122. Why We Should Stop Doing Our Best

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Speaker 5 And I continue to believe

Speaker 5 the best

Speaker 5 people are free.

Speaker 4 Hello,

Speaker 7 oh my god.

Speaker 9 Welcome back to

Speaker 10 We Can Do Hard Things.

Speaker 12 Oh, this is what my kids do in the back of the car.

Speaker 9 No, sister, she does this to me. She follows me around and will not stop repeating things like she's five freaking years old.

Speaker 6 I know, but didn't you guys laugh a little bit just right now?

Speaker 12 No, look at me. No, you did.

Speaker 6 You laughed. You laughed.

Speaker 8 You're smile. You're smiling.

Speaker 9 We laugh so we don't cry.

Speaker 9 Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 13 Hi, everyone. Hi, everybody.

Speaker 9 Sissy, how is your summer going?

Speaker 9 Talk to us a little bit about your summer and how it's going.

Speaker 8 It was going great until this.

Speaker 6 Sorry, I just needed to bring some joy.

Speaker 9 So, look how joyful I am about it.

Speaker 6 She's so joyful.

Speaker 12 Look at that face. So, we have a new member of the family I need to tell you about.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 12 Last

Speaker 12 weekend, we went to a crawfish boil.

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 12 So, this is a thing that is usually, it's sort of a southern thing, I think, because crawfish are from Louisiana.

Speaker 6 That's where the crawfish sing? Yes, where the crawfish sing.

Speaker 12 Exactly.

Speaker 12 And so, some folks up here had a crawfish boil. We got invited.
So, I was, John was out of town, and I took the kids up there.

Speaker 12 And I learned something about the two types of kids there are in the world. And one type of kid goes to a crawfish boil and eats.

Speaker 12 And then another type of kid goes to a crawfish boil

Speaker 12 and searches the entire yard for any lone survivor of the crawfish boil that doesn't make it into the pot

Speaker 12 and picks it up with their bare hands and demands that we rescue this crawfish and make it part of our family. So that is in fact what happened.

Speaker 12 Alice found this little baby crawfish and God bless her. She she has no fear.
She just ran. You know, it's like a mini lobster.

Speaker 8 Yeah. With its little pictures.

Speaker 12 It looks like a tiny mini lobster. She found it in on the ground.
She picked it up and was, and was carrying it around. And she was like, I'm not leaving without buddy.
Not without my crawdad.

Speaker 12 Not without buddy, which she had immediately named.

Speaker 12 And so I had to go and borrow a pan, like a baking pan

Speaker 12 and put the crawfish in the pan. We rode our bikes there.
I had to abandon my bike and walk home with this like large baking pan with the water.

Speaker 12 But at first, I tried to put it in like a little mason jar,

Speaker 12 but I only had filtered water that had been sitting in the cooler at the crawfish boil.

Speaker 12 So I poured the water on it, at which time it like clinched up into a tiny ball because Louisiana water is not apparently like that. And it was little buddy was like in a frozen ball.

Speaker 12 So then we had to take Buddy off and put him on Alice's like skin on skin.

Speaker 12 Oh my gosh to warm buddy up skin on exoskeleton skin on exoskeleton until buddy warmed up and then transfer him to the pan okay

Speaker 12 and walked him home and

Speaker 12 it was a whole situation i had to watch five youtube videos she made me watch so we could determine the

Speaker 12 sex So buddy turns out buddy's a female,

Speaker 11 buddy the craw femme.

Speaker 9 and buddy will reveal buddy's gender when buddy's damn ready older right right right

Speaker 12 but then turns out buddy needs all kinds of various accoutrements because buddy cannot live in a pan

Speaker 12 and so i went on facebook marketplace because all of the aquariums are like 700

Speaker 12 net and i'm like no

Speaker 12 No, over my dead buddy, am I going to spend $500 on this thing? So I go on Facebook Marketplace and I buy this aquarium and filled up the tank. And

Speaker 12 we just watched Buddy for like 10 hours, watched Buddy in there. Buddy was so happy.
And then the next morning.

Speaker 9 Oh, no.

Speaker 4 What?

Speaker 12 The next, I went to

Speaker 10 Buddy went to the different lands.

Speaker 17 Crawhy, dad, heaven.

Speaker 16 What did Alice do? How did she respond?

Speaker 12 She just kept saying, I don't understand.

Speaker 11 I don't understand.

Speaker 12 And it was very

Speaker 12 sad. And I tried to explain that Buddy had been through a lot of trauma.
I mean, Buddy was sent in a, in a cooler from Louisiana. All the crawdads are in there fighting each other in the cooler.

Speaker 12 Then they get there. Then 99% of Buddy's comrades boiled.

Speaker 6 Oh, Jesus.

Speaker 12 Buddy then, then frozen with my filtered water, then unfrozen.

Speaker 12 And then spent the last 24 hours of Buddy's life in the bougiest aquarium of its wildest.

Speaker 8 She had a good send-off.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I feel like she really had the last little happiness. So, we have a this weekend, we have a memorial

Speaker 12 because Alice wanted to wait till Buddy's godmother, which was her other little friend, who was also at the crawfish boil with us. When the godmother returns to town, we can have a proper

Speaker 18 does Alice eat meat?

Speaker 16 Is she mostly vegetarian?

Speaker 12 Um, she does eat meat, but I remember recently she asked me, why do we eat animals?

Speaker 9 Oh, shit, and I was like, I don't understand. I don't understand.
Say it like that.

Speaker 12 I don't know.

Speaker 8 It's really fucked up.

Speaker 9 It is fucked up. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Anyway, so that was the big events of our last

Speaker 12 couple of days.

Speaker 9 I mean, buddy might be the only crawfish on earth who really experienced true love.

Speaker 9 You know, was truly loved at the end there.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Well, we don't know.

Speaker 12 We have a lot of true loves down in, I mean, it's New Orleans.

Speaker 6 A lot of culture love there.

Speaker 9 That's true.

Speaker 7 Free crawfish love down there.

Speaker 11 I'm not sure.

Speaker 9 How are you, babe? How's your summer? Anything that exciting?

Speaker 16 My summer has been going really wonderfully.

Speaker 8 Really?

Speaker 2 I just feel like our kids are at a cool age where we're starting to really get to know them.

Speaker 16 Their personalities are starting to really

Speaker 16 stabilize.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 16 You know, the young years.

Speaker 10 They're picking a lane.

Speaker 7 They're picking a freaking lane.

Speaker 3 But something that's been happening recently, the last two days, I've decided to play music loudly.

Speaker 8 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 18 In our top floor, one hour before dinner,

Speaker 16 where I get to kind of center myself before I have to go into the cooking, cleaning, whirlwind of dinner. And we've been choosing to listen to the station called Born in the USA.

Speaker 9 True Springsteen. Yeah.
Last night we ended up with a white snake.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 14 It really, it's a little bit life-changing that hour.

Speaker 16 And so we sit there, we play solitaire, we date, we get the cards out and we sing and I take silly videos of Glennon because that's my favorite thing.

Speaker 9 Because, you know, we've been going back to my 80s Glam Rock headbanger.

Speaker 16 And before every song, sister, literally before every like top 80s song comes on, she goes, this

Speaker 6 might be my favorite. This is my favorite.

Speaker 8 This is my favorite.

Speaker 6 And then goes into.

Speaker 10 I'm going to show again on my mouth.

Speaker 16 And then she goes into

Speaker 16 my hair was this big

Speaker 9 and it was god absolutely i'm just like did you go to any of these concerts and she's like no i wasn't allowed to do anything but i had all their posters covering my walls i'm doing good it's been a good summer i'm not excited for it to be over how is your summer going

Speaker 19 um

Speaker 9 well i feel like I have just kind of figured out over the last couple weeks that I'm in like a different phase. So, you know, how the winter was kind kind of hard for me.

Speaker 9 I had a eating disorder relapse, all the things.

Speaker 18 I think I was in a bit of a depression.

Speaker 9 Um, when you're in that, I don't know why, but it's hard to recognize it. I just feel like, oh, my life is terrible, and everything's awful, and I hate everything.

Speaker 9 I've always hated everything, and I've always been this way.

Speaker 9 I can't see it as like a

Speaker 10 season when I'm in it.

Speaker 9 But now I am starting to see it as a season. So, I

Speaker 9 think about the time that comes after that season for me.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 9 I have a time where I am down.

Speaker 9 We call it down, depressed,

Speaker 9 melancholy, whatever you want to call it. A sadness comes, like sinks in like a haze over my life.
And then

Speaker 9 I come out of it and it lifts.

Speaker 9 And now I'm in the post-lift time.

Speaker 9 Yay. And what happens in this time

Speaker 9 is that it's like the depressed time is a forgetting of everything.

Speaker 9 And I always forget the beauty of the after season because

Speaker 9 I forget everything and then I come back to life.

Speaker 9 And the next season is a very much like a springtime. Everything is brand new.
I'm learning everything for the first time. Everything's beginner's mind.

Speaker 9 It's like I'm learning how to be human again for the first time. And it's silly.

Speaker 10 It's like, oh, water.

Speaker 10 Oh, moving my body.

Speaker 6 Oh, the sun, fresh air.

Speaker 9 It's like I'm an alien who's been dropped on the planet and I'm learning everything for the first time. And it's quite wonderful, actually.

Speaker 9 And I've been thinking about it in terms of

Speaker 9 crabs. What? Just stick with me.

Speaker 8 Like the animal since we've been on the crawfish.

Speaker 9 Which, by the way, I didn't think of until you said that. Okay.
Sister and I spent a lot of time near the Chesapeake Bay, so everything was about crabs.

Speaker 6 So crabs, they

Speaker 9 have seasons where they start to hide. They go into very dark places of the bay and they hide.

Speaker 9 And then they're hiding because they're losing their shell. And they have to hide because they're very vulnerable when they lose their shell.
They're soft shell crabs.

Speaker 9 Soft shell crabs are crabs that are caught in between losing their old shell

Speaker 9 and growing a new shell.

Speaker 16 They're mid-transformation.

Speaker 9 Right. They're mid-transformation.

Speaker 7 They're on the landing and they got caught.

Speaker 9 They're on the fucking landing and they didn't make their boundaries. Okay.
They snuck out and they got picked off. That's why when you are in a depression, you keep your boundaries.

Speaker 9 You don't, you don't go out where there's predators.

Speaker 11 Oh.

Speaker 9 Okay. Because you are a soft shell crab.
I do believe that there is something about going through a deeply sad, melancholy time that is about growth,

Speaker 9 that we can't understand like what the hell is happening and we think it's all bad. But what I do think is in this season, and by the way, I won't be able to see this next time it happens to me.

Speaker 9 I will not be able to see it until afterwards. I know.
I'll remind you. But there is a time where it's like a molting, that this like depression thing for me is sort of terrible.

Speaker 9 And I don't think I would choose it. But it also is a reset that happens every once in a while in my my life that is about getting bigger.

Speaker 9 Like growing into a new self. Oh, it's a new self.
It's a beginning, but it's like leveling up. It's like a video game.

Speaker 9 And I'm on a new level. And it has nothing to do with like outer things, like you wouldn't be able to see, but there's just a spiritual growth

Speaker 9 that's happening. So I just want it, in case anyone is in the molting part or the dark part or the whatever.
I want to read this paragraph that has helped me through many a molting times.

Speaker 16 Many a molting.

Speaker 9 Many a molting times. So I'm going to read something by Rilka.
It's called Letters to a Young Poet.

Speaker 9 He's writing to his friend, who is a young poet, and the young poet is going through a melancholy time.

Speaker 12 He's a feely, not just a poet going through a melancholy time.

Speaker 12 Sister, yes.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 9 So he is an older writer,

Speaker 9 anxious, sensitive bunny, who's trying to coach this young poet about making it through these times and being this kind of deeply feeling person.

Speaker 9 And he says to him this, so you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen.

Speaker 9 If a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do.

Speaker 9 You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand, it will not let you fall.

Speaker 9 Why do you want to shut out of your life any agitation, any pain, any melancholy, since you really do not know what these states are working upon you?

Speaker 9 Okay, so that's where I am. I don't know what the next thing is.
I just am experiencing everything as brand new.

Speaker 19 When a crab molts,

Speaker 16 does it molt into a larger shell?

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Oh, for real.

Speaker 12 I've got some buddy intel on that.

Speaker 9 Oh my God, of course you do.

Speaker 8 You have done research.

Speaker 6 I hope.

Speaker 12 Well, I had to watch all the YouTube videos with Alice.

Speaker 14 She pulled them all up. We had to watch them all.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 when at least a crawfish, I assume they're related.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 12 When a crawfish molts, that's when its exoskeleton, it comes out. It's the soft thing.

Speaker 15 It

Speaker 12 actually consumes. They said, don't take that skeleton out.
You've got to leave that in there because they eat it to have the strength to build their next one around them.

Speaker 3 That is some shit.

Speaker 12 So they need the nutrients from

Speaker 12 what looks like a discarded, useless

Speaker 6 past

Speaker 12 identity

Speaker 12 to grow into their new going to take them forward identity.

Speaker 4 Wow.

Speaker 9 Nothing is wasted.

Speaker 9 Nothing is wasted. None of that old pain.

Speaker 4 I

Speaker 9 feel that in my endoskeleton

Speaker 6 bones.

Speaker 9 That is true.

Speaker 12 That we are

Speaker 9 using every bit of every version of ourselves we have ever been to create the next version of ourselves that we will be.

Speaker 9 And that sometimes when we're feeling really, really tender, in our family we call it tender

Speaker 9 when we're feeling really tender really porous really sensitive

Speaker 9 we think that that's a weak state but I think actually that could be a transformative state where we are becoming the next thing

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Speaker 12 I have a question for you about your beginner's mind. When you talk about how everything is new and it's beautiful, when you kind of wake up from

Speaker 12 the depressive state, how long does that last?

Speaker 12 Because my only analogy to that is when I'm feeling sick and I'm in my bed, I always, well, first of all, I always think I'm going to die whenever I get sick. And I'm like, this is over.

Speaker 12 I had such a good run. Yes.
I wasn't ever as happy as I should have been. And now I'm never, this is like I have a fever.
Okay. Now I'm never going to get better.
and God if I had only enjoyed my life

Speaker 12 and then I always swear to God that once I feel healthful again I'll never complain I'll be so happy just to be able to not be sick and and then I start to feel better and I feel like that truly I feel so grateful for about

Speaker 12 seven and a half hours and then I'm back to my just curmudging self. So how long does that last?

Speaker 9 Okay, I love this whole comparison because I, weird, here comes weird Glennon. Okay, so here we are.

Speaker 9 If there's a God, and I've always, even when I was like, you know, just on cocaine and alcohol and would feel like God was hanging out with me and we were just like

Speaker 9 buddies always.

Speaker 9 If there's a God,

Speaker 9 if God is like joy and love and peace for human beings are when they notice the little miracles of life. That's it.

Speaker 9 People who can soak in the sun and see their friendships and their loves as a miracle and breathe and feel like that's a miracle and walk around. If that's the joy,

Speaker 9 great. Then when I get too far from that, because I've become so capable again,

Speaker 9 because I've become so efficient, because I've become so like steady and stable.

Speaker 9 Then that's when the depression comes

Speaker 9 because that takes me back to beginner's mind and and the beauty and the joy again.

Speaker 9 So I don't necessarily feel like it's,

Speaker 9 I feel like I'm going to get in trouble for saying like, depression is a blessing from God that takes us back to beginner's mind.

Speaker 9 I don't think it's exactly that, but I do think that for me, that's how I can frame it to make it instead of feeling cruel to feel like a blessing.

Speaker 12 That's what the episode with Dr. Lori Santos about, she's the professor who teaches the happiness class at Yale.

Speaker 12 And the science behind really is that the irony is that the happiest people are deeply in touch with the precariousness of life.

Speaker 12 They are happy because they realize that anything could change at any time and that it is not as steady as it feels. You think those would be the people that would be most

Speaker 12 sad about life, but they're actually the happiest because they appreciate that this is all very unstable and therefore their gratitude for it is bigger yes that's how it feels yeah and it feels like back to the basics

Speaker 9 oh that's so cute that you thought you were like an actual grownup and you were like chugging right along and like a

Speaker 9 back to the beginning and little things and if i describe to you what that bigger self looks like i can already feel it coming and it's silly like really silly like when i am in my beginning growing the new shell phase i have to find little teeny spots where i feel safe so as you all know, I've been going to this little yoga studio.

Speaker 9 I'm talking about it a lot because it's my little safe place right now, and I freaking love it.

Speaker 9 And I'm laying there the other day, and there's these teachers that are all different, but they're all amazing, and they say the nicest things. They just are like,

Speaker 9 You all are beautiful and perfect and amazing, and you all are breathing,

Speaker 9 and that is amazing. I'm like, Yes, to this,

Speaker 9 I love you. I need somebody saying really nice things to me.

Speaker 9 I need somebody who tells me I'm perfect the way I am. I need this.

Speaker 9 Okay. That's a basic thing.
Yes to that. This is a new thing for my new self that I'm learning in the yoga studio.

Speaker 10 I,

Speaker 9 when I go there, there's all these like young people there who are doing very hard things for a very long time. Okay.
They are doing hard yoga.

Speaker 9 And I think of myself as the permission to rest lady in those classes.

Speaker 6 Yeah. PTR.

Speaker 9 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 12 Hashtag PTR.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 9 I am like,

Speaker 9 child's pose for 20 minutes or whatever it is.

Speaker 9 And I just do it. And it feels so good to give myself exactly what I needed.
And here's the thing. I realized this.
I am 46 years old. That's how old you are.
Yeah.

Speaker 9 And I don't want to do my best anymore.

Speaker 4 Oh.

Speaker 10 I actually,

Speaker 9 and I'm sorry to tell you, my

Speaker 9 business pod business partners, I don't want to give 100% anymore. I don't believe in it.

Speaker 9 I want to show up at things that make me feel good. And I want to give like 70%.

Speaker 9 And I want to keep a little bit for extra and for me.

Speaker 9 I don't want to work hard and play hard. I want to work medium

Speaker 6 and play

Speaker 4 low.

Speaker 8 Play low.

Speaker 6 Your play also, just don't forget, is reading and resting.

Speaker 8 That's play low. No, it's it's it's balance, right? It's like

Speaker 7 work

Speaker 19 medium, play medium.

Speaker 10 Yes, okay.

Speaker 9 But what I'm saying is, I don't buy it anymore. I don't buy the like, show up and give 100% anymore.
I feel like show up and do exactly what feels right and good and tender and loving to you.

Speaker 9 Every time I'm there, I'm like, well, I already did it. I'm already here.
Who cares what happens next? Yeah.

Speaker 9 You know, so this is a new way of this new self. And it feels like if we just showed up and gave medium, we wouldn't have to be like always wanting to quit.

Speaker 16 Yeah, we wouldn't stress about it. That's been revolutionary for me and my working out right now.
So I just show up and whatever happens, happens.

Speaker 9 Yeah. It's awesome.
So this is what I mean by a new self. It's not like a,

Speaker 9 you know, leveling up in any way that anyone else would be able to tell.

Speaker 8 It might look like leveling down.

Speaker 12 You're saying Tony Robbins isn't co-signing on this level.

Speaker 9 Sick. No, it's the opposite.
I'm like a demotivational mouter.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 9 And I know that that sounds funny, but I actually think it's very true and real and deep because it's like unlearning all of the things that frantic capitalistic culture teaches us about what we have to do to be relevant.

Speaker 9 And oh, no, no, this is what I have to do to be peaceful.

Speaker 16 One of, one of my favorite things that I've recently read,

Speaker 16 a famous person was just asked, what is your most favorite thing that you're doing right now?

Speaker 1 And they said,

Speaker 16 divesting.

Speaker 16 And I thought, shit, that's so awesome.

Speaker 6 They're a little bit older.

Speaker 9 And I thought, yeah, you know, divesting.

Speaker 3 Because, like, you get to the, you're like, I need to get and invest and create and grow my family and whatever.

Speaker 16 And I thought, I think that we need to make the transition to the divesting sooner.

Speaker 12 I think that by that, you mean just extricating yourself from things that aren't the core of what you care about.

Speaker 8 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 9 Looking at all the things that everyone told us we had to do and being like, do I?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 16 Questioning everything.

Speaker 9 Anyway, that's how our summer's going. going.

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Speaker 9 I'm so excited to hear from a pod squatter today. We get this one question asked over and over again from so many people.

Speaker 9 So we're going to do focus in on one question today, and that question is from Catherine.

Speaker 20 Hi, my name is Catherine. My relationship with both of my parents has never been easy.
They are both complicated people, but I know they love me.

Speaker 20 But there have been many times in my life where I have been extremely hurt by their words and their actions.

Speaker 20 I know these words and actions stem from a place of pain from their own experiences and challenges that each of them has faced.

Speaker 20 Despite knowing this, I find it so hard to not hold on to how they have treated me in the past, which leads me to resentment. This has led to what now feels like a barrier between us.

Speaker 20 Do you have any advice on how to accept the people we love, knowing they are imperfect and cannot always recognize how they've affected us in the past?

Speaker 20 I love my parents and I still need them in my life, but I can't help but wish they were better to me. Thank you so much in advance.
I love all three of you. Bye-bye.

Speaker 10 Catherine,

Speaker 9 I feel like this, I don't know about you two, but it feels like this in some form is the question that every single one of my friends is dealing with right now. Yeah.

Speaker 9 It's like a time of life thing or...

Speaker 16 And our age, right?

Speaker 9 Our parents are getting a little older like we're having existential crisis because of the age of our parents and because we are figuring more out and looking back on our childhoods and some of us are parenting we're figuring out how we're parenting and then wondering why they didn't parent us the way that we're parenting anyway it's lots of lots of problems here yeah i mean i can tell you

Speaker 9 catherine i had a really cool conversation with a couple of friends recently who were talking about this exact scenario that they want to be able to hang out with their parents and not be angry all the time and not be resentful and not wish things were different, but just accept what is, especially when you get to the point where you realize you're not going to change anybody

Speaker 9 and you kind of give up on that. That idea that forgiveness is letting go of the idea that your past could have been any different.

Speaker 9 I know I have a friend who told us that one of the ways she made it through this was that she stopped, she was 50 years old before she stopped thinking of her parents as her parents.

Speaker 9 So let's say that her her parents were Bob and Joe.

Speaker 4 Nope.

Speaker 9 Maybe there was a woman and a man.

Speaker 8 I love that. You just like, you went into a gay man's

Speaker 9 homosexual brain instead of a heteronormative brain.

Speaker 9 Okay, let's just go to like Betty and Joe for this one. Okay.
So Betty and Joe are your parents and you called them mom and dad your whole life.

Speaker 9 When You're 50 years old and you're trying to figure out how do I have a relationship with these two people that is not so freaking loaded with resentment

Speaker 9 one strategy is to stop thinking of betty and joe as your parents as my mom and dad and just start thinking of them and refer to them in your mind as betty and joe okay now let me explain why because when we say my mom my mom my mom my mom What we're also bringing to that is all of these expectations we have for what a mom should have been, what we believe a mom should have been, and the gap is there between what we think should have happened and what actually did happen.

Speaker 9 Or even in the present, like what we think should happen when my mom should call me right now.

Speaker 9 If we call her mom, we're bringing all of these expectations and resentments and sadness to it right away. But at some point, we figure out that our parents are just freaking people.

Speaker 9 who have their own personalities and their own trauma and their own upbringing and their own experiences on the earth. And they've just always been themselves, right?

Speaker 9 So when we think about whether our mom called us or not, when we hoped she would and she didn't, we just think, instead of my mom didn't call me, it's like, well, Betty's just Bettying.

Speaker 9 There's Joe over there. Joe's just Joeing.
It's like

Speaker 9 this depersonalization. of roles.

Speaker 9 And when we take the role out of it, there's something, I've been trying it, and there's something kind of sweet that comes into it too, where you just start seeing your parents as human beings.

Speaker 9 We see it all now with our grown kids. They're already telling us stuff we did wrong

Speaker 9 or stuff that we would ever. And I think that for them to start seeing us as like Glennon and Abby,

Speaker 9 two people that are just trying to do their best and love them and have our own shit.

Speaker 9 It's just one

Speaker 9 little strategy.

Speaker 16 Is it possible to accept familial relationships as they are and also crave more?

Speaker 16 I think that the acceptance of the way things are has allowed me

Speaker 16 the chance at time spent with

Speaker 16 my family, with my mom, especially.

Speaker 16 She's recently gone through some health stuff, which she's... she's come out perfectly on the other side.
And I feel like I kind of left my resentments in the past.

Speaker 16 And I just want to experience the time I have left with her

Speaker 1 in a non-chaotic, non-resentful.

Speaker 2 And I think that maybe there will be a part of me that always craves more.

Speaker 3 Like, but that's just like me, you know, and I can't.

Speaker 12 Judy's just going to Judy. Judy's Judying.
She's going to Judy.

Speaker 18 And Abby's going to Abby.

Speaker 6 Yeah, Abby's going to Abby.

Speaker 16 I still, I'm a person who craves more connection.

Speaker 18 And that's okay, too.

Speaker 2 I think both things can be true at the same time.

Speaker 12 I think there's a distinction here. We hear this all the time.
And what we hear from Catherine is she says, I find it so hard to not hold on to how they have treated me in the past with resentment.

Speaker 12 So I think there's two buckets of people who are dealing with this. One is

Speaker 12 I'm looking back in my life and seeing freshly for the first time that I was not treated the way I should have been. And now it's hard for me to be in live relationship with you,

Speaker 12 knowing that this unexcavated treatment that we have never never talked about

Speaker 12 is always there. And then we have this whole second group of people where there's active mistreatment, crossing of boundaries in the live right now.
And that's the second bucket.

Speaker 12 We're going to have Nedra Twab on soon to talk about that whole phenomenon. But I think with Catherine, I just want to say that I

Speaker 2 get it.

Speaker 12 It comes from a really real place. There's almost a sense of justice that our lives and our personhood demands to be, wait, I'm looking back on this and I see that this was candidly fucked up.

Speaker 12 But now I'm in a relationship with you that doesn't acknowledge, that doesn't unearth, that doesn't deal with that.

Speaker 12 And it's somehow I am complicit in my own mistreatment by not unearthing that or not testifying to it.

Speaker 9 So does it feel like you're abandoning your old self, your little self, if you let it go?

Speaker 12 Yeah, I think that the reason a lot of us are getting to this point in our lives is we're just beginning to understand boundaries.

Speaker 12 We're just beginning to understand what we will accept and what we won't.

Speaker 12 And then we look back in our lives and say, the people that are closest to me are the people that I have, that I have accepted the most bullshit from.

Speaker 9 So you want to set like retroactive boundaries. Exactly.

Speaker 12 But what I want to say to that is like,

Speaker 12 we don't need to defend, unless it's an active thing right now, and that's a separate bucket.

Speaker 12 We don't need to defend ourselves and we don't need to, in some ways, punish ourselves for being unable to defend ourselves then because we were children.

Speaker 12 And the fact that somebody treated us badly doesn't mean we did anything wrong.

Speaker 12 And it's almost like a self-flagellation that happens now when we are uncomfortable because of the way people treated us in the past.

Speaker 12 Like we have to make it right for ourselves, but that's not on us, that's on the other person to make it right if they choose to, and many of them will not.

Speaker 12 So it's the freedom to be like, yeah,

Speaker 12 Joe and Sally, they didn't do right. And also, that's not my problem.

Speaker 12 What's happening right now is

Speaker 12 deciding what relationship I want with the limitations of who these people are. And can it be a satisfying situation for me?

Speaker 12 And that I don't need to carry this book bag of burden just because it was handed to me when I was young. I can put it down and try to have whatever relationship

Speaker 12 feels warm to me now if it does. It's cognitive dissonance because we're like, I love you.
This is lovely. But yet I keep looking back and seeing how fucked up that was.
That's not ours to carry.

Speaker 12 That's theirs to carry. And I bet they're thinking the same thing.

Speaker 12 But that's their bag to carry. You don't have to live in the cognitive dissonance.
You can live right now because you don't have to get that retroactive justice for yourself.

Speaker 9 Yeah, it's good. I think there can be a letting go and a forgiveness of the past when we remember.
I was reading this article recently that brought up the idea of presentism,

Speaker 9 which is presentism is the idea of applying what we know now

Speaker 9 and who we are now

Speaker 9 to past situations.

Speaker 9 So what that means is I look at like, I think of myself and what I know now about boundaries and what I know about like healthy relationships and even my parents know now about boundaries and healthy relationships and mental health and all the things.

Speaker 9 And I take who everything I know now and I look back at my, at my life when I was 10 and I'm like, why the hell didn't this happen and this happened and this happened and this happened?

Speaker 9 Because I'm taking my consciousness now and applying it back then.

Speaker 9 And there's Like, sweet Jesus, I hope that my children in 30 years will not apply their consciousness then to me right now.

Speaker 9 Because because i hope 30 years from now that i even have like i know a lot more and i can understand more a lot about interpersonal relationships and i know more about the world and but now i actually am doing the best i can with what i know

Speaker 9 so

Speaker 9 Sometimes people are doing the best they can with what they know and it's still not good enough for your future self

Speaker 9 because you know more.

Speaker 16 It's also sometimes not good enough for your present self. Right.

Speaker 9 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a big quagmire that everybody has to figure out.
But that little idea helps me of presentism, of not applying the same consciousness retroactively

Speaker 9 and expecting that everything would should have happened the way it would now.

Speaker 16 Yeah, that's so hard to do.

Speaker 16 I bet a lot of parents are like, I did the best that I could.

Speaker 9 That's what they mean.

Speaker 6 They're just different now.

Speaker 9 Yeah, they just mean like, I think I was doing the best I could.

Speaker 12 And the thing under the thing.

Speaker 12 That I think is the reason that this type of question and this type of feeling is so pernicious is that what she says is how they've affected me so when we get to this stage in our lives and we have them as much of self-awareness it's not just that they did that thing back then it's because what they did back then is so inside of us yeah that we can see it in our own actions in our own automatic responses to things in the way that we are parenting our kids.

Speaker 12 And that makes us pissed.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 12 That's why parents are so triggering because the thing in them is the thing in you that you are most allergic to.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 12 I just always view it as like a football player carrying the ball. I'm like, my

Speaker 12 parents were given

Speaker 12 a set of circumstances on the field and they really did carry the ball. They carried the ball as far as they could and they carried what for them was a dramatic drive down the field.

Speaker 9 Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 12 Now, my job, i know that i have in me that is going to affect my kids and i wish it weren't and all i'm going to do is carry the ball as far as i can down the field and then i know that my kids will have the same but when they finish their play it is going to look wildly different than my parents yes just because we're all just doing the best that we can And what you've just said allows us to take the power

Speaker 16 in a situation where we didn't get or receive the kind of love love and attention that we needed back then, because if we are playing out these scripts in so many ways, like all of us do, that we have our parents in us, that's something that we can proactively do to figure out: okay, where am I going to make sure that I don't pass this on to my kids?

Speaker 9 That's where therapy is. But you don't, I don't know a ton about the sports, but I imagine that you don't spend your down

Speaker 12 going back

Speaker 9 to your parents' down and like rerunning their plays over and over, like you stay in your heart.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

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Speaker 9 Okay, let's hear from our pod squatter of the week. Can we hear from sweet Lexi, please?

Speaker 21 Hi, this is Lexi, and I am calling because I just want to thank you all for changing the world. You are getting into people's subconscious, including mine.
And a couple of honest things here.

Speaker 21 I talk to the three of you all day long. I ask you questions and you answer me back.
We are in conversation all the time because I listen to your podcast and you are in my head.

Speaker 21 And thank you for that. Another thing, I just want you to tell me I'm doing a good job.
I have four children, seven and under, and it's a lot.

Speaker 21 And if I could ever hear it from you guys that I'm doing a good job, it would mean the world to me.

Speaker 16 Oh, lexi i am a person that words of affirmation is my jam

Speaker 16 glennon is not as much

Speaker 18 lexi you're doing an incredible job for children under the age of seven the fact that you even knew

Speaker 16 to remember numbers yeah dial numbers she knows how old they are she knows how many of them they are well the numbers to the pod squad she knows phone numbers to the voicemail to dial in to call and leave this voicemail.

Speaker 8 Jesus, crushing it.

Speaker 9 Get out of here. I get this.
I mean, going back to the beginning of this episode, when I sit in that little room and those women tell me that I'm doing a good job just by breathing and that I am fine.

Speaker 9 And that, Lexi, sometimes when I think about those teachers, like I get scared they're going to leave.

Speaker 9 Like I get terrified that they're going to leave because I need for them to tell me that I'm okay.

Speaker 9 And I actually actually was thinking about that this morning. And I thought, I wonder if that's how the pod squad feels about us.

Speaker 9 That's like a bold thing to say and consider, but it made me feel really good and important because it made me feel like maybe that's all that they need is to just hear us say, we are here and it's hard for us too.

Speaker 9 And we love you and you are crushing it.

Speaker 9 And if it's really hard for you, If like life and love and marriage and work and losing and all of it's really hard for you, that doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong.

Speaker 9 In fact, Lexi, that probably means you're doing it right because people who are doing what I would call life right, which means that you're just showing up again and again and trying and failing and flailing and trying again,

Speaker 9 are often the people for whom life is the hardest.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Lexi,

Speaker 9 we love you.

Speaker 9 We think that actually there's nobody better on the entire freaking earth than Lexi, right?

Speaker 6 Nobody better.

Speaker 6 I'll go ahead and say it.

Speaker 11 Go ahead.

Speaker 8 You're the best in the whole earth.

Speaker 9 You're the best in the world, Lexi.

Speaker 12 Lexi, you're doing a beautiful job. And it's like in school when they said if someone asks a question, it means the rest of the class had the same question.

Speaker 12 I think we should go ahead and extrapolate from Lexi that everybody needs to know they're doing great. And I would just like to say, I was listening to a podcast this morning

Speaker 12 about historically our roles. And I firmly believe that 50 years, 100 years from now, they're going to look back on this generation of women and be like, what in the actual fuck?

Speaker 12 Like, we are at this intersection of having it all, of having the careers, of having the educations, of having the whatever. And we are doing more than has ever been done before.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 12 You know what we all did 100 years ago? Farmed.

Speaker 12 The kids farmed.

Speaker 12 We farmed. Husbands farmed.
There weren't dance classes. Nobody was taking anybody to school.
Nobody was making sure they got tutored on Saturday. No one was making origami.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 6 Summer camps were not a thing.

Speaker 12 This was everybody, they woke up, they farmed, they went to sleep.

Speaker 9 Nobody talked about what they felt.

Speaker 12 No, there was an essay writing class for college admissions and also your 50-hour a week job. And also, did you remember avocados? Because it's a super fucking food.
Nobody was doing that shit.

Speaker 4 Okay,

Speaker 12 so this is what I want to say, Lexi. Historically,

Speaker 12 people will look back on you. There will be statues of Lexi and they will say, Thank God we stopped that horrendous experiment we were doing that just eviscerated all the women.

Speaker 17 Yeah,

Speaker 9 that's right. That's it.

Speaker 9 And with that, with statue and honor to Lexi,

Speaker 9 we end.

Speaker 9 We will see you next time if you come back

Speaker 9 on We Can Do Hard Things.

Speaker 12 Pour one out for buddy.

Speaker 8 Bye.

Speaker 9 I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlisle.

Speaker 5 I walked through fire, I came out

Speaker 1 the other side.

Speaker 5 I chased desire,

Speaker 5 I made sure I got what's mine

Speaker 5 And I continue

Speaker 5 to believe

Speaker 5 that I'm the one for me

Speaker 5 And because I'm mine,

Speaker 5 I walk the line

Speaker 5 Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on the map

Speaker 5 A final destination

Speaker 5 We've stopped asking directions

Speaker 5 to places they've never been

Speaker 5 And to be loved, we need to be known

Speaker 5 We'll finally find our way back home.

Speaker 5 And through the joy and pain

Speaker 5 that our lives bring,

Speaker 5 we can do a hard game.

Speaker 5 I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start.

Speaker 5 I'm not the problem,

Speaker 5 sometimes

Speaker 5 things fall apart

Speaker 5 And I continue

Speaker 5 to believe

Speaker 5 the best

Speaker 5 people are free

Speaker 5 And it took some time

Speaker 5 But I'm finally fine

Speaker 5 Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that

Speaker 5 Our final destination

Speaker 5 we lack

Speaker 5 We've stopped asking directions

Speaker 5 to places they've never been

Speaker 5 And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home.

Speaker 5 And through the joy and pain

Speaker 5 that our lives

Speaker 5 bring,

Speaker 5 we can do a hard pain.

Speaker 5 We're adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

Speaker 5 We might get lost, but we're okay.

Speaker 5 We've stopped asking directions

Speaker 5 in some places they've never been.

Speaker 5 And to be loved, we need to be known.

Speaker 5 We'll finally find our way back on.

Speaker 5 And through the joy and pain

Speaker 5 that our lives

Speaker 5 bring,

Speaker 5 we can do hard things.

Speaker 5 Yeah, we can do hard things.

Speaker 5 Yeah, we

Speaker 5 can do hard

Speaker 5 things.

Speaker 9 We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 9 Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn't, don't worry about it.
It's fine.