September 24, 2020 • 55 mins
Katie chats with activist and thought leader Glennon Doyle about her latest memoir and New York times bestseller “Untamed.” Glennon wants us all to find our inner wild and she shares ways parents can encourage their daughters and sons to live authentically. She also opens up about her own decision to not become a martyr, the pains of divorce, and the process of growing a blended family. Plus, the former teacher gives her hot take on homeschooling during quarantine.
Crib Notes:
Glennon Doyle - “Untamed” (book) https://untamedbook.com
Glennon Doyle - “Love Warrior” (book) https://lovewarriorbook.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Shonda Land Audio
in partnership with I Heart Radio. Welcome back to Katie's
Crib Today, I am talking with a mama. Oh wow,
does she get it? Okay? She is an author, she
(00:22):
is an activist. I am talking about Glennan Doyle. You
know her from her New York Times bestseller Love Warrior,
a memoir about infidelity, betrayal and redemption, and her latest
memoir that has been a quarantine sensation called Untamed, addresses
the new love and new discoveries that followed. It's intimate,
(00:43):
it's inspiring, it is at the absolute top of every
bestseller list. There's so much that resonated with me as
a woman and as a mother that I was like, please,
can we get Glennon Doyle on the podcast? And so
we did. You guys. We talked about so many different things.
We talked about cream cheese parenting, which you guys will
find out what that means. We talk about how to
(01:03):
raise a boy as a feminist, and we spend a
lot of time talking about what her blended family looks like.
I'm so excited that she is here, you guys. Here
she is Glenn and Doyle. I'm honestly, I've had a
lot of beautiful guests on this show, and I honestly,
I don't know if i've ever God, you must get
(01:24):
this all the time. I've I am having an emotional
response to you. I'm having an emotional whoa. I'll discuss
with my therapist at a later No, I love my therapist.
Oh my god. I'm just like, very happy to have you.
I mean, okay, so on Tame is the Book of
(01:45):
Quarantine is What I can say is that what people
are saying, people are saying right, oh wild is that.
I mean, I don't even know what to say about that.
I think I'm grateful that people are letting me into
their lives at such a wild time. Look, the book
is absolutely genius. I know it would have a vast
wave of response whether we were in quarantine or not.
(02:09):
But I mean, I think people are so tuned into
what everyone else is doing. It's just like wildfire. I
mean I saw it everywhere and I was like, oh
my god, if you don't have a tamed you are
a lose everything. I was like, if you don't get
on the untamed train, I mean, you are just not
in the know. It's so worthy. I've also never gotten
(02:30):
so much cred from my husband. Like usually when I
read a book and I want him to sit down
and listen to chapters. He's not a big reader, but
you know, he's he's wonderful and I love him and
he does listen. But when I told him that you
were Abby's wife, he listened so much. He was like,
Abbie is the greatest athlete that has ever been born.
And he was like, have you seen this video of her?
(02:51):
Have you seen this video? Like yeah, Like he was like,
do you know what Abby is capable of? He was like,
this is her wife. I was like, yeah, he was
like reading that chapter class. No, it's so funny that
you bring that up. I mean, and I swear that
she has some kind of like man whisperer energy, Like
there's something about her. Well, it's because she I think
(03:14):
they all have a respect that she could like kick
their ass at at sports or at whatever. But I
really we talk about all the time the way that
men respond to her compared to like me or It's
just it's fascinating, it's great, It's an amazing superpower. It's
awesome to watch. I was like, okay, so read this
(03:36):
chapter about raising a boy, raised this chapter about raising
a girl. Okay, So once I read Untamed, I learned
so much more and so many valuable motherhood tools through
the book. And I know it's it's about a lot
of things. First, can you explain the word untamed? Which
is the title? Obviously? Um, I'm sure it's hard to
(04:00):
settle on a title for your freaking memoir that best
encompasses the whole thing, but I felt like it was
probably easy in this case. It was not. It wasn't. I. Um,
I have never written a book where I knew the
title before. I mean, it was done and dusted, and
there were several different titles we were going back and
(04:21):
forth with, and I actually had to like rewrite some
of it to match with Untamed. It was It was interesting. Yes,
someday I'll admit all the other titles that I was considering,
but now they seem so terrible that I'm embarrassed to
say them. But um, so I wanted, uh a title
(04:43):
that suggested that, since there is a process that every
individual goes through where we're kind of, you know, we're born,
this wild, unique um ball of energies right is our
individual self, and then because this is the way it
has to be in cultures, we surrender some of that
(05:06):
in order to belong right. So we just start learning.
And most people will say that this process of sort
of losing ourselves in order to fit inside identities or groups.
We usually internalize that kind of conditioning between the ages
of seven and twelve. Okay, those aren't like hard and fast.
(05:26):
But when I say that, people usually women go, I'm
literally soaked in sweat, right, soaked in sweat. So the
seven to twelve is is it? That's where we formally internalize,
Like we start to notice. I mean, certainly from the
second we're born, we start to um. You know, we
(05:48):
look at our mom's faces and she smiles when we
do one thing, and she frowns when we do another thing,
and you know, we're constantly really such a good boy girl,
those don't cry, don't do that. It's okay, like all
the you know, all of that. So we're taking in queues.
But there reaches a certain point where we start to understand,
(06:08):
Oh I'm a girl, so I do this. Oh I'm
a Doyle, so I do this. Oh I'm a Christian,
so I believe this. We survive by um, by belonging. Right,
That's an age old um survival strategy. Right. You stay
(06:30):
in the herd so you don't get killed off, you
don't die, right right, Um. And so, but I just
think that now we are reaching a point, we were
reaching a point for sure inside of humanity, inside of evolution,
where I think our survival is gonna ironically depend on
the resistance of that um instinct. Right, we are going
(06:53):
to have to actually start separating from the herd a
little bit, like we see what happened encouraging people to
be individuals or as you say in chapter one there
whoever their cheetah is, Yeah, they're inner wild, right, yeah,
they're inner wild, which you guys listening um in the
(07:13):
first Untamed references this this glorious trip you made to
the zoo early on in the book, where you see
a cheetah in action and all instinctually the cheetah wants
to go and run, except that this cheetah is in
a cage. Um. You could probably explain it far more
eloquently than I can, That's exactly. And she her name
(07:34):
was Tabitha, and she was actually the zookeeper explained to
us that she was born in captivity, so she was
raised alongside a m labrador, and she was raised alongside
that labrador to tame her. And the zookeeper said, so,
now that everything that Mini the labrador does, Tabitha wants
to do. And we actually watched this labrador chase it
(07:58):
was called the cheetah run. So the abit or chased
this um little jeep that had a pink, a dirty
pink stuffed buddy tie to it, and Tabitha, the cheetah,
watched many do it. And then Tabitha, this amazing animal,
lined up, the jeep took off, and this animal chased
this dirty pink bunny down this well worn path while
(08:21):
all these board spectators flapped m hm. And I have
never you know, as a writer, like all you're doing
is like, where's the thing that I can look at
that describes the thing inside that I can't explain of
that moment was just like, oh my god, I just thought, oh,
of course, if a if a wild, powerful, majestic animal
(08:44):
like a cheetah can be tamed into forgetting who she
is and chasing dirty pink bunny's her whole life, and
so kind a woman right, That's what happens to us.
We are told all of these things that we have
to chase that will make that we're supposed to make
us ha be, and we spend our whole lives chasing them,
and that's why we're exhausted and overwhelmed and underwhelmed and
(09:06):
unfulfilled and un fulfilled. So how do we as moms
raise a cheetah who is untamed? How do we encourage
that behavior? I would probably think the first is through modeling.
You know, I think a lot on Katie's group, we
talk about how much kids learned from their parents. So
I think if my son could see me making choices
(09:27):
that are authentic to who I am, that's a start. Yeah, yeah,
that's it. I think that's everything as that. Do you
ever look back on raising your kids and say, there
was that cheetah moment? Or or were you until you've
sort of had this awakening, were you sort of fitting
in the bill like I'm going to do all the
right things that parents do to be the best parents.
(09:49):
I mean, this is the big one society standards. Yeah, yeah,
I mean I don't know. I feel people often ask me, so,
did you what if there was no abbey, would you
never have become untamed? Like was that your moment? Was that?
And I don't think so. I mean, I think that
my i'n dating probably started with my sobriety, right. And
then when I think back, you know, when I was
(10:11):
raising my kids went up when they were really little,
and I was raised in the Catholic Church, and I
began taking my children to sort of a fundamentalist type
church when they were little, and I remember listening to
what was being said and just you know, listening to
the indoctrination and a lot of the fear mongering that
(10:31):
was happening there. And one day they actually were going
to a school that was affiliated with this church, and
many things happened, but I just ended up walking into
the school and pulling them out of their classrooms one
at a time and leading and just being like, we're
never coming back, and that that was returning to my
wild That was you know, women are just especially want
(10:56):
to well, that's it's trusting yourself more than I mean,
so much of tragically, so much of fundamentalism in any
in any way, whether it's political fundamentalism, whether it's religious fundamentalism,
whether it's beauty fundamentalism. Whatever it is is this idea
that you cannot trust yourself, right, I mean my religion,
(11:19):
My first lesson of religion of God was the hardest wicked.
You cannot rely on yourself. Women are dangerous, Like, do
not trust your own understanding? Your mind isn't like constant
messaging that there is this other, there's this other. Be
it this all knowing thing that is outside of yourself
(11:40):
and that thing is good and you are bad, and
so you have to constantly doubt yourself now other people, right,
And and the trickiest part is when it comes to religion,
what they are saying is not even it's looking to
other people. It's looking to God. It's not it's looking
to other people who are telling you what God is.
(12:02):
It's not that okay, but it takes a lifetime for
those of us who were raised in that two dare
to return to ourselves and trust ourselves and consider that like, actually,
whatever God is is the deepest thing in here, right,
and this is what I have to return to and
this is good and this can be trusted. Um, do
(12:26):
you think it takes a while to build that you
talked about in your book, But that knowing that guttural,
instinctual knowing. Um, I've struggled. I'm a people pleaser. I'm
a good girl through and through. You say in your book,
I think that happens that you're twelve, That happened for
you done, And I wasn't really raised religiously. My parents
are New Yorkers. They're pretty outside the box thinkers and
(12:49):
job holders is as far as the norm is concerned.
But I I just always want people to feel good
and liked and I feel that in respond and that's
just who I am. And I have to say motherhood
has been the biggest wrench in that because my son
(13:10):
very early on was the hitter on the ground and
I was given I was given that kid, and I
was like, oh my god, I'm the one on the
park that the moms are judging. I'm the ones that
the moms are pulling their kids away because they think
my kid is bad. They think I'm bad and doing
a bad job. I mean, it was horrible. I mean
(13:34):
I just feel like motherhood, if you look at it
in the face, can really You're given these gifts of
the ship that you have to sort out. Um, and
he is providing that. Thank you, kid, and I'm sure
it's only gonna get way worse. I mean, he literally
gives zero f about what people think, and I give
(13:55):
all the f's. So it's a really nice combo. Um.
Figure out the eternal question is do I love my
kid more than I love the world's approval of me?
Which is, like you would think that'd be an easy answer,
but for women it is. Well, it's weird because I
know the answer here in the quiet of my closet
(14:17):
recording with you. Obviously it's my son. But when I'm
out there in the world and the stairs are coming
and I see myself putting this fake ass smile on
myself and apologizing profusely, when I'm taking out of the
situation for him, hitting, I know the things to say,
like we're working through, you know, like I stand my
own ground, you know, And all of a sudden, I
turned into my twelve year old like I'm so sorry,
(14:38):
Like please don't hate me, Like don't tell anyone. I'm
a good girl. I'm nice. I swear I played by
soci I'm not like him, and I've really I'm you know,
I'm working on it, um. And that's an untaped you know,
that's I'm trying, um to get stronger there. Um, you
do have chapters in your book about you've been raising
(15:02):
your daughters as feminists since they came out, and talk
to me about that, and then talk to me about
the chapter when you realize you turned the TV and
there's all this stuff about boys and hazing and gang
rape on the cross teams and mass shootings, and you
look at your son and you're like, what do I do?
Tell me about a son too, damn it. Um. I
(15:29):
was a child who got very sick, very early from
the messages in the air about what girls are supposed
to be, like Kimberliemick. When I was ten, Um, I
just had big feelings. I had big confusion, I had
big anger, I had big doubt. And I was told
that girls are supposed to be small, girls supposed to
be happy, girls are supposed to be you know, pleasant
(15:50):
and pretty and all of these things. And um, and
I was pleasant and pretty until I was ten, and
then ship hit the fan and I didn't know how
to be simple and quiet and happy and perfect anymore
because I started to become fully human. But since we
don't teach anybody as a child how to deal with
(16:11):
being fully human. Right, we don't talk about pain in
our culture. We don't talk about how to deal with anger,
about how to deal with grief, about how to deal
with envy and loss and all of that. I just
thought there was something really wrong with me, um, and
so I started numbing and hiding inside of food, and
that turned into every addiction. And so you know when
I had when I found that I was pregnant with
(16:32):
little girls, I just was like hell bent on making
sure they had examples of women who were just complicated
and fully human and loud and successful and failure and
obnoxious and all the things right, um, I mean, and
I was over the top. I mean I had little
(16:53):
earphones on my belly with like NPR and just Ruth
Bader Ginsburg ship. Like I just was like it can't hurt, right, scanner,
the I done so much damage to like my organs,
like I just need to give them a head start
somewhere else, right, like maybe cerebralery or something so um
so And it worked, man, I mean you know even
(17:13):
in like every time someone called them bossy, I would
be like, yes, isn't she a good leader? Yes, she
is a good leader. And like every time that vocabulary counts.
Those words pounds. Absolutely. My little girl let a revolt
at her school because she got her jersey for soccer
and said lady panthers and you would have thought that
(17:34):
someone had shot her. And like she she was very
serious about it. Yeah, and were you so proud? Girl?
I was like, I was like, I haven't told anyone this.
I was just like emailing talk about cream cheese, helipoped
her mom. I was emailing the coach, like you do it,
I'll pay for it, just just if there's any problem.
(17:55):
I just want her. I want her first activism to work,
to work so that she can wait explain to us.
We'll get into the boy things like a cream cheese parent,
which I also am. What what Glennon means is there's
a chapter in a book about you know, you're the
mom who has to bring the snacks. Let's say it's
bagel and cream cheese, and you get the call. Well,
we can't just have one type of cream cheese. We
need to have six different kinds of cream cheese. We
need to have different flavors. We need dairy free, we
(18:17):
need to have soy free, we need and basically because
of this style of helicopter over indulgent, insane amount of choices,
giving them the best options we can at all times.
It's basically creating little assholes. They're awesome. I'm like, there,
I am so guilty of that because it's how I
(18:37):
think we are supposed to show love. I know, because
that's what we were trying to believe. Ye, right, it
is not our fault. We got the memo that we
our job as parents is to hover, obsess, protect them
from any kind of pain. Ever, like these children. They
handed us these children, and the memo was, take this
child home and let nothing ever happen to it. Okay,
(18:58):
make sure that this kind never failed. They never feel pain.
They go to No one's allowed to frown in their
general direction, no teacher is allowed to do anything but
worship them. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare. And it's
why our kids suck, because because people who do not
suck are people who have lost and learned how to
(19:19):
lose with dignity. Right. People who do not suck are
people who have actually felt the sting of pain, because
then they feel empathy for other people and so they
become not assholes. Right, So we are like the memo
we got is causing us to steal from our children
the one thing that will allow them to become the
people that we dreamed abby. Right, we got a really
(19:42):
bad memo. And then and then the other part of
our memo was like, make sure that they have the
best of everything that you are capable of providing them, right, Um,
And this is what happened. One of my kids was
doing a sport and I finally answered the email. Who
I was, like the last one on the list to
show up to bring the breakfast or something that the
(20:02):
woman asked me to bring five tubs of cream cheese.
It comes from a good place like that mother thinks
that she's mothering the hell out of her children. But
five tubs of cream cheese is not how to make
a child feel loved. It's how to turn a child
into an ass white like that, because who on earth
needs five flavors? No one, no one, no one. So
(20:38):
tell me about when you realized your son had already
he was older, and you turned on the TV and
you see all of this awful darkness. I remember being
pregnant with my son and being in the airport and
my husband gasping, and I said, what And he said, Oh,
my god, a young boy just was killed because of
(21:00):
hazing in a fraternity. I thought about all the things
my brother did growing up, like all the things he
thought he had to do, you know, and I just
started sobbing for my son and how scared I was
for his safety, but also feeling like that's the culture
he has to tame himself to be a part of.
(21:21):
When you realize that of your own son, what did
you do? Well? I panicked at first, because I have
spent my whole entire motherhood life, you know, whispering in
the girl's ear in a million different ways. You can
be bold and loud and imperfect and certain and ambitious
(21:42):
and still be a woman, right. But I just realized
I had not been whispering into Chase's ear since he
was born. You can be uncertain and vulnerable and weak
and sad and still be a boy, right. I a feminist.
I'm in the fight. I know that women get screwed, okay.
(22:04):
I know that we have a lot a lot of
ways to go with equality and justice. But I wouldn't
trade places with a man for all the money in
the world. When I there's something about like being in
the same sex marriage now, which has changed my relationship
with men. I don't know if like it's like the
dynamic of any sort of sexual tension is gone. So
(22:26):
it's like I feel like men are talking to me
for the first time, just like humans who you're human. Yeah,
I've always been afraid of voice, honestly, like, I've never
really related to men. I haven't known how to talk
to men. It's fastening to me with Abby the way
that she like approaches a man and he becomes sort
of fully human with her that because there's no there's nothing,
(22:51):
there's no posturing, right right, um, And so that's what's
starting to happen with me. I think they're like, okay,
she's or we're all safe here, like nothing sure, sure,
so sure. When I'm what happens when everyone stops posturing
in in every way, not just gender wise, but every way,
is that you start to see people's full humanity. Right.
(23:13):
So I don't think that I've ever really seen a
male's full humanity because there's always been the gender posturing
going on on my part. And they're right, yes, absolutely,
I'm you're telling me the story, and I'm thinking about
one of my best friends in the entire world. Is
Gear Moo Diaz from a scandal. He's gay. He's been
with his boyfriend for a very long time, and it
(23:34):
was the greatest sexual relationship on a television show I've
ever had the pleasure of being a part of. Now
that's gone. When you have sex scenes with straight men
is very complicated and odd and the whole thing. I mean, look,
it's all uncomfortable and it all sucks. But the great
news is for seven years, most of them, I had
a lot of sex scenes with the gay dude. My
husband was stoked. Carol's my best friend. It was like,
(23:56):
and he's my soul mate. And that's my experience of
that sort of a situation where it's like, oh, we're
never like this is not anything ever, like this is
weirdness that it's terrifying possibility. Yes, it's like even it's
always there, like even with your best friends, whoever, because
then you're worried, am I being weird? Are they if
(24:17):
it's okay? Am I sitting too close? Like? Absolutely, it's
always there. So now that I've gotten beyond that, I'm
just like on the on the other team, right, sure,
I am able to speak to men and I my
heart breaks in a million pieces when I actually internalize
(24:39):
the obvious, which is that men are as fully human
and emotionally complicated and as we are. That sounds so simple.
I'm like they are. I'm literally you sure well I
And we definitely want to raise our sons to be right.
And if they're not, okay, if they're not, it's it's
(25:00):
been conditioned and beaten out of them, right like it is.
It is a very archaic and dangerous position to take
that we are born different, we are born fully human,
and then we are tamed. Right, little girls are tamed
in a million different ways that you have to be quiet,
(25:21):
you have to be commendating, you have to be pleasing,
you have to be pretty, you have to be and
boys are taught you cannot be vulnerable, do not cry,
do not be tender with each other, don't be that,
don't be gay, that's gay or that's you know. My
little boys at my house they are talk about not
knowing their audience. They will sit down next to a
(25:42):
boy and go no, homo, right in front of me. Down.
Oh my god, that is absolutely crazy. I mean, was
it too late when you realize this? No, no, never
too late. And also you know, he has a fully
human father who's like extremely vulnerable and emotional, and he
(26:03):
has a mother who's like real emotional, right exactly, So,
but it was past time to start naming it. Like
with my little girls, all the time, a commercial will
come on TV, a billboard would be on this, and
I would always turn them towards it and say, girls,
what is that advertiser trying to tell you about what
(26:24):
it means to be a woman? Because that is that
is to me, pointing and making very very clear. The
invisible messages is what you have to do, because otherwise
it just starts to seep in, like it's like osmosis. Right,
(26:46):
So without they have to become really clear about who's
lying to them and how. Right. So my girls will say,
if they're trying to say that all bodies are thin
and tall and white and blonde and a blah bla
blah blah. Right, So now I double time had to
start doing that with Chase. I mean, listen the story
(27:06):
I put in the book. All you have to do,
if you want to know what I'm talking about is
go into your own child's shower and look at the
ship you've been buying them. I walked into my kids shower.
My daughter's bottles are all lined up on one side,
Chase's bottles are on the other side. All of Chase's
bottles are big, bulky red white and blue chuggy bottles
(27:29):
of soap and shampoo. Okay, red white and blue, because
patriotism and toxic masculinity are always tied together, like listen
in America. But all the bottles said things like one
of them actually said slam body like a folding chair.
And then the girls, of course, they were all metallic
like an angel lod. Yeah, like not even no verbs,
(27:56):
like nothing to do on the girl's side, just a
bunch of disconnected whiskey words to be right. So, in
other words, the boys side is saying, yeah, the boy's
side is saying, you become a man by conquering, and
the girl's side is saying you become a woman by
being worthy of being conquered. That's it, right, So that
(28:18):
is the way that we shan't we caame our children
out of their full humanity before they even leave the
shower in the morning. Right. This is not um high
minded stuff. It's stuff that's right around us every single day.
So you know, little boys, they are teamed in opposite
ways and girls are. Um. But what it all comes
down to is misogyny, right, because if you look at
(28:39):
the ways that the boys are shamed, all of the
ways in one way or another, say, you'd be anything
but feminine. M you'd be anything but soft and merciful
and kind and connected and vulnerable. You'd be anything but
those things we attribute to women. Right. So, at the
heart of toxic masculinity and at the heart of toxic
(29:02):
femininity is both misogyny. Um. So you know, anybody, regardless
of whether you've been using these particular language with your
sons and daughters, if you've been teaching by modeling, by
living equality and respect for women, then you have been
underground doing child from being pained, you've been doing the work.
(29:25):
You've been just cool to start putting the overt language
on top of it so your kids can see well,
because yeah, and also so that they're not so unaware
of how it's everywhere. I mean, I wouldn't even think
to go in the shower and look. I can't wait,
that's like the first thing I'm doing. I need to
like go and look. I mean, my stuff is pretty hippie,
So I'm hoping that it's like, oh, you might say,
(29:46):
I'm hoping, I'm hoping the hippie stuff is safe, but
you never know. But I'm going to look at the
hippie stuff for sure. Can you tell me about something
else that I definitely struggle from? And I learned so
much from your book, So basically we've learned this so far.
(30:08):
I'm tamed. I'm a cream cheese parent, and I'll tell
you I'm also the martyr. And I loved in your book.
You So there's this concept that women martyr themselves for
their kids, meaning like, I'm going to stay in something
that makes me not how happy, or I'm going to
(30:29):
do something that isn't for me over and over and
again because it's with the best for my kids. Right,
I'm gonna put my kids first, which means I put
myself last. I went back to work when Albie was
eight weeks old, and it was already a big disaster
because my mom was a stay at home mom. So
that has been conditioned to me that that's the best
way to be and that's the only way to be.
(30:49):
And even though she was in my ear saying no,
she was in my ear, saying up, like, let me
tell you something she said I wouldn't. She was like,
I'm glad with the choice I made, and I love you.
You know she she is responsible for the choice she made,
separate of me entirely. But she was like, please, don't
feel bad, go to work. And so I started to
(31:10):
try to use language with my son like I'm going
to work now, and I'm I love my job, and
I really hope someday you get to go to a
job that you love, and then I love coming home
and seeing you like how great whatever. Um, you did
this in the biggest degree maybe you can do, which
is you were in a unfulfilling, messed up marriage. Um.
(31:37):
Are those the right words to use? Yes, I think
that's fair. A long time with the with the father
of your children, who I want to talk to because
he also sounds wonderful. Um, in how you work as
a blended family. Um, And you fell in love with
a woman, and instead of making the choice which I
(31:59):
think I would made, which was I can't have this,
I'm going to stay in my marriage or the thing
you heard when you were growing up, like I'm going
to stay in this marriage at least till the kids
go to college, because then I will have done my job.
You did not make that choice. You made the choice.
I'm not martyring myself and my life for my children.
My children I've raised to be strong enough to show
(32:19):
that if I'm happy in the choices I make, that
they can swatch that. And how the hell did you
do that? Like, well, how did you do that? Um?
How did you explain to them that you were leaving
their dad, that you were leaving their dad for a woman,
that you were in love with a woman, that you
(32:41):
were going to make this Some people would say selfish
choice for yourself. Yeah, I mean I guess, Well, here's
the deal. I almost didn't. I almost didn't because even
though I knew that, you know how you just deep
down no things. And I just, deep down knew that
(33:03):
the marriage I was in was not the truest life
for me. UM. I knew down deep that I was,
for the first time in my life, truly in love
with another human being. UM, and that it was probably
(33:24):
had to do with parts of myself that I had
never acknowledged. Also just had to do with Abby individually.
It had to do with the time in my life.
I mean, I was forty two. I finally stopped caring
more about what the world thought about me than what
I really wanted. You know, It's kind of like when
(33:47):
you figure out, oh, there's not going to be two
of these lives. Um. It was not like, Okay, do
I love Abby or do I stay with Craig. It
was like do I abandon myself again? It was about
me and my one wild and preshious life. Like it
was about here's the moment, Like, here's the moment where
(34:10):
I decide, do I choose the truth of me? Or
do I choose not rocking the boat right? Do I
abandon myself or do I just dare to abandon everyone
else's expectations of me? And what I do in this
moment will determine whether I live or don't. Um. And
(34:34):
I don't know if that's how dramatic it feels for everyone.
I don't know if it also had to do a sexuality,
but I doubt it. I doubt it. I bet that's
how it feels for everybody when they're when they're making
that decision about one way or the other, and one
means everybody else stays steady, but you slowly die, and
(34:54):
the other one means right, and the other one means
ship hits the fan with everybody else and you cause
so much pain and drama, but you live, right. Um,
the good news is the one I just mentioned everybody
also lives. Okay, the first one you slowly done? Yeah,
(35:15):
Like that sucks well. As women, we have literally we've
been taime to believe that that is an okay price
to pay. I'm like thinking about Meryl Streep and Bridges
of Madison County. She's losing the love of her life
and the life she could happen, but then asks her children, oh,
just bury me with this other guy, and then her
children that's the first time they find out. Look, that's
(35:36):
like a totally but I e. Everything into movies and television,
and I'm like, why it's insane. I imagined that moment.
I used to lay in bed and imagine my E
think Bridges of Madison County moment like I would I
imagine being eight years old and being like, wow, I
didn't do it, Like imagining Abbey somewhere and being like,
(35:59):
I didn't do it. I didn't take my one chance.
Like so, so, so here's the deal. Here's the one,
and even knowing all of that, I thought, I can't,
I can't, I can't, I just can't. We just I
don't give a ship the boat. I don't care. I
have learned to rock the boat. It was the children
(36:20):
as mothers. We It's just it was so ingrained to me. No,
a mother does not hurt her children, and mother does
not hurt her children. And then one day it was
braiding tissues hair and I just had this freaking epiphany
that I am still so grateful for, which was, oh,
I am staying in this marriage for my little girl.
(36:43):
But what I want this marriage for my little girl?
And if I would not want this marriage for her,
then why am I modeling bad love and calling that
good mothering? Why am I using my daughter as an
excuse not to be brave with my life? Right? And
(37:08):
because we know better, we know better, We know that
our children will only allow themselves to live as fully
as we allow ourselves to live. And so the call
of motherhood has to be not settling for any relationship,
any institution, any situation that is less true and beautiful
than the one we would want our child to choose.
(37:30):
That's example. I don't know why this got so messed up. Well,
because of course we know why I got so my steps,
because the job of patriarchy is to scare us into
disappearing inside every role we have. Right, I wonder who
taught us that as mothers we should slowly die instead
of teach our children how to bravely live. Right, that's
(37:52):
the poison that's been in the air since the beginning.
That's the untaming, Right, It's the examining of all of
these poison roots that have been planted beneath us, and
the tearing out of all of them so that we
can plant different routes that are our own beliefs, that
will allow us to grow as fully and tall and
beautifully and bravely as we were meant to, and that
(38:12):
won't team our children. Because that's what I would have done.
I would have in the name of my child, I
would have martyred myself and then passed that legacy onto her.
And then one day she would have been faced with
the moment where she would decide whether she was going
to let herself live and rock the boat or rock
(38:33):
the boat, and she would have let herself slowly die,
because that was her mother taught her. Absolutely tell me
about when you had when you told them, Was it
just you and Craig there were were you so nervous?
Did they cry? Did you tell them all at the
same time? Did you not bring in the abbey of
(38:54):
it until was it first? Let's talk about that, Dad
and I are separating. How did it look? Because I
think this is very like you know, we've had a
lot of We've had a lot of different families on
Katie's crib, for sure, but I love I don't think
we've really talked to somebody who's like, this is how
(39:15):
I did it? Yeah, like, yeah, yeah, totally. Well, I um,
I need to tell you that I was certain that
as a words person and in the emotions person, that
I was just going to figure out all the right
words and way to say this thing, and it was
(39:38):
going to be the most beautiful, perfect divorced conversation that
ever happened, and everyone was going to just actually be okay, Katie,
they were just actually gonna be okay, Okay. No one
was okay. It was a total nightmare. There are no
right words, there's no good way to do it. It was,
(40:02):
without a doubt, the most heartbreaking moment of my life,
and I've had many, many dizzies and this was the
worst of it. Like I could, I could start crying
right now thinking about I mean, I was the I
used to tell my kids. I remember when Tish was
(40:22):
little and she'd come home and tell me about her
friend's parents getting divorced, and I would look right in
her eyes and promise her that her parents were never
getting divorced. I did that ship, you know. I used
to lie to her all the time. I used to
tell her, your parents would never get divorced, like, yes,
I know, Heaven is real, Yes, God Sam to all
this bullshit, you know, um And so I don't know.
(40:48):
It was just like the moment where they lost the
solid ground beneath their feet, right it they lost part
of the innocence of childhood. There's no other way to
put it. In is absolutely freaking brutal. I mean they
also I knew the truth for the first time, which
is actually, there is no solid ground, and nobody's in control,
(41:09):
and nobody knows what's coming next. And all we know
is that what family is is that we will all
keep showing up. That's all we can promise you is
that we will all keep showing up right so um,
so I wish that I could tell you some magical
I mean, I remember saying one good thing out of
all of my fifty good things that I was going
(41:30):
to say. I remember saying, Okay, you know, we've taught
you that we always want you to tell the truth
about who you are, even when even if it hurts us,
even if it makes people uncomfortable. And now I'm about
to show you how that's done, because it's going to
hurt you, and it's going to make you uncomfortable, and
we are all going to get through it together. So
(41:51):
I remember like nailing that heart um and then and
then the rest was just so painful and so sad.
There's no other way to describe it, Like there's no
there's no way to Did you wait a while before
you introduced Abby? Was she? It was very very slow,
like we that was a whole year long process where
(42:15):
she moved down to Naples. She would come for like
twenty minutes, we'd meet out. We you know, we we
had like whole systems and whole process these and and similarly,
what is it always understood? Like I love this Craig
lives like a mile away he's very involved in the
(42:35):
kids lives. Oh yeah, you guys co parents, Like nobody's business.
Was that always the understanding, Like Craig was always like,
oh okay, like we aren't married anymore, but we are
both obviously still very much parents of these three children,
and I'm going to be very involved in their lives. Oh,
I mean Craig is there would be no doubt, Like,
(42:57):
there's no he's as much a parent to them, is up,
Like it would be unthinkable for him not to be here.
I love so much. Was marriage wasn't working? Not because
he wasn't an amazing dad. He's an amazing dad. Oh
my god, you guys just weren't an amazing relationships. And
we got married. He would say the exact same thing
(43:17):
if you were here, Like, we we got married because
it was the right thing to do, not because we
were the right ones for each other. I was pregnant,
I was I'd been sober for four seconds, Like we
were just doing what we thought was the right thing,
and and we were all time. How long were you
guys married? Oh, Chase's seventeen, so we got married eight
(43:39):
teen years ago. Um yeah, And and he just there
was all kinds of painting with Craig in the beginning,
to you know, I mean, that wasn't easy in the beginning.
Oh my god, to have your kids like watch your
husband pack up and like move out, Like that's just
so dramatic to me. I like, aunt, even I don't know,
(44:00):
you know, it's just so brave of you because the
whole time you have to go through this, Like now
you're on the other side, right, You're happily married, You're
in a loving relationship. Craig is a co parent to
the max. Like this is working. It's not only just working,
like everything everybody's truly, with every bone in my body,
(44:20):
know that there is no such thing as one way liberation.
Like when people are in a bad situation, one of
them is slowly dying inside. The other one is never
having the calm of their life. Okay, they might not
yet be able to admit that the relationship they're in
is broken and not working, and they might fight it
(44:42):
in the beginning, but eventually you get the moment. I mean,
when Craig wrote me a letter, it was like, thank
you so much for breaking all of our hearts. We'll
never forget. It was of my birthday cards, Like he
is happy now he has a girlfriend who wants she
wants to make out with him. Okay, like and also
tell me about having another Look, Okay, you already have
(45:04):
a mother figure now in Abby, tell me about a
third women walking around in this life? Like, were any
of those lower emotions present? Were you protective of your children?
So I just nailed it all the way? Cool, I
was easy, breezy, I was like, come on, no, I
(45:26):
was not. I was so disappointed in myself in the
beginning because I had such a hard time. I mean,
I think I got like I would give my I
felt like a B minus is what I would say,
because I I feel like I always handled it. Abby
is the only one who ever saw my inner feelings. Okay,
(45:52):
but there's this thing happen that happens where so Craig
when Abby came into the family, like he was getting
used to the kids having another mom. Okay, he didn't
deal with the kids having another dad. Okay, I had
to deal with another mob that was not of my choosing. Okay,
(46:16):
and prs. You know it was harder, isn't She was amazing, fantastic, wonderful, kind, smart, loving,
like so good to the kids, like there was nothing
for me to hold on to. Okay, um no, all
(46:36):
of those things huge blessing, huge blessing. But in the
beginning it was hard. And I will tell you the
way it comes out is in these little moments when
so when Craig and his girlfriend would drop the kids off,
they'd be in the foyer. We would all be hanging
out doing the awkward circle, like where we're all laughing
too much and like we're all just trying to talk
(46:56):
too much and make it more awkward and do all
the things. Um, I'm like hysterically laughing for no reason.
You wouldn't even know the size grin I would have
on my face and while sweating profusely too. There's no
situation that I can't up the awkward. Okay, A becalls
it my superpower, Like if things are awkward, oh not yet,
(47:19):
just give me a minute. So this thing would happen,
which is that she would start playing with the girl's hair. Okay, listen,
I don't know why the hair made me want to
stab everyone in the house, but it did. It was
something something primal about another woman touching my kids here.
(47:40):
And so here's the thing. Thank God, I am conscious
enough to understand that none of these feelings were her problems,
like I am through thirty years of fair kay wiseness
(48:02):
to know that these were my problems, right. And I
remember being on the phone with Craig trying to make
them his problems one time and saying something like, I
just think that it's going too fast and we just
don't have enough boundaries, and I'm just afraid she's gonna leave,
and um, the kids are going to be heartbroken. But
(48:24):
as I'm saying it, that wasn't true. That wasn't my fear.
I wasn't afraid she was going to leave. I was
afraid she was going to stay sure, and my kids
were going to love her. Right. So the reason I
tell these stories is just because the fact is that
no no matter how anybody acts like they're blended, family
(48:46):
went so smoothly and everybody was kumbaya the whole time.
That's not how it works. A lot of hard feelings
come up, and it is an exercise in trying to
be wise enough to know that most of the feelings
that come up have everything to do with how fiercely
everyone loves the freaking child and have nothing to do
with the other person, right, Yeah, they're all your own.
(49:09):
Yeah Yeah. What I would say is that a million
times a day I have to remind myself. I still
have so many hard moments, Like once a week I
walked past the foyer and all the kid's bags are
lined up with all their little shoes. It's just like,
if there's one image of divorce with kids that is
(49:30):
like it's just packing up. It's like it brings up everything.
It's like kids shouldn't have to do this, Like what
this wasn't the original plan. Um. But the one thing
that blended families have to remind themselves over and over
again is that things can be hard and still be
exactly right. Right, It's not correct, it's not uh necessary
(50:00):
every time something feels painful and hard to think, oh
my god, it was a mistake, it's because there's not
There's not a bone in my body or a hair
on my head. There's not a bone in Craig's body,
or Albus body, or any of our children's bodies that
thinks that any of this was a mistake. Everybody in
this family knows that our family is fixed now. But
(50:21):
this is exactly how we were meant to be, and
it's also hard sometimes and you just you just have
to live with that both. We can do hard things.
We can do hard things people. It's like I I
have to say that constantly in this pandemic. I mean, good, lord,
(50:45):
do your third grade teacher right, you are legit a
f y guys. We're just this is extenuating circumstances and
we have to remind ourselves that we can, like Lennon
Doyle says, finished strong mm hmm, nobody and finish yes, yes, okay,
(51:09):
listen to me. Listen to me Katie's crib community, and
listen good okay, listen. I when I taught pre school,
I used to spend all FFing night making forty million
freaking projects for my kids because I loved them so
much and I wanted them to have fun all day okay,
and be up until two in the morning making these
(51:29):
damp things. The children would go home with their parents
and the parents would say to the children, what did
you do today? And the children would say nothing, Okay,
that's what this A little assholes would say, here's what
I learned every time because I did my homework. Sometimes
(51:50):
the children would remember the last thing we did as
a class, the most brilliant children in every class. We'll
remember the first thing you do and the last thing
you do. Okay, that is it I am telling you. Okay.
(52:12):
So here's what I tell to the parents, especially during
the pandemic. You start strong, and you finish strong. All right,
you after breakfast, read them a freaking story. And I'm
not talking pinterest strong. Just like just some attention and time.
There's something they want to do for fifteen minutes, like
look at their face. That's all I mean. Okay, look,
(52:33):
read a book, do something. Then quick seven hour TV
show okay I cannot Yeah, just quick seven hours. If
you feel like you must have some instruction during that
seven hours, you can mute the TV, turn on close caption.
There's your reading lesson. Okay. That's for the extra moms
(52:55):
who feel like they need that little kick accolade. And
then at the end of the day, you finish strong, okay,
before dinner, after dinner or whatever, you get out a
little board game. You do the thing for fifteen twenty minutes.
Everybody goes to bed happy. Nobody remembers the messy middle. Okay,
(53:15):
we just finished strong, and for the rest of the
day we give ourselves a little bit of peace, because um,
that's all anybody needs right now. Okay, I could not
agree more. We got to take the pressure off moms.
We've got to take the pressure off. It's too much.
It's too much. You can't have a full time job
and be a full time mom and be a full
time teacher and keep your sanity. Yeah, it's teaching is
(53:38):
a whole thing that people, I mean, don't get me
started on this. With the teachers. We go to college
for this. We study in lots of classes, we learn
how to teach children. It's a degree we get. Okay,
you can't just all of a sudden decide to tell
parents they have to homeschool their kids. That's like saying, okay, now,
real quick, we're gonna home surgery. All social, unrealistic and painful.
(54:03):
And I have so many friends struggling with this right now,
and it's just not the guys. This is such a
crazy time. And I'm so thankful for you writing this
book and taking the time to come on Katie's Crib.
Please give my whole family your love. I know I
don't know them, but it's what you have. You have
that quality it's like we feel like we do. It's
(54:24):
like we feel like we do and it's wonderful. Um,
thank you Glenn and Doyle, thank you every bye. Thank
you all so much for listening to Katie's Crib. I
would love to hear more from you. Questions, comments, thoughts.
You know where to find me. My email is Katie's
(54:44):
Crib at Shonda land dot com. Bye. Katie's Crib is
a production of Shonda Land Audio in partnership with I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from shondalian Audio, visit the
I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(55:05):
to your favorite shows them I Want You, Want You,
I Want You
Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Shonda Land Audio
in partnership with I Heart Radio. Welcome back to Katie's
Crib Today, I am talking with a mama. Oh wow,
does she get it? Okay? She is an author, she
(00:22):
is an activist. I am talking about Glennan Doyle. You
know her from her New York Times bestseller Love Warrior,
a memoir about infidelity, betrayal and redemption, and her latest
memoir that has been a quarantine sensation called Untamed, addresses
the new love and new discoveries that followed. It's intimate,
(00:43):
it's inspiring, it is at the absolute top of every
bestseller list. There's so much that resonated with me as
a woman and as a mother that I was like, please,
can we get Glennon Doyle on the podcast? And so
we did. You guys. We talked about so many different things.
We talked about cream cheese parenting, which you guys will
find out what that means. We talk about how to
(01:03):
raise a boy as a feminist, and we spend a
lot of time talking about what her blended family looks like.
I'm so excited that she is here, you guys. Here
she is Glenn and Doyle. I'm honestly, I've had a
lot of beautiful guests on this show, and I honestly,
I don't know if i've ever God, you must get
(01:24):
this all the time. I've I am having an emotional
response to you. I'm having an emotional whoa. I'll discuss
with my therapist at a later No, I love my therapist.
Oh my god. I'm just like, very happy to have you.
I mean, okay, so on Tame is the Book of
(01:45):
Quarantine is What I can say is that what people
are saying, people are saying right, oh wild is that.
I mean, I don't even know what to say about that.
I think I'm grateful that people are letting me into
their lives at such a wild time. Look, the book
is absolutely genius. I know it would have a vast
wave of response whether we were in quarantine or not.
(02:09):
But I mean, I think people are so tuned into
what everyone else is doing. It's just like wildfire. I
mean I saw it everywhere and I was like, oh
my god, if you don't have a tamed you are
a lose everything. I was like, if you don't get
on the untamed train, I mean, you are just not
in the know. It's so worthy. I've also never gotten
(02:30):
so much cred from my husband. Like usually when I
read a book and I want him to sit down
and listen to chapters. He's not a big reader, but
you know, he's he's wonderful and I love him and
he does listen. But when I told him that you
were Abby's wife, he listened so much. He was like,
Abbie is the greatest athlete that has ever been born.
And he was like, have you seen this video of her?
(02:51):
Have you seen this video? Like yeah, Like he was like,
do you know what Abby is capable of? He was like,
this is her wife. I was like, yeah, he was
like reading that chapter class. No, it's so funny that
you bring that up. I mean, and I swear that
she has some kind of like man whisperer energy, Like
there's something about her. Well, it's because she I think
(03:14):
they all have a respect that she could like kick
their ass at at sports or at whatever. But I
really we talk about all the time the way that
men respond to her compared to like me or It's
just it's fascinating, it's great, It's an amazing superpower. It's
awesome to watch. I was like, okay, so read this
(03:36):
chapter about raising a boy, raised this chapter about raising
a girl. Okay, So once I read Untamed, I learned
so much more and so many valuable motherhood tools through
the book. And I know it's it's about a lot
of things. First, can you explain the word untamed? Which
is the title? Obviously? Um, I'm sure it's hard to
(04:00):
settle on a title for your freaking memoir that best
encompasses the whole thing, but I felt like it was
probably easy in this case. It was not. It wasn't. I. Um,
I have never written a book where I knew the
title before. I mean, it was done and dusted, and
there were several different titles we were going back and
(04:21):
forth with, and I actually had to like rewrite some
of it to match with Untamed. It was It was interesting. Yes,
someday I'll admit all the other titles that I was considering,
but now they seem so terrible that I'm embarrassed to
say them. But um, so I wanted, uh a title
(04:43):
that suggested that, since there is a process that every
individual goes through where we're kind of, you know, we're born,
this wild, unique um ball of energies right is our
individual self, and then because this is the way it
has to be in cultures, we surrender some of that
(05:06):
in order to belong right. So we just start learning.
And most people will say that this process of sort
of losing ourselves in order to fit inside identities or groups.
We usually internalize that kind of conditioning between the ages
of seven and twelve. Okay, those aren't like hard and fast.
(05:26):
But when I say that, people usually women go, I'm
literally soaked in sweat, right, soaked in sweat. So the
seven to twelve is is it? That's where we formally internalize,
Like we start to notice. I mean, certainly from the
second we're born, we start to um. You know, we
(05:48):
look at our mom's faces and she smiles when we
do one thing, and she frowns when we do another thing,
and you know, we're constantly really such a good boy girl,
those don't cry, don't do that. It's okay, like all
the you know, all of that. So we're taking in queues.
But there reaches a certain point where we start to understand,
(06:08):
Oh I'm a girl, so I do this. Oh I'm
a Doyle, so I do this. Oh I'm a Christian,
so I believe this. We survive by um, by belonging. Right,
That's an age old um survival strategy. Right. You stay
(06:30):
in the herd so you don't get killed off, you
don't die, right right, Um. And so, but I just
think that now we are reaching a point, we were
reaching a point for sure inside of humanity, inside of evolution,
where I think our survival is gonna ironically depend on
the resistance of that um instinct. Right, we are going
(06:53):
to have to actually start separating from the herd a
little bit, like we see what happened encouraging people to
be individuals or as you say in chapter one there
whoever their cheetah is, Yeah, they're inner wild, right, yeah,
they're inner wild, which you guys listening um in the
(07:13):
first Untamed references this this glorious trip you made to
the zoo early on in the book, where you see
a cheetah in action and all instinctually the cheetah wants
to go and run, except that this cheetah is in
a cage. Um. You could probably explain it far more
eloquently than I can, That's exactly. And she her name
(07:34):
was Tabitha, and she was actually the zookeeper explained to
us that she was born in captivity, so she was
raised alongside a m labrador, and she was raised alongside
that labrador to tame her. And the zookeeper said, so,
now that everything that Mini the labrador does, Tabitha wants
to do. And we actually watched this labrador chase it
(07:58):
was called the cheetah run. So the abit or chased
this um little jeep that had a pink, a dirty
pink stuffed buddy tie to it, and Tabitha, the cheetah,
watched many do it. And then Tabitha, this amazing animal,
lined up, the jeep took off, and this animal chased
this dirty pink bunny down this well worn path while
(08:21):
all these board spectators flapped m hm. And I have
never you know, as a writer, like all you're doing
is like, where's the thing that I can look at
that describes the thing inside that I can't explain of
that moment was just like, oh my god, I just thought, oh,
of course, if a if a wild, powerful, majestic animal
(08:44):
like a cheetah can be tamed into forgetting who she
is and chasing dirty pink bunny's her whole life, and
so kind a woman right, That's what happens to us.
We are told all of these things that we have
to chase that will make that we're supposed to make
us ha be, and we spend our whole lives chasing them,
and that's why we're exhausted and overwhelmed and underwhelmed and
(09:06):
unfulfilled and un fulfilled. So how do we as moms
raise a cheetah who is untamed? How do we encourage
that behavior? I would probably think the first is through modeling.
You know, I think a lot on Katie's group, we
talk about how much kids learned from their parents. So
I think if my son could see me making choices
(09:27):
that are authentic to who I am, that's a start. Yeah, yeah,
that's it. I think that's everything as that. Do you
ever look back on raising your kids and say, there
was that cheetah moment? Or or were you until you've
sort of had this awakening, were you sort of fitting
in the bill like I'm going to do all the
right things that parents do to be the best parents.
(09:49):
I mean, this is the big one society standards. Yeah, yeah,
I mean I don't know. I feel people often ask me, so,
did you what if there was no abbey, would you
never have become untamed? Like was that your moment? Was that?
And I don't think so. I mean, I think that
my i'n dating probably started with my sobriety, right. And
then when I think back, you know, when I was
(10:11):
raising my kids went up when they were really little,
and I was raised in the Catholic Church, and I
began taking my children to sort of a fundamentalist type
church when they were little, and I remember listening to
what was being said and just you know, listening to
the indoctrination and a lot of the fear mongering that
(10:31):
was happening there. And one day they actually were going
to a school that was affiliated with this church, and
many things happened, but I just ended up walking into
the school and pulling them out of their classrooms one
at a time and leading and just being like, we're
never coming back, and that that was returning to my
wild That was you know, women are just especially want
(10:56):
to well, that's it's trusting yourself more than I mean,
so much of tragically, so much of fundamentalism in any
in any way, whether it's political fundamentalism, whether it's religious fundamentalism,
whether it's beauty fundamentalism. Whatever it is is this idea
that you cannot trust yourself, right, I mean my religion,
(11:19):
My first lesson of religion of God was the hardest wicked.
You cannot rely on yourself. Women are dangerous, Like, do
not trust your own understanding? Your mind isn't like constant
messaging that there is this other, there's this other. Be
it this all knowing thing that is outside of yourself
(11:40):
and that thing is good and you are bad, and
so you have to constantly doubt yourself now other people, right,
And and the trickiest part is when it comes to religion,
what they are saying is not even it's looking to
other people. It's looking to God. It's not it's looking
to other people who are telling you what God is.
(12:02):
It's not that okay, but it takes a lifetime for
those of us who were raised in that two dare
to return to ourselves and trust ourselves and consider that like, actually,
whatever God is is the deepest thing in here, right,
and this is what I have to return to and
this is good and this can be trusted. Um, do
(12:26):
you think it takes a while to build that you
talked about in your book, But that knowing that guttural,
instinctual knowing. Um, I've struggled. I'm a people pleaser. I'm
a good girl through and through. You say in your book,
I think that happens that you're twelve, That happened for
you done, And I wasn't really raised religiously. My parents
are New Yorkers. They're pretty outside the box thinkers and
(12:49):
job holders is as far as the norm is concerned.
But I I just always want people to feel good
and liked and I feel that in respond and that's
just who I am. And I have to say motherhood
has been the biggest wrench in that because my son
(13:10):
very early on was the hitter on the ground and
I was given I was given that kid, and I
was like, oh my god, I'm the one on the
park that the moms are judging. I'm the ones that
the moms are pulling their kids away because they think
my kid is bad. They think I'm bad and doing
a bad job. I mean, it was horrible. I mean
(13:34):
I just feel like motherhood, if you look at it
in the face, can really You're given these gifts of
the ship that you have to sort out. Um, and
he is providing that. Thank you, kid, and I'm sure
it's only gonna get way worse. I mean, he literally
gives zero f about what people think, and I give
(13:55):
all the f's. So it's a really nice combo. Um.
Figure out the eternal question is do I love my
kid more than I love the world's approval of me?
Which is, like you would think that'd be an easy answer,
but for women it is. Well, it's weird because I
know the answer here in the quiet of my closet
(14:17):
recording with you. Obviously it's my son. But when I'm
out there in the world and the stairs are coming
and I see myself putting this fake ass smile on
myself and apologizing profusely, when I'm taking out of the
situation for him, hitting, I know the things to say,
like we're working through, you know, like I stand my
own ground, you know, And all of a sudden, I
turned into my twelve year old like I'm so sorry,
(14:38):
Like please don't hate me, Like don't tell anyone. I'm
a good girl. I'm nice. I swear I played by
soci I'm not like him, and I've really I'm you know,
I'm working on it, um. And that's an untaped you know,
that's I'm trying, um to get stronger there. Um, you
do have chapters in your book about you've been raising
(15:02):
your daughters as feminists since they came out, and talk
to me about that, and then talk to me about
the chapter when you realize you turned the TV and
there's all this stuff about boys and hazing and gang
rape on the cross teams and mass shootings, and you
look at your son and you're like, what do I do?
Tell me about a son too, damn it. Um. I
(15:29):
was a child who got very sick, very early from
the messages in the air about what girls are supposed
to be, like Kimberliemick. When I was ten, Um, I
just had big feelings. I had big confusion, I had
big anger, I had big doubt. And I was told
that girls are supposed to be small, girls supposed to
be happy, girls are supposed to be you know, pleasant
(15:50):
and pretty and all of these things. And um, and
I was pleasant and pretty until I was ten, and
then ship hit the fan and I didn't know how
to be simple and quiet and happy and perfect anymore
because I started to become fully human. But since we
don't teach anybody as a child how to deal with
(16:11):
being fully human. Right, we don't talk about pain in
our culture. We don't talk about how to deal with anger,
about how to deal with grief, about how to deal
with envy and loss and all of that. I just
thought there was something really wrong with me, um, and
so I started numbing and hiding inside of food, and
that turned into every addiction. And so you know when
I had when I found that I was pregnant with
(16:32):
little girls, I just was like hell bent on making
sure they had examples of women who were just complicated
and fully human and loud and successful and failure and
obnoxious and all the things right, um, I mean, and
I was over the top. I mean I had little
(16:53):
earphones on my belly with like NPR and just Ruth
Bader Ginsburg ship. Like I just was like it can't hurt, right, scanner,
the I done so much damage to like my organs,
like I just need to give them a head start
somewhere else, right, like maybe cerebralery or something so um
so And it worked, man, I mean you know even
(17:13):
in like every time someone called them bossy, I would
be like, yes, isn't she a good leader? Yes, she
is a good leader. And like every time that vocabulary counts.
Those words pounds. Absolutely. My little girl let a revolt
at her school because she got her jersey for soccer
and said lady panthers and you would have thought that
(17:34):
someone had shot her. And like she she was very
serious about it. Yeah, and were you so proud? Girl?
I was like, I was like, I haven't told anyone this.
I was just like emailing talk about cream cheese, helipoped
her mom. I was emailing the coach, like you do it,
I'll pay for it, just just if there's any problem.
(17:55):
I just want her. I want her first activism to work,
to work so that she can wait explain to us.
We'll get into the boy things like a cream cheese parent,
which I also am. What what Glennon means is there's
a chapter in a book about you know, you're the
mom who has to bring the snacks. Let's say it's
bagel and cream cheese, and you get the call. Well,
we can't just have one type of cream cheese. We
need to have six different kinds of cream cheese. We
need to have different flavors. We need dairy free, we
(18:17):
need to have soy free, we need and basically because
of this style of helicopter over indulgent, insane amount of choices,
giving them the best options we can at all times.
It's basically creating little assholes. They're awesome. I'm like, there,
I am so guilty of that because it's how I
(18:37):
think we are supposed to show love. I know, because
that's what we were trying to believe. Ye, right, it
is not our fault. We got the memo that we
our job as parents is to hover, obsess, protect them
from any kind of pain. Ever, like these children. They
handed us these children, and the memo was, take this
child home and let nothing ever happen to it. Okay,
(18:58):
make sure that this kind never failed. They never feel pain.
They go to No one's allowed to frown in their
general direction, no teacher is allowed to do anything but
worship them. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare. And it's
why our kids suck, because because people who do not
suck are people who have lost and learned how to
(19:19):
lose with dignity. Right. People who do not suck are
people who have actually felt the sting of pain, because
then they feel empathy for other people and so they
become not assholes. Right, So we are like the memo
we got is causing us to steal from our children
the one thing that will allow them to become the
people that we dreamed abby. Right, we got a really
(19:42):
bad memo. And then and then the other part of
our memo was like, make sure that they have the
best of everything that you are capable of providing them, right, Um,
And this is what happened. One of my kids was
doing a sport and I finally answered the email. Who
I was, like the last one on the list to
show up to bring the breakfast or something that the
(20:02):
woman asked me to bring five tubs of cream cheese.
It comes from a good place like that mother thinks
that she's mothering the hell out of her children. But
five tubs of cream cheese is not how to make
a child feel loved. It's how to turn a child
into an ass white like that, because who on earth
needs five flavors? No one, no one, no one. So
(20:38):
tell me about when you realized your son had already
he was older, and you turned on the TV and
you see all of this awful darkness. I remember being
pregnant with my son and being in the airport and
my husband gasping, and I said, what And he said, Oh,
my god, a young boy just was killed because of
(21:00):
hazing in a fraternity. I thought about all the things
my brother did growing up, like all the things he
thought he had to do, you know, and I just
started sobbing for my son and how scared I was
for his safety, but also feeling like that's the culture
he has to tame himself to be a part of.
(21:21):
When you realize that of your own son, what did
you do? Well? I panicked at first, because I have
spent my whole entire motherhood life, you know, whispering in
the girl's ear in a million different ways. You can
be bold and loud and imperfect and certain and ambitious
(21:42):
and still be a woman, right. But I just realized
I had not been whispering into Chase's ear since he
was born. You can be uncertain and vulnerable and weak
and sad and still be a boy, right. I a feminist.
I'm in the fight. I know that women get screwed, okay.
(22:04):
I know that we have a lot a lot of
ways to go with equality and justice. But I wouldn't
trade places with a man for all the money in
the world. When I there's something about like being in
the same sex marriage now, which has changed my relationship
with men. I don't know if like it's like the
dynamic of any sort of sexual tension is gone. So
(22:26):
it's like I feel like men are talking to me
for the first time, just like humans who you're human. Yeah,
I've always been afraid of voice, honestly, like, I've never
really related to men. I haven't known how to talk
to men. It's fastening to me with Abby the way
that she like approaches a man and he becomes sort
of fully human with her that because there's no there's nothing,
(22:51):
there's no posturing, right right, um, And so that's what's
starting to happen with me. I think they're like, okay,
she's or we're all safe here, like nothing sure, sure,
so sure. When I'm what happens when everyone stops posturing
in in every way, not just gender wise, but every way,
is that you start to see people's full humanity. Right.
(23:13):
So I don't think that I've ever really seen a
male's full humanity because there's always been the gender posturing
going on on my part. And they're right, yes, absolutely,
I'm you're telling me the story, and I'm thinking about
one of my best friends in the entire world. Is
Gear Moo Diaz from a scandal. He's gay. He's been
with his boyfriend for a very long time, and it
(23:34):
was the greatest sexual relationship on a television show I've
ever had the pleasure of being a part of. Now
that's gone. When you have sex scenes with straight men
is very complicated and odd and the whole thing. I mean, look,
it's all uncomfortable and it all sucks. But the great
news is for seven years, most of them, I had
a lot of sex scenes with the gay dude. My
husband was stoked. Carol's my best friend. It was like,
(23:56):
and he's my soul mate. And that's my experience of
that sort of a situation where it's like, oh, we're
never like this is not anything ever, like this is
weirdness that it's terrifying possibility. Yes, it's like even it's
always there, like even with your best friends, whoever, because
then you're worried, am I being weird? Are they if
(24:17):
it's okay? Am I sitting too close? Like? Absolutely, it's
always there. So now that I've gotten beyond that, I'm
just like on the on the other team, right, sure,
I am able to speak to men and I my
heart breaks in a million pieces when I actually internalize
(24:39):
the obvious, which is that men are as fully human
and emotionally complicated and as we are. That sounds so simple.
I'm like they are. I'm literally you sure well I
And we definitely want to raise our sons to be right.
And if they're not, okay, if they're not, it's it's
(25:00):
been conditioned and beaten out of them, right like it is.
It is a very archaic and dangerous position to take
that we are born different, we are born fully human,
and then we are tamed. Right, little girls are tamed
in a million different ways that you have to be quiet,
(25:21):
you have to be commendating, you have to be pleasing,
you have to be pretty, you have to be and
boys are taught you cannot be vulnerable, do not cry,
do not be tender with each other, don't be that,
don't be gay, that's gay or that's you know. My
little boys at my house they are talk about not
knowing their audience. They will sit down next to a
(25:42):
boy and go no, homo, right in front of me. Down.
Oh my god, that is absolutely crazy. I mean, was
it too late when you realize this? No, no, never
too late. And also you know, he has a fully
human father who's like extremely vulnerable and emotional, and he
(26:03):
has a mother who's like real emotional, right exactly, So,
but it was past time to start naming it. Like
with my little girls, all the time, a commercial will
come on TV, a billboard would be on this, and
I would always turn them towards it and say, girls,
what is that advertiser trying to tell you about what
(26:24):
it means to be a woman? Because that is that
is to me, pointing and making very very clear. The
invisible messages is what you have to do, because otherwise
it just starts to seep in, like it's like osmosis. Right,
(26:46):
So without they have to become really clear about who's
lying to them and how. Right. So my girls will say,
if they're trying to say that all bodies are thin
and tall and white and blonde and a blah bla
blah blah. Right, So now I double time had to
start doing that with Chase. I mean, listen the story
(27:06):
I put in the book. All you have to do,
if you want to know what I'm talking about is
go into your own child's shower and look at the
ship you've been buying them. I walked into my kids shower.
My daughter's bottles are all lined up on one side,
Chase's bottles are on the other side. All of Chase's
bottles are big, bulky red white and blue chuggy bottles
(27:29):
of soap and shampoo. Okay, red white and blue, because
patriotism and toxic masculinity are always tied together, like listen
in America. But all the bottles said things like one
of them actually said slam body like a folding chair.
And then the girls, of course, they were all metallic
like an angel lod. Yeah, like not even no verbs,
(27:56):
like nothing to do on the girl's side, just a
bunch of disconnected whiskey words to be right. So, in
other words, the boys side is saying, yeah, the boy's
side is saying, you become a man by conquering, and
the girl's side is saying you become a woman by
being worthy of being conquered. That's it, right, So that
(28:18):
is the way that we shan't we caame our children
out of their full humanity before they even leave the
shower in the morning. Right. This is not um high
minded stuff. It's stuff that's right around us every single day.
So you know, little boys, they are teamed in opposite
ways and girls are. Um. But what it all comes
down to is misogyny, right, because if you look at
(28:39):
the ways that the boys are shamed, all of the
ways in one way or another, say, you'd be anything
but feminine. M you'd be anything but soft and merciful
and kind and connected and vulnerable. You'd be anything but
those things we attribute to women. Right. So, at the
heart of toxic masculinity and at the heart of toxic
(29:02):
femininity is both misogyny. Um. So you know, anybody, regardless
of whether you've been using these particular language with your
sons and daughters, if you've been teaching by modeling, by
living equality and respect for women, then you have been
underground doing child from being pained, you've been doing the work.
(29:25):
You've been just cool to start putting the overt language
on top of it so your kids can see well,
because yeah, and also so that they're not so unaware
of how it's everywhere. I mean, I wouldn't even think
to go in the shower and look. I can't wait,
that's like the first thing I'm doing. I need to
like go and look. I mean, my stuff is pretty hippie,
So I'm hoping that it's like, oh, you might say,
(29:46):
I'm hoping, I'm hoping the hippie stuff is safe, but
you never know. But I'm going to look at the
hippie stuff for sure. Can you tell me about something
else that I definitely struggle from? And I learned so
much from your book, So basically we've learned this so far.
(30:08):
I'm tamed. I'm a cream cheese parent, and I'll tell
you I'm also the martyr. And I loved in your book.
You So there's this concept that women martyr themselves for
their kids, meaning like, I'm going to stay in something
that makes me not how happy, or I'm going to
(30:29):
do something that isn't for me over and over and
again because it's with the best for my kids. Right,
I'm gonna put my kids first, which means I put
myself last. I went back to work when Albie was
eight weeks old, and it was already a big disaster
because my mom was a stay at home mom. So
that has been conditioned to me that that's the best
way to be and that's the only way to be.
(30:49):
And even though she was in my ear saying no,
she was in my ear, saying up, like, let me
tell you something she said I wouldn't. She was like,
I'm glad with the choice I made, and I love you.
You know she she is responsible for the choice she made,
separate of me entirely. But she was like, please, don't
feel bad, go to work. And so I started to
(31:10):
try to use language with my son like I'm going
to work now, and I'm I love my job, and
I really hope someday you get to go to a
job that you love, and then I love coming home
and seeing you like how great whatever. Um, you did
this in the biggest degree maybe you can do, which
is you were in a unfulfilling, messed up marriage. Um.
(31:37):
Are those the right words to use? Yes, I think
that's fair. A long time with the with the father
of your children, who I want to talk to because
he also sounds wonderful. Um, in how you work as
a blended family. Um, And you fell in love with
a woman, and instead of making the choice which I
(31:59):
think I would made, which was I can't have this,
I'm going to stay in my marriage or the thing
you heard when you were growing up, like I'm going
to stay in this marriage at least till the kids
go to college, because then I will have done my job.
You did not make that choice. You made the choice.
I'm not martyring myself and my life for my children.
My children I've raised to be strong enough to show
(32:19):
that if I'm happy in the choices I make, that
they can swatch that. And how the hell did you
do that? Like, well, how did you do that? Um?
How did you explain to them that you were leaving
their dad, that you were leaving their dad for a woman,
that you were in love with a woman, that you
(32:41):
were going to make this Some people would say selfish
choice for yourself. Yeah, I mean I guess, Well, here's
the deal. I almost didn't. I almost didn't because even
though I knew that, you know how you just deep
down no things. And I just, deep down knew that
(33:03):
the marriage I was in was not the truest life
for me. UM. I knew down deep that I was,
for the first time in my life, truly in love
with another human being. UM, and that it was probably
(33:24):
had to do with parts of myself that I had
never acknowledged. Also just had to do with Abby individually.
It had to do with the time in my life.
I mean, I was forty two. I finally stopped caring
more about what the world thought about me than what
I really wanted. You know, It's kind of like when
(33:47):
you figure out, oh, there's not going to be two
of these lives. Um. It was not like, Okay, do
I love Abby or do I stay with Craig. It
was like do I abandon myself again? It was about
me and my one wild and preshious life. Like it
was about here's the moment, Like, here's the moment where
(34:10):
I decide, do I choose the truth of me? Or
do I choose not rocking the boat right? Do I
abandon myself or do I just dare to abandon everyone
else's expectations of me? And what I do in this
moment will determine whether I live or don't. Um. And
(34:34):
I don't know if that's how dramatic it feels for everyone.
I don't know if it also had to do a sexuality,
but I doubt it. I doubt it. I bet that's
how it feels for everybody when they're when they're making
that decision about one way or the other, and one
means everybody else stays steady, but you slowly die, and
(34:54):
the other one means right, and the other one means
ship hits the fan with everybody else and you cause
so much pain and drama, but you live, right. Um,
the good news is the one I just mentioned everybody
also lives. Okay, the first one you slowly done? Yeah,
(35:15):
Like that sucks well. As women, we have literally we've
been taime to believe that that is an okay price
to pay. I'm like thinking about Meryl Streep and Bridges
of Madison County. She's losing the love of her life
and the life she could happen, but then asks her children, oh,
just bury me with this other guy, and then her
children that's the first time they find out. Look, that's
(35:36):
like a totally but I e. Everything into movies and television,
and I'm like, why it's insane. I imagined that moment.
I used to lay in bed and imagine my E
think Bridges of Madison County moment like I would I
imagine being eight years old and being like, wow, I
didn't do it, Like imagining Abbey somewhere and being like,
(35:59):
I didn't do it. I didn't take my one chance.
Like so, so, so here's the deal. Here's the one,
and even knowing all of that, I thought, I can't,
I can't, I can't, I just can't. We just I
don't give a ship the boat. I don't care. I
have learned to rock the boat. It was the children
(36:20):
as mothers. We It's just it was so ingrained to me. No,
a mother does not hurt her children, and mother does
not hurt her children. And then one day it was
braiding tissues hair and I just had this freaking epiphany
that I am still so grateful for, which was, oh,
I am staying in this marriage for my little girl.
(36:43):
But what I want this marriage for my little girl?
And if I would not want this marriage for her,
then why am I modeling bad love and calling that
good mothering? Why am I using my daughter as an
excuse not to be brave with my life? Right? And
(37:08):
because we know better, we know better, We know that
our children will only allow themselves to live as fully
as we allow ourselves to live. And so the call
of motherhood has to be not settling for any relationship,
any institution, any situation that is less true and beautiful
than the one we would want our child to choose.
(37:30):
That's example. I don't know why this got so messed up. Well,
because of course we know why I got so my steps,
because the job of patriarchy is to scare us into
disappearing inside every role we have. Right, I wonder who
taught us that as mothers we should slowly die instead
of teach our children how to bravely live. Right, that's
(37:52):
the poison that's been in the air since the beginning.
That's the untaming, Right, It's the examining of all of
these poison roots that have been planted beneath us, and
the tearing out of all of them so that we
can plant different routes that are our own beliefs, that
will allow us to grow as fully and tall and
beautifully and bravely as we were meant to, and that
(38:12):
won't team our children. Because that's what I would have done.
I would have in the name of my child, I
would have martyred myself and then passed that legacy onto her.
And then one day she would have been faced with
the moment where she would decide whether she was going
to let herself live and rock the boat or rock
(38:33):
the boat, and she would have let herself slowly die,
because that was her mother taught her. Absolutely tell me
about when you had when you told them, Was it
just you and Craig there were were you so nervous?
Did they cry? Did you tell them all at the
same time? Did you not bring in the abbey of
(38:54):
it until was it first? Let's talk about that, Dad
and I are separating. How did it look? Because I
think this is very like you know, we've had a
lot of We've had a lot of different families on
Katie's crib, for sure, but I love I don't think
we've really talked to somebody who's like, this is how
(39:15):
I did it? Yeah, like, yeah, yeah, totally. Well, I um,
I need to tell you that I was certain that
as a words person and in the emotions person, that
I was just going to figure out all the right
words and way to say this thing, and it was
(39:38):
going to be the most beautiful, perfect divorced conversation that
ever happened, and everyone was going to just actually be okay, Katie,
they were just actually gonna be okay, Okay. No one
was okay. It was a total nightmare. There are no
right words, there's no good way to do it. It was,
(40:02):
without a doubt, the most heartbreaking moment of my life,
and I've had many, many dizzies and this was the
worst of it. Like I could, I could start crying
right now thinking about I mean, I was the I
used to tell my kids. I remember when Tish was
(40:22):
little and she'd come home and tell me about her
friend's parents getting divorced, and I would look right in
her eyes and promise her that her parents were never
getting divorced. I did that ship, you know. I used
to lie to her all the time. I used to
tell her, your parents would never get divorced, like, yes,
I know, Heaven is real, Yes, God Sam to all
this bullshit, you know, um And so I don't know.
(40:48):
It was just like the moment where they lost the
solid ground beneath their feet, right it they lost part
of the innocence of childhood. There's no other way to
put it. In is absolutely freaking brutal. I mean they
also I knew the truth for the first time, which
is actually, there is no solid ground, and nobody's in control,
(41:09):
and nobody knows what's coming next. And all we know
is that what family is is that we will all
keep showing up. That's all we can promise you is
that we will all keep showing up right so um,
so I wish that I could tell you some magical
I mean, I remember saying one good thing out of
all of my fifty good things that I was going
(41:30):
to say. I remember saying, Okay, you know, we've taught
you that we always want you to tell the truth
about who you are, even when even if it hurts us,
even if it makes people uncomfortable. And now I'm about
to show you how that's done, because it's going to
hurt you, and it's going to make you uncomfortable, and
we are all going to get through it together. So
(41:51):
I remember like nailing that heart um and then and
then the rest was just so painful and so sad.
There's no other way to describe it, Like there's no
there's no way to Did you wait a while before
you introduced Abby? Was she? It was very very slow,
like we that was a whole year long process where
(42:15):
she moved down to Naples. She would come for like
twenty minutes, we'd meet out. We you know, we we
had like whole systems and whole process these and and similarly,
what is it always understood? Like I love this Craig
lives like a mile away he's very involved in the
(42:35):
kids lives. Oh yeah, you guys co parents, Like nobody's business.
Was that always the understanding, Like Craig was always like,
oh okay, like we aren't married anymore, but we are
both obviously still very much parents of these three children,
and I'm going to be very involved in their lives. Oh,
I mean Craig is there would be no doubt, Like,
(42:57):
there's no he's as much a parent to them, is up,
Like it would be unthinkable for him not to be here.
I love so much. Was marriage wasn't working? Not because
he wasn't an amazing dad. He's an amazing dad. Oh
my god, you guys just weren't an amazing relationships. And
we got married. He would say the exact same thing
(43:17):
if you were here, Like, we we got married because
it was the right thing to do, not because we
were the right ones for each other. I was pregnant,
I was I'd been sober for four seconds, Like we
were just doing what we thought was the right thing,
and and we were all time. How long were you
guys married? Oh, Chase's seventeen, so we got married eight
(43:39):
teen years ago. Um yeah, And and he just there
was all kinds of painting with Craig in the beginning,
to you know, I mean, that wasn't easy in the beginning.
Oh my god, to have your kids like watch your
husband pack up and like move out, Like that's just
so dramatic to me. I like, aunt, even I don't know,
(44:00):
you know, it's just so brave of you because the
whole time you have to go through this, Like now
you're on the other side, right, You're happily married, You're
in a loving relationship. Craig is a co parent to
the max. Like this is working. It's not only just working,
like everything everybody's truly, with every bone in my body,
(44:20):
know that there is no such thing as one way liberation.
Like when people are in a bad situation, one of
them is slowly dying inside. The other one is never
having the calm of their life. Okay, they might not
yet be able to admit that the relationship they're in
is broken and not working, and they might fight it
(44:42):
in the beginning, but eventually you get the moment. I mean,
when Craig wrote me a letter, it was like, thank
you so much for breaking all of our hearts. We'll
never forget. It was of my birthday cards, Like he
is happy now he has a girlfriend who wants she
wants to make out with him. Okay, like and also
tell me about having another Look, Okay, you already have
(45:04):
a mother figure now in Abby, tell me about a
third women walking around in this life? Like, were any
of those lower emotions present? Were you protective of your children?
So I just nailed it all the way? Cool, I
was easy, breezy, I was like, come on, no, I
(45:26):
was not. I was so disappointed in myself in the
beginning because I had such a hard time. I mean,
I think I got like I would give my I
felt like a B minus is what I would say,
because I I feel like I always handled it. Abby
is the only one who ever saw my inner feelings. Okay,
(45:52):
but there's this thing happen that happens where so Craig
when Abby came into the family, like he was getting
used to the kids having another mom. Okay, he didn't
deal with the kids having another dad. Okay, I had
to deal with another mob that was not of my choosing. Okay,
(46:16):
and prs. You know it was harder, isn't She was amazing, fantastic, wonderful, kind, smart, loving,
like so good to the kids, like there was nothing
for me to hold on to. Okay, um no, all
(46:36):
of those things huge blessing, huge blessing. But in the
beginning it was hard. And I will tell you the
way it comes out is in these little moments when
so when Craig and his girlfriend would drop the kids off,
they'd be in the foyer. We would all be hanging
out doing the awkward circle, like where we're all laughing
too much and like we're all just trying to talk
(46:56):
too much and make it more awkward and do all
the things. Um, I'm like hysterically laughing for no reason.
You wouldn't even know the size grin I would have
on my face and while sweating profusely too. There's no
situation that I can't up the awkward. Okay, A becalls
it my superpower, Like if things are awkward, oh not yet,
(47:19):
just give me a minute. So this thing would happen,
which is that she would start playing with the girl's hair. Okay, listen,
I don't know why the hair made me want to
stab everyone in the house, but it did. It was
something something primal about another woman touching my kids here.
(47:40):
And so here's the thing. Thank God, I am conscious
enough to understand that none of these feelings were her problems,
like I am through thirty years of fair kay wiseness
(48:02):
to know that these were my problems, right. And I
remember being on the phone with Craig trying to make
them his problems one time and saying something like, I
just think that it's going too fast and we just
don't have enough boundaries, and I'm just afraid she's gonna leave,
and um, the kids are going to be heartbroken. But
(48:24):
as I'm saying it, that wasn't true. That wasn't my fear.
I wasn't afraid she was going to leave. I was
afraid she was going to stay sure, and my kids
were going to love her. Right. So the reason I
tell these stories is just because the fact is that
no no matter how anybody acts like they're blended, family
(48:46):
went so smoothly and everybody was kumbaya the whole time.
That's not how it works. A lot of hard feelings
come up, and it is an exercise in trying to
be wise enough to know that most of the feelings
that come up have everything to do with how fiercely
everyone loves the freaking child and have nothing to do
with the other person, right, Yeah, they're all your own.
(49:09):
Yeah Yeah. What I would say is that a million
times a day I have to remind myself. I still
have so many hard moments, Like once a week I
walked past the foyer and all the kid's bags are
lined up with all their little shoes. It's just like,
if there's one image of divorce with kids that is
(49:30):
like it's just packing up. It's like it brings up everything.
It's like kids shouldn't have to do this, Like what
this wasn't the original plan. Um. But the one thing
that blended families have to remind themselves over and over
again is that things can be hard and still be
exactly right. Right, It's not correct, it's not uh necessary
(50:00):
every time something feels painful and hard to think, oh
my god, it was a mistake, it's because there's not
There's not a bone in my body or a hair
on my head. There's not a bone in Craig's body,
or Albus body, or any of our children's bodies that
thinks that any of this was a mistake. Everybody in
this family knows that our family is fixed now. But
(50:21):
this is exactly how we were meant to be, and
it's also hard sometimes and you just you just have
to live with that both. We can do hard things.
We can do hard things people. It's like I I
have to say that constantly in this pandemic. I mean, good, lord,
(50:45):
do your third grade teacher right, you are legit a
f y guys. We're just this is extenuating circumstances and
we have to remind ourselves that we can, like Lennon
Doyle says, finished strong mm hmm, nobody and finish yes, yes, okay,
(51:09):
listen to me. Listen to me Katie's crib community, and
listen good okay, listen. I when I taught pre school,
I used to spend all FFing night making forty million
freaking projects for my kids because I loved them so
much and I wanted them to have fun all day okay,
and be up until two in the morning making these
(51:29):
damp things. The children would go home with their parents
and the parents would say to the children, what did
you do today? And the children would say nothing, Okay,
that's what this A little assholes would say, here's what
I learned every time because I did my homework. Sometimes
(51:50):
the children would remember the last thing we did as
a class, the most brilliant children in every class. We'll
remember the first thing you do and the last thing
you do. Okay, that is it I am telling you. Okay.
(52:12):
So here's what I tell to the parents, especially during
the pandemic. You start strong, and you finish strong. All right,
you after breakfast, read them a freaking story. And I'm
not talking pinterest strong. Just like just some attention and time.
There's something they want to do for fifteen minutes, like
look at their face. That's all I mean. Okay, look,
(52:33):
read a book, do something. Then quick seven hour TV
show okay I cannot Yeah, just quick seven hours. If
you feel like you must have some instruction during that
seven hours, you can mute the TV, turn on close caption.
There's your reading lesson. Okay. That's for the extra moms
(52:55):
who feel like they need that little kick accolade. And
then at the end of the day, you finish strong, okay,
before dinner, after dinner or whatever, you get out a
little board game. You do the thing for fifteen twenty minutes.
Everybody goes to bed happy. Nobody remembers the messy middle. Okay,
(53:15):
we just finished strong, and for the rest of the
day we give ourselves a little bit of peace, because um,
that's all anybody needs right now. Okay, I could not
agree more. We got to take the pressure off moms.
We've got to take the pressure off. It's too much.
It's too much. You can't have a full time job
and be a full time mom and be a full
time teacher and keep your sanity. Yeah, it's teaching is
(53:38):
a whole thing that people, I mean, don't get me
started on this. With the teachers. We go to college
for this. We study in lots of classes, we learn
how to teach children. It's a degree we get. Okay,
you can't just all of a sudden decide to tell
parents they have to homeschool their kids. That's like saying, okay, now,
real quick, we're gonna home surgery. All social, unrealistic and painful.
(54:03):
And I have so many friends struggling with this right now,
and it's just not the guys. This is such a
crazy time. And I'm so thankful for you writing this
book and taking the time to come on Katie's Crib.
Please give my whole family your love. I know I
don't know them, but it's what you have. You have
that quality it's like we feel like we do. It's
(54:24):
like we feel like we do and it's wonderful. Um,
thank you Glenn and Doyle, thank you every bye. Thank
you all so much for listening to Katie's Crib. I
would love to hear more from you. Questions, comments, thoughts.
You know where to find me. My email is Katie's
(54:44):
Crib at Shonda land dot com. Bye. Katie's Crib is
a production of Shonda Land Audio in partnership with I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from shondalian Audio, visit the
I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(55:05):
to your favorite shows them I Want You, Want You,
I Want You
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