How to Create Unbreakable Bonds with Brittany Packnett Cunningham

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Okay, Pod Squad, today we have one of our favorite human beings on the planet here.

And we just, let's take a moment and acknowledge how effing lucky we are that this person is spending an hour with us because they're probably the most wanted person on the planet in this moment trying to figure out our way forward because that's what she's always doing.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham is a leader at the intersection of culture and justice.

Brittany is founder of the social impact agency Love and Power Works, host and executive producer of the news and justice podcast Undistracted, and an on-air political analyst.

She has been an elementary teacher, policy advisor, presidential appointee, and will forever be an activist.

You can find her at Miss Pack Yeti on all social media, and you really should, and subscribe to her podcast wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Brittany, how you doing?

I'm so great, and I'm so glad to be with you all.

I'm still

a little bit shaken in the the best way as to how much has changed very, very quickly.

You know, before we get started though, I want the squad to know that like we are friends in real life, right?

This is not some like internet situation.

I remember when you all were doing together live and you have become joined some of those shows and that was where I first met y'all.

And I like watched you, Glennon, sit on the floor of the stage and be so authentically yourself.

And I was like, what is happening, right like this is a i've this is a movement and it was so beautiful and building that friendship with you all and remembering being at one of my lowest points and you all calling and checking in on me you sent over the woman to give me like an iv infusion so that i would be okay and i i think that the community can so often get lost in these conversations because everybody's got a hot take everybody's got analysis everybody's got a platform and they're trying to do something with it and that is a beautiful thing and And if we are not building community throughout all of this, we have nothing.

There is nothing to go home to.

There is no one to hold you accountable.

There is no one to be a shoulder.

There is no one to make you better.

There is no one to engage in mutual aid with if all we're doing is talking and we're not able to be with one another.

So I want to thank you all for being people who are.

community for me and whether it's been a million years or five minutes we pick right up where we left off and I'm so thrilled to be now a part of this podcast community that you all have been building because I know just like at Undistracted, this is not an audience, right?

This is a community and a family.

I'm grateful to engage in all of this excitement and confusion and building and trial and error and trying again.

Okay, well, since you did that, before we jump in, can I just share with the pod squad the first time I ever saw you before?

Okay.

So

we were at this big speaking event.

Who the hell knows what it was?

I don't know.

No, it was in Florida because it was in our friend Barb and Michelle.

That's right.

Okay.

And there were several of us that were going to go speak together.

We were backstage.

I was doing my nervous thing because that's what I'm always doing.

We were getting ready to walk out and all of us who were going to be the speakers were kind of buzzing and like talking to each other and feeling nervous and like preparing in that way in this little circle.

And I look over

and Brittany

is standing absolutely away.

She had been with us, but at this point, right before we go off, she's standing away from us.

She is quietly standing in front of kind of this big, huge wall,

and she's just

gathering herself.

She's looking up at what looked like the ceiling, the sky, and she's just

magically,

I don't know, praying.

I think you were praying.

Yeah, that's what I was doing.

I actually took a creepy ass picture of you

and then immediately showed it to you because I was like, oh God, she's going to be like, why is this woman taking pictures of me by myself?

But I just remember thinking, oh,

that's where this like

confident,

calm, grounded power comes from.

And I remember thinking, I need to get her prep partner because mine

are kind of freaking me out.

So anyway,

that was my first experience of you, and I have never forgot it, and I will never forget it.

And every time I see you speak in your power and beauty and brilliance, I think of that moment.

Oh, thank you, friend.

Thank you.

I always spend that time asking God to hide me behind the illuminating shadow of the cross, is what I say.

And that whatever words come out, whatever thoughts come up, whatever concepts are spoken are not mine, but that they are divine, right?

And that I'm used as a vessel.

And you're the first person to ever notice that I was doing that because I really never did it to be noticed, right?

I would truly always scoot over into a corner and people, I'd come back and people would kind of be like, where have you been?

And I'd be like, it's all good.

Now, some of that preparation is because now I know know I have ADHD and I actually like need the silence before I go on stage.

But I really, in my faith tradition, you know, I was raised by two very faithful people.

And my father was a liberation theologian.

So I learned about.

like dark-skinned, woolly-haired Jesus, you know, who comes from the Middle East and from Palestine and who, you know, worshiped with thieves and sex workers, right?

And like all of the people that the world tells us to forget, that he told us were the most divine among us, right?

And that if our world is not safe for all of them, then it is not safe for any of us.

So to be clear, like that's who I'm praying to, because I think, you know, you talk about being a Christian and understandably, we have not had very good PR

for a long time, okay?

But I, yeah, I don't actually want people to see me.

Like I want them to feel whatever is divine for them and feel empowered to go walk into their divinity as they go and change the world.

Like, I always feel like that's my task.

So, I got to have a conversation.

So, I'm actually equipped to do that and I get out of my own ego, which is not easy because we all got them, but it's necessary work.

Yeah.

So, that's my prep partner.

No shade to you, Abby.

I'm sure you're a very good prep partner.

I'm just over here sitting here chilling.

I don't do, like, I know the whole

conversations

before big moments.

I have prayed, even though I was an atheist during a lot of my gold medal winning performances.

I was praying to God that we could win.

No atheist in a foxhole or on an Olympic match.

Yeah, so I think that maybe I'm more agnostic.

I'm more agnostic these days than I am atheists.

Well, and Brittany, Abby just loves going on stage.

She feels differently about going.

She likes to go on stage because it's the place that no one interrupts her.

In our house,

she gets interrupted a lot.

I've got three kids.

Three kids don't care about what I have to say ever.

You know what I mean?

And, like, this is where I let my ego come out.

I get to.

It's the opposite of you.

Yeah, I get to actually have it come out.

I'm like, oh, yeah, that's perfect, though, because right, it's been like, it's been hidden and shielded all this time.

So it just has been like ripening for that moment for you to like,

say, tell the stories and like inspire the people and finally be able to come out of your shell.

Because as soon as you get back home, you got to go right back in it.

That's right.

Humble pie, right?

When you walk in the house.

Can I ask you about that, Brittany?

Because it's a paradox that your

faith,

so much of your liberatory work

and social justice work and political work is based on your faith.

And then, you know, what you saw just recently, Trump is actually speaking to

the quote-unquote evangelical Christians, the Christian nationalists, who, when he's telling them they won't have to vote anymore, he just needs them to vote this time.

So much of the base

is the self-avowed Uber Christians.

Is it their real faith that's being perverted and manipulated?

Is it that they have bought something that isn't

the real faith?

Like, what's happening?

They're speaking truly to their faith because they worship at the altar of white supremacy.

They are not praying to the same person I'm praying to.

They are not reading the same word that I am reading, right?

If I look at the red letters, the words that Jesus spoke when he decided to, in my faith tradition, become flesh, become human, and experience

the both joy and suffering of the human experience in order to be a relatable leader.

And when we talk about leadership,

that is antithetical.

That is what's antithetical to a Christian fundamentalism and evangelicalism that is rooted in Christian nationalism, that is rooted in white supremacy and patriarchy, that's rooted in heteronormativity and cis supremacy, right?

That these are things that they have put at the center of their world,

which means that is the idol they have built, which to be clear biblically

is the exact opposite of what the commandment told you to do, right?

There shall be no other gods before me.

You will not build false idols.

They have built false idols and refined them and sharpened them over generations.

And then they have found human vessels to stand up as representatives of the idols they've built.

So Donald is a representative, right?

He is the idol in human form.

Ronald Reagan was the idol in human form.

I mean, if you ever listen to a Republican talk about Ronald Reagan, it is like they are talking about God.

Deified.

Completely deified, straight up, right?

Like he could do no wrong.

Meanwhile, he is where Make America Great Again originates, right?

Meanwhile, he could not even utter the words HIV and AIDS while a massive now epidemic was raging, right?

He is the one that built this system of trickle-down economics, which permanently, at least thus far, reversed government investment in communities and people and put that that money straight into the hands of billionaires.

Like the reason why all of these billionaires were able to get richer during COVID has everything to do with a man named Ronald Reagan that they made God,

right?

So

they don't worship at the same altar I worship.

I'm not confused about that.

So for me, I tell people I'm not

progressive politically

despite being a Christian.

I'm progressive politically because I am a Christian,

because I was taught who Jesus actually was and what he stood for, because I was taught not to center my own image, but his, right?

Not, because I was taught that the basis of our faith is justice,

right?

That is what the fight is always for.

And so, I, yeah, like I want so many of us who are progressive

people of faith to reclaim that identity and take it back, right?

I think it's so interesting, and this is something that I've heard her do for a while, watching Vice President Harris, now that she's the presumptive Democratic nominee, reclaim the conversation on freedom and liberty, right?

I know you all have heard this, but these are words that for decades had become synonymous with Republicans, conservatives, the GOP, because they snatched it for themselves and they perverted the meeting and then sold it back to us.

What they sold back to us was a lie because they told us that real liberty meant restriction, that real liberty meant a lack of bodily autonomy, that real liberty meant all the women back in the kitchen and all the men in charge, right?

So here she is reclaiming what freedom means, reclaiming what liberty means, not because a single politician or party or election can set us free, but because we deserve to stand fully in what we are fighting for for and not let anybody thieve that language from us, thieve those concepts from us, right?

And it's that reclamation is important.

For me, that reclamation of my faith is important.

I know so many more people who are people of faith, who operate similarly to me, who have taught me how to operate in this way, who sharpen and refine my own walk as it relates to my work every single day.

I know far more of those people of faith than I do the other kind.

Now, I don't spend a lot of time at evangelical churches.

That's probably not a surprise, but we deserve to reclaim that.

We deserve to reclaim that.

Because if I'm going to believe what I believe, it should be of help and not harm to my neighbor.

Community and belonging, such a deep human need.

What do we do about

the average person who has found their community, their little version of mutual aid in their neighborhoods, in their churches, and they believe that the price of belonging and the price of community is ceding

to

this vote, this belief, even if it doesn't sit right in their soul.

Like,

what do we do about that?

Because that might be the reason why none of this that makes any sense is happening.

Yeah, you know, awakening to something that you've been raised in is a very challenging thing to do, right?

That it is emotional because you

are

coming to the place where you're rejecting the things that feel part and parcel with your identity.

I knew people growing up who were like, I am a Christian first and I'm everything else second.

And I'm not here to judge if that's how anybody decides to declare their identities.

It's not for me, but I'm not here to judge you for that.

But if that's how you identify and then suddenly you start thinking a little more critically about the sermons that have been preached about who's going to hell and who's not, about who you should love and who you shouldn't, about, you know, what is the role of the woman and what is not.

And then you start looking a little bit more critically at the person sitting to the left of you and the person sitting to the right of you.

And then you start thinking a little more critically about the lessons that you're being taught in Sunday school.

And then you start getting around more diverse groups of people.

And you start to realize that not only is this thing that you so fully identify with so different than what other people are bringing to the table, but that it actually can cause harm if you continue to identify in the particular way that you are.

Right.

And you look up and you're doing harm and you didn't intend to, and this is just what you've been taught.

And this is what you were raised in.

And this is all you've known, everyone you've ever gone to school with, all your friends, every birthday party you ever had, every holiday you ever celebrated.

This thing was at the center.

Extrapolating yourself from that

is

so painful.

Yep.

Because you have to learn how to distinguish between rejection of

dogma and rejection of yourself and the people you love.

I can't imagine how absolutely challenging.

Actually, I can't imagine how absolutely challenging that is because, in my own faith, I have evolved.

And I had to, like, when my husband and I, when we moved to DC, back to DC from St.

Louis, we decided very intentionally that we were no longer going to go to a church that was homophobic and patriarchal.

That we could say, well, it's really hard to find a church.

And, you know, like, you know, I know what I believe.

And so I just ignore that part of the sermon.

No, I'm not paying my tithes

to a place that stands against people that I love and that does not operate in how I have been engaging with God in this personal relationship and what he's been telling me.

I'm not like, y'all not getting 10% of my money for that.

And it took us a year to find that church.

And I find myself now more able to have conversations with people who taught me those things, not because they hated me, but because they loved me and they thought that was the right thing to do, right?

But that is hard.

That is incredibly difficult.

So, to your point, I think what we have to do is we have to simultaneously.

This is very difficult on the other side.

We have to simultaneously

give grace and expect responsibility.

So I like to remind people, I am not Christ.

I do not give grace and mercy anew every day.

That is not, I aspire to be like Christ, but that's not my ministry as of right now, right?

So my grace will extend as far as you take responsibility.

Boom.

So if you are coming into that awakening, if you are realizing actually this thing that I was taught and this thing I used to say and these things I used to post are really harmful.

And I'm still peeling back the layers of that and trying to understand who I should go be now.

I will have grace for that because you're taking responsibility for your own growth and learning.

You're going out there and finding community that embraces who you are becoming, right?

That helps aid you in your journey.

Other people who have taken that journey, you're finding space with them.

But if you stop being on that journey, if you decide, well, I've read enough books and I did the book club and I've got a rainbow flag in my Twitter bio and hashtag Black Lives Matter in my Instagram bio.

So I'm good.

Well, then my grace is going to start to fade

because

there is more for which you are responsible than just that.

If you have Black Lives Matter in your bio and I, as a regular black woman, am not safe around you at work, at play, at church, with my own children, then you still have work to do.

And if I extend too much grace to you, now I've made myself unsafe.

Now I've made my child unsafe, right?

So I need you to step back up in that responsibility.

And as long as you're engaged in that process, I can be in community with you.

As soon as you step back and start saying that's no longer my job, and I tell you it is your job and you still decide to stop making progress, then I have to remove myself.

But I think that if we

do extend the grace where people are genuinely taking responsibility, folks can find the kind of community in us that they need to keep going, right?

And that they need to then turn around to the people who taught them the wrong way and start to pull them in into the community as well, start to pull them into awakening, right?

Like that's how we build a justice army.

All your words are so directional.

It's like, if you're moving this way, I extend grace.

If you stop, if you turn back, to me, it's directional.

It's like Abby and I talk all the time about, okay, so who are we forgiving and what?

Like about homophobia and there is a way of being where you, you believed some stuff because you were taught that.

And then suddenly you're directionally moving in a different direction.

If you continue to move in that direction, I will be with you.

But there's another way of doing it, which is a stopping and like a backwards.

Well, I'm sorry for that, but I can tell there's no movement.

Yeah.

You're not on the path.

You're not on a path.

So we can't be on the path together.

When I worked full-time in education, there's a book that all of us read called Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together?

Me too, when I was teaching.

And if you were like a parent or a student at like an elite white private high school, like I was at a certain time, all of the book clubs are reading this book, right?

So I remember that book being very popular when I was a student myself.

And then fast forward when I'm running an education organization, I'm having my team read it, right?

And one of the things that Dr.

Tatum, who is an education researcher and practitioner, she's the former president of Spelman College, one of the things that she talks about is this moving walkway and is not the perfect analogy because it's, it doesn't make accommodations for ability, but follow me here.

So she talks about those people movers in the airport, right?

That you get on it and you can get to your gate faster just by standing still, that you actually don't have to make any effort.

The thing is making the effort for you.

She says, when you are standing on that moving walkway and you are facing in the direction, the intended direction, right?

Going from gate 50 to gate 40,

you are part of a first group of people that has accepted society, that has accepted the rules of society, right?

White dominant culture, patriarchal culture, et cetera.

You've accepted those rules and you're moving along in the intended direction, right?

You may even even be walking with it, right?

Enthusiastically.

You may even be running with it to get to your next gate.

That's our MAGA friends, right?

Who are like trying to get in the intended direction of white supremacy.

Yeah, it's not even fast as possible.

It's not as fast as possible.

Exactly.

They're like, no, we got to hustle, right?

And there are people who are standing still and at least looking around and trying to observe what's around them, but they're still moving in the intended direction.

Then there's a second group of people who started to realize, huh, what's ahead of us in the intended direction doesn't actually seem like the best destination for all of us.

Like we're headed to gate 40, but maybe we need to be at gate like 57.

I don't know.

So they turn around

and they start curiously looking around and trying to see what else makes sense to them because the thing that was ahead of them in their intended direction no longer computes.

right they turn around but if you turn around and you're standing backwards on a moving walkway you are still being moved in the intended direction, right?

You're still being moved toward white supremacy.

Then she talks about a third group of people who realize the intended direction is unjust and evil, who realize that turning, simply turning around is not enough.

And so they start to walk in the other direction.

They start to try to get themselves where they realize they should have been all along, right?

But y'all know just as well as I do, maybe this is not true for you, Abby, because you're an Olympian, but for most of us, when we try to walk in the opposite direction of the people people mover, it is hard.

It's hard because the force, the force of the intended direction is still trying to take you back to where it wants you to go.

Yeah.

Right.

And people are yelling at you because you're going the wrong direction.

You in the way.

You going the wrong direction.

Stop playing around.

This is too much.

I'm trying to get where I'm trying to go and you're standing in the way.

Right.

So that third group of people is working against

the quote unquote natural flow of things, right?

And it threatens to take them under, it threatens to have them give up and say, you know what, this is too hard.

It's too much effort.

My thighs are burning.

Just whatever.

Just take me where we were supposed to go because I don't feel like doing this anymore, right?

And that is, of course, the privilege of whiteness, the privilege of being cis, the privilege of being straight, the privilege of being a man, right?

Or, you know, like that is the privilege that says I can tap out at any time because even if I go to the intended direction that white supremacy has for me, I will be safe in it, will be protected in it.

I know how to maneuver and navigate that space and I won't be found out.

Right.

Now, for plenty of us, it ain't no turning back.

There's nothing for us over there, but destruction, but terror, right?

Then she talks about a fourth group of people.

The fourth group of people realizes that if they are going to overwhelm the force of the intended direction, if they're going to actually change the momentum and the velocity of the people mover in the intended direction, then they cannot do it alone.

That it is their job to go and link arm in arm and recruit as many people as possible, because the only way to stop the thing and move it in a different direction is to overwhelm the original force.

And you cannot do that by yourself.

You cannot do that with just your own journey, with just your own force, with just your own legs and your own suitcase.

It's impossible.

Right?

The only way we're changing this thing is if we're actually all moving in the opposite direction together.

And I like to add a fifth group.

Yes.

Because there's a fifth group of people who say, you know what?

Turn this people mover off.

Shut it down.

That's right.

Shut the whole people mover down.

Somebody go press that little red button under the cover that you're not supposed to press.

The alarm will ring.

It will freak people out.

Folks will not want the people mover to stop moving.

Folks will be mad at you.

Folks will say that you are a threat.

Folks will say that you are in fact the one inducing the terror when in fact

you are trying to get everybody on the people mover to turn around, look and move in the other direction or get off the people mover altogether because we need a different way to get where we have to go.

That's right.

And so like, that's what I'm talking about when people just stop or they choose to get radical.

And what Angela Davis says is that all radical means is getting to the root.

That is a word that is intended to like people have perverted to scare people, but she's just saying, let's get to the root of this thing instead of tinker around the edges let's stop breaking off the branches and actually uproot what's bad and plant a new tree that is the kind of sorry my son is like freaking out in the background

but that that is that is all of our work

at every given moment of the day

And that's also what tires people out.

Cause you telling me I got to be running in the opposite direction and recruiting people at my job when I just want to go do my work and go home and get paid for it.

You telling me that in the meeting, I have to bring up what somebody was talked over.

You talk about in the meeting, I got to show up as a co-conspirator.

You telling me that I actually have to like sacrifice something

that I hold dear, the things that I hold dear, the position that I hold dear, the privilege that I hold dear, the protection of that privilege that I hold dear.

You telling me I got to sacrifice some of that

to be willing to either be the person who presses the button or cover the person who presses the button, right?

Or make a distraction for the person who's pressing the button so that they don't get injured.

You tell me, I gotta, I don't feel, I don't feel like doing that, right?

I don't feel like being that person.

I don't feel like always being the squeaky wheel at church and at home and at work and at the city council meeting and during the block party.

And people, like, if you have the privilege to tap out, it is really easy to say, never mind, y'all got it.

But the y'all who always have to have it are those of us who have no choice but to move in the opposite direction.

And now, how is it fair that a system that we did not build and that we will never benefit from is on us to tear down?

We're not the ones who need to be the most traitorous to that system.

That's right.

Right.

In order to tear that thing down, we need people to be traitors to that system.

We need white folks to be traitors to the system of white supremacy.

We need cis folks to be traitors to the system of cis supremacy.

We need able-bodied people to be traitors to the system of ableism.

That is the work

all the time.

And yes, it is exhausting and it is taxing and you lose things and you sacrifice a lot.

And

when you've been smart enough to link up arm in arm with people to change the force, you have community in which you can do it.

Yes.

So this idea that when you step away from the things that you've always known, you're suddenly isolated and alone, it's because you have yet to let go of the white supremacist principle of individualism that tells you, I got to go figure it out all myself.

Actually, pick your head up.

Look around.

There are a whole bunch of people like you who are on the journey, behind you on the journey, in front of you on the journey, right?

Who are there to be community for you so that you can keep your energy and strength up to do that work?

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Is there a connection, Brittany, between, and please just everyone forgive me because this is just a swirling and I'm not going to say it right, but there's something about

the affinity groups, the groups that came together after Win with Black Women met right after, well, you all had been meeting forever and then you all got together on the night of Kamala's first endorsement from Biden and then raised $1.4 million and there were 44,000 of you and then the black men did it, then white women and then, okay, there was something in that meeting.

Like, honestly, Brittany, when Shannon sent me the graphic and was like, Do you want to, we're going to do this?

I was like, wait, so wait, are we saying that we're white women, like, in writing?

No, like, that's

like, can I just have 30 seconds?

And everyone will find out.

But, like, are we going to say it, like, in writing, like, collectively?

Right, right.

And by the way, four years ago, I tried to do that, and was, it was a blood, so much of a bloodbath that the people I was organizing with were like, stop, pull it back.

this isn't working.

So

there was something

seeing whatever it was, 165,000 white women say, I am in fact white and am coming to this thing, that I thought, is this what we have not been offering any sort of alternative?

They have only been seeing I have safety in these pews with these men who are telling me that this is the only version of safety and community that is available to me.

So if I leave this, I have nowhere to go.

I have nowhere to be.

And is there something in these groups that feels fresh and new in a way of saying, no, there is an alternative.

That was false safety.

That is not safety for us.

That's where we die.

Yeah.

Here's another place that maybe this is real safety.

Maybe this is a community we show up with.

Is there any connection here?

There's absolutely a connection, right?

Because again, that third group of people on that moving walkway often are the most self-righteous, right?

They're like, I've read all the books.

I went to all the lectures.

I asked Tanhasi Coates to be my personal mentor.

He said no when I asked, right?

Like, I show up at all the things, I make all the posts.

And

that hardly feels like a failure because in a society built around individualism, you get a lot of praise for that, right?

But when you start to realize that is a lonely path,

you then have, to your point, Glennon, two choices.

You can either press forward and find community, or you can stop, turn around, and give up, right?

And you might do that quietly because you don't want to stop getting your social justice cookies, but you still turn, you stop and you turn around and you go back in the other direction.

So it's absolutely related.

Here's the thing, though.

And perhaps this is a conversation we should have.

First of all, when the white women call came up and I realized that it was you and Shannon

who were organizing this.

I'm like, of course it is.

And I say that in part because I have watched the both of you

be intentional listeners and then intentional doers.

A lot of people like to stop at that listening phase.

We saw that all throughout 2020.

Everybody bought all the books.

My agent was like, are you sure you can't get your book out right now?

Because it will be like an immediate bestseller.

And I'm like, I hear you.

I still have other things to experience in order to write this book.

Like, I get you, but it's just not about the numbers for me.

But I understand

why you're asking me this, right?

Because everybody read the books.

Everybody wanted to listen to black women.

I have seen very few actually then go and do, right?

And do and fuck up and then do again.

Right?

Which is, again, in a society built off of individualism and so-called merit, nobody wants to fuck up.

Everybody wants to be perfect at the thing the first time out.

You can ask any of my trans friends.

I did not get that thing right the first time coming out or the second time or the third time, right?

I got better though.

So I was not surprised that it was you two doing that because you have been invested in that process for a long time.

And I think especially, you know, a lot of us have been frustrated with after this, what I call the summer of our discontent in summer 20, and summer 2020, how much things not only went back to normal, but went back to even worse, right?

That kind of backlash that we saw, that we're seeing for DEI against Claude and Gay, against Kentaji Brow Jackson, like all of that stuff came up because we had the audacity to be forthright in who we are.

That's right.

And demand basic aspects of humanity be applied to us as well.

But there were at least seeds planted then, even if we didn't see them germinate in all the ways we wanted to over the last four years.

And I think that one of those seeds was that white women were forced to realize they had not really been taught sisterhood.

And this is like, I actually want to hear you all talk about this because, and like, tell me if you think I'm wrong, but I just, one of the things I have experienced, especially in this moment, right?

So you talk about the women with black women call.

Shout out to Jotake Edie and Holly Holiday and so many others who were at the helm of that from the very beginning.

We started meeting four years ago

because

originally when

presidential nominee Kamala Harris was vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, the misogynoir that she faced was outrageous and very few organized, very few people were speaking up against it and there was little to no organized effort to push back against it, right?

To call these outlets out, to talk about why these things are problematic, right?

Even though some of these phrases and ideas just feel normal for people when they're talking about black women and South Asian women.

So we really formed because we say that is our sister.

Whether we agree with everything she has ever done or not is not the point.

The point is time and time again, it has been proven that black women are all we got, that there is nobody coming to our aid, that we are expected to fix everything for everybody else.

And then when we are the ones in trouble, we have to link arm in arm, hand in hand, because nobody's coming to join us.

That has consistently been our experience in the American experiment.

You can ask the black women who were fighting for voting rights as part of the suffragette movement just to be left behind by white suffragettes, right?

Just for Susan B.

Anthony to say, I would rather cut off this right arm of mine than to fight for the vote for the Negro and not the woman, right?

Because even in that phrase, she's not just not fighting for black women voting, she's erasing the existence of black women because she was talking about black men.

There's an anthology of essays written by black women that I refer to a lot in my book called All the Women Are White, All the Men Are Black, but Some of Us Are Brave.

Black women have always had to be the brave ones.

So when we saw our sister being attacked, the sisters mounted up like regulators, right?

We didn't have to all be the same sorority from the same place, believe all the same things, be the same faith.

We didn't all have to be biracial or not.

It did not matter.

That was one of us.

In contrast, I remember watching the Kavanaugh hearings

and

the ways in which

Christine Blaseyford,

Brett Kavanaugh's very credible sexual assault accuser,

was treated by supposed representatives of American citizens was abhorrent.

And I remember watching how many of my white women friends were incensed in a way I had never seen them before.

And I remember looking, and I was like, Christine Blasey Ford is not the first white woman to get,

you know, crucified for the sake of patriarchy.

She's not even the first white woman this year.

But it did something to people.

But then that instinct to say, how do we come together and organize to protect her like that next step didn't happen as quickly or as thoroughly or as broadly as i thought it would have knowing the way that like

black women show up so meanwhile like went with black women started for that but when brittany griner was detained We had a campaign.

When Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard University, was being attacked, we worked together, right?

The reality was that we had,

codified the sisterhood in a particularly political way in an era where one can use many forms of media to not only get the word out, but to protect one another, right?

We were, and even if it wasn't always a big, well-known campaign, there were ways we were blocking and tackling for each other because heads of DEI at corporate spaces were suddenly being attacked and we wanted to make sure that there was cover for them,

right?

Organizers and activists were being attacked.

We wanted to make sure that there was cover for them.

And sometimes cover looked like making a call for somebody.

Sometimes cover looked like passing the collection plate and putting $5,000 in somebody's account because they had lost all of their jobs and speaking engagements for saying the thing, right?

But that was the kind of cover that we were used to providing for each other, that we knew was necessary and that we knew we had to be the ones to provide for each other.

And so I think that part of the resistance that you experienced all those years ago was that white women had been removed intentionally from the the instinct of sisterhood right because white women have been taught to be committed to their husbands first which means you're committed to the church you're committed to your husband you're committed to the offspring of you and your husband your children and then way down the list comes you and a lot of the white feminist fights

have

not always intentionally been individualistic, but a lot of them have been, right?

Because it was like, it's about my choice, about whether I want to stay at home or work.

It wasn't like, let's build a school or a society for people so that they can develop skills and we can send a bunch of women out into the workforce.

But that's what Nanny Helen Burroughs did in D.C.

when she created a school for black girls and women to make sure that if they wanted to go and pursue careers in domestic labor, they could.

But if they wanted to be teachers or scientists or go to college, they could do that too.

Like she was like, I'm going to build the institution.

I'm going to be the institution as a sister.

Yeah.

And I just don't actually think that y'all were trained toward that.

No.

And so the idea that white women would say, I am a white woman.

I want to go stand in community with other white women and stand up for another woman.

That took time and development.

It took you and Shannon and lots of other people like having to take the blowback for so long when people were not ready for that.

And I mean, I'm interested in your thoughts on this because I'm not being all the way articulate, but I just, in my experience, I have not watched most white women that I know be trained towards solidarity and sisterhood.

That it is a muscle that y'all have had to develop if you feel like developing it, if you feel safe to develop it.

Yeah.

I mean,

I have been thinking about this nonstop

because I've, I mean, first of all, I have had very embarrassing moments where I'm in, like just say before this meeting, where,

well, one example, I'm on with lovy and asking a couple things and she's saying to me just check with your group chats

oh yeah

i'm like

lovy like i'm my sister and my mom yeah like what do you mean it's embarrassing meanwhile i'm in like four group chats i know

when lovie tells me about her that's how many group chats we all each have in our phones yeah is it something this is for me i don't know i haven't developed the language around it yet but i feel like this is what I have to figure out next.

Because

when I look at

your group chats and your community and your, the way that you do things, I feel a deep loneliness and a deep jealousy.

Yeah.

And I'm trying to figure out, is it because, is it a source of safety?

Like for white women, is it white women still have an option of alignment with white men?

And then you you all didn't have an option.

You say over and over again, we protect us.

We have us.

You are the only source of safety for each other.

So you have each other.

So you get to discover because of lack of other options,

this

the thing that everyone on the planet wants and needs and dreams of, which is like this sisterhood.

Is it a leap of finally, of white women finally saying,

this safety is not real.

It's actually killing us.

And so we have to take the leap, even with the other option there,

over to this other thing.

And I don't want to excoriate people who don't identify as black women, right?

Because part of the reason why we have had so few options historically is because black men have been intentionally removed from our families, right?

So when we're talking about families being sold off from one another during chattel slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, when we are talking about mass incarceration and its impact on our communities and our families when we are talking even about social welfare programs that used to come to housing developments and tell black women you're going to get more money for you and your children if there's not a man in the house right these intentional family separations made the sisterhood necessary.

It's not that we don't want to be in community with other people.

It's that our circumstances forced us to be in community with one another in a particular way, right?

And I, you know, part of the reason why I'm so grateful for my partner is I have watched him do his own work

about understanding the seduction that a very white supremacist version of patriarchy has for black men and to do his work around what it looks like truly to protect and love not in a paternalistic way, but in a partnering way.

And I'm watching so many more black men, especially younger generations of black men, really take that journey.

So I want to be really clear about that, that a lot of this is circumstantial and born out of necessity.

But to your question, it is hard to tell people to walk the other direction when the first option is still there.

Because if you watched your mother take it and your grandmama take it and your great grandmother take it, in part because plenty of them had to take it because they couldn't go buy a house, they couldn't go get a a checking account, they couldn't go get a credit card, they could own the jobs that they could get, you know, only paid so much, and they still had another option.

So, let me go rely on the other option.

If you watch generations of them take it, you are

working against your epigenetics, like you're working against the things imprinted on your DNA that help you be the person that you are.

You're working against life experience, memory, epigenetic, like you're working against generational trauma, and that's hard to do.

I also, though, think that

the waking up of white women to realize that there's actually not safety in the thing because patriarchy, as you all have heard me say time and again, your whiteness will not protect you from what patriarchy has for you.

That let down is something that plenty of white women think that they can avoid.

It's been so interesting watching the divorce conversation happen in the zeitgeist, right?

And so many white women who were traditional wives get on TikTok and say, you know, my husband had the six-figure job and we lived in a five-bedroom house and we went on vacation every month and I had five children with him and I never worked.

I have a degree, but I never worked.

And now I'm living in my car and I'm trying to figure out how to fund said five children myself because he wants nothing to do with it because he has picked up and moved on and built an entirely new life without us.

A lot of women out there are delusional enough to feel like that will not be their story.

They're like, oh, no, not me, not mine.

I'm the perfect wife, right?

We have sex 2.7 times, you know, a week.

We're good.

That would never happen to me.

But it's interesting to watch how many white women are coming to the realization that not only could it be them, it is them.

And that even if they are married, perhaps that marriage is loveless, right?

Or even if they are married, perhaps that's the marriage where they're not truly thought of as a partner, right?

And a fully realized human being.

I remember watching the show Desperate

Housewives when it first came out and like not all the way understanding it because I'd never seen my mother in a situation where she was down and out, where there was not always an entire crew of black women to help her.

Wow.

So the idea that they were like living these secret, painful lives in isolation and it was some big revelation when they finally started to reveal things to each other and support each other.

I was like, I don't understand why this is groundbreaking because

it was never my life experience.

I do think that it is hard to convince people to make the harder choice when the seemingly easy choice is still right there because people don't want to lose.

People don't want to lose the five-bedroom house.

People don't want to lose the country club membership.

People don't want to lose the basic access to something that they think makes them powerful, even though it's actually stripping them of their power.

And so, like, you know, y'all got it, y'all got a lot of work.

Ahead of y'all.

But I'm glad to see that there have been some breakthroughs.

I think it really sadly is

when

I think that we believed

that the people mover

that you described was always going to at least maintain or progressively increase, even if it was not at the pace that we wanted, rights and liberties, which meant for us.

And to your point, who was doing that labor?

Like, who was doing the invisible labor of making, it's like the learned helplessness that people talk about.

And they're like, well, I never washed the dishes, but the dishes always get washed.

No, somebody washed the dishes

because you didn't.

Right?

And it was the 98% who vote of black women who voted when we voted 53%

for shout out to Angela Peoples for that very famous picture of her holding up that sign, right?

I think that one of the things that helped break the dam.

To say they were like, oh, wait, we are not being sisters.

Because we voted against our own interests and we voted against the interests of other women.

And all the other women figured that out but us.

So what we're doing.

And now we're mad because it was supposed to work out for us.

So we all showed up at this march because we're super pissed because we thought we could be real quiet and the people mover would get us where we needed to go.

And now it didn't.

And now we're pissed.

I feel like if white women, if we could conjure the feeling, the rage, the deep discontent and anger we have about the men in our lives freeloading off of our labor in our homes.

If we could conjure that

and understand

that is exactly what we have been doing, that we are the freeloaders of democracy, that we have allowed black women and women of color to carry the mental, physical, the entire load of democracy while we freeload off of it and just watch the game.

We are the white men.

Like we are.

To be clear, not just freeloaded, and this is, I think, the hard part for people, not just freeloaded, but actively participated in the harm.

Right.

Because

there's not just the step of white women discovering I have benefited from labor that I have invisibilized.

There's also the discovery that I have perpetuated white supremacist harm and been a tool of something that was never meant to benefit me, but I thought protected me.

Because,

you know, if I look at the story of Emmett Till,

he is dead.

His mother mourned and had to have an open casket funeral because she needed the world to see, as she said, what they done to my boy.

That all happened because a white woman named Carolyn Bryant decided to make up a story.

Literally, like there was no piece of the story that was remotely true.

She made it up out of thin air, knowing full well the environment in which they were, knowing full well the consequences for a black man if he was accused of even looking at a white woman the wrong way, let alone touching her, talking to her smart, or laying with her.

Right?

So

there are ways in which white women need to first

make peace with

and atone for the ways in which

they have perpetuated white supremacy.

So, you are taking the benefits of the labor of black women and women of color around the world while actively making it harder for us to go and win said benefits.

Yep.

And that's like that's a painful thing to have to swallow.

Yeah.

I get that.

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Atonement and action and community can happen in numbers.

Like

what we've done is just all felt really scared and alone and ashamed.

Well, the ones who are even open to feeling that.

Alone and ashamed and petrified by ourselves because we are always by ourselves.

Atonement, moving things, creating a more just world, saving democracy can't happen alone and by ourselves and ashamed in our own houses.

And so we can do that.

But we can only do that if we take the leap, come together, and start moving together.

And there's a promise in it.

I think this is what my sister and I are talking about so much the last few days.

There's a promise in it.

There's a beautiful alternative.

There's something we could be moving towards instead of just doing it all out of shame, regret, atonement.

Yes, there is that, but there is also this gorgeous possibility that we could have together that we've never had before on the other side of it.

And so we've got to nail that.

We've got to like get it.

When I say we, not you, me and my sister now

shannon we've got to figure out yeah how to make the invitation irresistible well it's the reclamation right i mean you started brittany with the reclamation of this like beautiful faith and the way that the vice president says let's take back the flag on liberties and freedoms and reproductive justice and all of that like we have ceded

femininity womanhood to the idea of being polite and quiet

and not making waves.

And if we are to reclaim that power and say, no, it is not this, it is this.

Yes.

It is sisterhood.

It is power.

It is connection.

It is, I think it's part of the reclamation

and part of the seeding that we shouldn't have allowed happen and we did.

It's part of the reclamation and it's part of the new learning, right?

So, I think about that quote: well-behaved women rarely make history all the time, because it is true.

And

as a black woman, I have been on the receiving end of when white women have decided not to be well-behaved for the sake of history, and I end up under their foot, right?

So, again,

if you have been oriented toward an individualistic way of thinking, your not well-behaved moment, quote unquote, has you at the center.

Yes, yes.

But to your point, the reclamation is not just you told us that womanhood was this and we're actually reclaiming that it is this.

It's also an expansion to say

we were unclear that womanhood was also about the sorority and the sisterhood and the power of the collective in that.

And so we're expanding our understanding and definition of it to include this.

Part of why I talk about white supremacy supremacy culture so much, and that's not like a phrase I made up, right?

Like researchers over time have talked about and defined the elements of white supremacy culture that exist outside of purely systemic things, right?

Laws and policies, and that exist outside of purely institutional things, right?

Like practices at your workplace, right?

But the culture that Beverly Tatum calls the smog that we all breathe in, that's the stuff all around us.

us.

That's the way we dress.

That's what we consider feminine and not feminine.

That's the media.

That's the words that we use to describe a white woman and a black woman doing differently doing the exact same thing, right?

That is the culture of white supremacy, of patriarchy, of heteronormativity, of capitalism, etc.

That culture.

Because it is that smog that we all breathe in, it gets up into everybody's lungs.

It gets up into everybody's respiratory system.

And it can be very difficult to detox yourself from that and then with great intention, go and gather different inputs, right?

Because, yeah, I can detox myself from the bad air, but I still got to go back outside.

So, what am I like?

How am I putting my mask on?

Right?

And so, I say that to say this: because the white supremacist culture has been centered on hoarding power, has been centered on individualism versus the collective power and shared power and other things, that it feels completely against your muscle memory to be be doing these things.

And

part of the benefit that black women have is that even though there have been many attempts to steal our culture, our language, our beliefs, our faiths, what we knitted together, especially in America, what we knitted together was something brand new and unique unto us, pulling together all of those pieces from different tribes who suddenly had to become one tribe if we were going to survive.

So the benefit of that was us saying,

yeah, we've got some resistance.

We've got some antidotes, some vaccines against us being overly individualized because we recognize that even if you were Ego and you were Eurobo, that we came from societies of collective power, right?

So we're going to have memory of those things and infuse it in the rest of what we do, even if we call it something else and it looks different and it didn't look traditional to you or to me or to your country or my country or your tribe.

We're going to knit that thing together and use it to protect us.

There is power in us being rooted in things we can't even translate, in languages we have never learned, in people we have never met, in ancestry that runs through our veins that compels us consistently to be for and with one another.

That is not the experience of being white in the world.

That is not the experience of being a white woman in the world.

So to bring sisterhood into the definition of womanhood for white women is to intentionally expand what it has meant

for all time

until the day you declare it is not that anymore.

I think

I'm just gonna say this.

I'm just gonna say this.

I'm gonna say this, and it could be wrong.

I don't know.

But when people watch our U.S.

women's national team, I believe that something deep inside of us women go, there it is.

It's this collective connection.

And it's like, it's deeper.

It's why it makes you cry because it's this longing, this power, this community, this team mentality.

I just think, I don't know if this is...

I agree with that.

And you know what's so interesting?

That same kind of affection and deep joy in seeing it on the U.S.

women's soccer team is not what the average American experiences when they watch the WNBA.

Exactly.

That's right.

Yeah.

Although now, I would say

the team is more diverse than it's ever been.

They're half women of color that are now on it.

And so it's like, because it'll be interesting to see how they are responsible for the social media.

But it's still

soccer is still more rooted in whiteness, and the WNBA is rooted in blackness.

And there, so there's a difference, which is like such an American thing because if you go anywhere in the world, football is not rooted in whiteness.

I want to be real clear.

But this third thing is big because something that I haven't heard talk about very much,

which seems like the obvious elephant in the room to me, is that like we white women got scared.

Trump scared even us.

I think Dobbs scared y'all even more.

Yeah, Dobbs.

Trump and Dobbs scared us.

And then

we were like,

we need to get out of this.

And one of the reasons, like

it wasn't that meetup wasn't because it was the right thing to do.

Wasn't because it's what we owed to the world.

It's because we saw

that black women knew how to do it.

That it was effective.

Yeah.

He said there was a lot of things.

It's like we needed to win.

And that's what it takes to win.

We needed it literally to say, win with black women.

We needed it to be

literally literally because we clearly don't know how to win.

So what we need to do is do that.

But you're so right, Amanda.

That's what, yeah.

Abby, let me ask you a question.

Oh, go ahead.

Go ahead.

I just, I love listening to you talk.

Ask me the question.

So here's my question.

Do you feel like

sports

gave you a different orientation towards sisterhood that you felt when you were on the field, in the locker room, on the bus, than when you were outside of it.

Yes.

And

there was still this complete understanding that we were

being ruled and run by men in the consensus,

that little outer layer.

Concentric circle.

Yes.

Yeah.

That layer just beyond us, just beyond our locker room.

We knew that the men were making the decisions.

We knew that the men were, you know, deciding on our contracts and how much to pay us.

And so inside of this circle, we knew that the way

to maintain our strength and power and win is to do it unified and collectively.

And we've been doing this since the 90s.

And this has been passed on generation after generation.

This is the Julie Faudi, Mia Ham days to the time that I played, to the time that now equal pay is a real thing.

And it's not a surprise that when the leadership of that concentric circle on the outside of the team changed from male to female, it is no surprise that equal pay started to take form, that we were able to achieve that.

So I think that interestingly enough, in my retirement, I do feel less safe and less protected.

And whenever I am around my teammates, just even being in their presence, I'm like, I feel like, oh, yeah, I'm safe again.

It's this interesting vibe.

Like, oh, wow, we could do.

And even when I'm with Glennon, she sees probably, I don't know if you've noticed, but like, I become like a bigger version of myself around my teammates.

Yeah, that's true.

I become more secure and in numbers, it's just the way that it is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that immediate goal, goal, I'm sure, of equitable pay, fair treatment, decision-making power, et cetera, that much more immediate goal, even although I'm sure it needed to be more immediate than it actually was.

But that tangible goal, I should say, I think probably

moved y'all to that place faster, no?

That's right.

Yeah, of course.

I think a lot about,

I think a lot about my time on the national team.

And, you know, hindsight is 2020.

And so I feel intense jealousy that they were able to achieve pay equity.

Yeah.

And I wasn't.

And I also have to remember that had I not done what I did during the time that I did it, that they would never have been able to achieve it when they did.

Right.

And so it's, you have to have people

like women who came before Julie Faudi, who worked on Title IX and got Title IX going, that really allowed that people don't know a lot of these women's names.

We have to get comfortable, us white women, especially, have to get comfortable being no-named people in the fight of progressive freedom.

Is there something about the team?

Like, I feel like I, it will take me a lifetime to unlearn the individualness of white womanhood.

I am like, I am just starting to understand how individual I have

lived.

And that's okay.

That's cool.

I'm going to do it.

But I see it sometimes.

I don't understand your team mentality in lots of ways.

Like, I'm going to say this in general.

If there is a person on the national team with

homophobic views.

Yeah.

I'm just going to say

it.

Abby and I will have conversations until we are screwed into our floor about this.

Like, we cannot, I think, absolutely not.

You cannot have someone representing our country who is having these views and I'm on this side.

And Abby has this,

she said to me, we're going to win.

They put her there because she's going to win.

We're going to win.

And I think that's blasphemy to me.

Like I can't.

But then I think, is there something in it for me to learn in terms of white women and sisterhood and how we do not know how not to turn on each other and how we nitpick and divide.

And maybe right now I need to be saying, oh no, we're just going to win.

And we're not going to point out every single thing, I don't know.

Let me say this: there is a tendency among black folks, which sometimes is healthy and sometimes it's not, to not air our dirty laundry.

Now, when it comes to like mental health and assault and things like that, that can happen that happen in our families just like they happen in everybody's families, and people are shamed into silence about them.

This is not a healthy thing.

There are times, though, when we are smart enough to say, the world doesn't mean us any good.

So I'm going to protect you from the world

even while I get you together inside that.

So, and again, I'm not talking about those other things I was talking about before.

Those people need to be called out.

But when it comes to black women's sisterhood, so often, the choice that we are making is to take it to the group chat and not to Twitter.

There are conversations swirling right now about a particular black woman who has had some very,

shall I say, her views and the way that she's expressed them have riled up a lot of people.

And people are talking about the content of what she's saying, but there are folks that know her well or that have experienced her more intimately who are not saying a mumbling word.

Because what we're not going to do

is

put you out there on an island by yourself

and harm your ability to work, your ability to make a living, your ability to maintain your mental wellness, your ability to maintain your reputation.

And when

people have broken that code, we've called them out.

We're saying, you don't need to write that article.

It don't need to be no more think pieces on this.

And I'm not saying that's consistent across the board, person to person, that everybody abides by said code.

But overall,

there is a spoken and unspoken understanding that first do no harm

because the world is already set up to do you harm.

So what do I look like adding to it?

Now, behind closed doors, in the house, in the sisterhood, in the sorority, I'm pulling your coattail.

I'm telling you, baby girl, this is not it.

Or I'm at the very least saying, hey, let's talk because I want to understand where you're coming from.

Maybe I don't get it.

Maybe I don't hear you.

Maybe I don't see you.

Maybe there's stuff we can learn from each other.

And listen, like a person is open to whether or not they want to receive that on their own, but the effort is made

because

at the end of the day, we don't want to put each other in a position to be more harmed by the world.

And we don't want to stand idly by while we watch people put themselves in a position to be harmed more by the world.

That's good.

That's good.

That's what sisterhood means.

That's good.

It doesn't mean lying.

It means being extremely honest.

It means being honest because I love you in the most productive and protective way.

Damn, that was helpful.

And so I, so, but like what I hear you talking about, right, with the soccer team is you're like, listen,

I don't agree with the way she feels.

I'm hurt by the way she feels.

I don't like the way she operates the way we have tension in the locker room, right?

Like all of that stuff is true.

And if we go up and we fight for equal pay for everybody but her, then the whole goal is harmed for everybody.

That's right, right.

And I don't want her to not get what she deserves just because I'm still working on the way that she feels.

That's right.

It's a different positioning, it's a different posturing.

Not one that doesn't hold people accountable, but one that holds people accountable in a way that they still have the room to grow and to receive what is duly owed them.

Oof.

Jesus.

Yeah.

You, it's a good idea that you pray a lot.

It's is working.

Well, I'm glad my mama taught me how to pray because that's where I got it from.

And you know, like, I also, like, I am, I'm speaking from a lived experience because I am the beneficiary of sisterhood.

Yeah.

Right.

Because I have had people pull my coat toe.

I've had people say in private, I got your back in public, but that's not it.

Let's work on something else.

Let's try something else.

That's great.

Great.

The people who pick up the phone and they call and they say, hey, just so you know, this is coming.

I blocked and tackled for you in this way.

Now I need you to do X, Y, and Z to protect yourself.

That is

my story

as the beneficiary, as much as it is my story attempting to be the benefactor for somebody else.

That's so good.

And so,

when I speak to this, and so much of my book is about this, but when I speak to the sisterhood of black women, it's because we are called by our foremothers

into a divine place that we should be so

clear and forceful not to allow to be interrupted.

Because these are the things that have kept us alive, these are the things that have given us joy where there shouldn't have been any, creativity where there should be where it wasn't allowed, family where it was literally forbidden by law.

It was through this sisterhood that we were able to create the spaces that saved us and that hold us and that heal us.

And so

we owe it to our ancestors to make them them proud and to be as good of a descendant as we are, the ancestors we're becoming, right?

That I have a responsibility to those who built the space for me to exist in.

And I have a responsibility to make sure that space is ever more safe, ever more beautiful, ever more powerful for anybody coming up after me.

And that people, I want people to rue the day that they ever thought they were going to come break us apart.

Try it if you want to.

Fuck around and find out.

Okay.

There it is.

There we are.

That, my friends, is what we call a mic drop.

The end.

Bye, pod squad.

The pod is over.

That will be our last episode.

Fine, Brittany.

I love y'all very much.

And I'm glad we had this conversation.

I hope it helps somebody.

It loves somebody.

And heals somebody.

For sure will.

We love you so much, Brittany.

Thank you so much for the time and energy and brilliance that you just offered to us.

It means the absolute world to me.

And,

God, I'm grateful for you.

Yep.

The feeling is mutual.

The iPod feeling is mutual.

We're going to have to do part two of this on a distracted when we come back.

Oh, that's right.

September, you're coming back, right?

September 5th.

We're dropping that first episode.

Yeah.

We will be following the pod squad.

We'll be following September 5th.

Is when it, the first episode?

September 5th, first episode of season three.

So damn good.

But you can go back and listen to all the old ones now.

I know they will now.

They're there.

People have been doing that a lot lately actually which i find they've mostly been heartwarming i bet they have brittany

people are like i need some thought partners here in these wild times of ours so i'm glad that undistracted is with a thought partner

all right bye pod squad see you next time see you next time

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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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, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right hand corner or click on follow.

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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 this show is produced by Lauren Lograso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.

I give you Tish Melton and Randy Carlisle.

I walked through fire, I came out the other side.

I chased desire,

I made sure I got what's mine.

And I continue

to believe

that I'm the one for me.

And because I'm mine,

I walk the line.

Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on map.

A final destination

lack.

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to belong.

We'll finally find

our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we can do a heart pain.

I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start.

I'm not the problem,

sometimes things fall apart.

And I continue

to believe

the best

people are free.

And it took some time,

but I'm finally fine

Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that

A final destination

we lack

We've stopped asking directions

to places

they've never been

And to be loved we need to be known.

We'll finally find

our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we

can do a heart again.

We're adventurous and heartbreaks on that.

We might get lost, but we're okay

that we've stopped asking directions

in some places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find

our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we can do hard

things.

Yeah, we can do hard things.

Yeah, we

can do

hard

things