What We Don’t Talk About: Raising Older Kids

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Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.

We are forever grateful that you choose to spend your precious time with us.

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Today,

someone named Laurel called in and asked a question that corresponded with the most intense feelings that I'm having in my life that I've ever had.

Yeah.

That is saying something, folks.

Sister, I think I'm serious.

Red alert.

Yes.

Something.

Laurel.

Me too, by the way.

I know, right?

Are you too?

Yeah.

Both?

Yeah.

But we're just, we process it and handle it very differently.

You'll be shocked to know.

The three of you, you two and Laurel, having big feelings.

I can't wait to hear.

Abby, Laurel, and I are struggling, and we need you to carve out some time for us.

Laurel, let's go, sister.

Hi, Glennon, Abby, and Amanda.

My name is Laurel.

I am 35 years old, and my son is going to be 20 this year.

I hear on the pod episodes how Abby and Glennon are at this point of parenting where your children are physically leaving the nest.

And I am at that same similar point.

I was 15 when I had my son and 18 when his father passed.

So I became a single parent.

I was so young and giving so much to being a parent that so much of my identity is wrapped inside of being a mother to him.

So my question is, do you have advice or ways you're dealing with this transition?

It has been so hard for me.

I know I can do it because I'm reminded every time I listen to your podcast that I can do hard things.

Your words have helped me heal and grow in so many ways and hoping you have some words on this topic as well.

Thanks for everything.

Okay, Laurel.

I

thought

that

I was going to be okay

with

this stage in my life.

I really did.

I thought I have always thought of myself as a person who's forward-looking instead of backward-looking.

That is always how I have been, just naturally, like forward, forward.

We're moving forward.

And I really thought

that

I was going to be like, okay, we've all done our best and let's just keep going.

I have been stunned

by how difficult

this time period

is for me.

The period that I'm in is that our oldest is 21,

middle is 18, third is 16.

The oldest is into senior year in college, the middle one just graduated from high school, and the youngest one is a junior.

I think maybe everybody's

situation with this is a little bit different.

And I think sometimes I miss the days of when they were so little and you could just talk about it and talk about it and talk about it

because parenting young kids is so hard, but there's such a community around it.

I think before they get like real personalities and lives, you just feel like it's fair game to talk about them.

And then there comes a point where it's just not like their lives are their own and it's just not your story anymore to tell.

And so that it ends up being very lonely raising older kids because because you don't know how to talk to other people about it without revealing too much about your kids.

So as I talk about this, I'm just going to try so hard to stay in my experience, which actually isn't too hard because it's so clearly not about them right now.

But the experience that I have had

is that

when the kids reach a certain age, they start like looking at you differently.

This is what I have noticed.

It's like for a while, they think you know everything and what you're doing is right.

And your family's way is the way and all.

And then they go off and they meet all these other people.

I know I've mentioned this dynamic before and they see different families and they learn about the world.

And then they just look at you as they should.

They look at you less of like a god of their life.

and more of a coach or a person that has made certain decisions, like a human being.

They look at you like a human being.

And that, like, what's the word I'm searching for?

Fallible.

As if you were a mortal human.

They look at you as a fallible person, not as a perfect person.

Right.

Who has made decisions.

I remember the moment that happened with dad for me.

Really?

Just so you know, like, I always thought dad was like 6'2

because

larger than life, huge life force.

I always like, if people ask him, I'm like, oh, he's like 6'2, whatever.

And I remember one time I came home from college and I looked at him and I was like,

you're like 5'11.

And i was

so shocked because i was like when did you lose five inches it just i could see him as he was instead of how he was in my mind yes that's it right like that's a literal bodily example of like

all of it you can feel

them looking at you differently I can feel the questions they're asking with their minds at me.

I can

hear for the things they're trying to make sense of in their childhood.

I can see them

looking at me,

whereas when they were 10,

I know that they saw me as a fearless leader.

And now they're seeing me as

what is closer to the truth, probably, which is like

a person who's a little afraid and anxious and controlling things and a little lost sometimes and like certainly doing the best she can, but just open for questions.

And a fearless leader.

All right.

Right.

Right.

Or fearful leader.

Fearful leader.

That's fearful leader.

A bold and fearful leader.

Fearful leader.

Yeah.

I know that you're, you're making kind of a joke of it.

No, I'm not.

Well, the fearful leader, I would completely disagree with you.

I think that that's your fear.

I'm going to call out what I do not agree with when it comes up, just so that you're not like solidifying solidifying language or a process around it, because I think that that's really important too.

I relate to Laurel when her kids' father passed away.

Like I can only imagine the

focus and the like forgetting everything else.

And okay, here's what I am for on this planet.

I am the only one he has.

I had different scenario than that.

in that my mother origin story was that I was a severe addict for

sister.

I just want you to know as an aside that I just, for some reason, next to my podcast equipment, I have the big book, the Alcoholics Anonymous book, and I needed to make a note about something I wanted to say.

So I opened up the book because it's the only paper that I have to jot a note down.

And I just found this, I opened it up.

It's the first page of Alcoholics Anonymous book.

And it says in it, to my sister, who I want so much,

with faith, hope, and love, your Mandy.

Which means that

you must have given me this book

at a time when I was still drinking, because why would you say, I want you so much?

You must have, anyway, I just think that's

anyway.

When I had Chase,

I had been

gone since I was 10 years old.

So I became bleak when I was 10, and then it morphed into every other addiction.

And so there was an element of goneness.

I did not experience maturing into adulthood.

I was going to say like other people, but I can just say period.

And that's funny, but it's very real to me.

Like I sometimes feel like I'll have these wide swaths of

confusion that other people don't have that I think is really based on not being engaged in developmental stages that other people have, like learning how to have friendships, learning how to handle your feelings, learning how to have agency in the world.

I had to learn these things in a different way because from 10 to 26, Gonzo, becoming pregnant with my first kid,

the way that I became a human being or an adult was not through like

the normal pattern.

I used to say, what would this kid's mom do?

What would a good mom do?

I didn't really base it on instinct.

I based it on like, what would

the perfect mother of this being do?

One decision, one day, one month at a time.

I, with my oldest, have never stopped doing that.

I

do not have a self.

I lose myself around my oldest more than I lose myself around anyone else.

My friend Alec said to me once, I was talking about like,

literally a work decision,

a work decision that my oldest kid doesn't give a shit about and doesn't know.

And I was thinking it through his eyes: Would this be something that his mom would do?

And she started laughing.

She said, This is Alex Heddison, who now the pod squad knows so well.

She said, I just think it's so funny that you're a public feminist, you are a lesbian,

you

run a company with your sister and your wife, and you have still found a way to revolve your entire life around a man.

Like, yes, that is correct.

Now,

because

I

see myself, it's like I objectify myself.

I am not in my body.

I'm trying to look at myself through his eyes all the time.

And so I feel like I'm acting or something, or I'm trying to prove that I'm a good mom or a good person, or like I lose myself in conversation.

I find myself lately wanting to explain myself.

That's the only way that I know how to describe it.

I feel a desperation

to

sit my kids down and be like, okay,

here's every parenting decision that I made.

Here's why.

I need you to understand the context.

You're just seeing it from your perspective.

But like, let's.

Let's just take it up 64,000 feet and surely you're going to see how you would agree with me wholeheartedly on all of these things.

Yes.

And like, I want them to watch a million videos of every day of their lives and me me loving them so much.

I want to go through pictures so that they can remember all of our days.

I just want to remind them.

I just feel like suddenly everyone has amnesia.

And I just want to like cover my house in pictures of everything, which I have never had.

I have never had this.

nostalgia feeling that has risen up in me like I've never experienced.

And I feel like for so long with kids, it's like the love for each other is like beams of light.

It's like my eyeballs to your eyeballs.

And it's just love from me to you, you to me.

Your eyes are always on me.

My eyes are always on you.

And now it's just not a beam.

It's just like fractaled and diffused everywhere.

And I can't gather it.

I don't know how to gather it.

I can't gather everybody.

I can't gather the love.

I can't.

explain it in a narrative.

And I was in an airport recently and this poor woman who was a pod squatter walked up to me in the airport and she was like, Glennon.

And I met her.

She said, I have three kids, two.

And I said, how old are your kids?

And she said, they're four and seven and 10.

And I just started crying.

I just started crying.

And I was like, I'm so sorry.

I don't even know why I'm doing this right now.

And she said.

This is the exact experience I would expect to have with you.

I'm so happy.

And then she left.

There was no explanation.

She was like, thank you for that service.

Yeah.

I just, I never want another baby.

Okay.

But I want my babies.

I just want a day where I can just like go to their crib and they're just like looking at me and it's like their whole world and everything's less confusing.

And I feel scared.

I feel suddenly terrified because I knew how to do parenting when my job was just to like keep them in our little community, in our little school, in our little house,

they're like in my grip.

I knew what to do, but I don't know how

to protect them, or

I don't even know how to support them in their big lives, like when they're out in the world.

So I'm

panicked all the time, and I'm being

so horribly annoying.

I am

texting them to check on them.

I am doing that all the time.

If I don't hear back, I feel panicked, like something for sure happened.

And

I don't want to be like a job for them.

Like, I don't want to be something they have to manage.

I want to be a resource for them.

I don't want to be a job, you know?

But the world is so

scary.

And

I feel like

I'm trying to understand why I suddenly feel so scared for them out in the world.

And I think at the base of it is I have a real ambivalence about life.

I feel like

had I thought it through,

I'm not sure that I would have brought people that I love this much here.

I know that sounds.

Life is the wrong itinerary for people that you love that much.

I think I feel that.

I truly feel that.

I feel like a person who

has taken their favorite people in the entire world and invited them to a party.

But you know that feeling when you invite people to a place and then you're responsible for their experience.

You are the one who brought them there.

And so there is horrible people and violence and the world's the party, like you are responsible.

for helping them survive this party.

And so I feel like I told Abby recently when she was,

I don't know, somebody mentioned something, and then I immediately got online to like send them something that they need, I don't know, that no one asked for.

And

I told her, I feel like it's the hunger games, and I have brought them to the arena.

And the only thing I can do is be the person who sends in the provisions.

Like that's like, that's my job.

And

I don't think that that is a helpful way of thinking.

Like, I understand that I'm going to need

to be in a different place, but I really feel like I wanted to explain what it actually feels like to me in the moment because I do think knowing myself, I'll get to a better place, but this is what it is now.

And I feel like I'm constantly thinking, I cannot believe that I brought you here for this.

And one day I'll be gone, and I'll just be leaving you at this party.

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Do you think it's true that the world is all bad?

I do not think that the world is all bad.

I think that being a human being

in this particular world, in this moment, on this planet, or maybe any moment,

is much harder than I understood it was when I was 25.

Why?

Why do you think that?

I just think it's really painful to be on this planet.

I'm not having an easy, breezy time.

I think at the end of the day that I think it's like 51% worth it.

But it's not 90

for me.

Not a slam dunk.

It's a real close.

It's not a slam dunk.

And I'm raising deeply feeling people who are paying attention to the world, who are like,

I mean, pleasure problem.

I recently saw a meme that said somebody asked me about how I feel about recent events, and I said, I am against them.

That's how I feel.

I'm con, not pro.

Right.

And so, as an example, the kid was home.

I'm spinning a little bit, doing my best to be activated, like doing all my things about the world, and in particular, the Palestine genocide.

And

I was just trying to present

a cozy, happy house at that time.

So every time the kid came upstairs, I was like off the computer and like painting or like turning on music so that it would feel like just trying to create.

This kid sits down and what the kid is struggling with is how the world is going on.

And everyone's acting like they don't care with

what's going on.

in Palestine.

I'm like doing the opposite of what the kid needed.

That's

how it always is.

Okay.

Can I ask a quick question?

Yes, please.

Please.

I'm wondering, as you're talking, I'm catching threads of a couple of things.

And I'm wondering, is the fear

that

knowing you won't be able to control

or choose what happens to them?

which to a large extent you could do when they were young.

You could choose what happens to them and choose what doesn't happen to them.

Is it that you can no longer choose what happens to them?

Or is it knowing that from here on out

they get to choose

what role

you have?

I think it's probably that too.

Yeah, maybe that's why I'm so wanting them to know all of my explanations.

And like, I want them to see me as a good mom.

I'm sending them freaking TikToks.

I don't even know.

I'm not on TikTok, but like I'll see something come through that's like why it's good to have an over-protective mom and I'll send it to them on the family chat.

I'm trying to like shape their narrative about

the same fear, right?

You need them to see you

as good,

a good mother with good judgment,

who made every best decision and tormented yourself to think of what was best for them and make those decisions

not just to vindicate the last 20 years of your life but to ensure that you remain

very prominent and relied upon

and yes engrossed in their life going forward yes like the last thing i need is for anybody thinking for themselves the last thing i need is for any of these people to decide on their own what the hell all this was.

You're making sort of like a joke about it.

It's true.

But if this is a point of individuation where they realize they are separate from you

and that you are a person and they are a different person than that and that they're going to have feelings and thoughts and judgments that don't flow through your filter before it comes to them,

then it follows that they will get to decide

what happened to them up until this point and analyze that and what part of them they like and don't like.

And they will get to decide how much you had to do with that.

And they will get to decide how much of a role you have in their life and how much of an influence you have in their life going forward.

And that's terrifying.

Especially when individuation is the moment that people realize that they are two separate people.

I understand

that our children are now becoming their own person.

What I don't understand is what I am now.

Amen.

Yes.

I became a person.

My therapist is always like, there's two of you.

Like it's, you're a person to them.

You're okay.

Well, what is that?

Because I was not a person

before I had these kids.

I was a raging mess and didn't do anything intentionally and had no personality.

Okay.

I became a person as their mom.

I don't know.

It's like the first time I've ever even slightly understood, Abby, what you went through at the end of soccer.

I don't ever understood really what people are talking about because I don't like, if somebody said, you can't ever be a writer anymore, I'd be like, cool.

If somebody said, you can't ever do a podcast anymore, I'd be like, all right.

There's nothing that you can say to me that feels like the stripping of an identity.

This part, I feel like I don't understand how to exist as a person.

It makes so much sense.

So it's not that I'm scared that they are becoming people.

I'm creating narratives because I don't know what the hell they're looking at,

separate than this, when they look at me, separate than this thing, this role that I've always had, which is now changing

so much.

And I also think that

one of the things we don't talk about as much as women, or

I've never had a moment where I felt like I truly belonged in a group of people.

I've searched for it until this little family.

Yeah.

So it's not just identity.

It's also this belongingness.

The only real belongingness I've ever felt in my entire fucking life is in this little house with these particular people.

So it's not not just about them and being out in the scary world.

It's about me being in the scary world again.

Like, I don't know to whom I belong.

I've been in therapy about this too, because I know the transition from soccer out of soccer was really difficult for me.

That I want to be a little bit more prepared.

We have two years before the youngest goes off to college.

And

one thing that I'm thinking about

is through their eyes.

Like you're pretty good at figuring out, looking through their eyes, like trying to create the experience for them.

Like, what do you want to do as a parent to create this next experience positive for them?

And I think about my experience leaving my parents' house.

And one of my concerns since I was the youngest was like,

God, what is my mom going to do?

That was a concern of mine.

Yeah.

And a worry of mine.

That's interesting.

That, like, she spent her whole life, seven children, caring for human beings.

And I didn't know what she would do.

Now, a few years later, she had her first grandbaby, and that's what she ended up doing.

But my point is,

it is our job to not make them worried about that.

Agree.

It is our job to have

stuff to do, to create novelty, to create adventure, to create things.

Because the truth is we cannot control how they think about their childhood.

It's never been clearer to me that this moment in parenting, I have always tried to figure out what

they are, where they are developmentally and what they need from me.

And that I'm good at, okay?

I'm reverse engineering my entire life all the time.

What version of me?

is going to be best between the ages of eight and 10.

What version of me is going to be, and I was trained as a teacher.

So that is very, that comes very naturally to me, like working backwards that way.

This, Laurel,

it feels to me like

parenting these older kids is actually

figuring out our approach, Laurel, is just as important as figuring out our approach when they're one or when they're three or when they're five.

The answer is not, well, that's it.

Fuck it.

I'm on my own.

It's just a different version of parenting that maybe requires 10 times as much wisdom and 10 times as much attention, actually,

in different ways.

Okay.

I think I had this idea that

grown-ups have kids.

People who have grown up have children

and then they help their children grow up.

What I

now

understand

is that I have been growing up alongside my kids since the day that they were born.

That I was a baby

when I got pregnant with my oldest.

And that

I have,

with the consciousness that I had all along,

I grew up

the best way that I knew how

while also helping another little one grow up,

which has been hard and tricky and messy.

And there's probably a million things that I'd do differently with this consciousness, except no, because then I wouldn't want them to be any different than they are.

So maybe not even that.

Okay.

So I think that this moment, it requires just

massive, skillful amounts of compassion

for our little ones who are going to have so many questions for us about why we did what we did and we're not going to be able to answer half of them.

And such simultaneous compassion for ourselves

because we

are still growing up and we were growing up the whole time.

And we made this ridiculous decision to raise people while raising ourselves.

And that is hard.

So it's like, I just want to have

in this time going forward, I want to have that soft front and strong back, meaning I want to be a space where my older kids can have questions and criticism and I can handle it.

I can handle it, that I don't have any shame

because shame shuts everything down.

and makes them not, this, this time in our life is a call for zero,

whatever the equivalent of white fragility is, like parental fragility.

This is not a time for fragility, right?

This is a time for, I can be so open to all of your questions because I know how much compassion I have for myself because I have finally figured out that this is never about

good mom, bad mom, good childhood, bad childhood, that we have all just been doing the best that we can.

And the best that we can in this time

is this double helix of compassion, which

amazingly adds this triple helix of compassion that for the first time, I have true, deep compassion for my parents.

I wondered when we were going to get there.

Listen, I'm still pissed about a lot of shit.

But.

I understand now.

That's all I can say.

I understand

that we

don't know everything.

Yeah.

And it's like

what Abby's therapist said to her at one point, which I thought that was so brilliant.

And I think about every day, which is this idea that

the job of kids, of a 20-year-old, of a 15-year-old, for some kids, it happens earlier at 13.

For some, they'll be 40 when it happens.

But there is this assassination of the parent.

And it's like the job of the kid is to kill the parent off.

And that is is

so important for individuation.

Like that's a developmental stage.

Like they have to

decide we're bad or decide we're whatever so that they can make their own way.

And so it is their job to kill the parent.

And it is the job of the parent not to die

to maintain this level of like, I'm thinking of it as like a sovereignty right now.

I'm thinking of it as my energy right now

is, I am chasing everyone.

I am desperate.

My energy is just like reaching out and grabbing at them and grabbing at them.

And that is not where I want to be.

I want to be

on a fucking throne in my house.

I want to be not the throne of like, I was a great mom.

So don't poke any holes in the story I have for myself.

Just

the centeredness of of a person who knows that it's not about good and bad, and that at every moment of this life with them, I have loved them

sometimes poorly, sometimes amazingly.

And so I have like this centered

faith in that,

right?

That I'm okay and that they can come.

I

have this friend who I was doing a yoga class the other day and she teaches it.

She always lets us pick one of those, I think it's tarot.

Is that how you say it?

We say tarot, but.

Yeah.

So, okay, I don't know what it is, but I pulled one and it was called The Hermit.

And I was like, oh my God, this is so me.

And I was made a joke.

I was like, does this mean I don't have to leave the house anymore ever?

And she said, that card is about a person who, yes, the vibe of staying home, which is metaphorical, right?

Like home in your body, home in your whatever, but who always has a light on so that people are attracted to that, so that people come back to get your light.

I want them to see my peace and strength and juicy, beautiful life and trust it and want it enough to ask for my help and my thoughts and to see me as a steady resource that they can come back to and refuel and

so that they can

go out

into their lives and

become that.

And I'm not there.

Yeah, when you get brave enough.

But I'm working to it.

Like, I feel it energetically.

I know, I feel it.

And when you get brave enough, you're going to put a sign on your throne that says, please tell me everything you want me to know.

Because I think that that's the hard part about these growing up children is that they now start to have private lives, not only interior, but private lives with their friendships and their new partners and their new communities that they're building and forging for themselves.

And I think that that feels hard because I do feel like it leaves us out.

And getting comfortable with the space in between their lives and our lives is what this fucking journey is.

It is a trek.

It feels like it's Mount Everest right now.

And also there's like a part of me that just has to trust and believe that we did the very best that we could and that they will come and file their grievances when they're ready.

And so will we be.

Amen.

Amen.

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It truly is

the most heartbreaking paradox of life, right?

That if

you are lucky

and if your work has

come to fruition,

your children will not need you.

Yep.

And

what you want

most in the world

is for them to need you on some base level.

And so you have to get to the evolution of feeling good about them not needing you

and trusting that they will want you.

That's it.

And they will choose you.

That's it.

I was talking with my therapist the other day about that.

And like, if you could be brave enough to bridge the gap between the person needing you and for them to get to the place where they want you,

where they choose, it's not a necessity.

It's a choice.

It's a, oh, I can't wait to go back to see my family, whatever it is.

That is the magic.

Because think about it, it's just so much more expansive.

Needing somebody is constricting.

Wanting somebody is expansive and open and possible.

Yeah.

And the surefire way, tragically, which is the painful fire you're walking through right now, Glennon, the surefire way to make sure that your kids won't have the ability to want you is if you need them.

Yep.

Yes, that is not okay.

You cannot need

your children.

You can't even right now.

We get away with it when they're little.

We get away with needing them to be okay.

We get away with needing to, we just barely, though.

It causes a lot of suffering for us and our kids to need them to be anything.

But when you're old, the needing, that is the desperation.

That is what you're trying to chase with those texts.

It's the chasing of the wind in Ecclesiastes.

Like, you're never gonna, it's when you need them,

they will not want you.

No,

because they can't, because they know that's not right.

They know that's not a healthy relationship for them.

When you don't need them, you open up the space that they can want you.

It's like the name on the deed is changing.

Because, look, we all think of our children as mine, ours.

And if we can start thinking about them as their own body, their own separate entity, and hand over the deed to them and have them fill in their own name with their own pen and their own signature and instincts and love, they need to know that we trust that they can go do this on their own.

I know.

I just don't know if I can do it on my own.

Like, I don't know.

I know that they can.

Does your life have a meaning?

Does your life have, will you, without this, if they don't choose you, if they they don't want you,

what makes of that life?

Whew.

That's when I'm like, I'm going to have to do something drastic to make my life worth living.

Yes, that's good.

I think that's right.

I think it is right.

I don't know what the drastic thing is.

Don't have another baby.

Oh, fuck.

No, I'd rather have purposeless existential dread for the rest of the day.

Because I think that a lot of people do that shit.

Totally.

That is not it.

Oh, God.

That's just like delaying the inevitable.

Two things that I'll end this

with: is that on the plus side, Laurel,

lately, every time I look at one of these people that are suddenly like adult people in my house,

I am flabbergasted by them.

I suddenly can't even believe

how beautiful they are.

How it is like I am suddenly geppetto and they have all suddenly come to life like little Pinocchios and they are

operating in a way that I can't understand.

I am my ghasted is flabbered.

And Abby knows this.

I am constantly looking at them going, oh my God, you are so beautiful.

And it's too much.

Yeah.

It's too, yeah.

Yeah.

It's it's actually awful.

Abby's like, it is.

Like my kid's trying to eat her

mac and cheese.

And I'm like, oh my God,

you're so beautiful.

It's too much.

It's thirsty.

It's thirsty.

It's thirsty is what it is.

Laurel, I don't know.

I have no lesson.

I'm just telling you that that has happened.

I don't know what to do about it.

Secondly,

and lastly, I promise, coming back to that oldest one that we started with.

So

I was raised on the East Coast.

Okay.

I moved as far as humanly possible while staying in this country, I think, right?

So like, I mean, we could have gone to Hawaii, but yeah.

Right.

So every day I look at the coast, we're so fucking lucky.

We live like, I can see the ocean from our house.

And I think I've told you this over and over again is that the mantra in my head every morning when I see it is, well, I've gone as far as I can go.

And I don't know what that means.

Okay.

It's just what I think.

My kid

is settling in on the East Coast.

He likes the bustle.

He likes the hustle.

He likes the culture.

He likes the allottiness.

I feel like I don't exist in a city.

Like I lose myself.

But I just was thinking about that so much just this morning on the way home.

If that's not this generational shit, I don't know what it is.

My parents raised me on the East Coast.

I'm like, fuck no.

I go all as far as I can thinking I'm creating this life for my little family that's going to all stay together.

Nope.

Back.

It's just back and forth, coast to coast.

And sometimes the kids just have to find themselves on the opposite coast of you, right?

Yeah.

And also it could look like choosing the opposite coast of you, or it could look like I taught my kids that you could go a whole coast away.

and still have home.

Yeah.

And so they got to choose that that for themselves.

Yep.

And luckily, we don't live in an age where you have to travel by horse and buggy to get there.

It's a five-hour flight.

It feels like that.

It's a five-hour flight, and we have face time.

Like, it's as if we could be living with him.

We will have a humanoid robot probably in our house at some point in the next few years.

And the face, we will have it programmed together.

That's a great idea.

Remember when he went to college?

And I put, for months, I put a place setting with a framed picture of him on the plate so that it would.

I know.

I know.

I'm not saying any of its normal.

Talk about it.

It's too much, people.

My God, it's like a memorial.

It's nothing else.

It's hard because the kids do also.

They're like, oh my God.

They roll their eyes like, mom, come on.

They also like secretly love it.

They also like secretly love and

know

that there is not a person on this planet that has loved them like you.

From the moment they were born, they know in their bones that though mom might be a lot and oh my god, she's telling me that I'm beautiful and all this stuff right now, they know

and I want you to know and I want you to affirm yourself of this every day

that you are the most important person in all three of their lives.

That you will live as the most influential person that has ever come into contact with them.

They might not ever say that to you.

They might, but I know it.

I know it by the way that when they call you.

I know it by the way when there's a crisis and they need something, they call you.

I know it by the way

when they get sick, they need you.

You are their person.

And yes, they are going to develop more lives, bigger relationships in different ways.

They know they can come to you.

And that is winning an Olympic gold medal, if you ask me.

I'm going to be such a good grandma.

You are.

And also, I'm going to be

mine.

I'm ready.

The first baby's mine.

Oh, you guys.

Thank you for listening.

I

kind of feel like

maybe

the function of this episode was to make other people feel like they're doing okay.

Like

at least they're not doing it this way.

It has been such a good with the bad, messy middle.

I like

noting and like

honoring

the moments where this stuff gets really hard and before it's all sorted.

It's real.

It's real.

And we all go through it different times and

in different ways.

But Laurel, I am with you in the trying to figure out who we are next.

Yes.

And Glennon,

isn't there a part of you that feels a little like, even if it's like a smidgen of excitement to uncover her again?

Yeah.

To be like, who is this lady in here?

Who is this young woman at 20 years old who I didn't really develop and I had to become insta adult, insta mom?

Who are you?

I am so eager to get to know her.

Cause guess what?

I'm also going through this too.

I'm trying to get to know the person before soccer.

Right.

Because I went from soccer to mommy.

Yes, you had a similar.

I'm also like, who the fuck am I?

What do I do?

Y'all are going to need some babysitters.

Yeah, we did.

It was.

Like, we've got two eight-year-old girls in this house trying to figure out who the fuck is.

Is that totally wrong though?

Because it was both, it was arrested development.

Yeah.

Whether it was addiction or talent.

Who am I?

Both created an arrested development.

That's the line between addiction and obsessive accomplishment.

I didn't have any talent, so I had to go for the boost.

Anyways, Pod Squad, we love you so much.

Let's just conjure some of that hermit energy.

All right.

We're on a fucking throne.

We did the best we could.

The throne says we've done the best we can.

Okay.

We love you.

We'll see you back here next time if you're brave enough.

Bye.

Bye.

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.

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

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