia, Georgia.

Speaker 4 Sweet baby Georgia in her 20s.

Speaker 2 Why have we not been calling our Q ⁇ A episodes queries?

Speaker 4 Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Really huge misstep.

Speaker 4 Queries. How did I miss that? How did I miss that gay pun? I'm obsessed with gay puns.

Speaker 4 Abby and I just had a big conversation with a lot of our queer friends that we were all planning a thing together.

Speaker 4 And there's this thing we decided that happens when there's a critical mass of queer couples that you can get other queer people to join by just telling them how many queer people are already going.

Speaker 4 Then they'll feel left out and want to come. And we call this queer pressure instead of peer pressure.

Speaker 2 I thought you were going to say homo instead of homo.

Speaker 4 Well, Megan Falley, when I said to her it's queer pressure, she said it's homo FOMO, which is better because Megan's a poet. So of course.
So anyway, that was an aside. Let's come back to Georgia.

Speaker 4 Okay, I want to hear your all's take, you guys' take on this because I feel like I'm going to have a weird one of what was happening in my body when I was listening to Georgia say this question.

Speaker 4 For example, when Georgia said the words, it seems like women from 40 to 65 are considered irrelevant. How do we integrate them into our world? My immediate thought was,

Speaker 4 Georgia, stay the hell away from us.

Speaker 1 We do not want

Speaker 4 to be integrated

Speaker 4 back into

Speaker 4 your world that we just narrowly escaped with our lives.

Speaker 4 Okay? Georgia, Georgia, don't cry for us, Argentina. Okay.
Secondly,

Speaker 4 here's what I want to say, George. I have two stories to tell you.

Speaker 4 One of them, if you've listened carefully to this podcast, you may have heard before, but it's in a different context, and it's important for me to tell it this way.

Speaker 4 I read this story in a book called How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. It was this story about

Speaker 1 foresting, this

Speaker 4 really big, beautiful forest in Oakland, California. And it had been around for a very long time, and the people loved the forest.

Speaker 4 But then the foresters came, okay, and they needed to harvest all the wood.

Speaker 4 So they came in with their bulldozers and whatever tree people use,

Speaker 4 and they start chopping down trees. Okay.

Speaker 4 Now,

Speaker 1 over time,

Speaker 4 all the trees start disappearing.

Speaker 4 There's this one tree

Speaker 4 that the loggers don't cut down. It is an old, twisty, twisty tree.
It's not shaped conveniently like all the other trees. They need the, you know, like straight wood.

Speaker 4 This is like a queer tree. Okay.

Speaker 1 This is like,

Speaker 4 this tree is misshapen. It's old.
It's curvy.

Speaker 4 So at the end of the day,

Speaker 4 This tree is the only tree left standing. The reason why

Speaker 4 it's left standing is because it was useless to the loggers.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 4 Hold that thought.

Speaker 4 Last year I read this book called The Matrix by Lauren Groff.

Speaker 4 Lauren Groff is such a good writer that honestly she pisses me off.

Speaker 1 I love it when you read a book and you're like, Damn it.

Speaker 4 Yes, I just say, damn it, every few pages. It's so good.
She's so good. I also read an article where she writes two or three books at a time.

Speaker 2 What? Bro, that's crazy.

Speaker 4 They're like in different parts of her home, and she goes to this one, and then she goes to that one. And if you understood how freaking intricate and incredible every book is, I don't understand it.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 4 She has this book called The Matrix, okay? Or Matrix.

Speaker 4 Loosely.

Speaker 4 It's a story about this woman a long time ago who leaves her village and creates this like

Speaker 4 convent kind of like this nunnery.

Speaker 4 The nunnery ends up being integral to the survival of the people in this huge culture in like this revolutionary, crazy, weird way that only a bunch of outcasts, badass women could create.

Speaker 4 There's this one part in the book where

Speaker 4 The woman who's leading the nunnery is explaining how she started this whole thing, because it's very strange for for a woman to be leading this way.

Speaker 4 She explains that she was from a group of sisters in a family and she was the only one who wasn't pretty. All of her other sisters were beautiful women.

Speaker 4 And so one at a time, they were picked off by men in the

Speaker 4 town.

Speaker 4 And they were all now living like, maybe they were happy, whatever. I don't know.

Speaker 4 It was a time where they were being dominated by their husbands, they were second-class citizens, and they were basically servants in their homes.

Speaker 4 Because she was useless to the culture, to that culture.

Speaker 4 This is how she defined it.

Speaker 4 Because she did not have the characteristic that was most valued in that culture, she was left alone to create her own life.

Speaker 4 She became this leader of this nunnery and she was free.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 4 Georgia.

Speaker 4 We do not want

Speaker 4 to find a way to continue to be useful to the world that has sucked us dry.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 4 I am so serious, Georgia, when I say that I have

Speaker 4 never

Speaker 4 been more excited,

Speaker 4 never been been more,

Speaker 4 started to feel more free. I feel like I understand what George is saying.
I now walk down the street. Nobody looks at me.
I feel like underestimated all the time.

Speaker 4 I feel like in some ways, this like the world, the cultural relevance goes down a little bit. I feel like age for a woman can be a little bit like wearing an invisibility cloak.

Speaker 4 But do you know how dangerous and happy a bunch of women underneath an invisibility cloak are?

Speaker 4 I was with my daughters the other day and I was so pissed because they came home and were like, they went for a walk and Abby knows this, they got cat called on the street.

Speaker 4 And I just, you know, they felt very

Speaker 4 icky, that ick that begins when you're 10 and then doesn't stop until you're 50.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I felt so exhausted for them.

Speaker 4 I just felt so

Speaker 4 like, wow, we are entering a time where, yes, the bad news is we might be ignored on the street and the good news is we might be ignored on the street.

Speaker 4 Like we can do whatever for the, we are not going to be sought out for or used like those logs in the forest anymore. Once you hit 50, the bad news is you might be a little less needed by your kids.

Speaker 4 The good news is you might be a little less needed by your kids. The bad news is in a meeting, you might be overlooked because you suddenly don't look like the freshest, most

Speaker 4 usable item. But that's the good news too.
It's a superpower, I think. And especially for women, I mean, I do think that the world sort of looks at young women like a freaking

Speaker 4 forest of trees that can be cut down and used in a million trillion different ways.

Speaker 4 And the name of that tree that was left there because it was unusable and it kept being able to grow in weird, swirly ways is called old survivor. That's the name of that tree.

Speaker 4 So Georgia, we're just old survivors. Like please, honey, you're looking at me and I'm almost 50 and you're thinking, oh my God, that's so scary.
She feels irrelevant.

Speaker 4 And I'm thinking, oh my God, Georgia, you're 20. I feel so tired for you.

Speaker 4 Just hang in there. You will get to the point where you too can be an old survivor.
All I want to do.

Speaker 4 For my life, I mean, Abby and I talk about it all the time. We think of our house as like, we call it the coven.

Speaker 4 All we want to do for the rest of our lives is to have old women around us and sit on the couch together and cackle and dream up schemes we can do underneath our invisibility cloaks and

Speaker 1 be

Speaker 4 irrelevant to the culture. So we can finally be relevant.
to ourselves and our friends and our lives and our integrity and our creativity and our joy and our freedom. So that's where I am.

Speaker 4 I would not go back to being 20. I would not go back to being 30.
I would not go back to being 40. I just keep feeling freer and freer.

Speaker 4 And I think about that. My hair's, you know, it's an inch of gray now.
I keep dying it. Maybe I'll stop at some point.

Speaker 4 I notice all these wrinkles and like my body's looking different. And I'm kind of like, okay.

Speaker 4 Like, like I feel, I'm smiling. They can't see me, but I feel a little bit like,

Speaker 4 this is the superpower of

Speaker 4 what will signal to the world that I'm irrelevant. So I can finally be left the fuck alone and do whatever the hell I want to do.

Speaker 1 It's really good. I have no notes.

Speaker 2 Really?

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 4 It's really good.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Those are beautiful stories.
I think there's a few things like she was saying

Speaker 2 from the posture of, I feel so bad. I don't want to be invisible like that.
But also, how do I integrate into my life? Which is in some ways what you're saying too.

Speaker 2 You're saying you want your coven and you want older people there integrated into your life. And I think it's a really good call.

Speaker 2 Just a side note of that we didn't discuss on this is like the intergenerational aspect of it

Speaker 2 is really wise for people to have older people that they hang out with and younger people that they hang out with. We're learning from all of those folks.

Speaker 2 And I think it's one of the just in the very, very recent history of humanity, we have lost that, which is very unfortunate because I think that's why we're a little adrift is that we don't have that wisdom being passed down and passed up.

Speaker 2 That's an important piece of it. I think of it as like the relevant means

Speaker 2 important to the matter at hand.

Speaker 2 And like, that's the thing, right?

Speaker 2 We are no longer important to the matter at hand, which is the uber striving and trying to find your identity, the uber striving to prove yourself and your worth and to be desired.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's plenty of older women that are trying to be desired, but I think they're actually more interested in what they desire as opposed to being desired, which is the shift there.

Speaker 1 It's also a little science and biology here because a lot of women are going through perimenopause, menopause, postmenopause during this period of time that we're talking about.

Speaker 1 And it's like literally the chemicals in your body make you give less shits, make you care. Like you're, the nurture part of you starts to fade away.

Speaker 1 And so you get to be like, oh, I don't actually give a fuck anymore. And I'm just going to go and live my own life.
And for me, I'm excited about that.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Somebody needs to tell us.
I read this. I'm not saying it's true.
I think it is, though. There's this thing called the veil that like.

Speaker 4 We call it menopause. We call it whatever, but what Abby's saying is science.
There's something that's equivalent to a people-pleasing hormone that starts to disappear.

Speaker 2 It's estrogen. That's the empathy, the taking care of everyone around you.
That's an evolutionary thing that is wired in us so that the people around us don't die.

Speaker 4 Yeah. So it makes you understand then why men tend to trade their wives in for younger models.
I don't believe that it's just all about like better boobs or whatever.

Speaker 4 I think that they want somebody that still is strongly in the people pleasing caring for them most hormone.

Speaker 4 Like they can sense a woman who has become only relevant to herself and they can sense a woman who is still, you know, striving to be chosen and an important part of the capitalism experience, which it does include little family units where women are running the show at home.

Speaker 4 And, you know, I mean, it's all part of a bigger system. But I do wonder if the reason why, and I'm sure I felt exactly the same way as Georgia when I was in my 20s and 30s.

Speaker 1 Like a pity about older women.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And I wonder if it's because we have lost the intergenerational thing.

Speaker 4 Like if all Georgia is seeing in media is what the media wants people to think of older women, which is that they are sad and just all sitting at home wishing their kids would come home.

Speaker 4 And they're all like, you know,

Speaker 2 they're all staring wistfully at 20-year-olds just wishing to go back. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Maybe if...

Speaker 1 Not for all the money in the world would I go back to 20. No.

Speaker 4 So maybe if, you know, I should, it makes me think as I create my coven world of older women who are sitting around cackling with me, that we should invite younger ones in to see us.

Speaker 4 Like just to see us.

Speaker 2 Just alternate programming. Right.

Speaker 4 To just see that actually this is the promised land. Actually, what they're selling you as the end is the real beginning.

Speaker 4 It's like a dream to become this sort of old woman, not

Speaker 4 something to avoid.

Speaker 1 It's hard to sell something to an older woman who has herself.

Speaker 4 That's it.

Speaker 2 And what a vision to not only like have those glimpses. I think the dream world vision is not like, you want to see us so that you can imagine being this when you're older.

Speaker 2 So then you can imagine that this is what's ahead. It's the way we used to live is we're all living this together.

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 2 The older people are living with the middle people who are living with the younger people. And so that is all happening at once.

Speaker 2 So you have an older woman's wisdom in you throughout every step of that. You have the younger person's awe and joy every step of that.

Speaker 2 And we have like such fragmented lives from isolation and from just we're surrounded by people with this very narrow frame of reference on life. And that's at the detriment of all of us.

Speaker 2 It's a damn shame.

Speaker 2 As my daughter starts to enter into the phase where she will be going through puberty and she will be starting to go through all those stages.

Speaker 2 I'm like, I want all kinds of women around her all the time. I don't want her only talking to 12-year-olds.
I want us all to be doing life together at every stage, which would be a goddamn dream.

Speaker 2 But I think it is, relevance is a question of centering. Who are you centering? Because I know that now when I go to a concert, I get ma'med left and right.

Speaker 2 And that was a shock the first time people started, like, excuse me, ma'am. And I was like, oh, I'm wearing tight black pants.
And so I just called, you know, ma'am, like, that's a first.

Speaker 2 So I know that I am invisible to

Speaker 2 those 30-year-old men,

Speaker 2 but I feel absolutely as visible as as I've ever been to the people who are in my orbit. Yeah.
I feel more visible than ever.

Speaker 2 So why are we looking at that 30-year-old man's perspective and calling it invisible when in fact it's the first time I've really emerged as visible in my real life ever?

Speaker 2 So we're choosing some random perspective and it's not at all random and calling that true of the whole thing.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And we can forgive Georgia for thinking that that perspective is the perspective because that is media's media's perspective.
Queerness can help the start of this because

Speaker 4 for the first few years of being married to Abby,

Speaker 4 I started to experience what it feels like to not be living under the male gaze.

Speaker 1 Truly.

Speaker 4 It was a very strange experience to suddenly be in rooms, be at a party and feel the difference when I was not feeling like prey.

Speaker 4 Okay. Like there was something that shifted in the energy around me, in the way people approached me, in the way men did and did not approach me, in the way women did and did not approach me,

Speaker 4 where I started to understand, oh, everyone is seeing me differently.

Speaker 4 I am not

Speaker 4 a conquest for that man anymore. I am not.
a competition for that woman anymore. Yeah.
It changed in my every experience of my life.

Speaker 2 You were not important to the matter at hand for that man or that woman. So therefore you were irrelevant for those rights.

Speaker 4 Same when I'm walking down the street. Same when I'm in a store.
Everywhere now, when I'm with Abby,

Speaker 4 I have a different experience than when I'm not with Abby. And when I'm at a place where everyone knows me.
and knows I'm queer.

Speaker 4 I have a different experience than when I'm in a room where no one knows me and no one knows I'm queer. And I can feel it and I, no one could ever talk me out of it.
I know exactly the the difference.

Speaker 4 It's in the air around me.

Speaker 4 To live outside of the male gaze, even

Speaker 4 in moments in this country as a woman,

Speaker 4 is a fucking miracle. It's also a challenge because there are things you get and things you need from people in power.

Speaker 4 And so I'm not knocking it, but to live free of it at all is a miracle that makes me understand and and want to step into also being outside of capitalism's gaze. We don't talk about that enough.

Speaker 4 Being seen as a conquest is to live inside the male gaze, but to be seen as a resource

Speaker 4 or consumer or any sort of resource is to live inside of capitalism's gaze. And so

Speaker 4 to become an older woman, to not be marketed to all the time anymore because they think you, I don't know why the hell that is true, but to not be invited to as many things, to not be tapped on the shoulder as many times, to not be cat called, to not be, you know, zeroed in with a red target all the time is

Speaker 4 for me

Speaker 4 the next level of the queer experience that I had. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Thank you, Georgia. We love you.
You're invited to my house to sit around with the coven and just dream of one day joining.

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Speaker 4 Okay, let's hear from Casey.

Speaker 5 Hi, Glenn, Abby, and Amanda. My name is Casey, and I'm a huge huge fan of the podcast.
I've been listening since you started.

Speaker 5 And I just had a question for you. I was listening to the episode on confronting crisis with compassion.
And it came up a lot, the idea of needing to process emotion.

Speaker 5 I was wondering,

Speaker 5 what do you think that that actually means? How do you process emotion?

Speaker 5 Because I think what I normally do is what you all sort of described as like jumping straight into action. Glennon, you were talking about calendaring out the treatment plan for Amanda

Speaker 5 and that not really being processing emotion. So I'm just wondering, what does processing emotion mean and how do you do it? Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 Casey, I love people who ask the questions that everyone's thinking. Like, what the hell do you mean when you say processing emotion?

Speaker 2 Because there's so many phrases we throw around that's like, truly, what the fuck does that mean?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But I don't want to be the last one to ask because it seems like everyone's saying it like they know what the fuck it means.

Speaker 2 I am just learning this, which is why I like Casey, because she's talking about the episode from a while back that we did about when going through the breast cancer situation.

Speaker 2 And I remember I had not cried yet. And so I was reading Prentice Hempel's book where they talk about setting like a date with yourself to do it.

Speaker 2 And I was like, okay, I know that this is probably something I need to do. And I just don't cry really.

Speaker 2 And so I set a

Speaker 2 time

Speaker 2 and I went into my basement and I was like, this will be the time where I cry about breast cancer. And like, I put a candle on.

Speaker 2 I put on my friend Wendy's t-shirt that her partner gave me and I put on music and I just cried and it was really good.

Speaker 1 And then I finished that. And then wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 4 Stop for one second. I need to process this.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 4 First of all, I need to know, was it on your to-do list? I just have a few follow-up. Was it, was it like something that you wrote on your list for the day?

Speaker 2 It was planned. There was a year.
Okay. It was planned.

Speaker 4 Yes. Okay.
And then when you got down to the basement, did you have a slotted amount of time that you were giving yourself?

Speaker 2 Well, I was generous with myself. It was an open-ended, there was about an hour of open-ended time where I could just sky's the limit, you know?

Speaker 4 Okay. And then when I'm picturing you doing it, you light the candle.
Were you like, come on, tears?

Speaker 1 Like, come on, fucking do it, boy!

Speaker 4 Did it come naturally? Did you have to think of sad commercials? Did you really like were you method acting, or did it really come naturally?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, at that point, I think there was probably enough stored

Speaker 2 serve from the prior couple months that I think it was there. However, I will tell you that

Speaker 2 flash forward

Speaker 2 many, many moons from that crying date to on yesterday o'clock.

Speaker 4 I recently have

Speaker 2 shifted up my meds. And so I have found myself feeling this strange phenomenon of like,

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 feel like this is what people must feel before they think they need to cry.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 I was having like a really, really tough time, you know, and this is relevant to our friend Casey.

Speaker 2 Everything felt like, you know, how how when you're like so full of food and there's no room, that's the feeling for me where it's like everything is so full, like up to my throat, and there's no more room.

Speaker 2 Even when you're breathing, I feel like I can't take a full breath. It's just like, there's only that little

Speaker 1 part

Speaker 2 of my throat that can take the breath in because everything else is too full. That's the way it feels to me.
Yeah. So it's yesterday.

Speaker 2 I'm feeling like total shit. My therapist comes on a little late to think.
And I'm doing that thing where I'm praying that she had to cancel at the last minute. And I'm like, I can get out of this.

Speaker 2 This is amazing. But then she shows up and I'm like, God damn it.

Speaker 2 And we start to talk. And I'm like, in my head, this is what I'm doing.
Okay. I am thinking, this is a code red.
I can feel it in my throat. I think I might have to cry.

Speaker 2 And so in my head, I'm going through the entire day that I have and I'm looking through to try to find

Speaker 2 a 30 minute window where I might be able to take care of this thing that I have

Speaker 1 while I am actively

Speaker 2 trying to pretend to listen

Speaker 2 to a woman who there's an allotted hour of time with a skilled professional to whom I'm paying hundreds of dollars to presumably do things like process my emotion.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, won't won't be able to do it today.

Speaker 1 Is it hard for you to cry in front of somebody else?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 So I'm so proud of myself. I told her that.
I'm like, right now, what I'm doing, just so you know, is trying to figure out when today I'll be able to cry.

Speaker 4 Oh, that's good, sissy. That's such a good start.

Speaker 2 I did. So this relates to Casey because this is

Speaker 1 it. Okay.

Speaker 2 So we talked about it. I'm like, it's not going to work.
You know how like if you're having sex with someone and you're like, this isn't good. We're not, this isn't isn't going to go there.

Speaker 2 We should just stop.

Speaker 4 No, I'm usually like, this isn't going anywhere. This is awful.
Let's get married and do this for 20 weeks.

Speaker 2 But you're like, can we, this is embarrassing for everyone. Can we just tea and just stop? This isn't going to happen.

Speaker 1 We could pretend like we're going to keep doing this and it's going to happen, but it's not.

Speaker 2 This is what I felt with the therapist. I'm like, oh, we're going to do the thing where you're going to be like, try to get it out of me.
And it's going to be so awkward for everyone.

Speaker 2 But the orgasm thing is relevant truly because my therapist has talked to me about this. It is emotion is a wave.
Yes. Okay.
So when you're actually processing an emotion, there's all these steps.

Speaker 2 It's physiological because there's five core emotions, right? Like you don't really process feelings. You process these five core emotions.

Speaker 2 And if one comes up and people call it different things, but you basically, the first step is recognizing it, which is like that alone takes like a lot of years, not just thinking, oh, it's, oh, I'm so pissed at the mail carrier for coming coming late.

Speaker 2 It's like, no, you're very sad about something else, you know? So recognizing what you're feeling and then allowing the wave to come.

Speaker 2 And that's where I always was like, nope, and like jumped ship, right?

Speaker 2 Because you have to let the wave crest up and you actually have to feel the shitty, shitty, shittiness in your body and let it all come.

Speaker 2 in order to ride the wave down and finish the cycle.

Speaker 2 It's like any other physiological cycle. And so

Speaker 2 you don't get that release. You don't get that catharsis.
You don't get that orgasm. You don't get that whatever the thing is if you don't let your body actually ride it all the way up or down.

Speaker 2 And you remain

Speaker 1 full like that.

Speaker 2 And so for me, that's what it feels like. It's the

Speaker 2 space making

Speaker 2 in your body

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 if you actually allow yourself to fully ride that up and down,

Speaker 2 you're actually not doing anything. You're tolerating something

Speaker 2 and the tolerating of it naturally creates what you need.

Speaker 2 Like the wave crashing

Speaker 2 makes the waters stiller. Yes.
That's the way it works. And so that is what processing the emotion is, but it's so petrifying because A,

Speaker 2 as we've learned, that I've learned, it is so impossible for me to do that with someone else. Like I literally, in this instance, when we were going through it, I covered my face with my hands

Speaker 2 because it's so awkward to me to have it happen that I just was like, I'm going to need to cover my face for this. And she was like, you just do whatever you have to do.

Speaker 1 But after it,

Speaker 2 it flowed through me and there was more room.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 I think that's what it is. But the reason a lot of people don't do it is because it's actually so scary at the very top of the wave.
That's where people usually stop

Speaker 2 because it's so scary. And that's where our fight or flight behaviors come from is that like fear right at the top.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So you have to just keep riding it through.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, the word, it's emotion. It's motion.
It's emotion is energy in motion. When you're having an emotion, it is energy stirring inside of your body.

Speaker 4 Energy stirring inside your body, whether it's a wave gathering or whatever you want to label it. So what we do is we tend to say, I am feeling sad or I am feeling angry.

Speaker 4 And that is because my father did this and I blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so we stay in our head about it.
We stay in the story.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 But energy in motion is not about a story. That's why people say, oh, you're angry.
How does it feel in your body? Is it in your chest? Like when you get really still,

Speaker 4 it's a tightening in my chest. And then suddenly this magical thing happens, which is that you've been so scared of 30 years of story that's about to pour out of you in this moment.

Speaker 4 And actually, all it is, is a tightening of your chest.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 That is processing emotion also. When you realize, let me get out of the story of this

Speaker 4 into my my body, what is actually happening? My fear,

Speaker 4 my anxiety is often in my chest. It's a feeling in my chest.
My dread or depression, it's in my gut. It's in my gut.
My sadness always manifests as an overall bodily exhaustion. There is.

Speaker 4 When you start to get out of your head and into your body, you feel where the energy is. And this amazing thing happens where you can actually just physically

Speaker 4 ride the wave of the emotion without the story attached.

Speaker 2 And the physical piece is so huge of it because it's like this crazy circle, right?

Speaker 2 Because in order to ride through the emotion and create the more space in your body, you have to recognize it, but you can't recognize it until you've gotten so skilled at feeling where it is.

Speaker 2 And it's also that what your emotions are trying to tell you is how safe and stable and secure you are or not. That's what their whole job.
That's why there's only five of them.

Speaker 2 You know, that's why there's things like fear, joy, anger, sadness, disgust. Those are the five things.
Why is disgust on that list?

Speaker 2 Because it's evolutionarily like we needed to know not to eat that fruit because we would die, because we weren't safe. So these emotions are evolved to keep us safe.

Speaker 2 So that's why when something happens that we don't understand why we're so disproportionately out of our minds about something,

Speaker 2 it isn't that that thing

Speaker 2 is that bad. It's that it touches this place in us that we've never really spent a lot of time living in that feels deeply unsafe

Speaker 2 around that thing. And then the people who are like, oh, I know what I want.
I know that that person's not good for me. I have a really highly attuned intuition and gut wisdom.

Speaker 2 It's because because they've practiced this shit. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 Because they can feel it at the slightest nudge, whereas it takes some of us getting run over by a car to be like, I don't think that was very good. Should have seen that coming.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because it's like a car. There are some cars that are so highly sensitive.

Speaker 4 And those are the really expensive cars.

Speaker 4 You just touch the brakes and it stops. You just tap the whatever.

Speaker 4 A highly sensitive, highly attuned, well-practiced emotional processor doesn't need a lot of dramatic signals anymore because they feel it right away.

Speaker 4 And because it is physiological, it is in your body, but it is also signaling. And I think what I want to say to Casey is for me, processing emotions is two different things.

Speaker 4 First of all, it's the physiological riding of the wave.

Speaker 4 and the not suppressing it and the not ignoring it and the stopping and the being embodied and the feeling it people since the beginning of time have had different ways of doing this. Music.
Okay.

Speaker 4 We lost a beloved aunt during the time where I was on tour with Tish

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 she was opening for this incredible artist named Monrovia. And he every single night sang a song called Damn These Forces that was about him losing his best friend.
I was so busy.

Speaker 4 I was on the road during that time that I felt like I didn't have enough time to like sit with what what had just happened to our aunt and our family. And so I used to go out to the venue

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 for that set when he played Damn These Forces, I would just ball, just stand there in the middle of the crowd and just cry for three songs. And I

Speaker 4 music.

Speaker 4 I know when I am in a not a good emotional place or disconnected or dissociated place because I won't listen to any music.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 Oh shit. That's so true.

Speaker 4 When I am in my body and I know I can handle and I'm processing right and I'm, I, I can listen and I want to listen to music. I want to feel it.
I want it to move through me.

Speaker 4 When I'm in a suppressive state, I won't touch it. It's like hot coals.

Speaker 4 Music, art, movies. Why are we crying? It's not about that character.
that we're crying. It's because it's touching an unprocessed emotion in ourselves.
That is the beauty and importance of art.

Speaker 4 So there's that. You go for walks by yourself.
You give your body time to let the wave rise. And then for me, there's a second part, which is for me, it's not just about the riding the wave.

Speaker 4 It's about then figuring out

Speaker 4 why did that make me angry? It's sitting with my journal in the morning. It's taking the walk and thinking over, okay, I rode the wave, but what information was that trying to give me?

Speaker 4 Why am I continuously angry about this, this, and this? What patterns are there that are guiding me to make a different decision in my life? For me, emotions are not good for immediate decisions.

Speaker 4 Often it's the riding of the wave first, and then it's phase two, which is a kind of grounded reflection. When I'm out of the wave, when I'm out of wave,

Speaker 4 when I'm out of like the fight or flight, whatever it is that brings, the wave brings, it's then looking back and really taking time to figure out what is my body trying to tell me?

Speaker 4 Why am I disgusted by that and that and that?

Speaker 4 Why am I feeling this deep sadness about, and what can I do differently? What is my anger trying to signal that that's not good for me?

Speaker 4 I think that's kind of the sensitivity of the car too. It's like, what's the point if you're not turning the wheel based on the signals you're getting?

Speaker 1 And I think it's important, you know, I think that you two are really interesting like examples in this because I think that Glennon, especially recently, you've been really doing quite a bit of work on processing emotions and feeling them in your body.

Speaker 1 You've lived a lot of your life head up and you've thought through your problems a lot. And one of the most beautiful things that I've noticed that you've put in your daily life is

Speaker 1 whenever we have a discussion about pretty much anything now, you actually say out loud, I don't know if this is something that you're doing intentionally, but it's something I'm noticing.

Speaker 1 You say, I'm feeling that in my body.

Speaker 1 And you'll feel it somewhere specific or you'll attach an emotion to it. And I think that that is like such a good

Speaker 1 kind of

Speaker 1 way to begin. And maybe it's like varsity level.
I don't know. I'm not a psychologist.

Speaker 1 But what it actually does for me in a conversation is it actually allows me to check in with myself in my own body so that I'm not just in my headspace trying to solve the problem.

Speaker 1 We in our culture and our society, there's all these nails that need to be hammered down, all these problems that need to be solved.

Speaker 1 But so much stuff that happens in a day, we are conditioned not to even process this shit.

Speaker 1 We are conditioned to just keep moving forward, keep trucking along and giving giving yourself the moment or even in a conversation to just be like, oh, God, I feel that in my chest or I feel that in my gut or I feel that in my heart, whatever it might be.

Speaker 1 And what I've noticed about you and whatever kind of way you're processing through this is you've become more curious

Speaker 1 and consciously curious.

Speaker 1 I don't know how to say this without sounding weird, but like less certain.

Speaker 1 There's an uncertainty around it. And I think that that also is part of what makes people scared about processing emotion because there is no certainty.

Speaker 1 It's like, well, I think I feel sad or I think I feel angry. And then what do I do with it? Or how do I solve the problem? Because it's a longer thing.

Speaker 1 right it's not just about the awareness though that that's a really great step it's not just allowing it letting it go through you

Speaker 1 it's also like you said glenn and trying to like capture the why of it all. And is it a story I've told myself?

Speaker 1 Am I just riling myself up over here because some sort of condition belief that I have had since I was four years old? How old is this emotion? Yeah, does this track way back?

Speaker 1 Is this even something that I actually still believe in my 44-year-old body now? Or is this just like seven-year-old? I mean, I had a tantrum the other day, a literal physical in-my body tantrum.

Speaker 1 And it is a young part. It is a young part of me.
And Glennon can feel it. And I'm like embarrassed about it.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 2 it can be embarrassing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I just, I love this question, Casey, because it's not one size fits all. Who knows what will work best for you? We're not like therapists here, but I just feel really proud of both of you two.

Speaker 1 because I know how difficult it is for you or it has been to just want to actually get into the emotion of your lives.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And in your body.
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Speaker 2 For the people, like, that seems like a fucking lot, a lot of work and thinking about it and feeling it. What I think I'm figuring out is that it's a lot of work either way.

Speaker 2 The energy that it takes to not let your emotions, to not let the wave come, you're putting your body up and trying to stop the wave from coming takes at least as much energy as it takes to actually let it happen so you're using that energy anyway yes

Speaker 1 so you might as well let it create more room in your life I actually have no basis of reality and what I'm about to say but what I believe to be true is I think it's actually way more detrimental to not process emotion and I actually oh it's way more detrimental

Speaker 2 for sure.

Speaker 1 I'm just saying the energetic output. I know, but I also think that it shortens a person's life.

Speaker 1 I have no research or science, but if you are not processing your emotions, I believe that we are doing real harm and real damage to our physical beings.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, that's what the whole, when anyone says that's a defense mechanism, all that means, a simple way.

Speaker 4 of understanding what that means is that is a way a person has learned to not feel their feelings.

Speaker 4 And so, when you're in relationship with someone who doesn't feel their feelings, doesn't process, you're in relation with a group of defense mechanisms.

Speaker 1 That's it.

Speaker 4 You're not in relation with the person, the person is not present. So, when I am in an argument with you or a conversation, and I say, Okay, I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 4 I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna stay embodied. I'm gonna stay in my body.

Speaker 4 What I'm doing

Speaker 4 is I'm stopping myself from jumping into my mind and activating a million stories about this is what this means. This is what always happens because that's my defense mechanism is to go to my mind.

Speaker 4 And so I'm avoiding that. I am not activating story because when we activate story, this vicious loop happens between our emotions and our story.

Speaker 4 And we don't even know what's real anymore because our story is intensifying the wave.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 4 The wave then is hijacked. Yep.
And you actually don't have to hijack your wave with story. That's why, where do you feel it? In my chest, let's stay in our body.

Speaker 4 So then when I'm staying in my body, I am actually having a conversation with you, my wife. I am not in conversation with my own mind.
You're gone. I'm not even with you when I do that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know. And I think that it's really, it has been maybe one of the most profound things.

Speaker 1 And we've said this on this podcast that like sometimes when we get into an argument or I'm telling you that my feelings are hurt, I've never felt until recently that you actually cared.

Speaker 1 Honestly, we just had a big conversation the other night and it was, I'm not kidding, it was literally one of the first times that I actually think

Speaker 1 you cared.

Speaker 1 And I'm like an anxious attached person. So the not caring is really hard for me to not just get over, but to like, to be like, are we okay? Like, is it really okay?

Speaker 1 We had a big conversation and it was the first time that I was like, oh, no, I think that we're really okay.

Speaker 1 And that was

Speaker 1 huge.

Speaker 1 That was really huge. Not that I thought we were like getting a divorce, but like I didn't have any adverse secondary questions and wonderings about what her experience was.
I knew it.

Speaker 1 I could feel it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And that's so interesting because Glenn, you said defense mechanisms are trying to avoid our feelings.
I think defense mechanisms. are survival strategies.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And a lot of people's survival strategies are don't feel your emotions.

Speaker 1 Right. Right.

Speaker 2 And then you start to get to the sadness of how sad it is that your survival depended on not feeling your emotions.

Speaker 2 And so then when you can actually feel them and bring them to your relationship, oh my God, how beautiful and redemptive is that to be able to do in your relationship?

Speaker 1 So good.

Speaker 4 It's just the whole goal changes. Like I thought the goal was to work it out.
The goal is to fix it. The goal is to like make your columns, figure it out, who's right, where we're moving on from here.

Speaker 4 They used to drive Abby crazy. I'd always say, Where are we moving on from here? Just tell me what have we learned.

Speaker 1 And we will never come back to this thing again.

Speaker 4 No, I'm not talking about this again. Yeah.
All right. Write it down.
Let's sign it. What have we decided? But like,

Speaker 4 I'm understanding now that that's not it at all. It's just like, oh, we're just supposed to be messy and like present with each other.
And that's all that comes out of this.

Speaker 4 And it actually then isn't.

Speaker 4 Right. But when that's the only goal, all of this magic comes out of it.

Speaker 4 So anyway, Casey, in short,

Speaker 4 find a couple processing things, music, walks, whatever it is,

Speaker 4 and then write down your noticings. I think that's what processing means.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 4 here's what we've been doing, Pod Squad.

Speaker 4 The reason why this episode was such a great, great joy. to me is because

Speaker 4 anyone who's been listening for long enough knows that I am in a process of learning that unsolicited advice is in fact criticism.

Speaker 4 Okay, so if you've listened, you know that I basically, my entire mind used to be made of metaphorical file folders. One was for each kid, one was for each person in my family, one was for the world.

Speaker 4 I had file folders. full of ideas of how everyone should live their lives and how they'd be happier and how what they should do and

Speaker 4 waited around for people to ask me to retrieve their file. And then, of course, when no one ever did ever, not one time, I just assumed that they didn't know to ask.

Speaker 4 And so then I would just pull out their file at any given time. And lovingly, or so I thought, but it turns out this is not the most connective strategy for relations.

Speaker 4 So I am working on it in my various ways, one being 12-step meetings. It's a good time.
But I have found a loophole, and that is that,

Speaker 4 so as Megan Fowley says,

Speaker 4 I am allowed to be a source of water. I am like a pond, a lake in the wilderness.

Speaker 4 If people come to the pond for water, I am allowed to give them water.

Speaker 4 What I am not allowed to do is chase them down with buckets of water. I'm not allowed to, I have to stay in the source of the lake.

Speaker 4 But But, pod squad, that means if you want to come visit my lake, if you have a problem, a challenge, if you're stuck somewhere in your life, in your relationship, in your family, in your work, if you have a big problem

Speaker 4 that you want some advice about, if you have a little problem, like you don't know what to name your dog or you don't know what sofa to pick or something that's light,

Speaker 4 if you bring it to me, I am allowed to respond to you. And I will.

Speaker 4 If you write me an email, okay, if you write to the pod squad, if you write to the podcast at wcdhtpodgmail.com and you write me your problem with the subject line solicited advice.

Speaker 4 Not unsolicited, solicited advice.

Speaker 2 Do you have to show these receipts to your 12-step program so they know, look, it says solicited right here.

Speaker 4 Oh, no, I didn't run this by anyone in my 12-step program.

Speaker 1 They would not be allowing me to. I hope they write it.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 That's good. So write an email.
Then I can read it, think about your problem,

Speaker 4 and then

Speaker 4 give you some advice on the pod. Or

Speaker 4 if you're more of a talker than a writer, you can call in the number 747-200-5307.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 please,

Speaker 4 only one minute, y'all. You can only

Speaker 4 leave a message that is one minute long or we can't use it. And you have to use the word advice in it.
So we know that it's for this purpose.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 4 I just think this would be great fun.

Speaker 2 Maybe we'll bring one of these horses with their water.

Speaker 2 I feel like that pond thing was zero.

Speaker 1 With their thirst.

Speaker 2 With their thirst. Maybe they could come on the podcast.

Speaker 1 I want the pod squatters. to be people that we talk to like they're our guests.
Okay. Because they're in IRL.
In real life. I want this.

Speaker 4 Oh, that would be so fun.

Speaker 1 I want this so much. You guys, nobody cares that I played soccer anymore.
The deal is I'm a podcaster now and I need a little bit of like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 What you're hearing is Abby's sick of us.

Speaker 2 No one recognizes her anymore. She's sick of talking to us.
Just help a sister out.

Speaker 1 Help us help you. Do you want to come on the pod is what we're asking.
Okay, I love that idea. Does the pod squatters want to come on the pod?

Speaker 2 But you have to have a problem or else.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And it won't let you one.
That's right. That's right.

Speaker 1 Or I think it would be kind of cool if one of the pod squatters wanted to come on and talk about an episode that changed their life in some way, that they've like put into the practice some things that we've been talking about.

Speaker 1 I mean, my goodness, my shadow side. Anybody else working on their shadow side? I would like some freaking pod squatters who are on my side here.
We could talk about it.

Speaker 2 It's like Liz Gilbert's Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It, but. We can do her things made me do it.

Speaker 4 Yes. Oh, yeah.
And Liz won't care if we steal it from her because she's our bestie. So let's just steal it from Liz.
Let's just actually call it Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It.

Speaker 1 Exactly. No, no, no.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the new podcast called Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It. Yeah.
With Glenn and Doyle, the never ever was soccer player, Abby Wombach.

Speaker 4 Okay, so we're going to end here, but I'm just going to say then in sum, let's process this.

Speaker 4 If you have a problem you want me to help you solve or any combination of us to help you solve, you're going to write to us.

Speaker 4 An email with the subject line, solicited advice. Okay.

Speaker 4 And I actually love your idea. Thank you.
If you are someone who

Speaker 4 one of these episodes made you think about something differently, try something differently, do something different in a relationship or in work, or there's some episode that sparked something cool that you want to tell us about, and maybe even come on the pod to talk about.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 Okay. Let's do an email for that too.
And the subject can be made me do it.

Speaker 4 Made me do it.

Speaker 1 Made me do it. Okay.
You guys, I've been feeling an emotion of joy. And I'm feeling an emotion of joy.

Speaker 4 big joy in my body all right pod squad we love you so much and we will see you next time and we will see you in the inbox and on the voicemails all right bye bye

Speaker 4 If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things.

Speaker 4 things, first, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode.

Speaker 4 To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 4 And then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod.

Speaker 4 While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much.

Speaker 4 We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wombach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey.

Speaker 4 Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman and the show is produced by Lauren Lograsso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.