239. Why Are We Never Satisfied? with adrienne maree brown

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Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.

Today, we are going to finally figure out how the hell to be satisfied in our lives.

I don't make that promise lightly.

I think we have the one person on this planet who might be smart enough to help us with this.

I really, really think they are.

The person who is on our podcast today, finally, sister has been counting down the days till now, is Adrienne Marie Brown.

who grows healing ideas in public through writing, music, and podcasts.

Adrian has nurtured emergent strategy, pleasure activism, radical imagination, and transformative justice.

All the most important things in the world.

No pressure, Adrian.

No pressure.

Adrian's work is informed by 25 years of social and environmental justice facilitation, primarily supporting Black liberation.

Adrian is the author and editor of Emergent Strategy, Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Pleasure Activism, The Politics of of Feeling Good, Grievers and Maroons.

And Adrian lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Thank you for being here, Adrian.

Thanks for having me, y'all.

Oh, I love being here with y'all.

Since this came in, I've been walking around.

Like, at what point do I sing the theme song to y'all and like let you know immediately that you have a brilliant voice?

Your voice is so good.

I think maybe you should do it now.

To be loved, we need to be known.

Finally find our way back home.

I literally walk around my house singing this all the time.

When do I get to meet your child and collaborate?

Like, I love this song, y'all.

It's such a beautiful song.

Wait till I tell little Tish that.

What tells me?

It's an excellent song.

Like, it's very rare that you can have a song that you're going to play every single podcast.

And every time you're going to want to hear it.

It's excellent songwriting.

Oh, my God.

And that's your thing is songwriting.

She's great.

She's a little love bug who did not know what to do with her feelings for a very long time.

And it was not an easy road, Adrian.

I'm just going to tell you.

I feel her.

And then she found out.

It was easier for her.

She's 16.

I'm 44 and I'm still like, what do I do with my feelings?

Same, same.

I'm just like, so you're 16 and you already know that like you stop following, asking directions from people you've never, where you've never been.

I didn't figure that out for a really long time.

I'm really impressed.

And just to have something to go to when you have big feelings.

She went from no outlet to this journal thing.

And then she went from the journal to the guitar and then the guitar to the voice.

And now we hear her in her room just,

you know, every time anything happens,

singing the world into being.

You know, I really feel like a lot of what singers and songwriters, I've been playing with this this year.

I've finally gotten to do music and musical ritual.

And my sister and I.

She's also making music.

We sat up last night exchanging songs and like just being like, you know, if the world is made up of all these vibrations and right now so many vibrations are harmful and scary and terrifying and then we're able to process like take it into our bodies and process it through into something beautiful hopeful or connective tissue that feels like a very sacred act like i i think it's really important and then the younger you find that power that superpower like oh this doesn't have to crush me I can actually take it and compost it and make it into something beautiful.

That's what the world, I think that's what we're supposed to be doing.

One of the main things we're supposed to be doing is letting it move through us and then changing the world through us.

I'm taking my nibblings to see Beyonce tonight.

And I'm like, so geeked out.

We're so geeked out, but they're both musician artist people.

And at the young ages of 10 and 13, they're like, I'm a songwriter.

I'm an actress.

I know what I'm supposed to do.

And I'm like, great.

Let's go see the best.

Let's go like witness what it's like when a, when a witch is fully empowered and just casting spells over the whole universe through vibrations and sound and music.

And, you know, this is the time.

It's a crappy time.

We might as well make things beautiful.

And we're done.

Yeah.

So thank you for your time.

We can do hard things.

It's a crappy hard thing.

We might as well make things beautiful.

It really is like you got to have some form of alchemy, like something.

Yes.

to take the shit and spin it into something that it's power.

Well, because when you're in the hard time, you know, I've been reflecting on this a lot because I'm like, oh, fascism, you know, it's not a small hard time.

It's a big hard time and global hard time.

But then I also am like, well, fascism has never won.

You know, it cycles around, it comes, it tries to win and it is terrifying and it costs us so much every time it comes through, but it never wins.

We are all the survivors of fascism always.

And then when you look at like, well, how did we do it each time?

We told jokes, we hugged each other, we hid each other's secrets, we saw each other as valuable.

Like Like it's always been these like small things, but song is always a part of it.

People sang in the camps, people sang on the fields, people always sing.

We sing our way through.

This is one of the reasons I'm so obsessed with everything that you do is because

it

is both hope and faith and aspirational, but it is very, very grounded in discipline.

Yeah.

It is a discipline to understand

that everything that has happened has happened before.

Yeah.

That this is not shocking.

And it is shocking, lowercase, and not capital case shocking.

And that we need to ground ourselves in really what is the opposite of a self-indulgent

shock, but it's saying this is the way of the world.

And we take our place in the way of the world and we

find

our

huge moments of victory over that, you know, connecting with each other.

And in game, I was just listening to Abby, you're remembering of the World Cup.

And I'm just like, oh, that feeling and like being in a stadium with everyone having that feeling.

That's aliveness, you know, that's satisfaction.

There's a moment there was like, yes, this is everything.

I've been getting into basketball and I've been like, this is it.

I've been really amazed lately.

I'm like, sports, sports are like really up to something.

And I feel like for the longest time, I didn't get it.

I was like, no, sports are a distraction from the movement and the revolution.

And now I'm like, oh, no, there's something really revolutionary about what happens when people are fully in their bodies and they come together and galvanize.

And especially if you have progressive sports participants, right?

Where you're like, oh.

I'm going to now use this.

Are you excited?

Are you turned completely out by my amazingness?

Also, justice.

This is a very exciting moment, you know, for someone like me to be like, oh, open, just what makes people feel alive and want to come together?

And then how does that become a portal to the world we want to be like?

And what is that divine stirring thing that I don't cry?

Okay.

I always say, I cried and I'm always lying.

I never cried.

I just feel like a tear came to my eye.

Exactly.

And it stopped.

I considered a tear intellectually.

Well, it's antidepressants.

It freezes.

It dries you out.

Yeah.

But I have a feeling inside me that I assume is what other people feel before they cry.

That's what I mean.

Yeah.

Except sports,

theater.

Yes.

And concerts.

Yes.

And then all of a sudden it opens you up and you can do it.

It might be a scale thing for you, Glennon.

You know, like for me, there's a scale thing that happens where because I've had a lot of intense experiences in my life and I need intense, I need extreme experiences in my life.

When I met something that's really massive, like I just did this ritual and it was like 600 people singing at at the top of their lungs and feeling belief.

And I was like, now I can feel, now I can feel it.

Or I just went to see Stevie Nixon concert.

And it was like watching this witch and watching the scale.

I was like, this whole room just believes in a freaking landslide right now.

Like everything can happen.

But the scale does something for me.

Me too.

I think in relationship to the intensity post-addiction.

Intensity too.

It's like, what can touch that

for me?

You know, it's like the place that ecstasy used to take me to where I'm like, now everything is connected.

And I'm like, okay, everything is connected.

I can feel everyone feeling togetherness right now.

And anything that's making them feel that I'm curious about.

And then I'm like, how do we make people feel that and not cause harm?

That's like the thing I'm, you know, I'm just like, okay, because people feel that after a game and they're like, now let me go tear up this city.

Let me go destroy everything.

Or, you know, I used to live in Detroit near the downtown area.

And it was like, after the games, it was just like, ugh, like, why did you feel so excited you had to throw up everywhere?

Like, what was that about?

You know,

or, you know, what the last president did is like taking that feeling and whipping it into like, let's go destroy everyone and get to go hate people.

So that feeling is, is almost neutral.

It's aliveness, it's neutral.

And then we have to figure out like, how do we make that feeling something that moves us from life moving towards life?

And it's like, there's room for for this feeling and everyone could actually be connected into it and use it for good.

Because church does it.

I, you know, you've seen, I've seen that thing on Twitter where it's like, I was, I thought that that feeling I got with my hands in the air and the evangelical church was God, but then I found it at a YouTube concert.

Like, yes.

That's what's happened to me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I thought, oh, this is Jesus, which bless maybe it is, but it's also Brandy Carlisle.

Like

Brandy Carlisle do it.

I think that what you're speaking to right now is like really interesting because

when you're collectively in a stadium, I've been in a few.

I've been the subject of why people were there.

And when there's this collective moment of awe,

of like, we've never seen this moment before.

And we're all like the expectation and the hope and the belief that this thing can come true, this big moment, the crescendo.

After every world championship I ever played in, where there was multitudes of these throughout the month or however long the tournament was,

I would go into a mild depression.

Absolutely.

And so I think of it as the unplugging, right?

So it's like, I was plugged in, you know, so completely.

And I was, you know, like, oh, I just felt all of this, like the love and the aliveness and the hope of all these people and their ancestors and their future.

Like I could feel that time was an illusion and I could feel the separateness as a game and I could feel all of that.

And now I have to like not unfeel it, but I have to like kind of unplug so I can function.

Right.

Cause I'm like, okay, now I've got to be back in the world that doesn't know that all the time and is not going to respond well if I'm walking around all the time, like, oh my goodness,

you guys, you know, so I'm like, okay, how do I right-size that for like daily life?

And here's something I've been playing with is, can I access, can I touch into it when I'm doing something mundane?

So can I touch into like, I'm that connected right now doing the dishes and I'm that connected if I'm taking care of one of the kids in my life.

You know, one of my babies who's almost two just visited and it's one of my goddess friends kids.

And we're playing, we're making art together.

We're like just drawing on this box.

And I was like, how connected can we be drawing on this box right now?

Like, how much can we just be one being?

Because, you know, he's down.

He's like, I don't even know about separation yet.

I haven't reached that point.

I'm like, I'm here.

She's mine.

She's a part of me.

And you're now a part of me.

And we just went into it.

And I was like, I'm so present.

I'm being so present right now, which is what those big feelings call in.

And I also feel the unplugging when he leaves.

And I'm like, okay, now there's no little kid who's completely available.

But if I can learn to just ride that and just be like, all of it is true.

I'm just, I'm alive now with missing that.

I'm missing the connection.

I'm missing being 600 people plugged into one emotion in a moment.

I don't know if I could sustain feeling it all the time either, though.

Like, I don't know if you could stay in that, you know, World Cup winning moment and live, you know.

No, but what you just said, I mean, it just like completely floors me thinking about the

games, the big games that I played where literally millions and millions and millions of people around the world are watching.

Yes.

That is like.

to want to participate in that moment, you know, in your mind about what it is, but in your soul, it really is about feeling less alone and being and trying to be a part of this energy that all of these human beings' consciousnesses are coming together and exploding into this oneness.

Yeah.

Well, and you know, Abby, I'm interested in this because I'm like, not everyone can handle it either.

So I'm really curious about what the role is like amongst humans.

I think about this, you know, I'm like watching a Steph Curry, I'm watching someone like you, I'm watching someone become a body that all these people are pouring their hope into.

And if you miss, all this disappointment is going to happen.

And if you get it, everyone's going to be like, we did that.

In a way, we all poured into you doing that.

And your body was a vessel for this thing to happen.

And I'm like, not everyone is called to be in that work.

But I do think there's a way that we can be like, but everyone can tap into that connection.

And then how do we take care of those people who do become that the body of the whole for a moment?

Because I think celebrity culture has it all wrong, right?

I think it's like, oh, putting that person on a pedestal and taking them away from humans is often the next thing that happens is being like, you're not like us.

You're so different.

You're over there.

Instead of being like, you're so of us.

Thank you for what you did with us.

Thanks for.

being a part of this and like, let's take care of you.

Now you get to take three years and just sleep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

With a hot water bottle because you did the thing where you let us pour through you, and then someone else can step up and be poured through, or whatever.

You know, in my vision of the future, there is a lot of that sharing that work,

right?

Being like, oh, we cultivate excellence and we share the work of holding it, and we take care of those who embody it.

And then everyone is like, oh, and I play a role in that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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Do you ever think of it as like a distilled aliveness?

Because I have the same feeling when I watch my kids play in a little league game as when I watched the World Cup.

Literally the exact same thing.

She does, Adrian.

She does.

And

for me, it is

less about like, oh my gosh, so much is riding on you because this is this moment of, it's distilled humanity and aliveness.

It's like, I see you trying so hard and we don't know what is possible.

And we don't know if we're going to lose or we're going to win, but I know you're relying on her.

You're going to throw that ball and you're going to hope she catches it.

And you're going to, and to me, it's just like, this is what we're all doing when we walk down.

This is what it is.

Like you're a little kid going to theater too, right?

It's like, in some way, doing the work that I've been doing lately, this like theatrical ritual stuff has been really interesting because people have been like, you know, theater is just a place where someone goes and feels on behalf of everyone else.

That's what the original purpose was.

It was always ritual.

It was always like, this person's going to get up and they're going to grieve for us and they're going to tell us a love story so we can all touch into it.

I think sports is theater.

You know, when you talk about,

you know, when you watch someone and they're like, they're injured.

And you're like, let's see what happens, right?

Are they injured or not?

You know, they're they're giving a great show of what it would be like to be so injured right now, or what it would be like to win, or what it'd be like to be like, I'm a fucking badass right now.

Part of what got me into basketball was watching the women's college games go down.

Watching, I was just like, I could watch these girls do anything forever and just be like up in each other's face, like deal with it.

And I was like, this is, it's erotic.

It's powerful.

I feel alive, but it's all theater.

Something's playing out that all of us can somehow tap into.

And I think if we see it that way, then it's like, I mean, I can't imagine what it's like to have someone who came out of your body also then becoming a body that all that is pouring into.

I feel like that must be a whole nother level.

But for me, I'm just very interested in the healing capacity of that, which is theatrical, right?

Or even Glennon, you know, I think this is so much of the power of what you do is like, you're like, I will feel it.

and I will testify.

And then other people are able to be like, oh, I know what addiction is like.

I'm going through eating disorder recovery too right now.

And I'm like, I never thought that we would talk about that, you know, that anyone would talk about that.

It's so private, but I'm like, actually not performing, but testifying, here's what it is.

It's fucking hard.

Here's what's happening inside of it.

Then everyone else can be like, oh,

relax.

You belong.

You belong.

You're doing, you're going through this thing and someone else is going through it.

And you can see them going through it.

And it makes you understand you're not outside of humanity.

You're not outside of belonging to the species.

In fact, the things that make you feel sometimes worthless, right?

Because we live inside of capitalism.

All these things we think of as flaws or things that we're struggling with are made to feel make us feel worthless.

But it's like, actually, I'm never worthless.

I'm in this experience with all these other people and my experiences are worthwhile.

So every time you share it, it's like you're literally helping people be like, oh, maybe I should get therapy or maybe I should, you know, talk to someone about this, or maybe my partner could help me with this.

And that is so valuable.

It's so valuable.

But it's not that, it's like a World Cup win, right?

It's like, I'm winning at eating disorders or whatever, right?

I'm just sort of like, I'm testifying that this is another part of aliveness.

Uh-huh.

Right.

Yeah.

And it's so,

um,

I just feel like addiction

for me is the same as

I'm fucking crying right now.

I know.

I'm like looking at you going, what is happening?

We're in the stadium.

We're in the concert.

It is like the feeling of the scale you were talking about is also for me about disappearing.

But is it,

is it disappearing or is it like dissolving?

That's what I wanted out of drugs.

Yeah.

That is sort of what I wanted out of the eating disorder with bulimia because it was

a swallowing up of everything that everything just disappeared.

It was just.

Yeah, it's the numbness, you know, like I think of it as this

numbness that I could mistake for aliveness for me, right?

That I was like, I'm going and I'm going to get so high.

And then I'll think I'm connected.

But actually it's like, I'm disconnected from the things that hurt me.

And you can misplace that for connect.

It's like, well, nothing's actively hurting me right now because I'm so high that nothing could.

So yay.

And then I tried other, you know, mushrooms and I was like, oh, now I feel actually very connected, maybe in a way that I can't quite handle, but yay, also.

And then for me, it was binge eating that I'm like, I, you know, fuck what anyone wants.

Oh, sorry, I keep cursing.

Oh my gosh.

I was like, I'm not going to curse because the babies listen, but babies, there's curse words.

So yeah, welcome to the stage.

We curse you.

Here we are.

Yeah, but I think that for me, the eating

was like, oh, I can numb the impact of the world.

There's this numbness, but I'm like, even when I'm trying to numb, it's because I feel so connected.

And if I can remember that, then I don't need to do the self-harming behavior in order to feel connected.

Maybe I can write a song instead.

One of my practices right now is being like, could I sing?

Could I sing my way through this moment instead of having a pizza?

And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't work.

Or could I write something?

Or

the last thing I think of when I'm in the moment is: could I reach out to someone?

Like, even though that's usually the thing that I most need, is like,

now I feel like I'm going to cry, but I'm like, I'm mostly like, can someone just hold me?

You know, and can we just hold each other in the spirit of climate crisis and in the spirit of racism and in the spirit of all that is happening?

Can we just hold each other with the fact that that's the world we've chosen to create with the miraculous time we have?

And it feels like there's not enough time to make another one.

Sometimes I feel that and I'm like, someone hold me.

And instead, you know, I don't reach out.

I don't say anything.

I just do a pract, do this coping mechanism that from very young has protected me.

It has kept me alive.

When I wanted to die, I didn't die at a pizza.

I'm also very grateful to pizza.

You know, it's gotten me here.

Right.

But now that I'm like here, I'm like, okay, I'm 44, about to turn 45.

And

I want to feel connected and I want to feel alive and I want to feel feel satisfied in my life with this being the short time that I'm going to have.

And this is the impact I will have.

I want to be in it.

I want to feel it.

And no drug quite gets me to that place, right?

So far.

Still looking.

I'm still like, I don't know.

Also just trying to deal with shame, you know, just being like, oh, I'm not ashamed of however I got to here.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm not ashamed of how are my people, you know, and I think of the lineages behind me.

We've all made compromises to get to here

and but maybe i get to have the most time to reflect on it of any anyone that's ever existed in my ancestry i'm like i have time to sit and think about what i'm living and how i'm surviving and what i want to do with my life and i want to heal turns out how do you think about being satisfied talk to us about um

the shift that happened when you were speaking with a teacher who asked you, are you satisfiable?

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

So I was in somatics work, which I think you all have understanding of what somatics is.

It's the understanding of embodiment, really looking at what does it mean to be in a body.

And we were in a class and my teacher turned and asked me that in front of everyone, are you satisfiable?

And it was one of those like

stop me in my tracks questions because I thought of myself as a very

already very pleasure-oriented person.

You know, I'm like, yeah, I get what I want, you know, badass, whatever.

But that I was like, no, I'm definitely not satisfiable.

And there's nothing in my entire life that has cultivated satisfiability in me.

I think it is like fundamentally an anti-capitalist thing to be satisfiable.

Right.

So we live in a culture that is constantly like, you don't have enough.

You are not not enough.

You are not pretty enough.

You're not skinny enough.

You need better skin.

You need better hair.

Everything is wrong with you.

You need a better car.

You need a better house.

You're just not there yet.

And we export, this is our primary export from the US, you know, to the rest of the world.

It's like, we've got the best cars or whatever.

We've got the best everything.

And so constantly from a very young age, what we've all been steeped in, but for me, I can speak to my life.

I've been steeped in, I am not enough.

I'm not doing enough.

And I don't have enough.

And so then to inside of that, decide, wait a second, maybe

this satisfiability thing is actually something I could access.

I could be enough.

Maybe I already am enough.

Is that that, there's no way that that's possible.

So a lot of satisfiability is just even sitting and considering the question, could you be enough?

Could you consider that you're already enough and that there's nothing to fix?

about you?

Like that there might be places that want to grow, but that's different from like, there's something fundamentally wrong with you that you need to go purchase a way out of.

And I feel like that for me, then I started living in my life and being like, well, when do I feel satisfied?

When do I feel satisfied?

And

if I'm not feeling satisfied, why not?

What is the texture of my dissatisfaction?

Is it from inside me or is it from someone else's narrative of my life?

And that, you know, it turns out when I start moving other people's voices out of my mind and I start to notice in my own body, wait, that does feel good enough for me.

That does feel good enough.

I think about this with orgasms.

You know, when I was writing pleasure activism, I was like, it's so important to me to write a book about this

that

kind of allows people to feel good with what feels good to them rather than what someone else is saying.

I'd be like, as a woman, I can have multiple orgasms.

So I'm just going to have as many as I can have because I can freaking have so many.

Instead of being like, what is the quality of this connection?

And what is the quality of this touch?

And what is the quality of how I feel in my body?

And then what is the orgasm that comes out of that

attention?

And it might be one,

which is shocking to me, but it might actually be sometimes I have one that I'm like, that is totally satisfying.

Or a moment.

You know, Audrey Lorde is the patron saint of pleasure activism.

And she wrote about this in this essay, The Uses of the Erotic as Power.

And she talked about painting a fence or laying in bed with her lover or writing a poem as all these experiences that give her this erotic aliveness, right?

And now I'll be like, oh, I'm sitting on my porch watching the geese fly across the water.

I'm like, God, that satisfies me every time.

Like just.

the rhythm of them and the sounds of them and the formation that they get into and the beautiful divine design of it all.

I'm like, this is very satisfying.

So I think a trick to satisfaction is it's actually simpler than we think, but you have to sort of say, what if I wasn't purchasing it?

What if it wasn't something money could ever buy?

Then what would what would satisfy me?

And I think.

I was laying up last night writing about this.

I actually think the clue to our future is in there somewhere that's like,

because we have to redistribute everything.

If our species is going to survive right now, we have to really like let go of having too much.

All the people who have too much are not satisfied.

So that clearly is not a winning strategy.

So we have to like let go of that.

And we have to materially redistribute things because some people don't have enough to even get to think about what would satisfy them because they're constantly trying to just meet their basic material needs.

But like, if I can recognize, oh, the simpler things satisfy me, I don't have to keep hoarding and accumulating and aiming for millions and billions when

you know you can live a good life right it's the whole pizza it's the binge pizza it's binge eating the binge eating yeah it's absolutely that it's like actually my body can be full it can have just the right amount of food in it I'm learning to feel this sensation, Glenn.

I don't know if this is part of the work you're in, but for me, it's like, I actually am like learning at a sensational level to be like, can I be in touch with what's happening inside my body body rather than

like, for instance, what someone across the table thinks about how much I'm eating?

Right.

Can I just tune in and be like, I'm, I'm just in my stomach.

How is it inside there?

What you're saying is seven months in for me.

Like, I'm like, oh,

like what, Pot Squad, you're listening to Adrian thinking that for me, that has taken me seven months.

Yeah.

To do that.

No, I mean, that's what we're doing.

I'm about the same where I started to be like, oh, I think this is not just a

quirk.

Same.

I think it's inside me.

I have to learn how to feel something.

Yeah.

And then as I'm, sometimes I cry when I feel it.

You know, sometimes I'll get really, I'm just like,

that's enough.

Like the literal sensation of it.

And I'm just like, this is mind-blowing.

And, and then I wonder

in our world, like, what would it look like to care about about that being a sensation that everyone got to experience?

And what would change if enough is what we focus on kids experiencing in school?

Having enough belonging and enough space to make art and enough food and enough, you know, adult attention,

right?

That instead of being like, there's something wrong with your parents, no, they're probably working.

So, how do we make sure you're getting enough attention?

in school or whatever.

But if like enough was the focal point of how we educated our kids i think that we wouldn't have all the crap that we deal with today and what makes us cry in that moment of the enoughness or i should say when what makes me have that exact feeling you're talking about we're one person yes exactly atrian what makes us is because the fear that we were unsatisfiable like that's why i was a binge eater for so long i didn't think I would tell my therapist just now, no, I'm just not a normal person.

Like

not like anyone else.

God bless everyone else.

Great with your little lives and your bodies that work and your souls that are not empty pits, a bucket with no bottom.

But for me,

my body doesn't, I don't know what is enough.

I will never be satisfied.

And so that feeling of, oh my God, my body works.

I am satisfied is the same as sitting and watching the geese.

It is.

You're like, it's so

divine design.

It's like, I was not left out of the divinity of the design of all things.

I wasn't left out of it.

We are species, you know, because I do think our species is like

on the, you know, we're, we're, we're struggling.

We're struggling on behalf of all the species in the world.

We're definitely like at the bottom of whatever that list is.

But I do think we were not left out of the divinity of the design of all things.

And the design of all things is there is a balance, there's an order, enough matters.

And

enough looks different.

I'm like, oh, I'm not a bear preparing for hibernation,

so I don't need to eat like a bear preparing for hibernation.

I'm a creature who is designed to eat a little bit every day all year long to sustain my system.

And there's certain things that my body really likes, and there's certain things my body really doesn't like.

And I'm just like everything, I'm like, the bees like honey, and I like ice cream.

And there's a way to be in relationship to that.

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Don't you have respect, though, for like, I think like taking a step back and being like, it was subversive and beautiful that you became binge eaters because you looked at a world and you were like,

I deserve something.

Yes.

I deserve to be satisfied.

Oh, yeah.

It started as a subversive act.

Like I will get my pizza.

I will get my pizza.

It's like a million orgasms.

I like this also because I can't speak for boys as much.

My experience was very much being a young girl and being a young girl and deciding like,

like I was told at a very formative moment, no one wants to marry a fat girl.

It was like right as I had started to put like a couple of pounds on, which now it's like embraced.

It's like, have a thick butt.

That's great.

We love it.

Right.

But at the time, it was like, how flat and thin and bony and like non-structural can you get?

And that was not the body that the divine design had in mind for me.

But I was told no one wants to marry a fat girl.

So it was very like tied into my sense of what was going to give my life value if I couldn't be someone's wife, right?

The assumption of it.

And so for me, there was a rebelliousness in it to be like, I'm eating everything.

Yes.

No one wants to marry a fat girl.

I don't care.

I'm going to eat everything.

But then, because I was raised in diet culture, then I'm going to try to diet.

But then I'm also going to rebel against that and eat everything.

It's just been like this.

When I'm gaining weight, it's almost always this feeling of like, I don't care what anyone thinks.

There's such a freedom in it.

But then I'm like, oh, this is causing other situations in my body that are really painful or really hard or I'm trying to navigate.

And I'm interested in the public conversations about this because I think this is an area that we have not figured out at all yet.

It's kind of like, you know,

you're fat, you're judged for that.

You're dieting, you're judged for that.

Oh, you're not fat enough anymore.

Now you're judged for that.

If you talk about health and what your own desires are for health, you're judged for that.

I look at people and I'm just sort of like, no one's winning in this game if we're dealing with external positions on it.

This is internal work.

You really have to be like, how do I get good with myself?

And I think that's the key, coming back to this question about satisfiability for life, for enoughness.

It's always like you only have your own one little miraculous life.

That's it.

And so you have to get really good with your choices.

You have to get really good with yourself and whatever arrangement you have to do around you of boundaries and who gets to be close and far and how much you look at social media or don't.

Make those adjustments so you can hear yourself.

Because when you can hear yourself, you're much closer to actually being able to feel your good life.

Yes.

Yeah.

And it's like mind-blowing and almost unacceptable at first

that

the satisfiable, because we weren't wrong.

The culture put a bunch of stuff in front of us and said, this is what's going to make you satisfied.

This is it.

And then there was this other way.

Yeah.

That we did.

Also, we didn't know how that stuff was made.

So I'm like, oh, I didn't know that chips were like specifically designed to make me like almost satisfied, but need one more.

Oh my God.

I didn't know someone was nefariously thinking that.

No, I don't know.

So our cars, so our houses,

clothes.

You literally know that you were going to build every piece of technology to fall apart and I would need a new one.

Or just planned obsolescence in everything we buy.

So it's like.

We're so fucking exhausted because they promise it's just right there.

But you get there and then you're just like, oh, I'm so exhausted, but I got to keep going because I'm just right about there.

And then you don't want to become like this paranoid person

or this negative person.

You know, my early years of activism, I was rough on my family.

You know, I'd come back and be like, you guys are all participating in this matrix of hell.

You know, it was very intense.

That was on our Christmas episode where you were all anti-capitalist.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, you were using it.

I forgot I called in about that.

Yes, exactly.

So I love telling my family about themselves.

Right.

And I came back.

I was just like, I got a lot to tell you about yourself.

I mean, we've gone through many variations of what is a righteous person and how does a righteous person live and eat and talk and think and do all this stuff.

And there's some balancing out of all that you have to figure out in there.

But I don't want to be someone who's constantly lecturing at people about how to live either.

So a big thing I've been tuning into is just like, what does it mean to just live it?

Yeah.

And let my life be the communication about it.

Yes.

I am a writer, so I'm going to write about it.

I am a singer, so I'm going to sing about it because that's how I live it.

But not, I'm like, I don't know more about this necessarily than anyone else does because I'm really focused on my own experience.

And then I'm listening for other people.

Like, I don't know what it's like to be the

sports person who is right in front of the goal, about to do the thing with millions of people watching, but I can listen to what Abby's saying and I can learn from that, right?

There's, there's precipices in my life that are that important for me, even if that's not the way it's going to play out.

And so you're going to help me understand something about my own humanity.

And I think if we have that sense of like, oh, I'm responsible for living mine.

God didn't give me extra special soccer skills.

God gave me like a certain kind of voice and a certain way of hearing things and a certain poetic license and sisters to belong to, you know, and things like that.

So I always am asking people that too.

I'm like, what are your gifts?

What were you given?

You know, do you know yet?

Right.

No one else can tell you.

And other people might like see it in you, but some people are like, I have 20 gifts.

I'm not interested in most of them.

Some people have like one really big one.

It's even that part is really interesting to me.

But everyone, I have not met someone yet who didn't have anything.

Yeah.

I've only met people who were not invited to develop it, invited to live into themselves.

And that's devastating.

When you

talk to other people who are on the journey of becoming satisfied, of finally realizing, oh, I see how it works is you can't ever get enough of what you never really needed.

So

that's the thing that I was just on the wrong ladder over there.

And so now I'm going to

test the possibility that in our divine design, there was satisfiability planted inside of us.

Because it would be pretty cruel to not have that.

Yeah.

To make a person who was constantly hungry and could never be satiated.

Yeah.

So if we have that, do you find

that the people who find it, that they're often the simplest things?

Because that's what's almost so mind-blowing to me.

I'm like, is this, is it okay?

Is it okay?

That it's okay that actually it's just sitting on my deck with a book.

Yeah.

I do find that absolutely to be the case.

One of the principles of emergent strategy is small is all and everything large is made up of the small.

Everything in our bodies, we're not individual beings.

We're beings made up of tons of cells and bacteria and longings and dreams and memories.

I mean, it's all in here.

It's all these small parts in motion.

And even when I think, oh, my depression is actually this like small set of organizers inside my system up to something.

And there's other small things up to something inside of me.

But the simplicity of it, I think, is the trick that we have not figured out in this time how to be simple and to be interconnected.

We know more now than we've ever known at any point in human history about what's happening with other people.

And so it's like, oh, can I remember to stay with the simplicity of my own life inside of that?

And the people I know who feel the happiest and most satisfied are the people who are able to really land in the small things that give them pleasure in their lives, the routines that give them stability in their own lives.

Even the things I'm like, I don't really enjoy.

You know, like I wake up in the morning and I need to do stretching and some Pilates and some PT.

to be a functional body.

And it's not like I wake up and I'm like, can't wait to do the hundreds, but I do feel the joy, the pleasure of like, I woke up and I did the routine that my body needs.

I'd nourished the system.

And now I'm going to be able to stand up a bit straighter and walk for a bit longer and feel less pain.

There's something so delightful about just being like, this is my body and I'm being in it.

And now I'm making my tea.

That's.

dope.

I'm just like making, I don't know, the tea came from somewhere.

There's just so much about

if I can tune in to what I'm doing.

The other thing that I do, I do these sabbaticals or these little trips, these vacations for myself.

And the only practice of it is do exactly what you want next.

So, you know, I'm like, okay, now what do I want to do?

Oh, I want a bowl of cereal.

Okay, now what do I want to do?

I need to go put my feet on the dirt.

Okay, then now what do I want to do?

Yeah.

Oh, it's time to write.

An idea is coming.

And what I find is if I clear the decks and just ask myself what I want to do, it always gets me to writing.

That's how I know that that's my purpose.

That's my thing I'm meant to do in the world.

It always brings me there.

And love.

I always want to be falling in love, being in love, loving people, like talking to my loved ones.

I just am a lover, you know, then that's the simple things that my life is now constructed of.

And if it doesn't align with those things, I'm getting much better now at being like, oh, that's okay.

That's just not a part of my life.

I I used to work so hard to be like, I need to convince those people about how to be in right relationship with me.

And I need to convince everyone to do exactly what I want to do, the way I want to do it.

And that's not what we're here to do.

Let them go do their thing.

You do yours.

You know, and then surprise, there's tons of people who want to do that thing with me.

Several of my closest friends now are people who are like, oh, we're loud introverts or we're like, visible introverts or whatever.

We make plans and we're in pencil because we probably don't actually want to do anything, but we just love each other enough to make a plan.

And then we just check in and we're like, Do you still want to do the thing?

And mostly it's like, no, but I love you so much.

And I'm so glad that like we had to talk today to talk about the plan that we're not going to do.

And then sometimes we do do it.

And the whole time we're like, we are outside.

Do you want to just read together?

Or do you want to sit in a hot tub and gossip?

Or like, what is the most unimportant thing we could do or the easiest thing?

You know, last week I was like, I'm going to come over while you make food for your baby, and

we're just going to sit and focus on the kid.

We're just doing this.

This is so normal and it's so like unimportant and it's so joyful.

Just stop wasting your time on things you don't want to do and things you don't like and things that don't feel good in your body.

Yeah, the world has enough of that.

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I think what you're saying is so specific to me and the way that I have found to live my life post-soccer because I had so much.

There was just so much in that world that I've had.

It sounded so rigid too.

Yeah, there was a lot of rules and you had to do X and Y.

And so I had to kind of cultivate a whole new existence as a person.

And what I have found is doing very simple things because a lot of these simple things are the things in my life whether it's my daily wellness care whether it's getting in the cold plunge whether it's going to the gym i tried to do that as early in the morning as possible because then what ends up happening is like the divine the world

is allowed to now come through me because I've opened myself to it.

And I think that that's what you're saying.

It's like, you find yourself always getting to writing.

And it's because you're doing all of these simple next right thing moments

that gets you to the place that your body can be to accept the divine.

That's it.

I think of it as getting everything else out of the way.

That's right.

As well.

I went through a big breakup a couple of years ago.

I was in a big relationship and I thought I was going to get married.

And I went through this breakup.

And part of the breakup, part of what I realized I needed, I was like, I love this person.

I love being up in this, but it takes so much time and attention.

And it's, there's a lot of instability inside of it.

And I can't write.

I'm not getting to my writing.

I'm spending all of my creative work trying to create this relationship to function.

Right.

And I was like, oh, I have to let this go, even though I'm breaking my own heart to do so, because I actually have to trust that my calling, my destiny is this writing thing.

And I'm not going to be satisfied if I'm not doing it or if I'm trying to just do it on the edges.

Sort of like when the toxicity or the thing that's not working takes the main character location in the story, right?

It's like, that's not the main character of my story.

So I'm casting it.

You know, I'm like, go get on a different story.

My story is Adrienne Marie Brown was a writer, period.

That's my main story.

And I'm doing all this other stuff, but I found that.

And I feel blessed that I found that as early in my life as I have.

Toni Morrison for a long time was the person I looked up to because I was like in my 20s and 30s and I hadn't published fiction.

And I was like, this is just never going to happen.

And I'd be like, but Toni Morrison didn't publish her first fiction till she was 38.

And she didn't really get going with that until she was in her 40s.

I'm doing okay, right?

It's okay.

You can still be, we all know that Toni Morrison was a writer, period, right?

And reading about how she landed that in herself, I'm like, everyone has to go through their own journey to land it in themselves.

I sometimes think people can go their whole lives without never knowing what that sentence is for themselves.

And so I think even if you're living a very successful life, if you don't feel satisfied in it, it's probably because you haven't found that sentence yet.

And that sentence can have commas.

You know, it can be mother and writer or, right, it can be sister.

I'm also a daughter and an auntie.

I'm the best auntie.

You know, like I have a lot of destiny, but.

having that sentence really matters for me.

And

yeah, and then I think you are supposed to organize your life.

And there a lot of it is the simplicity.

It's like, how do I clear everything out that's not that?

And then how do I, inside of capitalism, make a living doing that?

You know, and I call myself a post-nationalist and a post-capitalist because I really, I feel like part of my mind is in another time where I'm like, we don't have to do things we don't love or not part of our destiny in order to make a living doing the thing we love.

But I also feel really blessed in this lifetime, you know, that I've written enough books and that I've, I've listened enough to the calling to be able to do that.

I'm like, most days I can spend my time writing.

It's so simple, but anyway, that if I'm writing with my hand on paper, if I'm on my computer, if I'm like doing it on my phone, I'm just like, I'm the happiest.

Is it easy?

My tail is whacking.

Because that is simple, but not always easy.

What I'm hearing from you is like,

we think of.

pleasure or satisfaction as

because I'm like, yes, Adrian, I am with you.

Let's sit on the deck and watch the geese.

But what I hear you saying is that there's an and both of discipline and pleasure.

Yeah.

There is a hard part of being satisfied.

Discipline of pleasure.

Yeah.

There's a discipline.

There's a discipline.

The places where I'm rigorous now are,

you know,

really when I notice that there's a tension in me where I feel like, oh, I'm holding back.

I don't want to be here.

I don't actually want to do this.

And I can feel the tension of my not wanting to do something.

My rigor now is, can I actually honor that and not do the thing?

Right.

So, because in my head, I'm like, if I can say no to the things I don't want to do, it makes more room for me to say yes to the things I do want to do.

It makes more room for me to say yes to the writing.

And then I'm lucky.

I love writing.

And most of the writing I do does come in a way that feels easy to me.

It's pouring.

It's flowing through.

It feels like it's channeling or something.

I liked you so much till now.

Right.

But listen, but the things that that matter the most to me are not always like that.

I look up to people like you who spend a lot of time in memoir and who spend a lot of time in being like, I'm going to tell you the hardest parts about my own life.

I have not done a ton of that.

A lot of my writing is like,

I did all this facilitation.

Here's everything I know about what you need to know about that.

Or I lived in Detroit for 12 years.

Here's this fiction about the future that we can live.

you know, going through this process in Detroit.

And the hardest parts for me to write are the parts that often feel like they resonate with people the most.

And those, it might take me like a whole day to write a sentence.

And I'm really trying to honor those days because they don't feel the same level of satisfaction.

You know, like on a day when I'm like, I wrote 4,000 words and a new computer love story or something, you know, then I'm like, banging.

Awesome day.

And then I'll have one day where I'm like, I wrote one line.

It cost me everything I had today.

I had to like cry.

I had to grieve.

You know, I had a friend pass away a few few months ago, Evans Richardson, and it was such a shock to my system.

And I kept trying to write for him and about him.

I was like, I need to write with you because you're not here anymore.

And that's not right.

And I need to figure out a way to get it through.

And I just kept writing all this stuff.

I was like, this is crap.

This doesn't come anywhere close to what I'm feeling.

It's just so trite and so stupid.

And I can't write about how big my grief is.

And then the other day I was writing something and like a line came through that as soon as I wrote it, I was just, I stopped and just started weeping, like bawling.

And I didn't think it had anything to do with him.

It had to do with grief.

It had to do with like what it really means to realize you have to live the rest of your life without someone, you know, that's like, I'm okay.

I know that we all die, but your timing is off, you know, your timing is off.

We're supposed to do a lot more of this together.

And then you die or I die when we're old.

We're not old, even if the kids think we're old.

We're not old, you know?

And so when I realized, I was like, I have to live the rest of my life without you.

And I, every time I sign on to a friendship, that's a part of it.

That's a part of the risk of every love story.

It's like,

I'm supposed to freaking fall in love with you, knowing that I might have to live the rest of my life without you.

That's so dumb.

Like, who made it so dumb?

And it's also so amazing.

Like, it makes me cry.

That's where the preciousness comes from.

I think if we all lived forever and we knew we had forever with each other, we wouldn't have a necessary purpose or a reason to grow and to get better at how we treat each other and to get better at how we treat ourselves.

Since he died,

I've made like four more boundaries in my life that I needed to, because I'm like, I'm not wasting my time.

Evans isn't even here anymore.

Like, who knows who else I'm going to lose?

Who do I need to call?

Who do I need to deepen with?

Who do I need to experience today?

And what of myself do I need to experience today?

But yeah, all of that, right?

So it was just like one line that I could get out in a day, but all of that came with it and around it and through it.

Everything you're saying right now.

And I have this vision that I'm seeing in my head, which is that when you said about the clearing out and whatever the main story is,

because I just have so much compassion for myself and

everybody.

I just want to say like, you're not satisfiable because that was the fucking plan.

Okay.

It was a plan.

It was

still the plan.

And it's still the plan.

And so as long as that's the main story that we're telling,

then you are never going to be satisfiable because it's not those fucking kitchen counters and it's not those shoes and it's not your husband.

And it's not like.

It's definitely not your husband.

I'm the biggest like breakup, breakup, break up with people, you know, because I was definitely raised and like, you stick it out, you you know marriage is about you stick it out stick and i'm just like no you don't you do not stick it out if it's not working it's not working and if you cannot get help and get it to work you let it go and you go live a different life and it's okay and actually all the divorced people i know i've not yet met and i'm like excited i'm sure there's exist because all things exist but i have not yet met someone who's like I'm divorced and that was the bad decision.

All the people I know who are divorced are like, oh, I wish I had done it sooner.

All the people I know, like when you go through the breakup where you're like, I was trying and trying, I believe in relationship therapy, but I'm like, I don't think you need to be in there in the first three, six months.

There's certain things that I'm like, what was you talking about the other day?

Beige flags.

I've been thinking about this, like the red, yellow, green flags of life, right?

We apply it to relationship, but I'm like, in all of life, these flags are constantly showing up.

And it's just like the signal inside of my body that like I'm full.

I also get a signal that I get nauseous.

When I eat something that my body is like, that's not good for me, right?

My body is like, I get nauseous.

The same thing happens in my life.

When I'm sitting down with someone, I'm like, this person is not authentic, which is not going to work for me.

It literally shows up as a sensation in my system.

And now I'm learning to feel it.

You know, I've spent like 10 years learning to feel again.

And now I'm like, oh, I can feel that.

God, I wish someone had shown me that when I was five.

I really think of it as like, stop wasting your life.

And not that we're wasting it on purpose.

I also have this compassion for myself i'm like i did the best i could with what i was given now i have new tools now i have new capacities but i don't just want to do the best i want to do the

i think it's the realest right like i'm like oh i want to be as real as i can and kind about it and honest in it I think you all understand this.

I'm always dancing with like Buddhism is like, don't be attached.

Don't feel desire.

That's the way.

And I'm like, I think that's mostly the way.

Yeah,

mostly the way.

But I also think that there's something around like, when I feel this aversion, there's something in my soul that's like trying to take care of my capacity to feel the simplicity and the goodness of life.

And when I feel desire or longing, now what I'm trying to do is, can I hone that?

So it's not moving me towards toxicity, but it's moving me towards things that are good for me, right?

And that's the trickiest part, Adrian, because as long as the main story

is

this unsatisfiable destination that doesn't exist, we are either trying to trek towards that or we are acting in direct opposition to it.

And just like Glennon says, with the rebellion is the same cage as obedience.

And that's the reason we don't stretch in the morning.

That's the reason we don't go on the walk.

That's the reason we eat the pizza, even though the one will make us

feel better, if the main story is the satisfaction journey that is bullshit, we are either doing it or we're acting direct opposition to it, and we're not doing this one.

We need to clear the slate and be like, where is my capacity to feel these things?

I have lost.

I don't think geese are fun and cute and satisfying because that's not my

sister off.

No, I'm geese.

Because, no, but I mean, because of my program settings, right?

Are this other journey?

It's a radical stripping down to understand that there is a whole nother system setting that you can set up.

And only when you start acting in operation with that alternate system,

can you even want to do your stretching?

Because I'm fucking stretching just like, cause I never give myself good things that I want.

So why am I starting now?

You're like, why would I start now?

Yeah.

I'm so grateful in my life.

Therapy has been such a helpful thing.

Having teachers has been such a helpful thing.

But nature has always been my shortcut.

And I will say this, like when people are like,

I don't get any of this stuff, right?

And I'm not a camper.

I'm not like that kind of hardcore naturally person.

I'm not that.

I'm not a camper.

I'm a porch.

I'm like,

if I can step outside on my porch

or if I can step and put my feet on actual grass.

Yes.

Or I love the ocean.

So I'm like, if I can get, if I can swim, if I can,

even if I can slow down, I'm a swimmer.

So that's, but also I have early on set arthritis.

So swimming now for me is the place where I can feel the capacity of my body to do anything.

So swimming has become very important for me.

But it's also like, if I can notice the quality of the light coming through leaves, there's certain things in my life that I'm like, I'm in a good place if I can actually notice these things.

It's kind of a shortcut for me.

For instance, leaves have been tripping me up a lot lately because I'm just like, there's so many leaves and there's so many humans and leaves fall down.

They just all fall off the tree.

They just all go.

And that's not insignificant.

They were still part of this green, very gorgeous thing.

And then they're all going to go and something else is going to emerge.

And it's been a really helpful teacher for me because whether I live my life well or don't live well, I'm going to fall off the tree and something else is going to happen.

I might as well be a bombastic ass leaf.

Like I might as well do it all the way, be the greenest.

And then when the colors change, be the brightest orange.

I want to go all out.

And I've been thinking that in my life too, the balance of that and simplicity, right?

That I'm like, oh,

the more I lean into this, like

trust the sensation.

The sensation leads you to the most bombastic, wonderful life.

But the most bombastic, wonderful life might be.

brushing your teeth next to a person you love.

Or it might be singing a song that 600 people sing with you that you first heard in your own body.

Or it might be having a good conversation.

You know, I'm telling people this all the time.

I'm like, you know what this is like because you have a good conversation with your homies.

And we, we don't take it seriously.

I'm like, you know, that feeling where you're sitting there like, we're so amazed at being bad or at being whatever.

Or, you know, we're just, this, we're, this is great.

I also hate that person or whatever it is.

It could be anything you're talking about.

I feel it now.

But being alive.

You know, you're just sort of like, oh, this is it.

This is being alive.

It's like, we're both here.

We're right here.

We're all here.

And you remember those, you know, that's like, that is what life is actually all about.

I'm trying to live so much of that that it doesn't even stand out to me anymore.

Right.

That's just like, that's the, that's the baseline.

Right.

And I'm doing well.

I think I'm doing well.

Yes, you are.

Tell us your friend's name one more time so we can think of them.

Evans, Evans Richardson.

He's a black, beautiful, queer

man.

He's just one of my favorite people to look at and watch and play.

We dance together for years.

I mean, just the best, the most sophisticated.

When he died, I was like, oh, I have to upgrade my art collection in my home because he always just had framed, gorgeous art everywhere.

And I'm always the kind of person who's like, I like that idea.

Even if I get a painting in, you know, if something's in the house, I'm like, okay, now I need to get it framed.

That's going to take 20 years.

Or now it's framed.

Now it's leaning against the wall.

Like, how do people put pictures on walls?

I don't know.

This is a mystery to me.

So now I did it.

I put like four pictures up.

Now my office is covered in the other things I bought that either needs to be framed or needs the frame to get up on a wall.

So Evan's just, he's just going to be with me.

Because now every time I look at him, I'm like, these are the Evans things that I'm integrating into my home somehow.

But you know, it's actually been a season of intense loss.

I think six people in my peer group in the last six months have transitioned and each one has been very unexpected.

And I was reaching out to my friends, like, is this just what it is to be in our 40s?

Or is this what it is to be in 2023?

Or should I make a meaning of this?

And all I can conclude is like, life is precious.

Live it now.

Love yourself now.

Love the people.

Tell whoever it is you love right now.

Whatever you can do to bring yourself into the present moment, do it right now.

And

then just keep doing that.

And with that,

just start at the beginning and listen to it again.

I'm done.

Oh, I love y'all.

I love y'all.

I just want to say too, as a sister in a podcast situation, the level of vulnerability that you all come on here and practice, that too is a rigorous thing.

Like, I don't think people necessarily always know what it takes to get on and say, I'm going to let you all come close to me.

And then you meet people and they're like, I feel close to you.

And it's like, I don't even know you, but I also feel close to you.

Like you're sort of sending out this beacon for your people in the world.

And I love that our beacon centers really overlap.

You know, like I'm like, I love the things y'all.

bring up and talk about, but mostly I just love the intimacy and the bravery you all share of just really being honest with each other and letting us witness that so i wonder if you and your sister would consider coming on and doing a double date with me and my sister i thought you'd never ask i do think we need a double date i do think we need a double date okay let's do that because i think sistering is the whole thing that just needs so much attention as a practice and then i'm also really interested in partnerships

Partnerships and sisterhood.

I've been seeing someone really sweet and my sister just got to meet them.

And it was like this really amazing moment.

The first time my sister was like,

like, pro, thumbs up, which was a big,

big deal, hard to get.

And what y'all are pulling off here, it's not easy.

Every time you fall in love with a new person, it shifts all the dynamics of your existing relationships.

And the prayer is that those people can also find right relationship with each other.

Yes.

You know, and so I'm really, it's been cool like watching y'all navigate.

And I feel like you, even in the podcast, watching you all continue to deepen your love with each other.

So it's all cool.

My dreams.

So cool.

What an amazing person.

Gosh, you're amazing.

I love you.

You are too.

This is astounding.

I love y'all.

Thank you.

It's for the gift of my little tin man self having some real tears.

I feel so human today.

Yeah.

I know.

We cried, Glennon.

We did it all.

I'm going to call him a therapist.

I am going to call him a therapist.

Guess what?

I cried.

I know.

I really feel touched.

Well, you know, I think it's because we brought the stadium into the studio.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We got big enough, huh?

We got big enough.

Oh, I love you, Adrienne Marie Brown.

Thank you for this hour.

We'll see you soon on the sister podcast.

Yeah.

Thank you, Pod Squad.

We love you.

Bye.

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