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And I continue to believe

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Hello, Lex.

Oh my God.

Welcome back to

We Can Do Hard Things.

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

So, sister, she does this to me sometimes.

She follows me around and will not stop repeating things like she's five freaking years old.

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

No, look at me now.

You did.

You laughed.

You laughed.

You smile.

We laugh so we don't cry.

Okay.

Yeah.

Hi, everybody.

Hi, everybody.

Sissy, how is your summer going?

Talk to us a little bit about your summer and how it's going this it was going great until this um

sorry i just needed to bring some joy

so look how joyful i am about it she's so joyful look at that face so we have a new member of the family i need to tell you about okay

last

weekend we went to a crawfish boil okay so this is a thing that is usually it's sort of a southern thing i think because crawfish are from Louisiana.

That's where the crawfish sing, yes, where the crawfish thing.

Exactly.

Okay.

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.

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.

And then, an other type of kid goes to a crawfish boil

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

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.

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.

Yeah.

With its little pictures.

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 not without buddy which she had immediately named and so i had to go and borrow a pan like a baking pan

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 but at first i tried to put it in like a little mason jar,

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

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.

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

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

and walked him home and

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

so buddy turns out buddy's a female but buddy the the craw femme but buddy will reveal buddy's gender when buddy's damn red older right right right

But then turns out Buddy needs all kinds of various accoutrements because Buddy cannot live in a pan.

And so I went on Facebook Marketplace because all of the aquariums are like $700 net.

And I'm like, no.

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 we just watched Buddy for like 10 hours.

Watched Buddy in there, and Buddy was so happy.

And then the next morning, oh,

oh no,

what?

The next, I went to

Buddy went to the different lands.

Crawdad heaven.

What did Alice do?

How did she respond?

She just kept saying, I don't understand.

I don't understand.

And it was very sad.

And I tried to explain that Buddy had been through a lot of trauma.

I mean, Buddy was sent in

a cooler from Louisiana.

All the crawdads are in there fighting each other in the cooler.

Then they get there.

Then 99% of Buddy's comrades boiled.

Oh, Jesus.

Buddy then frozen with my filtered water, then unfrozen,

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

She had a good send-off.

Yeah, I feel like she really had the last little happiness.

So we have a, this weekend, we have a memorial 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

does alice eat meat is she mostly vegetarian um she does eat meat but i remember recently she asked me why do we eat animals oh

and i was like i don't understand i don't understand

i don't know

it's really

up.

It is fucked up.

Yeah.

Anyway, so that was the big events of our last

couple of days.

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

You know, was truly loved at the end there.

Yeah.

Well, we don't know.

There's a lot of true loves down in, I mean, it's New Orleans.

A lot of love going on there.

That's true.

Free crawfish love down there.

I'm not sure.

How are you, babe?

How's your summer?

Anything that exciting?

My summer has been going really wonderfully.

Really?

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

Their personalities are starting to really

stabilize.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, the young years.

They're picking a lane.

They're picking a freaking lane.

But something that's been happening recently.

the last two days, I've decided to play music loudly.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

In our top floor, one hour before dinner,

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.

Drew Springsteen.

Yeah.

Last night we ended up with a white snake.

Yeah.

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

And so we sit there, we play solitaire, we date.

We get the cards out, and we sing.

And I take silly videos of Blenin because that's my favorite thing.

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

And before every song, sister, literally, before every like top 80s song comes on, she goes, This

might be my favorite.

This is my favorite.

This is my favorite.

And then goes into.

I'm going to go again on my mouth.

And then she goes into,

my hair was this big.

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

um

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 of hard for me.

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

I think I was in a bit of a depression.

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.

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

I can't see it as like a

season

when I'm in it.

But now I am starting to see it as a season.

So, I

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

So,

I have a time where I am down.

We call it down, depressed,

melancholy, whatever you want to call it.

A sadness comes, like sinks in like a haze over my life.

And then

I come out of it and it lifts.

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

Yay.

And what happens in this time

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

And I always forget the beauty of the after season because

I forget everything and then I come back to life.

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.

It's like I'm learning how to be human again for the first time.

And it's silly.

It's like, oh, water

oh moving my body oh the sun fresh air 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

and i've been thinking about it in terms of um

crabs what just stick with me like the animal since we've been crawfish 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.

So crabs, they

have seasons where they start to hide.

They go into very dark places of the bay and they hide.

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.

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

and growing a new shell.

They're mid-transformation.

Right.

They're mid-transformation.

They're on the landing and they got caught.

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.

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

Oh.

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.

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.

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.

And I don't think I would choose it.

But it also is a reset that happens every once in a while in my life that is about getting bigger.

Like

going into a self.

Oh, it's a new self.

It's a beginning, but it's like leveling up.

It's like a video game.

And then 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 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.

Many a molting.

Many a molting times.

So I'm going to read something by Rilke.

It's called Letters to a Young Poet.

He's writing to his friend, who is a young poet.

And the young poet is going through a melancholy time.

He's a feely, not just poet.

He's a young poet going through a melancholy time.

Sister, yes.

Okay.

So

he is an older writer,

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 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 if a restiveness like light and cloud shadows passes over your hands and over all you do 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.

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?

Okay, so that's where I am.

I don't know what the next thing is.

I just am experiencing everything as brand new.

When a crab molts,

does it molt into a larger shell?

Yeah.

Okay.

I've got some buddy intel on that.

Okay.

Oh my God.

Of course you do.

You have done research.

I hope.

I had to watch all the YouTube videos with Alice.

She pulled them all up.

We had to watch them all.

So

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

Yeah.

When a crawfish molts, that's when its exoskeleton comes out.

It's the soft thing.

It

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.

That is some shit.

So they need the nutrients from

what looks like a discarded, useless

past identity

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

Wow.

Nothing is wasted.

Nothing is wasted.

None of that old pain.

I

feel that in my endoskeleton bones.

That is true, that we are

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

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

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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

the depressive state, how long does that last?

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.

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, God, if I had only enjoyed my life.

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

seven and a half hours.

And then I'm back to my just curmudging self.

So

how long does that last?

Okay.

I love this whole comparison because I, weird, here comes weird Glennon.

Okay.

So here we are.

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

buddies always.

If there's a God,

if God is like joy and love and peace for human beings are when they notice the little miracles of life.

That's it.

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, carpet kairos.

Great.

Then when I get too far from that,

because I've become so capable again,

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

then that's when the depression comes

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

So I don't necessarily feel like it's, 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.

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.

That's what the episode with Dr.

Lori Santos about, she's the professor who teaches the happiness class at Yale.

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

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

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.

Oh, that's so cute that you thought you were like an actual grownup and you were like chugging right along and like a, 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, know, I've been going to this little yoga studio.

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

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,

you all are beautiful and perfect and amazing.

And you all are breathing.

And that is amazing.

I'm like, yes to this.

I love you.

I need somebody saying really nice things to me.

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

I need this.

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.

I

um,

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.

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

Yeah.

PTR.

Yeah.

Hashtag PTR.

Okay.

I am like,

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

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.

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

I actually,

and I'm sorry to tell you, my

pod business partners, I don't want to give 100% anymore.

I don't believe in it.

I want to show up at things that make me feel good.

And I want to give like 70%.

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

I don't want to work hard and play hard.

I want to work medium

and play

low.

Play low.

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

That's play low.

No, it's, it's balance, right?

It's like work

medium, play medium.

Yes.

Okay.

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.

Every time I'm there, I'm like, well, I already did it.

I'm already here.

Who cares what happens next?

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.

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.

Yeah.

It's awesome.

So this is what I mean by a new self.

It's not like a,

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

It might look like leveling down.

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

For love.

Fuck's sake.

No, it's the opposite.

I'm like a demotivational mouter.

Okay.

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.

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

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

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

And they said,

divesting.

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

They're a little bit older.

And I thought, yeah, you know, divesting.

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

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

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

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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

Yeah.

Questioning everything.

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

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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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

resentment.

This has led to what now feels like a barrier between us.

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?

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.

Catherine,

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.

It's like a time of life thing or

our age, right?

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 problems here.

Yeah.

I mean, I can tell you.

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

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.

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 so let's say that her parents were bob and joe nope maybe there was a woman and a man

i love that you just like you went into a gay man's i did i'm so nice

homosexual brain instead of a heteronormative brain

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 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?

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.

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

If we call her mom, we're bringing all of these expectations and resentments and sadness to it right away.

At some point, we figure out that our parents are just freaking people 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?

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.

There's Joe over there.

Joe's just Joeing.

It's like

this depersonalization of roles.

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.

We see it all now with our grown kids.

They're already telling us stuff we did wrong

or stuff that we would ever.

And I think that for them to start seeing us as like Glennon and Abby,

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

It's just one

little strategy is it possible to accept familial relationships as they are and also crave more i i i think that the acceptance of the way things are has allowed me

the chance at time spent with with my family with my mom especially um she's recently gone through some health stuff which she's she's come out perfectly on the the other side.

And I feel like I kind of left my resentments in the past.

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

in a non-chaotic, non-resentful.

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

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

Judy's just going to Judy.

Judy's Judying.

She's going to Judy.

And Abby's going to Abby.

Yeah, Abby's going to Abby.

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

And that's okay, too.

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

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.

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

One is

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,

knowing that this unexcavated treatment that we have never talked about

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.

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

get it.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

So you want to set like retroactive boundaries.

Exactly.

But what I want to say to that is like,

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

We don't need 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.

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

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.

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.

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

Joe and Sally, they didn't do right.

And also that's not my problem.

What's happening right now is

deciding what relationship I want with the limitations of who these people are.

And can it be a satisfying situation for me?

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

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.

That's theirs to carry.

And I bet they're thinking the same thing.

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.

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,

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

and who we are now.

to past situations.

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.

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?

Because I'm taking my consciousness now.

and applying it back then.

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

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.

So

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

because you know more.

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

Right.

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

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

Yeah.

That's so hard to do.

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

That's what they mean.

They're just different now.

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

And the thing under the thing

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 as much as 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

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.

And that makes us pissed.

Yes.

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

Yeah.

I just always view it as like a football player carrying the ball.

I'm like, my

parents were given

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.

Yeah, that's right.

Now my job, I know that I have shit 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

in a situation where we didn't get or receive the kind of 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.

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

going back

to your parents down and like rerunning their plays over and over.

Like you stay in your heart.

Yeah.

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Okay, let's hear from our pod squatter of the week.

Can we hear from sweet Lexi, please?

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.

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 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 and if i could ever hear it from you guys that i'm doing a good job it would mean the world to me oh lexi i am a person

that words of affirmation is my jam

glennon is not as much

lexi

You're doing an incredible job.

Four children under the age of seven.

The fact that you even knew

to remember numbers, to 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.

Jesus, crushing it.

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.

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

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

And I actually was thinking about that this morning.

And I thought, I wonder if that's how the pod squad feels about us.

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.

And we love you, and you are crushing it.

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.

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,

are often the people for whom life is the hardest.

Yeah.

Lexi,

we love you.

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

I'll go ahead and say it.

Go ahead.

You're the best in the whole earth.

You're the best in the world, Lexi.

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.

Yeah.

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

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?

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 yeah you know what we all did 100 years ago farmed

the kids farmed 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 okay

summer camps were not a thing

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

Nobody talked about what they felt.

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.

Okay.

So, this is what I want to say, Lexi.

Historically,

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.

Yeah, that's right.

That's it.

And with that, with statue and honor to Lexi,

we end.

We will see you next time if you come back

on We Can Do Hard Things.

Pour one out for buddy.

Bye.

I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlisle.

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

I chased desire,

I made sure I got what's mine.

And I continue

to believe

that I'm the one for me.

And because I'm mine,

I walk the line.

Cause we're adventurers, and heartbreaks are map.

A final destination.

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives bring,

we can do a hard game.

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

because we're adventurers, and heartbreaks are back.

Our final destination

lack.

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we can do a hard

day.

We're adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

We might get lost, but we're okay with that.

We've stopped asking directions

in some places

they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives bring,

we can do hard

things.

Yeah, we can do hard things.

Yeah, we

can do hard

things.

We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios.

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