257. How to Finally Forgive with Nadia Bolz-Weber

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Okay,

pod squad, get ready for today.

I am so delighted, already full of energy and wondering what's going to happen in the next hour because we have one of my faves, Nadia Boltz-Weber

here today.

Nadia is an ordained Lutheran pastor, founder of House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, host of the Confessional Podcast, and author of three New York Times best-selling memoirs, Pastrix, Accidental Saints, and Shameless.

All of her books are so flippin' good.

She always sits in the corner with the other weirdos, one of the many reasons we love her so much.

And she can be found a couple days a week inside the Denver Women's Prison, where she is a volunteer chaplain.

Nadia, welcome.

And the corner sub stack.

Don't forget the corner sub stack.

Oh, yes, absolutely.

Yes.

If you want to get her writing now, you have to subscribe to the corner sub stack, which we're going to talk about in a minute because.

This is interesting what's going on with you right now, Nadia.

First, I want to tell you a little story.

Okay.

The first time I met you in real life was at something called the Wild Goose Festival.

So Abby, I've explained this to you as kind of like a Jesusy Woodstock, like a mini Jesusy Woodstock.

So the first time I went to Wild Goose,

I was referred to in the community as the one who wore heels.

Okay.

Cause it was.

It was in the mud, rain, like a festival type thing.

And so people kept saying, oh, is is she the one who wore heels to this?

And that is true that I did.

Why?

I didn't understand.

I didn't, it was like camp.

I didn't understand.

I made my mom's friend lived in the town.

So I would go all day and then pretend I was going to camp.

And then I'd have my mom's friend pick me up in the secret in the back and take me to her house and put me in a room.

Wow.

I pretended that I camped.

I'd pretend I was going to camp.

Yeah.

I don't think anybody thought you were probably going to camp.

So

no one?

Okay.

So Nadia,

I brought my baby Chase.

He was like 10 to Wild Goose.

I was obsessed with you.

You did a speaking event like in a tent with Krista Tippett.

You and she were recording an on-being.

And the whole Wild Goose was all, it was like, Nadia is doing on being.

So the whole Jesus-y camp Woodstocky Festival went to listen to you two.

And you talked a lot in that about

gendering God as just he and sort of the damage that that has done and continues to do.

The next week, I'm minding my own business at home and I get a call

from my son's Christian school.

This is why that happens.

Okay.

Fuck it off.

I never knew this.

Yes.

My son is in fourth grade at this time.

He's in the principal's office.

Okay.

He's in the principal's office.

I've been called a few times.

Okay.

Like they've said, my mom doesn't believe there's a hell, principal's office.

My mom has tattoos and does yoga, principal's office.

Okay.

But this is

the last straw.

My son has stood up and said to his Christian teacher, I think we should be done with calling God he.

Let's think about how this is making everyone feel.

He quotes Nadia Boltz-Weber.

That's it.

So I go to the principal's office.

I'm sitting there with the principal.

And

we just agree that we have to leave the school.

That day,

I take Chase out of the office and I'm like, I guess we can't go here.

I pulled all three of them.

You had to pull all three.

I pulled all three of them.

I went to Tish's class.

I went to Amma's class, pulled them all out.

We walked out.

We started public school the next day because of you.

You might want to be careful listening to this podcast because it might have large ramifications for your life.

Yes.

I don't know whether to feel more proud of that or how many middle-aged lesbians are in seminary now because of me.

How would you pick what to be proud of on an audio voltage webinar?

Yeah, that's amazing.

I never heard that story.

Me neither.

You say, I mean, it saved us.

I knew the kids left school.

That's so funny.

I also remember in 2016, maybe it was like early 2017, you and I were texting about something.

And I was like, nobody knows I'm in the middle of a divorce.

And you're like,

nobody, nobody knows that I fell in love with a woman.

Abby Wombach.

And I'm like, girl, you can't be blamed for that.

Oh my God.

And Tanadi is like, phew, heats off me.

I see your divorce and I raise you a lesbian.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yes.

We've been through some shit, haven't we?

Nadia.

Yeah.

So I'm getting this sense.

I could be making this up, but

I feel like you seem

to be carbonated.

Like you seem very alive.

We have spent decades in sort of this like

trying to figure out how to do what we love and also

be in the grind.

It feels to me lately like you are living a little bit, like, you know how campy people live off the grid?

Like you seem to be living off the grind.

I am living off the grind.

You're totally right.

The way I put it is, I think that

all my ambition left with my estrogen.

I was driven my whole life.

I've been this like driven person and I'm entrepreneurial.

So I create stuff, I make stuff, I have new projects, I get people excited.

I've just done that

for so long and

I don't

care anymore.

I don't want to create.

I don't, I don't, I don't have it in me to like create anything else

because

I am very busy cooking and going for walks and

doing

what I'm really obsessed with, my new hobby, which is sacred harp singing.

So every week I gather with this small group of people and we sing like colonial era music.

My dad, Abby, you would love that.

That's so fun sounding.

Yeah, I'm obsessed with it and it brings me so much joy.

And so my best friend in the world said the most grace-filled thing to me a few years ago when I was like,

it's hard to get off the carnival ride of book publishing.

And so I was like, oh, I should figure out what my next book is.

And she said, Nadia, if you never

write another book, And you never preach another sermon and you never publish another essay, you will have already like done enough, like more than enough.

And I, I, yeah, it made me teary because that's what I needed someone to say, you know?

I think when you do work that has a positive impact on people, it creates a sort of weight around,

I have to keep doing it.

And we don't have a lot of words of grace.

That's why I'm so obsessed with grace.

It really cuts us free a lot of times.

And anyway, so there have been moments in my life when somebody has said something so graceful that it really reoriented everything for me.

And that's kind of what happened.

So I don't, I don't know, maybe I'll write a book someday, but the drive to, I don't have anything else to prove.

I think is what I feel.

Like, I don't want to, oh no, I need to write a fourth New York Times post.

That'll do it.

That'll kill a God-sized hole in my soul.

Exactly, exactly.

So, part of it is I'm so extraordinarily well-loved for the first time in my life.

I'm in a very deeply, I'm so in love with Eric, and

it has softened everything about me.

So, I don't do CrossFit obsessively anymore.

I mean, I weigh more than I've ever weighed.

My hair is longer.

I sort of spend my time more slowly.

And

I like it.

How is this relationship different than any other that you've had that is having this effect?

I think that Eric and I

have this thing where we get that our relationship is like a huge treasure.

And so we try to

value it every day like that, you know, and not take it for granted.

And so we've both been through a lot.

And we were together in 93, 94.

He was the boyfriend who like broke my heart, just like destroyed me.

And it was a whole thing.

It was like part of my story.

Like if I had a new friend and I was telling them about who I am,

I would tell them the story of having my heart broken.

Wow.

You know, decades later.

I'll just tell you the story real quick, which is this.

We both got sober in 91.

So in 93, we're very young.

We're newly sober.

And I

was so in love with him.

I remember loving how his hands looked.

Do you know?

Oh, Lord.

Do you know what I'm saying?

You were gone.

So

I had nothing going for me in my 20s.

I had good abs, but really, that's it.

That's all I had.

So I thought, oh, this really handsome, sexy guy who's in this big alternative band,

like wants to be with me.

That must mean that I'm worthy of desire, that I'm worthy of love.

It means I'll have a future.

It means I'll have some kind of security.

So

I attached so many things to being with him.

And so when he broke up with me, I was destroyed.

So, okay, fast forward to 2016.

We've had various marriages and degrees and children and careers and whatnot.

And I was in a coffee shop and I bumped into his roommate from back in the day.

And he goes, hey, you and Eric are both divorced.

You should have dinner.

And I was like, yes, we should have dinner.

And we've been together since then, August 2016.

And he went with me on a gig, like three weeks in or a month into our relationship.

And we're on the airplane.

he just looks at me and he goes, when did you forgive me?

And I said,

when I realized how much of the suffering that I had experienced from our breakup was my fault, was about how much I had attached to the relationship.

My suffering was from that so much more than from what you did.

And that's when I forgave you because

it was more more

mine than yours, you know?

So

anyway, yeah.

How many people

think that their first breakup is still breaking their heart because of the other person when really it was because that first thing is when you decided you were worthy of anything?

So if they leave.

you're unworthy of anything.

That's right.

Because he met somebody on the road that he fell in love with.

And I was like, okay, now all those things are true about her and not me.

Yes.

Now she's the one who has security and who has value and who's worthy of desire and not me.

It's been transferred.

We're both 54.

The great thing about being in a relationship now, I don't need anyone

for me to have value and to know that I'm worthy and to have security and financial security.

I don't need him

for anything

except that love connection and that's it and that makes it have a buoyancy uh yeah

yeah so how did you get there what do you most attribute being a becoming a human being who has all the worthiness the security in herself so that she can choose love instead of desperately need it

yeah

Just a lot of pain.

Yeah.

I damn it.

I love you.

That's why I love you.

It's so hard.

Why does it got to be so hard?

That's it.

That's the way.

Yeah.

On Substack,

you know, Liz Gilbert, she just started a Substack.

And in honor of that, I posted a note, which is sort of like a Twitter feed type of thing on Substack.

And it was a picture of myself at 10.

And I was like,

in honor of Liz Gilbert's new Substack,

I'm writing my 10-year-old self a little note here, right?

And so it was before all the pain, it really was.

It was before bullying, and sorrow, and sickness, and addiction.

And I was like, part of me just wishes I could

protect you from all of it, from the betrayal, and the sorrow, and definitely the cocaine and

all of it.

And

I want to tell you, like, never go on a diet.

And, you know, like, all of these things.

And yet,

if i did

you'd be boring as now yeah

yeah

i think about my 10 year old self a lot and i also think about

there was also a knowing i would get here like deep

down

because we didn't let all of that take us out

and so it's like Hey, you're going to have a long road ahead of you.

But you know, you got this.

Abby, why do you think it's 10?

Why do you think it's 10?

I don't know.

You said 10 and I just went boom right to that number.

It's always around that.

Every girl says that.

It's 10, it's 11, it's 12, it's 9.

It's right in there.

It's like that's where the split happens.

You're like living as a subject.

You're thinking about what you're seeing.

And then suddenly you have this double consciousness.

You become the object.

You think about how you're being seen.

And that's

that's right.

Right?

Like you become aware of your body and the awareness of your body as this thing that's being understood separately from you

creates this like dissonance in you that now you have two things.

You have yourself and you have your body.

And then you have to choose which one to protect and which one to preserve.

So you become

bisected, I think, at that time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You become kind of an actor.

And then suddenly we're all like 50 and it's just this beautiful recovering

of this original self who had to go through so much shit to just be back in the same place.

Because you eventually you become old enough to become unself-conscious again.

Yes.

Yeah.

And it's this interesting thing.

I don't think.

men do this

as much.

And I think that this road that take, it's self-exploration.

Like it's hard as shit.

It's a journey.

It's suffering.

But we come back to, I think, ourselves, where I think a lot of men, and this obviously is very generalized, but I think it's a little true that they don't do all of the self-expression in the middle.

And so they just stay without maybe as much pain.

I don't know.

Well, I think they aren't companioned in the way women often are with each other, right?

I'm in conversations about all of this this stuff with my closest friends all the time.

And I think they've really shown that men tend to not have those really deep, intimate friendships where they're companioned through that process, you know.

I was a third-grade teacher, so I also got to watch this process happen from

the teacher's perspective.

And I saw it happen just as severely with boys.

I could see it in my mind right now

more clearly.

Like the boys have to act out masculinity, they have a bisecting also.

Imagine if men got together and talked about how when they were 10 years old, they were like feely and soft, and then they had to put on this masculinity armor and they just never get to take it off.

Oh, they have to like pretend they're not suffering.

Yeah, that's terrible.

Yeah.

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So not yet, you're in love.

You're living a little bit off the grind, doing all of your...

What's hard now?

Like really, when you think about

whenever I choose a new way

things get better but there's still something like what is your hard thing right now my ego didn't love it yeah i wondered

yeah and that happened with with the pandemic so in 2019 i was on 90 airplanes in seven countries that's how much i was touring

and then in 2020 i was in my apartment

And there are no upgrades in my apartment.

Minimal applause.

There's no United Club.

Nobody's sending a car service.

I wasn't special in my apartment, you know, and I was sort of sickened when I realized that I'd become accustomed to being treated a certain way.

I didn't notice it had happened until the world changed so much that it was taken away.

And I thought,

oh my God, I can't do this.

I can't stay at home.

I'm used to traveling constantly, being in front of adoring crowds, and you know what I mean, being treated a certain way.

And what I discovered was it wasn't that I couldn't do it.

It's that I had not yet met the version of me that could do it.

And that's

who I met during that year and a half of mostly being at home.

I met

a whole different part of myself.

And then when I started, the first time I got on a plane again,

I had this like meltdown.

I forgot how to pack.

I didn't know what I was supposed to take.

Like the thing I was so adept at suddenly was just gone.

And I thought, I can't do this.

I was like, no, I just haven't met the version of me who can't, right?

And that's who I'm about to meet.

And

so

I think to not be publishing and doing quite as much as all that, because to be clear, I got off the book publishing bandwagon, but that does not prevent my friends' new books from arriving at my house every few days.

That's the thing.

Then I have feelings.

Then I have feelings.

I'm like, oh, God, why am I, I'm so lazy.

I'm too self-involved.

Or, you know, oh, if I don't capture it again, it will be gone forever.

You know,

it.

So

that's the part that that has been difficult.

But I think I'm old enough.

I do see it when it's happening.

It's little, you know, dialogue in my head is pretty short before I go, Oh, I know what that is.

That's just

my ego, and it's okay.

And that's not the thing I want to be leading with.

And then I just kind of go for a walk and figure out what I'm cooking for dinner.

Yeah, that is such a vital skill set because you don't have to be a New York Times bestseller to understand that phenomenon.

Like, I live in a very

type A, hustle,

parent, like raising little mini

people to do whatever it is we, the hell we think they're going to do.

And it's like when you decide to be like, actually, I'm just going to let them be whatever they are.

You can feel good about that in your house at night when you go to sleep.

And then when you wake up and see everybody else doing all the things that they're doing, you kind of have a panic attack.

So it's like, it's all well and good.

What do you say to yourself to bring yourself back to peace about what you've decided when the scarcity,

like tornado is happening around you?

Well, I have Eric and my best friend Jodi.

I will tell them exactly what I was thinking, right?

I tell them things I just would never tell other people about.

terrible thoughts about others.

And

my friend Jodi and I spend four or five hours a week on the phone together.

She lives in St.

Paul.

Also a 10-year-old self-throwback.

You're like, well, we need to spend four hours on the telephone.

I'm like, I need to wind a cord around my finger.

But

anyway, we go on walks and we talk for hours every week.

So

I'll just go, hey, can I just tell you something I really hate about my personality just real quick?

And she'll be like, yep, go for it.

I can say the most honest, not spinning it, not filtering it things to her about myself and things I think and things I fear and jealousies I have or whatever.

And she never thinks less of me because she really knows the whole so well that

I'm never at risk of that turning back on me.

So I think having that in my life

allows me to metabolize that stuff pretty quickly.

I have a question about this connection between ego and self-esteem because I've been on this exploration since retiring.

Of course.

And I think that I have attached so much of my physical output with self-esteem and love and worthiness and enoughness and all of that, all of playing and the things that I do.

I'm trying to figure out how ego is good for me and not, because I think we all have one.

It's all there, right?

And how we can kind of balance and keep it in check.

What are ways that you, in this world of being off the grind,

how are you finding self-love and your worthiness or your self-esteem without

overplaying the ego and tapping into the shadow side of ego?

Yeah.

I think I know

when I'm in ego in a way that doesn't serve me.

When I feel defensive,

if I feel defensive about something,

it's always, that's not my truest self.

If I feel

like I have to justify something, that's not my truest self.

There are these signals that go, oh, that's not, and it's okay.

Like there's no escaping it.

I think that's like so important for us to get.

Yes.

You cannot escape the shitty parts of yourself.

You can't do it.

And I have been in subcultures that like to pretend you can, and they're toxic as fuck.

Yes.

So evangelical Christianity, oh, I'm just living in victory with the Lord, you know, and it's just like, it doesn't even mean anything.

And you're just,

and they believe in like progressive sanctification.

You can just, if you have quiet time with the Lord and you're a good disciple, you can.

Actually, I think it's a form of atheism, to be honest, because it's this idea that you can sanctify yourself so much that you never need to call on God for help.

You never are standing in the need of prayer you're never somebody who needs mercy or compassion or forgiveness that's for other people so i i don't trust it in like christianity and i don't trust it in like the yoga new age spirituality scene either these are two

phases of to me the same thing when i like I love yoga, but I do not trust yoga teachers who are affected.

Like when they have that, like, oh, the painfully good, they talk with like the passive aggressive half-whisper

and

they really try to act like nothing ever phases them.

I just assume they're a monster.

I do.

I'm like, oh, God, stay away from that person.

But I had this yoga teacher who came in once and he goes late, which is rare, right?

He's a couple minutes late.

He goes, I'm so sorry.

But I was having a fight with my teenager and I threw my yoga mat across the room before I got here.

And I was like, oh my God, what do you have anywhere?

Exactly.

What do you have to teach me?

So it's sort of smeared all over us.

And it shows up in really sneaky ways through different like influencers, this idea of we can somehow transcend the shitty parts of ourselves.

I don't.

think so, or at least I haven't yet.

So all everything is still there, and it's part of the whole package of me.

And the whole package is pretty great.

The whole package is pretty good, and has managed to survive some stuff and be of aid to others, and make some pretty good jokes.

And you know what I mean?

But also can be very self-centered and in ways that other people don't realize, and can be kind of sneaky about getting what I want and making it seem like I'm being generous, whatever.

You know, I mean, I have, I have all the things.

I know that one.

And

they're all still there.

They're all still there.

And like, my self-esteem is intact.

I have, I have pretty good self-esteem.

And boy, I really don't mind telling people the kind of awful things about myself.

And I actually think these two things are related.

Yes.

Because some things can be a little embarrassing, I guess, the shittier parts, but I'm not ashamed of them.

And in fact, it would be evidence that you do not have a solid foundation of self-esteem if you could not tell those things.

I agree.

Totally.

Absolutely.

Because it'd be fake.

And if you didn't tell those things and you had a solid self-esteem, it would be quite precarious feeling all the time because eventually someone's going to find out those things.

And goodbye to that.

Exactly.

That's right.

That's exactly right.

I also think when when I look at Nadia

and you say ego is not the thing you're following the most, right?

I see the fact that Nadia is still doing

what she's made for.

She's just not doing it in a, look at me, I need everyone to pay attention to me way.

You're a chaplain at a women's prison and you're writing.

beautifully.

You're just not begging the world to pay attention to those two things constantly.

Yeah.

Is how it feels to me.

But you haven't stopped doing what you do so beautifully.

Yeah.

I mean, I do have a very particular calling.

I have a lane that I stay in.

But yeah, I think I just don't need the adoration of all the people anymore.

And also, it's so mean out there.

You know, there's so much unkindness towards people who put themselves out there.

And I just don't really want

to be exposed in that way anymore.

What is it about the women's prison that's so important to you?

Oh, I just love them so much.

What you see is what you get, you know.

They're not pretending life is something other than what it is.

And,

boy, you learn a lot about our society spending time in prisons.

There's an underclass that we warehouse.

I don't know how else to put that, but

most of the women are profoundly undereducated.

They come from poverty.

They don't have any education in their families at all.

They have learned to survive with a certain set of skills within systems of addiction.

And yet they're these complete humans, you know, who have their own stories and their heart and their humor.

And

I kind of feel like if it doesn't float, in a women's prison,

you shouldn't say it.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, there's so much bullshit out there.

If there's something that I wouldn't say to them,

then maybe it's not worth saying.

Like, what?

On,

oh, like, I think about what you say about the opposite of fundamentalism is not atheism, it's humility.

Yeah, right.

Okay, here's something that will not fly with them.

There's a lot of stuff out there about manifesting.

Yeah.

You know, power positive thinking, manifesting, this idea that name it and claim it.

Well, the woman who I sat next to on Sunday, I said, oh, you had your babies.

She had, she, last time I saw her, she was pregnant with twins last month.

And now she's not.

And she had two little boys and then handed them over a half an hour later, right?

So you want to have a conversation about manifesting with her?

Who is your community now?

My community has just always been in diaspora.

I mean, I have a couple friends here in Denver, but my community is a group of women who have been by each other's side for years and years and years.

And we're going to be in Nashville next week for Lamnesia's art opening.

I think there's eight of us getting together.

So I have extraordinary individual friendships that I value very highly,

but I don't have necessarily

community although the sacred heart scene is is kind of a community I mean I just show up and I'm part of a group which I like and I'm not special

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I'm just obsessed and want to talk to you about this.

So, you know, all the signs in the kitchens and the influencers selling the programs about the

you are enough.

And I, honest to God, I'm not even judging.

I just don't know what the hell it means.

I don't just intellectually understand what anyone is talking about when you say

you are enough.

And your concept of wanting to preach the good news that you are not enough

makes so much more sense to me.

So can you just take us down that train a little bit about how we're not enough?

And that's quite all right.

Well, I think where it comes from is just the constant messages about

how we should be something that we're not, you know, throughout our lives and that feeling we have of shame that comes from living in a culture that's saying that constantly.

So I think that's where the you you're enough thing is.

But for me,

it's related to the thing where I think progressive sanctification is a form of atheism, where I wanted to write an anti-self-help book called You're Not Enough.

But there is enough.

And it doesn't have to be you.

Foundationally, the longer I've been out of seminary, the more simplistic I've become as a theologian.

And so this is my basic sort of cosmology.

It's simple.

Have you guys been watching these webb telescope photos and kind of paying attention to them?

No, I watch Bravo.

So.

You watch Bravo.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Same, same.

Same, same.

I mean, the universe is like 13 billion light years across.

There's no way for our human brains to really conceive of it.

I would have been a pretty good medieval person, just believing in like the dome.

You know, you know, that thing was just like what we could.

I'd be good with that.

I'm fine with this.

But apparently it keeps going for real far.

And so

you think about how far that is.

And the only place that we know for sure has the conditions to support life as we know it is here.

This one weird little blue speck is the only place where there's puppies.

and pizza, you know, like Beyonce.

Just here.

That's it.

That's the only place.

And we get it, and we get it.

We get a habit, which is just mind-blowing.

Okay.

So I think that all of the cosmos, creation, everything came is an act of divine love.

I think there's a source from all of it, which is divine and ineffable.

We can't really understand it totally.

It's so big.

But I think it's almost like God wanted to be known, and that's what creation is.

And so

we all come from the same divine source.

And then while we're here living our lumpy lives that we're also full of inconsistencies and desperately in need of grace and mercy all the time and fucking up and being extraordinary and all of that.

When we don't have enough,

When I don't have enough compassion to be the kind of person I want to be, there is enough.

That source I came from is available to me to draw upon.

And so I get to draw upon my own divine source through prayer or meditation or whatever it is.

And that is enough.

And so I don't have to be.

Like, I don't have to have all the love, all the compassion, the mercy.

the understanding,

the companioning.

I don't, because I have access to this unlimited source of it in the divine.

And then when we die, somehow we return to the source.

That's all I know.

I mean, I could get into a gazillion other things because I'm like a Lutheran theologian, but like

basically, that's what I believe.

And so when people go around going, I actually don't need access to anything other than myself.

I'm like, well, that's awesome for you.

I desperately need

more than just me because I feel like if I am all I have and all there is, I feel fucked.

I just do.

And the way that that plays out in community, I also love so much because you can take that like macro huge approach and then also look at like.

Even your little community you build around yourself of friendships and be like, today I have no patience.

I have no tolerance.

I hate everything.

And your friend can show up in your threads and be like, I've got it for you today.

And it doesn't mean that yours is superfluous because

yours is absolutely critical for the next time around when you have it for the next person.

There's a story in the New Testament where there's a whole crowd and Jesus is in a house and these friends brought their friend who's sick and needed healing.

And so they opened up.

a hole in the roof and they lowered their friend down to Jesus to be healed.

And I'm always like, sometimes we're the ones lowering our friends down.

And sometimes we're the ones being lowered.

But it's a team sport, you know?

So we do.

We need each other.

I actually, this might be weird, but you know, Annie Lamotte.

So she texted me.

I just want to look really quick.

She sent me.

She goes, do you have one minute?

Can you say why community, which is so unnatural for some of of us narcissistic loners, is so necessary for our souls slash humanity slash healing?

This is the text that I get from Anne Lama.

Just watch me.

She's watching it.

And I said, here's my answer to Annie.

Because giving and receiving is the economy of our souls.

We must give and receive help.

and love and forgiveness and because the Lord in his mercy created us as fleshy musical instruments and no matter how hard I try, I cannot sing harmony alone.

By ourselves, we are unreliable narrators.

We need the eyes of the other in order to have a halfway accurate view of the world.

Yep.

Okay, I want to read to you the text that Anne Lamont sent me.

Which season of Love Island should I start with?

So that's what she thinks of us, Nadia.

Same saying.

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Do you still have anybody to forgive?

Oh, I wish I could say no.

So I still do 12-step work 31.

How many years?

30.

33 years.

33 for 91 was the day.

Okay, thank you.

32.

Wow.

And

I still do that work.

And yesterday I was having this long conversation with Eric about the stuckness that I'm feeling in a particular area of my life.

And he said, I think you need to finish writing your resentment inventory that you started last month.

And that felt like an act of aggression against me, but I do think he's right.

So I do have these resentments that they almost always have to do with me feeling betrayed by someone.

And I know I need to do it.

And I just am fighting it.

And I know he's right.

I have to like process that stuff.

It's not great to hold on to.

So I would love to say, oh, now I'm free from all of it, but I still have work to do.

Can you explain to the pad squad what the resentment work, like what you're saying for people who aren't familiar?

Because I think everybody

would benefit from this step.

Well, okay, so I'd say one of the worst lines in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous is when it's talking about people who've hurt us.

Because what

the program tries to get you to do, even though it's the last thing you want to do, is to look at how you participated in something that hurt you.

Because it's the worst.

It's so gross.

And yet, it's the only freedom we're going to get.

I'm like, I've never gotten free by detailing over and over what someone else did.

Those, those stories.

Try as I might.

Totally.

And I'm a fairly good rhetorician.

So the thing is, is if I tell you a story of a grievance story of mine, I promise you at the end, you will feel the same way.

Yes.

You will be like, how dare they?

And I think my ego, back to that, my ego thinks that's the path is by getting more and more hostages, you know, to my story.

And yet I have a situation in my life, I won't go into the details, but I had this story locked.

I had it locked down.

And this is how you know you're trapped.

If you're telling the same story the exact same way, to grievance story, the exact same way to multiple people, you are trapped.

You are in a maze that you can't get out of.

And actually,

in the court system, the way they know somebody is a reliable eyewitness is that they actually change the way they tell the story a little bit, right?

If you tell it the exact same way over and over without varying, it's manufactured on some level.

You might have been there, but you're not a reliable witness anymore.

Oh, because you're reporting your own story.

You're not reporting what happened.

Because if you report what happens, memory is valuable, but your story doesn't get memorized.

You're no longer in active memory.

You're in a rehearsed thing.

Okay.

It's the same with us.

Like, if I am telling the exact same story the exact same way over and over and over again, and I don't even ever vary it, I'm locked down.

I'm in the maze.

And if I want to get out,

the only way is to go, how do I tell the story differently?

So we can, I've found for myself, if I can manage to tell the story a different way using the same set of facts, but tell a different story that's equally true.

I'm on the path to freedom.

And normally, the retelling of the story in a different way has to have me as not just the innocent victim.

Oh,

I know, it's the worst.

So here's the worst line in the big book.

It says, looking at people who've hurt us in our resentments, if we look back far enough, we will find that at some point in the past, we made a decision based on self that put us in a position to be harmed by them.

Okay, does that stand up in women's prison?

Yes.

100%.

100%.

The ones who are free, because I do some stuff in men's prisons too.

The people who are the freest inside are ones who have been able to go through a restorative justice program.

Where in restorative justice, you have to sit, the people who were the victims of the crime and the perpetrators of the crime have to sit with each other's stories, even if they conflict.

And you have to honor that.

where that person's coming from.

You know what's interesting about the restorative justice thing is liberals and conservatives both like it.

It's very unusual to find this because conservatives like it because there's like personal accountability, and liberals like it because there's so much humanity in it.

It's looking for the humanity, right?

So,

yeah, it does stand up.

But you have to do it in a way that isn't the sort of blaming the victim way.

So, you know, it's not saying it's your fault.

I think fault and participation or involvement are different, right?

So I just want freedom.

And I get really very, very attached to my grievance stories.

And

it never

helps me.

It just doesn't.

So I have a situation in the past.

I had that story.

It was worn smooth through telling.

It was really locked down.

And

four years after this one situation completely blew up,

four years,

I, to myself, was willing to admit what I had done to help create the situation.

Four years

to myself.

And then I was like, oh, you know what?

I was not honest in this situation at the beginning.

I was manipulative in this way at the beginning.

And that really set it up.

to go the way it did.

And as soon as I was willing to do that, and I admitted it to someone else, all the resentment I felt about the people involved, it was gone by like 80%.

Wow.

I am like, my mind is blowing right now because,

so I just recently gotten to therapy, trying to like really like go after like my dark side.

I'm like positive patty over here for the most of my life, but like, I just haven't really paid any attention to my dark side.

I just want to be there when she comes out sideways.

Yeah, because

she's new,

She's coming out right now.

Not a lot of fun of her.

Lennon's like, what the hell is happening?

Can we just be happy again?

So one of our kids has been going through a little bit of a heartbreak.

And this particular situation with our kid has actually been really hard for me.

Like it has, it has.

I'm going to start crying now.

Like,

it has broken me in a way.

Like, I'm so fucking mad.

And I'm like, this is too, this is too close.

I shouldn't have this experience for my kid's heartbreak.

Like, what the fuck?

And I'm now understanding that

watching our kid go through this has

completely brought to the forefront the way in which I contributed to all of the heartbreaks of my own life.

And it has fucking floored me.

And I watched

the way that the world is and the way that, and it's like, fuck, you did this to you.

It wasn't about that person, it was me.

Well, the okay, here's the advanced course

is forgiving yourself,

you know, is forgiving yourself.

I was just like this little scared person, and I didn't know, and I just wanted to be loved.

Of course, that's right.

And like

having so much compassion for that, and going, oof, and I was participating in this thing that ended up hurting me.

And I have so much compassion for that, that version of myself and why I felt like I had to do it.

I'm really happy for you.

I know that sounds horrible, but I'm really happy for you because you're doing the real shit.

Every time I talk to you, there's just magic.

That's all I'll say.

And I am really grateful for who you are in the world.

And I just love you.

And thank you for this hour that's been so healing for the person I love so much.

A lot of the people that surround Nadia,

these are people who, you know, maybe like a lot of the pod squatters who have been hurt by church a lot because of queerness, but for a lot of different reasons.

Nadia, what would you say to all of the love bugs who, because of queerness, yeah,

have really been sort of

told that they are not part of that community that you're talking about.

You know, aha,

here it is.

Here's that blessing I wrote for Abby.

Do you remember?

Yes.

Oh, yes, I do.

So it's not, I'm going to read it.

Is that okay?

Because I feel like it, I mean, it's specific to you, but I feel like it's also.

Uh-huh.

Okay, here it is.

A blessing for Abby.

Abby, you said that when you got hurt, your body let you down and you felt mortal for the first time.

I get that mortal refers to being subject to death, but there's another definition I really love, which is belonging to this world.

So for you, Abby, I offer a blessing of that belonging.

I bless the young queer girl who felt she did not belong in the pews of a church that told her she was an abomination, because the real abomination is an imaginary hell created by anxious men, unconvinced of their own belonging.

But you, you belong here.

I bless the athlete who did superhuman things on the field, who collected more goals and trophies and titles and wins than anyone else.

When you tried to buy your belonging with excellence, that deep loneliness was proof that you are so much like the rest of us and you belong here.

I bless your divorce, which is no more a curse than marriage is a reward.

I bless the pain that you tried to medicate away.

I bless you for holding so tight to what you thought made you lovable.

I bless that moment in jail when you sobered up enough to realize that no, the breathalyzer wasn't broken and you were just a very drunk, very dangerous woman.

Even when it sucks, you belong here.

So I offer you a blessing of belonging, Abby.

May you luxuriate in your ordinary humanity.

I'm so glad you are here with us in it.

So may you wake up each morning, stretch your mortal body, and hear love whispering, you belong.

Amen.

Amen.

So crying again over here.

Thank you.

Did you hear that she said that divorce is no more of a curse than marriage is a reward?

Holy shit.

Pod squad, I mean, obviously, go to Substack and follow this one.

Thank you.

I'm so glad you're happy.

I'm so glad you're, um, that you have this love for Eric, but just also for you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Oh, I wish I could give you a hug, Abby.

My wife.

I'm really good at that.

Thank you.

I want a hug.

I don't know.

There's just something about, I mean, I'm going to keep crying, but I just think that there's something so important about somebody who sees queer people

and who is of

God, like the real one, you know, not the one I grew up with.

And I just feel like I could just pour myself out to you.

So thank you.

Well, you have my number.

You're welcome to call it.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks, Nadia.

Thank you so much.

Bye, Pod Squad.

We'll see you next time.

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