194. Glennon Finds Her Healing Partner

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Hi, everybody.

It's me.

Before you listen to this, I just want you to know that there's lots of talk about mental health, about trauma, about eating disorders, about pain.

It's a lot.

It's good.

It's freaking good.

If you can handle it, you should listen.

But I love you and I always want to tell you that first your safety.

So if it's too much for you, don't listen.

If you can listen, do because I think it might change your life.

Okay.

Bye.

Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.

That was so...

Sad sounding.

Was it?

Yeah.

Well, I'm not always a happy sound.

You were like, okay.

welcome to we can do hard things

okay well interesting that you mentioned that because today's going to be the one of those days where i talk about how recovery is going and what i'm learning that i think might help everybody

everybody

first of all

just

god bless every single person

who decides at some point in their adult life

to really freaking do therapy and dive into

all of their shit because it is hard.

You know, I mean, babe, I just, I cannot believe how hard it is.

I cannot believe how

uncomfortable and tiring.

And,

you know, I didn't sleep last night.

And sometimes, as I've told you, I just feel like, why the hell am I doing this?

This is ridiculous.

I was fine.

I was fine before.

And now

everything feels so hard.

And as I said to you yesterday, it feels like everyone else is just going on with their lives and doing all of these things.

And

when someone asks me, what did you do today?

I'm like, well,

just spent all day trying to be less fucked up as usual.

It's just.

Yeah.

Well, and like I said yesterday.

It feels like you were fine long ago based on based on the hardship that you're going through now.

But let's not forget that I was anorexic.

That you were not fine.

That's right.

Yeah.

That's correct.

The only thing harder than doing all the things you're doing and the only thing more exhausting than doing all the things you're doing is

doing all the things you were doing before.

Yeah.

Like that was exhausting and consuming.

It just was, you were just got really expert at it.

It was comfortable.

And now you're in the uncomfort.

Yeah.

And I do think about, you know, to anyone who's doing this, it can feel like self-indulgent.

Really can.

I'm so grateful that I have this to

create and give because it feels so indulgent, so much time, so much hours, so much energy uncovering all of this and trying to figure it out.

And, you know, as I say to Abby all the time, everyone else seems fine.

Like everyone else is just going about their lives being fine.

But then I think, no, they're not.

No, we're not.

nobody is fine actually

the reason why most of us have to do this work is because however many generations before us didn't do this work and passed on a bunch of stuff that now we either have the choice of doing this really arduous annoying work or just passing the buck to

the next generation, whether it's through our own children in our house or just the culture, that that we keep passing down all this bullshit.

Cause all this body stuff and eating stuff is not just something that happens in family.

It's something that happens in the entire culture.

And I don't want to propagate it in my home and I don't want to propagate it in the world.

It's interesting to me that you just use the word indulgence because it seems like maybe that's where we all want to head.

Because like, wouldn't it be amazing if all women everywhere?

lived into indulgence.

Yeah.

I mean, it's an interesting word when we talk about food, food and bodies, and rest, and eating, and all of it.

Like it kind of is the opposite of self-denial.

Is your perspective, G, that the other generations

of folks with whatever it is, alcoholism or eating disorders or whatever, that they passed it on because they chose not to face it?

Or do you, because there's another way of looking at it, which is like these things fall through.

And then if you're the one to be able to face it, maybe it's like this ecosystem of privilege and resources and safety that maybe didn't exist before.

It's both.

Yeah.

For sure.

I mean, I think

there are generations where there was no time, money, or resources to even consider this shit, which is really probably why every generation is a little bit bitter at the next one to be doing all of this work, because it's like, well, if I hadn't didn't have to walk to school backwards up six miles, you know, there's truth in that.

But then there's also, I think,

if we're being completely fair, there's the desire also to not hot potato our pain.

Because I'm not just talking about like eating disorders or drinking or whatever.

I'm talking about whatever kind of pain we experience as human beings.

And then in our homes, we can go.

inward and figure it out or we can just hot potato it out to somebody else.

I think it's Richard Rohr that says pain is either transformed or transmitted.

Like there's only two options.

I think that maybe if you look at like a bunch of generations in a row, then there maybe is like a generation where there is the time, the resources, the money, the awareness, the consciousness and the culture, instead of just being rageful at all the other generations for not doing it, not breaking whatever, then

it's cool to think of all of them working to prepare a space for somebody to be able to do it.

Yep.

And if you do have the space to do that, you should.

I think that's the idea.

And then you become like the matriarch for the new order.

Yeah.

It's a cool way of thinking about it that you will be the one that it's like, oh, and that changed there.

You know, maybe.

It's a beautiful way of thinking about it.

Yeah.

So inside of it, it doesn't feel like any of that.

It feels like leaving my bed because I can't sleep, getting in my daughter's bed because she's not there, having a huge thing of animal crackers and a book and reading until 5 a.m.

and then realizing, oh, this is what I used to do when I was little.

Anyway, that's interesting.

I know.

I figured that out at 2 a.m.

I was like, fuck.

I'm staring at my teenage daughter's ceiling, shoving animal crackers, reading, trying not to think.

So I'm reading, reading, reading, reading, reading.

Reading Judy Bloom.

Oh, my God.

I was reading this book called Sam.

It's this new novel.

I think it's freaking beautiful, but it is all from the consciousness of a girl child all the way from the time she's four and now she's like 17.

And by the way, nothing happens in the whole book, but everything happens because it's just her life.

And I was like, thank you, universe, for letting me read this during this time.

As I've said before, I

am kind of experiencing this as like,

Taylor Swift would call them, eras

as themes of each month.

When I look back on it.

Like you're going through different

chapters of this recovery that allows you to look back into different chapters of your life.

Yeah.

When I'm in it, it doesn't feel like anything.

It feels like nothing's working and nothing's happening.

And I hate everything and I want to quit.

Here's what this month has been like.

So, if you remember the last update I did, I was in that era where I was desperate for some other set of rules to replace my anorexia rules with.

Like, I was thinking, okay, fine, if I'm going to let go of this set of ideas that kept me safe, or so I thought, that kept me in control, fine, I believe you that this isn't healthy, but what the hell am I supposed to do instead?

So like you lose one religion, you're trying to replace it with another religion.

So my thought was that kept coming to me was like, okay, you have to replace it with nothingness.

You just have to replace it.

with nothing.

Because you originally tried to replace it with other rules.

Oh, yeah.

I remember my, all of my beauty rules I replaced it with.

I was going to be like a beauty monk.

And so you, you realized maybe that wasn't it and you're now moving into the place of nothingness.

Well, I realized it after my 16-year-old daughter told me that wasn't it.

And then my doctor told me that wasn't it.

And then, so yes, I myself discovered that it wasn't it.

And then the idea was that people who don't have an internal locus of self-trust create outer ideas of control because they think that will keep them safe.

So my thought was: I have to figure out what this inner locus is instead of replacing old ideology, old control ideas with new ones.

And that's on episode 182 for folks, if you want to hear back on that one.

So,

during this time, I decided that I was going to really stick to my morning walks.

I've talked about walks before.

Walks are my most important,

I don't know, like spiritual time with myself.

So

I live close to the beach.

I kept waking up early in the morning and going out to the beach for my morning walk by myself.

And the interesting part of this is that when you think of a beach walk, that's not what it was because it was like really, really cold.

Well, cold for Californians.

So it would be what?

Like 40 degrees?

40, 50 degrees in the morning.

Yeah.

Right, 40 degrees.

So I would put on like a big coat and scarf and hat and like there would be a lot of wind.

You were so cute.

It felt very like Virginia Wolf or something.

I don't know.

I was like a very had a lot of main character energy by myself

just walking in the cold for a long period of time.

And here's what happened.

And like a long period of time, like an hour.

Yeah, exactly.

So long.

I was basically Cheryl fucking straight.

I just want people to not think it was like a five-hour

walkabout.

So

this is what I think started happening.

Since I demanded of myself to not replace my thinking structures with any other thinking structures, since I decided I don't think I can think my way out of this,

something else started happening during those walks.

And what it felt like was that my mind

started shutting down

and

other things started rising up, is the best way I can tell you.

All I'm doing, you got y'all, is like trying to put into words things that cannot be put into words all the time.

So, I'm just going to do my best to explain it in my own way, and then maybe

you'll understand.

So,

I,

all of these things started rising up as I'm walking on the cold beach.

And what

started rising up was

kind of like memories,

just like

flashes, but flashes too violent.

Like it wasn't flashes.

It was just like gentle rising of ungentle memories.

And so while this is happening day after day after day, because I think we're talking about actually a couple months and it's still happening now, the beautiful thing for me was that I was walking on the beach and

feeling upset because it's a rainy season in California.

We live in a town that has bad irrigation.

So when it rains in the town, all of the trash, the plastic

comes from the town and gets washed into the ocean.

And then overnight, the ocean, you know, the waves in the ocean push the plastic back out onto the coast.

So when you go out in the morning, in the rainy times, there's just little teeny toxic plastic all over the freaking coast.

So it's upsetting.

You know, you're walking and you're seeing all of this little plastic.

And

this one day,

I was walking and there's never anybody out there because it's too early, but I walked towards this kind of young surfer guy.

He was out there and he was just standing on the beach.

And so

I walked towards him and we kind of made eye contact And he looked at the plastic and the ocean and he said to me, It's a shame.

And I felt like we were kind of having a moment, you know, because that's how I was feeling.

Like, it's such a shame.

And I said, it really is.

And then he looked out at the ocean and he said,

Yeah, I mean, I can't even surf.

And I just felt,

of course, I didn't think of anything.

I mean, I didn't, I just kept walking.

But as I was walking away, I felt so much sadder

because

that was not the shame.

The shame was not

that we couldn't use the ocean anymore.

The shame

was that our carelessness and toxicity,

because of that, the ocean had to work so hard every damn night to get our toxic shit out of her.

That is the shame.

The shame was not that we couldn't continue to use her while she's trying to save herself.

Where are you going with this story?

Right.

Y'all, I cannot, I, my healing partner right now is the ocean.

I go out there every morning, no matter what the weather is,

and

together, side by side,

we just

get

the toxic shit out of ourselves that carelessness and

people have put into us.

Just

that is what we were, we are doing the ocean.

She's getting it out through her waves, and I'm getting it out through this gentle rising of memories that I believe

now

we keep our brains so controlled and busy so that these things don't rise.

It's so beautiful.

I'm out there sometimes and I, you know, some mornings the ocean is like angry and just scary and

nobody can go near her, but she's not apologizing for any of it.

This is just the way it is today.

And sometimes she's just so gentle and rolling, and there's no judgment attached to any of it.

It's just the way the ocean is today.

And

God bless the surfers, but every once in a while I'll be watching, and she'll just like spit one offer into a wave.

And I literally find myself like winking at the ocean.

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A lot of these things rising up, I feel like

there's a lot in our bodies.

It's like our bodies are just one big memory, you know?

Um, which makes sense of why we would want to stay in our heads then, right?

Just bless us all.

Like, it's a self-protection mechanism.

It's like a sinking ship, and we're climbing to the very top of it and living there.

We're like, it'll be the last to go down.

Listen, you picture that scene in Titanic, right?

Yes, like all the people are holding on for dear life up in the top, they know what's beneath, right?

I think that that's really fascinating.

Um, I'm glad that you pointed that out because that's what I was thinking about the fact that

for the whole of your life, you've armored yourself with rules and regulations in order not to

maybe allow some of this stuff that happened in your childhood or along the way to surface, you know?

Yes, there's a lot from childhood that's come up, but it's not all childhood.

It's my whole, it's our lives, you know,

living in a woman's body and on this planet, living in any body on this planet.

What happens to us and what we watch happen to other people

is traumatic,

period.

What I want to say to

people who have trauma for living in these bodies on this planet,

I have felt

so gaslit my entire life about

how we're all supposed to act, like what happens to us down here is normal.

And what I just want to say is to anyone who has struggled or continues to struggle with

living in a body on this planet, because that's what eating disorders are about.

They're not about, you know,

do my thighs look fat in this?

That's not what it is.

It's the terror of living in a body and feeling unsafe living in a body on this planet, which is real.

I just want to say, you are not crazy.

We never stood a fucking chance.

Okay.

What I am reading and learning about

how

all of these disorders happen,

there's three factors on our planet that contribute to them.

They're home, media, peers.

We grew up in homes where for many, many real reasons, our parents were not exposed to the healing that we are exposed to now or for eating stuff.

We were born to the generation of like spa lady and dexatrim and slim fast.

And they didn't have the consciousness we have now.

That was poured into us, into our homes.

The media from the time we were born, every single image that was shown to us was to encourage us to believe that our worthiness was based in our appearance and that our appearance was only worthy if it was small.

We were exposed to constant, constant images and reality that said that living in a woman's body is not safe.

It will be assaulted.

It will be raped.

And then once we speak up, it will not be believed.

We were exposed to all kinds of

degrading messages and treatment in schools.

When we wonder why we are like this, it's because this was the plan for us.

Sometimes I think of a room full of women suffering from eating disorders just getting smaller and smaller and smaller with no voice and bodies shrinking.

And I think, why isn't anyone doing anything about this rampant issue?

And I think, because this is ideal

in a world like ours, a bunch of women wasting away to nothing and becoming completely voiceless and small and irrelevant and not causing any problems was the plan.

So,

you know, to all of you suffering from this shit, like, it's not our fault.

It's a cultural sickness

that we have become sick with.

And so, what I would say is, we didn't do this to ourselves.

I didn't do this to myself,

but I

sure as hell am going to undo it

because I only have one life.

You only have one life.

and we are just not going to let them have it.

I have a question for some of the people who might not understand the macro,

the plan, like whose plan?

I guess you could look at it through any lens, like a political lens, a capitalism lens.

I mean, I've stopped using basically the internet because I feel like I'm working so hard in therapy and in my reading and in my all of it

to stop objectifying myself, to change my thinking about what a body is for.

And then if I go on the internet, it's like, all it is is images of that.

It feels like going for a long hike in the wilderness and then smoking a pack of cigarettes.

Like if I work this hard on therapy and then I go on the internet, it's like.

all of these images of a certain kind of body, we don't know what that does to us.

Like it's real.

Feels like you're like a character in somebody else's simulation.

Yeah.

And that's to sell things.

Like women who feel like shit about ourselves, we buy more.

And when I look at the world, I have thought about this a lot lately.

When I look at the world, it doesn't look like that.

When I walk around, when I go to my kids' stuff, when I go to bodies look all different.

It's not the world that looks like that, that does that to us.

It's not the actual people in our community.

It's not our actual life.

It's

the media, which media means medium.

There is a medium between

and our world that is telling us what to think and telling us what to do.

And that media's main goal is to sell things.

And you do not sell things by telling people that they're all right how they are.

You have to tell them that they're not all right the way they are.

To go back to Abby's point about the plan, from a historic perspective, what you're saying, Glendon, about a room full of women who are sick is the ideal.

That was when the Industrial Revolution happened and we stopped having families work as a unit so that kids and partnerships were necessary to keep a family afloat.

And

it shifted from that, where everyone's contribution was necessary for the survival of the family, to a situation in which there was one earner of the family.

And when that happened in the upper white

class, in which there could be one earner,

it became the ultimate status symbol for that earner who was a man,

for their wife to be

so,

it's almost unbelievable, but it's truthful.

For the wife to appear to be so sick that she couldn't work.

Wow.

Okay.

That was the model.

Because if my spouse appears to be the kind of body that is so frail that she cannot work, that

reinforces my status as being able to hold down this entire family.

Holy fucking shit.

It's true.

But that phenomenon was about

the inverse of power.

If you're just walking around looking like you're full-bodied, healthy, can take care of yourself, that reflects negatively on me.

Cause then how is everyone going to know that i am the one who's providing for this whole family wow the stronger you appear the less strong i appear and the weaker you look the stronger i appear

and that still holds true like if you extrapolate out of that i mean women who earn

more than their husbands are multiple levels more likely to be cheated on.

Women who are successful,

the husbands report multiple levels above dissatisfaction and discomfort in the relationship.

It is when you think about it six generations later, that same, how is anyone going to know my worth if you're out there proving yours?

Yeah.

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So

something interesting happened

a few weeks ago.

Sister, you were here and our dear friend Alex was here and Abby was here and I went to a therapy session on Zoom because I had it scheduled.

I actually asked everyone to do

all of you to do other things because I didn't want to miss anything you were saying to each other.

What happened during that therapy, I want to explain to the pod squad carefully, is that

as part of my recovery, I've mentioned this before, but I have like a scale in my room and I weigh myself every once in a while, and then the information goes to my therapist, not me.

So I can't see any numbers on it.

But

as a

like a security blanket or

stepping stone in the recovery, what often happens and what happened in my case is that my therapist and and I created like a window of weight gain that

if I were inside of that window, and it was pretty substantial for me, it was a pretty substantial window.

Everyone's window is different, but it was a way of saying, you don't need to worry about it.

I'll let you know if you're out of this window.

But people who are recovering from eating issues aren't great at self

analysis in terms of we don't understand, we don't know what's happening to our bodies.

So it's a way of us doing the work without worrying that we're like off the charts of our own chart.

So what happened was that this day,

my therapist in a beautiful, wonderful way just said, so I have to let you know because we have this deal, you are out of your window.

The amount of weight you've gained is out of the window that we made together.

Meaning, just so everyone knows, meaning that

this was the window that you decided to, in order to curb your, this is totally out of control and none of this will be predictable.

And how do I know I'm not going to wake up tomorrow and everything's going to just be wildly out of control?

There was a certain number of pounds after which you gained more of, she would agree to tell you.

So, the window isn't like this is your optimal health.

The window is just that comfort zone where it's like, okay, if you gain more than X, I promise I'll tell you.

I'll stay with you.

So, you will know what's happening.

And you don't ask me all the time, and you don't obsess about all the things.

So,

she tells me that,

And I'm sitting on my bed with the computer up

and she's looking at me.

And

I,

it feels like the way to describe it is, you know, on sometimes in a movie where

the character's sitting there and then

something happens like, whoosh, and then the whole background is different and they're like taken to another place and it's like all different.

That's how it felt.

Yeah.

The second she said that, it felt like everything is different.

Scene change.

My entire being,

the best way to describe what happened in my body was,

I'm in trouble.

I am in trouble.

Like

that feeling that maybe you haven't had since you're probably an adult listening to this podcast, but like, you know, the feeling you had when you were like in a teenager or something and you got busted.

Like the jig was up.

Like you got busted and you were like oh

i'm in so much trouble

the feeling that i had from the top of my head to my bottom of my feet was i am in so much trouble

so

i don't even know like i'm not trying to analyze all of this to death i'm doing all of this in real time but When I came upstairs

to talk to all of you, I don't even remember the rest of the therapy session.

I'm sure I said some words to try to act like I was fine with this or whatever.

I don't know.

The opposite of what you're supposed to do in therapy.

By the time I made it upstairs to all of you, we did sit and talk for a while.

Do you all remember anything about?

What do you remember, sister?

I remember being scared, first of all, feeling just incredible empathy and

pain with you because of the just kind of

felt like a

oddly like a verdict had been read or something and that we were dealing with it.

And

I

remember being afraid that since this is kind of where the rubber meets the road,

that it would be like,

well, I've gone too far.

I trusted this process and I told you all this would

happen

and this is happening and now i am going to pretend like i'm going to keep doing this but i'm going to secretly have another agenda where i get this under control right like that was my fear is that

you were going to start managing it

it did feel like a verdict i wasn't scared of that um

I knew that you were so open and you've been so outwardly communicative.

The fact that you told us made me know that you weren't going to go down that road.

That's true.

That's a big step.

Because had you been less healthy, you would have just been like, it's fine.

Everything's fine.

She wouldn't have said anything.

Yeah, she would have just kept it to herself.

I think what I remember most

was just seeing that little girl inside of you scared.

You were like glassy-eyed.

You were almost on the verge of tears.

And that very rarely happens.

but it was kind of like that

almost like you had the that that feeling in your throat where you're just about to cry and it stayed there for about an hour yeah it was really i think such a beautiful moment because you sat on the couch and sister and i literally got on our knees in front of the couch

and alex sat right next to you and we were just flanking you like we were just completely surrounding you with so much love

and you just were like

confused I was confused.

You kept saying, I just feel very confused for a lot of reasons.

And I thought that you were super honest, and you said so many things that

felt true to you.

And we all just listened as much as we can.

And I just,

that little girl needed, needed to be scared and around other people who weren't.

Wow, that's good.

It did feel that way.

Thank you.

And to everyone who is wondering why this was such a big deal,

it feels like when you're doing this kind of work, mostly what you're doing

is you're letting go of or challenging some ideas you learned as a young person,

some rules that your family and your culture promised you you needed to follow in order to stay safe.

Okay, and you believed it.

And it was kind of true in some ways.

It's true.

People with eating disorders,

it's less about an

obsession with appearance and more about obedience.

The women who are complying with the rules about

denying our appetites and self-denial.

And it's so interesting because

it's obedience to power, but then it creates its own kind of power in

white womanhood.

Thinness is a signal of status, of, we've talked about this before, of control, which translates to power.

And just privilege.

Privilege, right?

You know, there's a certain amount of privilege in that.

Right.

And it's also control.

It might be shitty.

but you know if a then b if i am this thin then i know that these things will happen to me in the world and these things will not happen to me.

And if you decide to

not be,

then it's like, if X, then I don't know what.

I don't know what's going to happen.

And eating disorders are about

control and predictability and surviving, as you say, in a body in this world that is completely out of control.

And so if you are voluntarily acquiescing the modicum of control you have,

that is a very brave thing to do.

Yeah.

And it feels like, you know, one of the things that I kept saying to you is,

it feels like the roosters have come home to roost.

I don't even know what the fuck that means, but I kept saying it.

And what I meant was,

fine, it's all well and good that you're going to go into therapy and

challenge the rules or stop following the rules that your family and culture laid out for you.

Mine would be, you must control your appetite.

In order to stay safe and powerful on this earth, your body needs to look a certain way.

And in order to for your body to look that certain way, you need to deny your appetite.

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I want to know if you remember what you said your biggest fear was when you came up after hearing this from your therapist.

No, what did I say?

You said, I'm the chubby little girl that I was.

Yeah, I said I'm the chubby little girl.

I did.

That's what I felt.

I felt like I am in this moment vehemed into I am that chubby little girl again and I'm in trouble.

And I feel like one of the things that was important to hear from the three of us talking to you,

because a lot of this has to do with trust, like trusting yourself and that your body will be what it is and that

the fear of that little girl doesn't have to subsist now in your adult life.

Yeah.

Well, the little girl was right to believe that this is what would keep her safe.

Right.

That that is what she was taught.

And

so she was correct.

Yeah.

That

it's just that now

that little girl doesn't live in that particular world.

She lives in this world where we're doing something different.

Yeah.

Except that that little girl also lives in this world where it's also

still true.

It's complicated.

For anybody

who is doing this very difficult work, who is

challenging

an old idea that was taught to them, a rule that was taught to them by their families and their culture, and it has stopped working for them.

and wants freedom.

So they are starting to try to disregard that rule and live a different way.

So for me, it was a very like, I don't know that this self-denial

staying small rule is helping me anymore.

So, what if I try something different?

What if I just actually eat what I want to eat?

And what if I,

every time I want to restrict, I don't allow myself to restrict?

What if I indulge my appetite?

That's great,

except for then there's this moment

where

the roosters come home to roost, where the consequence of the breaking of the rule happens.

So if like your rule is, we talked about this, you can rest when you're dead.

Like if your parents taught you that, hustle, hustle, hustle, you can rest when you're dead.

You decide to try something different.

You indulge rest, you indulge self-care, you indulge all of these things.

And then somebody comes to you and says, that's great, but you didn't get the promotion.

Yeah, exactly.

It's like people are like, you're so stressed.

You work too hard.

You shouldn't stay up all night.

And you're like, you're right.

My rest and my mental health is worth it.

And then you try something different.

Yes.

You trust them and you don't study like you did before.

And you get a B minus.

Exactly.

And you're like, what?

So what?

So wait, now

are you wrong that I shouldn't?

Exactly.

Were you wrong about what you said and what I believed?

Because now I need to go back and study the way I used to.

Exactly.

Or is it that it is true

that

you deserve to rest and you shouldn't sacrifice your mental health?

And what that world looks like is you get B minus.

Yes, because what our parents taught us, what culture taught us is culture.

They weren't lying.

What they taught us was: if you, as a white woman, want to have any safety and power, fake safety, fake power, in this, this is what you have to be.

They were right.

Okay.

If they taught you, do not rest in order to get ahead in this culture, you have to grind.

They were right.

It's just that culture is shit.

We have to decide which prize we want more.

So in that moment,

I realized, oh, changing the rules, there is a consequence.

There is a prize that we give up.

Am I willing to give up the prize?

Damn.

Also, I have to give up the rules and I have to give up the prize.

And so for me, me, that moment was my therapist saying, you're the boss.

I'm not the boss.

If we want to rethink things

because you truly feel that this is out of control, we can work with this.

You know, we can change things.

We can slow it down.

We can whatever.

And it was me saying, no,

no, I am not going back.

I cannot unknow what I know now.

I will not.

deny myself anymore.

So this is the person who says, no, I will rest and then gets passed up for the promotion and then doubles down and says, That's fine.

I will give up the culture's prize because I don't believe in it anymore.

And start valuing your prize that you're creating.

Exactly.

Yep, the prize of being fully human.

Yes, and living by my own

values instead of the culture's values because I'm finally giving them up.

So, um,

so that's it.

I I mean, I think that might be enough for one episode.

That's it then?

Uh, that's all.

That's what's been happening over here.

How long did it take you

to decide that you were like, okay,

no, the prize that I am experiencing internally

is worth foregoing

the prize of staying in that window?

Was that an immediate knowing or did it take you a while to to get there?

It was an immediate knowing.

There was no seconds in me that thought, oh, well, now I'm going to just go back.

No, but you were grieving.

Exactly.

There was a grieving process.

I was grieving.

I was grieving.

I was grieving the release of the prize of being culture's prize.

Yeah.

And does the grief process for that is that, are you grieving an identity?

Are you grieving the privileges?

Are you grieving the lack of control and not knowing what's coming?

I don't know.

What is it?

Yeah.

I don't know the answer.

All I know is I was grieving, feeling like

what I said to you guys, like the chubby little girl who's in trouble.

Maybe in my next era, next month, I will figure out exactly what.

But also, so much of this is, it probably sounds funny after hearing all this, but I really am trying to just allow myself to feel it and not try to intellectualize everything because

I know how to intellectualize this shit.

Like I, if intellectualizing was going to work for you, I would already have done it for you.

Yeah.

So I'm just trying to feel all of it this time because I'm trying to do it differently this time.

And this is what's happening.

And this is what I'm sharing.

And I hope that it made sense to anyone.

Do you think that's because the feeling is the source of the bigger prize for you?

Like you can't point to what the prize is that outweighed the privilege prize, but it has something to do with the feeling of it.

It's just inside of you as a feeling, right?

So it would make sense that you'd have to return to the feeling again and again because that's where the prize is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think the prize is like

living authentically in any way,

actually

living in response to what I feel and want and know and hunger for and yearn for.

And

the entire prize is not replacing this with another control mechanism.

The entire prize is figuring out how to live from the inside out as opposed to the outside in.

Because there's no prize on the outside that is big enough

to sacrifice my one wild and precious life for.

I've had a front row seat to a lot of this.

And one thing that I think is miraculous,

having lived with you for a long while now, seven years,

is that I'm like seeing this

birth happen.

And some days it comes in blips, like in a moment, I can see

this embodiment happening.

that you are becoming completely integrated.

And then it goes away or you

get in your head or whatever it is.

But there has been such a

settling of

your spirit, of the energy of you,

that

I don't know, every once in a while when I look at you, it's like you're finally taking a breath.

And maybe you only get one in a day, or maybe you're getting 10.

I don't know.

It's just, I see you doing this hard work.

And I see some of the fear come up.

And it's like this little child in you is like screaming, thank you.

And I see that.

And I just want you to know, and all those listening who might be dealing with something similar or something adjacent, those moments in the day are the purpose, are the worth it.

Well, it makes me think of

when you say it that way, it makes me think of, oh, I'm that chubby little girl again.

That's what that is what I am again.

Like, that's what I'm walking on the exile, I call it the exile walks.

The things, the parts of myself I've exiled.

That is who I am on those walks.

I am like

allowing her

to speak, to remember, to tell us what she needed.

And the reason that I can do that now

is because there is a responsible adult in the room and it is me.

Yes.

Hey yo.

It's me.

I've got us.

Go ahead.

Come up.

Say the things.

Remember the things.

I have got us here.

We're going to be okay.

Gives me the chills.

So when

I say I'm afraid I'm that chubby girl again.

I'm in trouble.

That is correct.

Like, I think I might actually actually be trying to get back

to that.

Yeah.

All right.

I love you.

We're going now.

I'm done.

I'm fucking up.

Thank you, G.

Bye.

We can do hard things.

See you next time.

Bye.

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I give you Tish Milton and Brandy Carlisle.

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

I chased desire, desire,

I made sure I got what's mine.

And I continue

to believe

that I'm the one for me.

And because I'm mine,

I walk the line.

Cause we're adventurers, and heartbreaks are map.

A final destination

we lack.

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to belong.

We'll finally find our way back home

and through the joy and pain

that our lives bring,

we can do a heart pain.

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

I'm not the problem.

Sometimes things fall apart.

And I continue to believe

the best

people are free.

And it took some time,

but I'm finally fine.

Cause we're adventurers, and heartbreaks on that.

A final destination

we lack.

We stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we

can do hard things.

This world adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

We might get lost, but we're okay.

We've stopped asking directions

in some places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home

and through the joy and pain

that our life

springs,

we can do hard

things.

Yeah, we can do hard things,

yeah, we

can do

hard

things.