Glennon: Is it Insanity or Life?

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Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.

I just wanted to pop in before we roll this conversation and tell the pod squad this.

We recorded this episode before the election,

okay?

But

what I need you to know is that I think it might be really helpful

because it's about

sanity versus insanity.

It's about the abyss that we all live so close to,

the abyss of lack of control, the abyss of depression, the abyss of oppression, the abyss of all of it, and how to survive that abyss.

I can't wait to hear what you think of this episode.

We're calling it Weird Glennon because, in fact,

it is about Weird Glennon.

But I hope it's a little bit about all of us.

I love Weird Glennon.

Oh.

Weird Glennon might be my favorite, especially the one with now two nose rings.

Sister, have you seen her two?

Bring yourself closer.

What's better than one nose ring?

Two nose rings.

And it was an accident.

What's better than two nose rings?

Who knows?

That's good.

I went over to my friend's house last night and

she was having a real hard time.

So I was dropping things off.

And then

she invited me in and she just read me dad jokes for 45 minutes.

And I really recommend that to people.

Dad jokes.

Here's one for you.

A pirate

parrot flew away.

But honestly, it was a weightlifted off his shoulder.

Oh boy.

I just have a pirate one.

What is a pirate's favorite letter?

R.

R.

You would think, but no, it's the sea they love.

What's a pirate's worst exercise?

Planking.

Okay, since we've already lost them, what is a very proper owl say?

Whom!

Whom!

Ah, damn it!

You know that I was going to get that one.

Oh my God, I love a grammar joke.

Okay.

All right.

This is a perfect segue, though, into Weird Glennon.

We love you.

Look at how fucking weird we are.

Good luck with this one.

Let me know what you think after, but only if it's nice.

Enjoy.

Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.

It's been an awkward start for us.

Abby keeps making jokes.

And nobody's laughing.

They're funny, but nobody's laughing.

I think if they're funny, that's when you know if it's funny is when people laugh.

No, it just means that your guys' sense of humor is off.

That's true.

And first of all, welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.

Did I already say that?

No.

Okay.

Welcome to you, Pod Squad.

Today, this is one of those episodes that is coming to you from Weird Glennon.

Okay.

Oh, fun.

Yeah.

So

here's what I have decided.

I'm going to give you an update about

my life experience lately.

Oh, shit.

Because God knows the world needs another update of my life experience.

Okay.

We're doing it.

Okay.

This is fun.

Now, everything that I'm about to say during these 50 minutes makes perfect sense to me.

Okay.

I do not know if it's going to make sense to everyone, but here's what I have.

Is this kind of like Abby's joke?

Yeah, it might be.

Her joke is very funny.

She doesn't know whether people are going to experience it as funny.

Yes.

Is this why this was a good segue?

Segue.

The reason she sang segue, y'all, isn't it?

It's like a legume, but it's a segue.

Yes.

I have spent my entire life thinking that

people were making segues in their conversations in my books.

And I just learned that there's no such thing as a segue

maybe a year ago.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Also, I will remind everyone.

It's a segue, by the way.

It's a segue.

If people are like, what the hell are you talking about?

It's also not one of those things that tourists do on

sidewalks that appear very dangerous.

It's a cross between a scooter and a bicycle and it looks like it's from Mars.

Right.

But I knew that there was a word called segue in the world.

Like I say that in my life.

And let's make a segue so we can get to the same time.

Did you just think Segu and Segway were the same?

I thought Segu was a completely different word.

I'd never heard anyone say it in real life.

What did you think the meaning of Segu was?

I thought that a Segu was very similar to a Segway.

This is so.

Just like I didn't know that nothing goes houry.

Oh, yeah.

Everything just goes awry, whether it's in a book or in real life.

There is no going houry.

You're such a book nerd.

So cute.

Shout out to all the kiddos who spent their childhood in books instead of listening to human beings because we have a confusion.

You're so cute.

About words.

Okay.

What I was going to say is what I've decided is that it's not that it doesn't make sense or not.

It makes sense to me.

It might not make sense to everyone, but two things can be true at the same time.

I did.

shoot this whole concept of this episode and my experience to my therapist the other day and said, Do you think that people are going to resonate with this situation?

And she said, Glenn and as always, I think we just have to try.

I don't know what that means.

The rest of us have to try to understand.

She said, I think that I just have to try.

Oh, you see.

Okay.

She understood it,

but I do pay her to understand it.

So I'm not sure.

When I was little,

maybe not so little, maybe like in my elementary school, middle school, maybe.

Okay.

We lived on this street and then there was this bike path that was a mile away.

Okay.

So it was too kind of dangerous to get our, we lived on this main road, and then the intersection was another highway.

So we would put our bikes in our van, in the back of our van, and then drive the three quarters of a mile to the beginning of this bike trail.

And this would happen like every once in a while.

Okay.

And then we would all get on the bike trail as a family and ride a couple miles.

I don't know.

It wasn't a big deal.

Now,

what I remember from these times is that

it was a beautiful trail kind of through the woods,

but to the sides, there were cliffs.

Okay.

There was like drop-offs to either side.

And

I just could not believe there were no fences.

It was just a trail a little bit of trees not much few feet and then just

death okay so you went mountain biking well no it was like an asphalt trail like there was like three-year-olds walking on the trail okay so it's proper concrete okay yeah yeah

so

yeah concrete for sure you don't think i was like i was on like my a little 10 speed okay right yeah okay well when you said cliffs and death it did indicate a little more rugged terrain

than a community bike path.

I was excited.

I was like, shit, we're going to get you a mountain bike today.

It was cliffs, though.

I believe you.

Your perception was it was cliffs.

It was cliffs.

All right.

Do you not remember this?

It was

horrific cliffs.

And I used to ride my bike.

And Virginia.

Sister, do you not remember this?

This is a bourbon, Virginia.

I'm struggling to figure out where we're talking about.

Okay.

Remember interstate van lines?

Yes, I do remember.

Okay, so for all of you, we're placing you in Burke, Virginia, on the intersection of Burke Road and Rolling Road.

Interstate van lines, where they used to have those letters.

They would say something.

It would change like every month.

Okay.

Yes.

Close to West Springfield High School.

Yeah.

Actually, equidistant for West Springfield High School and Lake Brett.

Go Bruins.

Bruins, Bruins, hats off to thee.

To thy colors, choose the colours.

To the colours,

Robert Van Strong United Standards.

Rafa Bruins Strong fight the battlefield for purple and gold.

Go Bruins.

Wow.

Anyway, there were horrific cliffs to eat.

And if you don't remember it, then I don't know.

Okay.

So

all I would think the whole time, I would squeeze my little handlebars and I would think,

I hope I don't turn

myself and plunge myself into.

the cliff.

Solid intrusive death.

Certain death.

Right.

Now I think.

Intrusive thoughts.

Yeah, I get it.

That's what my therapist said.

Intrusive thoughts.

Interesting.

Okay.

I wasn't thinking,

I hope I don't accidentally fall off.

Oh, oh, yeah.

Like, I hope I don't do something.

I mean, absolutely.

All that shit crazy.

All of us do that when we're driving the car.

They're like, what if I just turn the wheel and I go into the oncoming traffic?

We all do that.

So when you're on a balcony, are you thinking, I hope I don't jump off this balcony?

Every once in a while, I'll have an intrusive thought.

Oh, that's so, that makes me feel better.

Yeah.

Okay.

Same.

It's like a little fun game we play with ourselves to not do it sometimes i'll be speaking when i used to speak and i'll be like standing up at a church yeah and i'll be like what if i just scream

you all

like i hope i don't do that i might one of my intrusive thoughts is when i'm we're driving in the car and you know how people like don't stop short with me seinfeld seinfeld yeah don't stop short with me i have this intrusive thought that i do the don't stop short with me but i hit you really hard Oh, that's nice.

Isn't that so bad?

Yeah, no, that makes me feel better because I do like, if I'm holding a child, it's one of my favorite things about myself is that people will just hand me babies.

And when I'm holding baby, I'm always thinking, what?

Don't, don't drop the baby, like, which I would never do.

Don't on purpose drop the baby.

Yeah.

Yes.

Okay.

Do you know my worst intrusive thought?

What?

The one that bothers me the most

is I would travel with the babies when they were very, very young on planes.

Like we always have business meetings across the country when my babies were like three weeks before we did we did always and so

i would be traveling with them and you know how the airplane bathroom where they have this tiny little thing where you change their diaper on the bathroom so i've done that like a thousand times and

only in the last couple years i've realized oh my god that

little thing was right on top of where the toilet is, where it just goes through the toilet into the the sky.

And oh my God.

And so I think, it's in the past.

I'm literally never going to do it again.

Hold on.

But I wake up in the middle of the night once a week thinking my baby could have fallen off the diaper thing into the toilet, into the sky.

Hold on.

Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

To outer space.

No, hold on a second.

Don't be logical about it.

It's just a fear that you're not.

I know, but I just want to, I want to, I need to.

I fly enough.

Our shit and piss does not go out into the sky.

No, they keep it in a container.

Okay, Okay, but you're saying out into the sky.

Well, I don't know.

None about it is logical, but I'm going to find out when we're going to be able to do that.

Okay, okay.

Okay, that's a really good point.

Amanda, I didn't know that.

Pooh isn't flying out.

I mean, it's going into a bin.

Either way, it wouldn't be great for the baby.

Also, the baby's not fitting down that little hole.

I do not think that these are

logical.

We're really yucking.

your intrusive thought here.

I need to know this.

Do you guys ever just lay in bed?

I think this usually happens to me in bed, but do you ever just lay in bed and think of a scenario and then

lose your shit about that scenario that is definitely not happening?

But for example, go through the whole thing.

Well, I'm always in a home invasion.

Oh, yeah.

Every night, I do that too.

I'm thinking what I'm doing.

A firewear home invasion.

Yeah, what am I going to do?

What door am I going to lock myself behind?

Yes.

And then do you like come to and it's like 10 minutes later and you are full on so upset about that thing.

and then you have to remind yourself that didn't happen and you're just in this bed still you're not the hero of your little story you're telling zero times i've never been

you're the victim in your story i'm always the hero that's interesting huh that must be nice what about you sissy i always figure i need to pressure test the plan a thousand times and then that's how i end up with you know ordering another well another fire ladder or something because i'm like i i realized i have a soft spot in my plan of what I'm going to do.

Fire ladder.

So I got it.

Hey, always want to know something.

Fire ladder.

I just saw the other day on a reel.

If you keep a bat by your bed, because you know, a lot of people don't believe in guns and stuff, which is great.

I don't either.

You keep a bat by your bed, put a long sock on the end of it.

Because if you go to hit somebody with it, an intruder, and they go to stop it, the sock will pull it off and then you can hit them again.

You get two whacks at him.

Okay.

So that's good.

And then also

in my head, I make up the scenario.

I go through the scenario.

Lots of horrific things happen.

There's, it's just, it's endless.

Then I wake up sweating, but I'm not even ever asleep.

Now,

back to what we were talking about.

Oh, yeah.

The cliffs.

The cliffs.

Of Virginia suburbia.

It was freaking the woods.

It was an epic landscape.

Got it.

Okay.

Okay.

We're there with you.

We're there with you.

With the toddlers and their parents walking.

Yeah.

Anyway, that is a memory that is seared into my mind.

And

as both of you know, I think that that actual situation morphed with

kind of a way that I see myself and my life, which is, as you know, I've told you many, many times, I always feel like I'm kind of walking on the edge of a cliff.

Okay, like that's what I'm doing.

I'm walking on the edge of a cliff and I feel an abyss

to my side.

And the abyss is like this sea of purple, swirly, silvery, sparkly, dark purple, like kind of scary,

but also like a lot of depth and a little bit of magic in it.

And the abyss is what I have always thought is insanity.

It's kind of like alluring.

It's like calling.

Okay.

It's calling.

It's like a siren calling.

Yes, yes, yes.

But it's my job, as I have understood it, is to stay on the motherfucking cliff.

Okay.

Just stay the course.

Stay.

Glennon, do not jump.

Are you going to jump, Glennon?

I hope I don't jump.

I don't know who gave me the power to decide.

That's what pisses me off.

We just make these balconies and we just just assume that people aren't going to use their own volition.

Anyway, all the things that I have

employed,

all the strategies, eating disorders, alcoholism, anorexia, medication, controlling other human beings with my brain.

These have all been strategies to keep me on the cliff.

This is what I have told myself.

I have to do.

I'm like white-knucking the handlebars.

Whether I'm parenting, whether I'm working, whether I'm just taking a walk,

whether I'm in a friendship, I am just white-knuckling the handlebars so I don't veer off into the abyss of insanity,

even though it looks

kind of great.

Okay, that's interesting.

Now,

lately,

I

have

one at a time taken away all of my white knuckle handlebar strategies, okay?

And it kind of feels like I just let go of the handlebars completely.

Feels a little ridiculous and stupid and reckless, okay?

Lately, I have felt

like I'm in the abyss.

So you've jumped.

I feel like I am in the abyss.

And what

I would like to explain a little bit

is I don't know how to describe it.

So I'm just going to tell like some stories about what it feels like to be in the abyss.

Okay.

This is fun.

Nothing

is good.

Okay.

Is that true?

It's not that nothing is good.

It's that

I am overwhelmed all the time.

Okay, maybe I shouldn't say I am overwhelmed all the time.

I feel

overwhelmed all the time.

I feel

like everything

is

too hard or too much or too good or too bad or too everything.

It's just so much muchness.

Here's how a few things that it feels like to be in the abyss.

I have no distance from things anymore.

It's like all the things that I had to protect me

from life or from being human are gone.

Just gone.

All of my protections, all of my little armor, weapons, all the things.

And so now it's just me and life.

Okay.

So a few little things.

We took this trip to Seattle because our kid was in a soccer tournament.

And

I do not know how we're supposed to handle our kids in soccer tournaments.

These children are teenagers, young teenagers.

This kid plays at a high level.

So all of these freaking college coaches are watching them.

All of their parents are gathered around, like staring at them.

You can like feel the stress and the love and the hope and the control and the pressure.

And they love each other so much, but they're kind of like competing against each other.

I just feel like I'm going to die from the vulnerability of it.

Yeah.

It's like so much is riding.

A lot of how they do,

it isn't just perception, is going to affect the opportunities they have because they're trying to get recruited, right?

So it's like, it really is that kind of

how you play matters and not just to us egotistically.

So the vulnerability you're experiencing is the vulnerability on behalf of our child or it's just like the vibe of the totality of what's happening for all of these kids.

It's an abyss.

I sit there and you can feel that so many of them are doing it just to like make their parents happy and their parents are just, you can just feel the muchness of all of it.

So I'm handling it.

I'm doing okay.

Sam is a coach from UF.

She's so wonderful.

She walks over.

She and Abby are friends.

Go Gators because I went there.

So I know them.

I'm half watching the kids, half just, sometimes I just try not to.

I try to distract myself.

She's telling me about her kids, and they sounded so wonderful.

I asked about one of them, and she's like, let me show you this video of my kid.

And

her kid had just gone through this season of, I think it was soccer, and their team had like won no games.

They had kept trying.

And then they won like one game at the end of the season.

And this video was of the game ending.

And Sam was holding the phone.

And her little boy could, like, they blew the whistle and they had one.

And this kid,

you just see his face like he can't believe it.

And then he just takes off from his friends and runs to his mom.

So you see him running at the camera.

And then you see the camera go down and she's hugging him.

And then he.

quickly hugs her and then he runs as fast as he can back to his friends and his like fist is in the air and he's like hugging his friends.

She's shooting, I just start bawling.

And Sam is like, what's wrong with your wife?

What?

No, she really appreciated that.

You were so touched by it because it is a touching thing, A, to have your kid run to you, and then B, to get it on film.

And then C, after he hugs her and he's running back.

He's kind of like jogging back to his team to go celebrate again with his teammates.

he likes to look up and has this take-it-all-in moment that, like, finally, they did it.

Finally, they had this moment, you know, like he finally had it.

And as a parent, she caught it all on video, like, get out of here with that.

It's beautiful beyond.

Yeah.

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So then that night, Emma goes off with her friends.

and Abby and I are in this random city we don't know in Seattle and we wander into this tiny little restaurant.

It's like the size of a kitchen.

It's so small.

And there's these little tables.

There's probably 10 tables in the whole place.

We walk into the restaurant and there's this couple,

this man and this woman, young, maybe like lower 30s, I don't know.

And they're eating and the woman looks over at us and you just, her face just, you can see she's recognized us in a very meaningful way like you can tell when it's

somebody that is very connected to

our work in the world i can tell that she's just about to melt so i just walk right over

she stands up it all happens very fast she's hugging me

The man that's sitting with her,

no time has passed enough for her to explain anything to him or to make any explanation of what's going on.

The man waits patiently for us to hug and then says very gently,

he turns to me and says, would it be okay with you if I got a picture?

Now,

I don't know why that made me so, I felt like, oh my God, he is so in touch with his partner that he knows.

She didn't say, get a pressure.

Like, I'm watching the whole thing.

There's no way this guy knows exactly who we're like,

he just was so

attuned to her.

Yeah.

And he knew that she wasn't going to want to ask me because she was so respectful, but he knew that it was going to be important to her and that he should

step in for her and get what she's going to want to leave this with.

And so

we take a picture.

Abby and I go sit down.

And then Of course, I'm like all emotional about the whole thing.

And then they come over when they're leaving and I say, I just want you to know what we've been talking about is how beautiful that was that you didn't have to ask, that he knew, that he asked so gently, that you all too are so attuned.

She told us that the reason she was so emotional is that they live an hour away, that she's going through a very hard, interesting time, that she has listened to every single podcast and read every single word we've ever written, and that has gotten her through the hardest times.

That she's been relying more heavily than ever on this podcast lately.

And that night, something was just like, go

to that restaurant an hour away from their house.

Whoa.

And

she came.

We leave the restaurant

and we're walking home.

And this woman, she's in this different woman no different woman different woman okay

she's in a big suv and she's got like 17 kids in the car okay

and

she is driving by and she just screams out the window glenn

glenn

we love you glennin and she's waving and all the kids are waving

and i just thought

I cannot believe this.

I spend so much time being scared.

I'm so scared of like the internet and like people hating me and like people, I feel so constricted all the time because I'm scared.

Like the world is a scary place.

The world is scary.

Yeah.

And so I have to be constricted and on guard and like white knuckling all the things.

And I'm always white knuckling public things too.

Like I don't exactly know how to handle it.

I don't know what's appropriate.

I don't know what I should protect our kids from.

I don't know how to do it.

And so I always feel constricted.

Andrea Gibson tells the story about how they went to the Grand Canyon when they were really fucked up and like really in their depression.

And they were, they came to the Grand Canyon

and they looked at it and they were like,

eh.

I mean, whatever.

I guess it's a big hole.

You're glad I drove all this way.

And then.

oh, it's so funny.

If you've ever been in the Grand Canyon, that's hilarious.

Yeah.

And then they were in a different spiritual place in their life and they went back to the Grand Canyon.

And they just thought, oh my God, is this what it has always been?

Like,

this is the most unbelievable thing I've ever seen.

And they talk about, of course, the Anias Nin quote: that we do not see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.

And

that

experience in Seattle is like, is this how it's always been?

Like, am I just not afraid?

Is it, I don't know.

I felt overwhelmed by the beauty and love of it.

And then a week later, we go to the Noah Khan concert.

I'm standing there with the girls.

And one of our kids has her girlfriend with her.

And the other kid has her good friend.

And

Noah is just like, he does this divorce song, you know, it's about divorced kids.

And he says, shout out to all the kids from divorced families.

And our kids, just he's saying, All my love, and they were all the kids are just the whole

Hollywood bull is just bawling and screaming and dancing and losing their minds.

And I'm looking at my kids, and they're bawling.

And I'm like, Oh my God,

I was seeing them for the first time.

Like, they are children of divorce.

Like, they had their family separated, They have two houses.

I had one of my strategies of gripping my handlebars is just to tell myself stories

about how everything's okay because I did it.

And it's not a broken family because we're a whole family because we're fixed.

We're fixed.

We're not broken.

We're fixed.

We're the exception.

We're the exception.

Yeah.

It's kind of sad, but not really.

It's fine.

It's kind of sad.

It would be sad if it wasn't so magical and unique and extraordinary.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

So I was seeing them for the first time and it did not kill me.

It like overwhelmed me to the point of like explosion, right?

I was bawling with them.

But

it did not kill me.

And I realized these narratives that I make are another strategy to keep me on the thing.

I will tell you what it is.

I will arrange all the chaos into a story with characters.

And this is your character and this is my character.

The other day we went to see our son in New York City, and

being in the abyss while raising adult children, because this has been the biggest doozy for me.

We walked around New York City for two hours, and then we went to a dinner.

We took our son to dinner with two of his best friends, him and two girls.

And they go to college together, and they talked about their adventures and their lives for two hours at dinner.

I've never seen our kid so alive.

They just love each other so much and they take such good care of each other.

And he just had this like sense of

you could just see the belonging and the joy.

And

I think I thought that like I was supposed to

make everything so perfect that he would always just want to have that with us.

That like our house and our town and our

would be his place of belonging and joy and connection you know

but

when i saw that i thought okay i felt such relief because i felt like he has it and then i felt relief that i was relieved

because

it made me know that i don't need it to be us i just need him to have it

you know in general

so On the way home, I have this new fun thing that I think is from early menopause.

I'm not sure what it is, but it's a really good time.

And what it is is that I have constant motion sickness.

Okay.

I used to be able to spin around in circles for fun.

And now if I'm in a car for longer than five minutes, if I glance at my phone, if I, I can get motion sickness from watching a movie that's moving too fast.

Like it's just ridiculous.

So, and I know this, I know this, but we get in an Uber, like one of those big Ubers in New York City, and it's 11 p.m.

And Abby and I are going back to our hotel and we've got the kids, the kids, they're 21, but they're in the back, all lined up, the three of them, just chattering, chattering, chattering, because they're about to go off and do whatever they're, this is just.

This is the beginning of their evening.

Yeah, this is lunch for them.

It's pre-game.

Right.

But they're talking about like relationships.

And one of them turns to Chase and says, well, you're securely attached.

So you're

like, I almost died.

I just almost exploded.

I'm like, wait, no.

It's all I could do just to not stop them and say, did you say he's securely attached?

Do you think that's because of me?

Do you, can we talk about this more?

Did your child aggrieve?

He did.

Yes.

He did.

Jesus.

Just retire.

That's the closest you could get to an A-plus valedictory address as a parent.

You know that, like, how much that meant to me to hear because it has been, I have felt like.

I'll talk about this in another episode, but I have felt like maybe I did everything wrong.

Maybe like I have started to see myself from from his eyes in a way that has freaked me the fuck out and made me lose myself a little bit.

And I think it might just be something that happens as they get older, but it's been hard.

It's been the hardest phase of parenting for me.

And it's all been internal.

Nobody else has done anything.

It's just been internal.

So I'll never forget that moment as long as I live because Glenn and I got to do the look, even though she was experiencing insane nausea.

She looked at me and I looked at her and our eyes were like,

We're going to talk about this later.

Is he securely attached?

How do they know about secure attachment?

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

Can I get this in writing?

Can okay.

Yeah.

So

I'm, they are in the back.

Like Abby and I are in the two like bucket seats, you know?

And

I am looking at them,

sister, and I am so sick.

I am close to throwing up.

I cannot stop looking at them.

I cannot.

I was like, I don't care.

I just, they were so, they were the three of them were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

And I could not

stop looking at them.

We get to the hotel.

I get in my room.

I throw up for two hours.

I'm sick for 24 hours.

Okay.

I would do it again.

It was too beautiful to look away from.

Being in the abyss

is

much, much messier

than being on the top of the cliff.

I feel

out of control all the time.

I feel overwhelmed all the time.

I feel very messy.

I feel confused.

I feel

so much more.

And what I

figured out

just about a week ago

is that the abyss,

the purple, swirly,

silvery, sparkly

abyss that has been calling to me since I was 10

is not

insanity.

It is life.

It is life.

It is being fully human and present without all of the things that we put

in our lives to protect ourselves.

And the reason why

being in the abyss is so overwhelming is because it's supposed to be, is because it's just

love.

It's like to be

really alive with a wide open heart

and to be that present with things you love and things you're afraid of and all of your messy mistakes and

all of it

it's not insanity it's like the truest reality

right

there are definitely times where I feel like I enjoyed

being on the cliff better

It was easier to have some distance between me and everything.

And I kind of feel like I'm annoying now.

All of the things

that kept me on the cliff also gave me this kind of like cooler, detached

thing where things didn't affect me as much.

So I wasn't so desperate.

Like I feel very desperate lately, desperate to like, I don't even know for what, like for the kids to understand me in every way, for everyone to know I love them.

I just feel desperate all the time.

I think I'm more annoying.

I think I'm more needy.

I think I'm less efficient.

I'm more confused.

But you know how, like, if you're having dinner with somebody and they have a couple glasses of wine or pills they don't need, and

they act a certain way

and you don't know who they are really, Their reactions might be a certain way,

and you take it as who they are.

But

the thing is between you, like, you can't really know who they are because it's not their natural reaction.

Or, you wonder, is that their actual reaction, who you deal with normally, is not them.

Like, it is that there's like an alter, like, oh, now I'm dealing with Betsy 2.0.

Yeah, there's a 1.0 and a 2.0 version of you.

Which one?

Yeah.

So I feel like, even if

I now am, like, say to the kids, or like less together, less held together, less pretending that I know what I'm doing, less detached, less cool and calm,

I do feel like they can feel my

love more, probably.

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It makes perfect sense to me when you're talking about the cliff, right?

The cliff is so

much simpler because you only have one job.

Your job on the cliff is very, very clear, and clarity

is

very helpful.

And so your one job is to keep your ass on the path.

And so you might have constant fear,

but the only thing you have to metabolize is fear.

That's the only emotion.

You just have to keep feeling the fear.

Only emotion coming in.

And your only job is to control

your

direction.

So I'm controlling my direction.

I'm only feeling the fear.

That's all I have to do.

And so

that's simple.

And the promise of that is that it'll keep you safe.

But the highest upside reward

is

remaining in fear and control for the rest of your life.

But

when you go off the cliff,

you have to metabolize everything.

No matter what, it's coming at you.

It's like the real key quote.

Let everything happen to you.

Yes, no feeling is final.

You just have to let everything happen to you.

And so you're like up and down.

You can't even anticipate what your job is because every moment is going to either make you buckle to your knees in like the glory of the Shakespearean moment of the five-year-old on the soccer team or break your heart because you realize your baby's never going to be a baby, and whatever.

It's just what letting everything happen to you, which is the promise and the reward.

Yes.

And the terror.

Yeah.

And it's like when you're on the cliff,

you are driving.

You're

in control.

And then the swirly abyss, you are surrendered to the

swirling.

I do just feel like I'm taken over by a swirly situation.

And every once in a while, I'm just popping up and like yelling something.

I don't even know.

Like I have absolutely no control.

Well, I think what's happened, because like with everything new, like this jumping into the purple swirly abyss.

It makes sense to me that it feels uncomfortable.

It makes sense to me that you feel confused and overwhelmed and everything is happening all at once, seemingly.

But I think part of what you're going through is that you've brought a little bit of the cliff, dare I say, rigidity and control and

trying to apply some of those mechanisms that you learned into this purple swirly abyss.

And so I think that that's why it feels uncomfortable.

makes sense.

Of course you would do that.

Like you bring what you know into new experiences.

and so to me it feels like it won't be as uncomfortable forever because you will learn how to flow with the purple swirly

glittery

mechanism that's in the abyss

well it's interesting that you use the word metabolize

Like, how do you metabolize it all?

Because

I think it's another version of

like the word anorexia is sort of ridiculous because it like implies that it's all about food.

But it's not.

It's just a complete way of life.

It's the person on the cliff with the handlebars.

I did not know

that I could metabolize food like everyone else and just keep going.

That was a...

unbelievable discovery for me.

And I think that I also didn't know that I could just metabolize feelings, that it wouldn't kill me.

The feelings that have

come up in the last

six months,

two years, I can't believe.

I've had days where I didn't think

that it was okay,

like how strong they were.

But

all of the mechanisms that I used were to protect myself from big feelings because I felt like I would not be able to metabolize them and go on.

And, like, the discovery that I had with physical things and food

is the same as the discovery that I'm having with emotional things that I can, in fact,

it might not be pretty.

It might not look like a day I used to have

where it's just one thing after the other on the to-do list, and I can handle all of it because I'm not in any of the things.

But

I have

survived.

Yep.

Right.

Do you know what you're talking about reminds me a lot of

Dr.

Dan Siegel's model of healthy minds because it's a different analogy from the cliff and the water?

But he talks about

how

there are like two banks on a river, and one bank of the river is chaos, and a lot of people live there.

And that's this idea that we feel all out of control in our life.

We are caught in this turmoil.

We have no control over it.

It's like instability, anxiety, fear, all the things.

And then the other side of the river is rigidity.

And that is this idea that if we impose enough control over everything and everyone around us, and we just never try to adapt to anything going on, but we stay the course of where we are, then we will

just

maintain control, and nothing bad will happen to us.

So, one side of the river is like pure fear and anxiety, the other side of the river is like utter stagnation because all you're trying to do is have control.

And, like, where you want to be

is in the flow of the river between

like where you are

finding the balance between

some chaos

and some rigidity where you're like, I do have

some ways of living that I want to have.

I do have this like canoe to keep me afloat, but I'm letting it flow.

Like I am letting the river take me where it's going.

So it's like, I don't know exactly how we're going to get there.

I trust we're going to get there.

Like I am flowing.

I'm not fighting the rapid.

I'm going, you know?

And so it's a really interesting

way to think about it.

And also, I think it's a good clue.

Like when life is full of chaos,

we're probably like hugging one of the banks too much.

And when it's just full of stagnation

and

we feel threatened by the idea of being flexible about anything, we're probably on the other side.

Yeah.

That's what I've got for you today.

I know.

But I feel impressed by you.

Yeah.

Because I have watched you

experience a lot of this discomfort over the last many months.

And as the person in your life, that it does not sit very well when you're uncomfortable.

I like to fix problems.

It has been difficult to watch,

but I think slowly but surely, there's this confidence that's brewing inside of you that you're like,

I'm not going to be killed by my emotions.

The world is not going to kill me.

Yes, this is a lot.

Yes, this is overwhelming.

And I think that the courage that it's taken for you to do this,

especially because it's making you look at your whole life, all of the relationships, your children, me, your family, all of it.

And you're like,

I'm going to survive this.

Like, I feel this I've got me energy.

And boy, is it really scary for me?

Because I like to be the one that's got you.

That's interesting.

But I'm sitting on my hands and I am doing my time also.

But I just think that you are coming through this extraordinary period of your life.

And it's just been really beautiful to watch.

Thank you, Pair.

I think I was thinking last night about how all of these things that I have had to discover through this work and actual embodiment and actually taking things away that I was using as protection from life.

I was writing this in Untamed.

There's whole chapters about feeling it all, about not being killed, about the ache and entering the ache and like how that is life and like the ache is where the bravest people meet each other and how the only thing worse than feeling it all is missing any of it.

And I was writing all of that while severely anorexic, heavily medicated.

I didn't know that, but it makes me emotional because it feels like my writing self is just me five years ahead of me.

It's like an arrow pointing me towards this is where we're going.

And

your brain knows it, your spirit knows it before your body does.

But like, you cannot, Glennon, learn anything but the hard way.

Like you cannot.

It's just gonna be a doozy of a five years, but this is where we're going.

I feel like a lot of people write, and it's like, this is where they were.

And mine is always like, this is where I hope to be soon.

Yeah.

You're imagining the truest, most beautiful life.

Yeah.

So anyway, thanks for listening, you all.

And yeah, I actually just feel like thanks for listening.

You're welcome.

Okay.

Thank you for sharing.

And on another day, I want to know how you think you

slid into the water, like how you got yourself off the path.

And was it just removing, and I don't mean just, is it if that, that wasn't a Herculean effort, but was it the removal and the not relying on the coping strategies that got you in the water?

You know what I mean?

Because that would be if you know that you're a person on the path and you want to like submit to the swirl.

I think it's the roomy thing.

It's like our job is not to seek for love, but to remove all the obstacles that we have built between ourselves and love.

And those things are different for everyone.

So it's one at a time removing the walls that you needed,

that you built.

I mean, look, we were all raised by human beings, which means that our first environments were places where we learned what was going to threaten our attachment to them.

And so in our situation, everybody has different situations with their parents, but when we were in a situation where our muchness,

big feelings, big appetites was

absolutely disallowed.

And it didn't always have to be in words.

It was in body, it was in energy.

But,

you know, when

I learned very early

that

messiness, bigness, gooeyness, juiciness,

confusion, indulgence, indulgence, big feelings, big whatever was absolutely a threat

and not what we're doing here.

This is not hard to put together.

Okay.

Like eggshells, keep it small, keep it quiet.

Of course.

So how do you do it?

You figure out what was disallowed, what part of your humanity was disallowed in your earliest environments, is still disallowed in your culture.

You figure out what

part of you threatened your survival in the first half of your life.

And you're thriving in the second half of your life is reclaiming that thing

that

threatened your survival in the first half.

And it's different for everybody because everybody has a different family and culture and

life, you know, time they're here.

It's always different, but we all have things that we have built up to protect ourselves from life.

And

I have a few more.

And the adventure of a lifetime for me has never been like, go see this place or go bucket listy things.

I'll do it because Abby wants to do it.

But I'm just like, okay, here's another hotel.

Like, okay, that's a mountain.

Like, it doesn't do it for me.

What the adventure of a lifetime for me is to like experiment with removing blocks between me and life.

Because for me now, like the more walls I remove, I am as moved

to tears taking a walk and seeing a dad with his kid playing rock, paper, scissors on the sidewalk as if no one else is around and lighting each other's faces up.

There's no way I would be more moved by the Grand Canyon.

It doesn't matter where you are.

If you have nothing between you and life,

life is everywhere breathtaking.

You don't have to go anywhere.

It's like God.

So

yeah.

I think that that's a perfect way to end.

Okay.

I love you all.

Thanks.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Beautiful.

Bye.

We love you, Pod Squad.

Bye.

Bye.

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

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