September 16, 2020 • 37 mins
Glennon Doyle is many things: a mother, a wife, an activist, and a bestselling author of three memoirs. Her unbelievable honesty, clarity, and humor about her personal struggles, as well as her courage to speak out and speak up, have made her an inspiration to many. Glennon joins Pete to discuss the poignant messages in her current book Untamed, their shared values of belonging and trust, and what it's like being an LGBTQ person of faith.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, I'm Pete Buddha Jedge, and this is the deciding decade.
One thing I found in life is the way that
huge transformation can happen even in moments in your life
when you thought you had the big things established. I
was already mayor of my hometown when I experienced a
life changing deployment to Afghanistan as a reservist, and it
(00:28):
was in the wake of that experience that I made
the decision that it was time to come out. I
was already in my thirties when I confronted the fact
that I was too old not to know what it
felt like to be in love, and then and finally
being ready to date who I wanted to date, learn
how to open up trust and be comfortable with myself
in new ways. Nothing about that was simple. Now we're
(00:48):
in a moment in our country where it's becoming more
and more common to see people sharing extraordinary turns in
their personal journeys. I know personally how difficult that could be,
but I also know how rewarding it could be in
my own and it was the road that led to
my now husband, Chaston. I think a version of this
is going to have to happen across the country. In
(01:09):
order for this deciding decade to go well, navigating what's
ahead for us, it's going to take a new level
of self knowledge for all of us. It's going to
mean being ready for transformation sometimes when we didn't expect it.
And my guest today has an amazing story about that
kind of self knowledge and about the kind of courage
we're going to need more than ever, wherever we can
find it. Many people have been falling in love with
(01:30):
Glenn and Doyle's story, especially since the release of her
remarkable book, Untamed. She has written with honesty, clarity, and
humor about her experience as a parent, author, and activist,
overcoming addiction and eating disorders, and coming to terms with
the truth that, with a husband and three children, she
had fallen in love with her now wife. She's also
(01:51):
helped raise millions of dollars for families in need through
her nonprofit Together Rising. She's been an inspiration to so
many encouraging people too, as she says, quit fearing themselves
and start trusting themselves and to live out their truths,
something that certainly resonates with me. I know so many
are grateful for your leadership, and I'm grateful for your time, Glennon,
(02:12):
thanks for joining us, Mayor Pete. This is such a
treat my entire fan My mom is cannot believe that
I'm speaking to you right now. I'm going to call
her right after this and tell her everything, So I'm
going to make sure to tell her the Style and Untamed.
One of the things that I think makes it so
readable is that there are these very short episodes, but
(02:32):
they add up into a big and powerful story. These
things you describe breaking out of and becoming more of
yourself as you conquer addiction, as you fall in love
with your wife Abby. You don't describe the world you're
coming out of as being sort of obviously and compelling
lee awful, even though it turns out it's not where
you need to be. So I wonder that tension, especially
(02:55):
for people who may read this book and think, you know,
that same thing that you're kind of bathed in this
existence that maybe feels fine from minute to minute, but
from hour to hour, but it's not where you need
to be. Yeah, when you said bathed in it, it
made me think of you know, how they've done that
experiment where there's a water and there's a frog in
(03:15):
the water, and if they if the water is boiling,
the frog will save itself and get out. But if
the temperature is just turned up slightly a little bit
each day, the frog will die. Because it's like that life,
that good enough life, you know, where everybody's telling you
to be grateful, you have more than other people. I mean,
this was my life. I was in a broken marriage
(03:37):
to a good man. That's the slow water temperature turning up.
That's like, you know, he's a good person, and you
should be grateful and you have you have a good life,
and you have these three beautiful children, and you have
a career. And we were recovering forever from infidelity, okay,
and I have seen some people recover from that beautifully.
(03:58):
My experience was that I was doing all of the
things I was supposed to do to forgive, and he
was doing all the things he was supposed to do
to get me to forgive. We were in therapy, we
were doing all of the things. I was just waiting
for forgiveness to fall down on my head as a
reward for all of my suffering. Like I was just
like a dormant volcano with lipstick on, I was smiling
(04:22):
and like, oh, this is okay. We have this little
family that I was piste off all the time, and
and and the piste off adness came up the most
when there was any sort of like when we were
supposed to be trusting each other again, when there was
intimacy or any of that that was supposed to make
me feel like I could trust again. It just I
just was angry. Did you experience that as a being
(04:45):
piste off at something in particular or that general piste
I mean, you know one thing that you know? Sometimes
Chaston all say you know, what's the matter, I'll be like, nothing,
what do you mean, what's the matter? What's the matter?
What's the matter? Right? Like the um can you talk
about the relationship the general to the specific? Uh? And
and and how you see it and who helps you
see it? Yeah? Okay, So if you want to talk
about the general and the specific, let's go to the cheetah.
(05:08):
So years ago, I'm at the Safari Park with my kids,
and my kiddos wanted to go see the the Cheetah run,
which was like the big event for the day. So
we're sitting there watching and the zookeeper comes out and
the zookeeper is holding the leash of a black labrador cheaper.
So the zookeeper says, hi, everybody, do you all think
that this is Tabitha the Cheetah And all the kids
(05:29):
go no, and she says, you're right. This is many Um,
Tabitha's best friend. And we raised Many alongside Tabitha to
team Tabitha. So Tabitha the Cheetah is right there in
that cage and she and us are gonna watch Many
do the cheetah run, and then Tabitha is going to
do it. So we all stand there and Many the
(05:51):
lab lines up on the starting line and this little
jeep takes off with this pink bunny. Mini takes off,
chases the pink bunny crosses the finish line and everybody claps,
and then Tabitha stalks out of her cage and she's
gorgeous and huge, and her muscles are rippling beneath her skin.
And then this majestic creature lines up on a starting
(06:13):
line and the jeep takes off, and this gorgeous animal
chases this dirty pink bunny down this well worn path
uh with all the board spectators clap and the zookeeper
throws Tabatha this like Costco steak or something, right, and
Tabitha lays down and gnaws on it. And while all
these people are clapping, I'm just like full body goose bumps,
(06:37):
kind of nauseous actually, because I was like, oh my god,
that is my life. Right, Like if a wild majestic
animal like a cheetah can be conditioned, can be tamed
into forgetting her wild, into forgetting who she is, then
so can a woman, and so can a human being. Okay,
(06:57):
because Tabitha was born into the zoo, like, she never
are new in her material life anything different. So general
wisdom would say, she thinks she's a lab. She's fine,
this is a good enough life for her. She's safe,
she's whatever. But what we know is that these animals,
even the ones that are born into captivity, they have
(07:18):
an instinct that they were born for something else. Something
in them knows they shouldn't be doing general piste off
in nous. This is what you're saying, right, This general
feeling of like wait a minute, I know all I
can see in my life or these cages and these
store bought steaks in these labs, but like I just
have this weird feeling inside of me that I was
(07:39):
made to run on open land and like hunt and
kill and sleep under stars. However, that must be crazy
because this is all I can see. And so the
gas lighting of Tabitha, the gas lighting of all of us.
We're supposed to be grateful for the good enough life.
I was supposed to be grateful for this really sationship
(08:00):
that I had, because it was good enough, even though
there was a wildness and restlessness inside of me that
was my wild that was like, I think, it was
supposed to be more beautiful than this. So this brings
us to I think one of the central themes of
the book, certainly something I've been thinking a lot about,
which is trust. Because the question then becomes, how do
you decide whether to trust that voice that's describing something
(08:24):
you've never even seen, and how do you weigh that
against trusting all the voices telling you you know, as
you say, you should be grateful, like you're you're good
where you are, don't burn this down, don't blow this up.
You had a lot to lose coming out, and with
the changes that you made in your life, how do
you reach that level of trust? And what or who
exactly is it that you're trusting when you take that leap? Okay?
(08:48):
So I think the way that I would describe that
trust is the word faith. But when I say faith,
I don't mean a bunch of dogma, Okay, I don't
mean like a bunch of rules that were made up
by powerful white men a million years ago to control people.
One of my favorite definitions of faith is the unseen
(09:10):
order of things. So like, there's the seen order of things,
that's the material world, that's what we see on the news,
that's the injustice, that's the war, that's the imbalances of powers,
is all of it, right, So it would make sense
actually that we would all just be like, that's the
way it is, but we're not like that. There's something
inside of us that rejects it, and and all of
(09:32):
us of conscious like, regardless of what religious background you were,
you were raised with, regardless of there's something inside of
us that when we see that order of things, we
go that's not it. There's something off there, right, and
that thing inside of us that's insisting, that's rejecting it
is the unseen order of things. Okay. So to me,
this would be what the Christians called the Kingdom of
(09:54):
Heaven or you know, we'd call enlightenment or nirvana, or
we'd call you know, atheists who called love. The thing
is the same, right, and that's why we said, you know,
the Kingdom of Heaven is not out there, it's in here.
My faith ridition would say, our job is to bring
heaven to earth. Okay, So to me that means our
job is to bring the unseen order of things into
the vision visible order of things. So you could also
(10:16):
call this thing inside of us the imagination. It's the
part of us that says I have a different idea
of the way that things ought to be, and how
do I get that idea from inside here outside here,
which is what you're doing in politics, which is what
activists are doing. It's like having faith in that because
(10:37):
it's so important, especially for marginalized groups, to depend on
the unseen order of things, because if we only look
at what's already been created, we will have no hope.
We will continue to rebuild and recreate what was builded
and created without us in mind. Right, which is why
Dr King said I have a dream because he had
(10:59):
never seen in the visible order of things, this unseen
order that he was convinced he was born to bring
to earth right, Oh my Gloria sign and says dreaming
is a form of planning. M consider real these ideas
and imaginations we have unfolding inside of us. Instead of
thinking that they're pipe dreams. We have to consider that
perhaps there are marching orders if I understand how these
(11:35):
things relate. You talk about imagination is a way to
kind of have access to that kind of bigger I
guess realm, you might say, where we belong. You also
have I think, really powerful vocabulary for talking about God
or what some call God. You you use the word
knowing with the capital K. If I could play back
to you a little bit of how you describe this
In On Tame, you say, why do we worry about
(11:56):
what to call the knowing instead of sharing with each
other how to call the knowing? You go on, you say,
some call the knowing God or wisdom or intuition or
source or deepest self. It doesn't matter what we call
our knowing. What matters if we want to live our
singular shooting star of a life, is that we call it.
So what would you say to those who are struggling
(12:18):
to figure out how to call it. I think that
experiences with God, with the divine, with the truest, deepest
self might be as individual as every individual. This is,
this is just a terrible plan. I would have done
it differently, so that we could help each other more,
you know, without sounding you know, judgmental of Whenever I say,
(12:42):
without sounding judgmental, I'm about to say something terribly. What
I have experienced is that inside of fundamentalists, or fundamentalism
in any form, whether it's religion or political or whatever,
is this need for leaders to separate followers from their
(13:04):
deepest self. The way I experienced that inside of fundamentalist
Christianity was this campaign to make sure that I never
trusted myself. We learned that with you know that the
heart is wicked. That might be how you feel, but
the heart is wicked, you know, that might lean into
thine own understanding exactly exactly. So, So I can't trust
(13:25):
my heart because my heart is wicked. I can't trust
my mind because I can't lean on my understanding. Well,
what can I trust? Oh? You? Okay. So so the
argument is don't trust yourself, trust God. Okay. But the
people who are saying that, what they really mean is
don't trust yourself, trust us, which is different than God. Right.
(13:50):
That reminds me of a pattern I've been thinking about
with conspiracy theories and conspiracy thinking, because one of the
things I've noticed, especially with something is really weird to
disturbing groups out there, is that they actually, even though
their languages, you can't trust anybody. Everything's you know, deep state,
and there's a system. It's calling all the shots. Be wary. Right.
(14:13):
They're also saying, listen to me, I'm telling you the truth.
No one else wants to tell you. Right. You won't
see this in the media. This is the thing they
don't want you to know. And I realized that when
somebody in that way says, you know, trust no one,
they're really saying trust me. They're they're offering a kind
of the only word I can use for it is membership.
And I wonder if actually that that search for belonging
(14:36):
that I think is a struggle in so many ways
for all of us, is actually ironically part of the
appeal to these groups that are an expression of mistrust
or distrust is that they're asking you to trust them.
But there's also this misplaced trust, right that that we're
often called to. I believe is happening with the president,
certainly happening with some of these efforts, and as you're saying,
(14:58):
has happened in a troubling pattern with a lot of
fundamentalist movements too. I don't see much difference in any
of it. I think it's all religious in terms of,
you know, we just are so desperate for somewhere to belong.
It's like that the dilemma of being human, which is
it almost feels like we want to be individuals, but
we want to belong. And that's what I wanted so much,
(15:21):
as you know, church after church after churches, I wanted
to belong. I wanted a group. I wanted people, and
I was willing to pretend for a while, I was
just willing to find I'll just pretend I don't have
that thought, I pretend, I'll believe that, I'll say that
I'll do I'll do this just in exchange for some
people to belong to, right. And it is easier I
(15:43):
have because I have been part of these groups. I
know that it's almost like the less individualistic you are,
the easier it is to belong to these crews, and
the more well It's like, it's why progressive Christians or
progressive groups have so much less solidarity. We you know,
the conservatives have nailed this right. It's like they are
(16:05):
just moving like a school of freaking fish in everything.
It's like it disturbs me at a deep level and
also impresses me. And no one is allowed to raise
their hand and think differently. I know, I've been a
part of those groups, and so it becomes very easy
to vote in blocks, to think in blocks, to think right.
And then you've got these progressives, which now I'm a
(16:26):
part of these groups. Jesus, you can't keep us. We're
like Dory from Nemo or like over there, what about this?
But what about like the questions are eternal, the like
different perspectives, like we can't agree on anything, which is
part of the beauty of it. So that that brings
me to the family that we're part of, the LGBTQ community,
(16:48):
which is I think an example of a family that
has a lot of belonging and also a lot of
jostl ng and can actually be kind of challenging and
in the way that people treat each other. Sometimes one
thing you and I have in common is is coming
out a little bit later in life. Uh, you know,
I felt very strange. As I'm a grown as man,
(17:09):
I'm in a position of responsibility. I've been to Warren
back and now I've got to start from scratch on dating,
and i gotta go out and tell the world who
I am. And there was a part of me that
of course, it was probably the part of me that
had kept me tamed, if you will, for a very
long time, which is a part of me that was
fearful of being harmed or attacked for being gay. Growing
(17:32):
up in Indiana, serving in the military, joining under Don't Ask,
Don't tell. I was It was actually during the time
I was figuring out exactly how to come out that
here in Indiana there was the religious freedom so called
Religious Freedom Bill under Mike Pence. That it was horrible
in the way that it marked out our state is
one of the most anti LGBTQ places in the country,
(17:52):
but it was also remarkable and that a lot of people.
I saw a lot of people find their way a
little closer to acceptance. And often it was not the
way I would put acceptance. It was not exactly what
I was hoping people would would say, but you could
tell for them it was movement, somebody who had been conservative,
someone had been brought up to reject gainness. And you
(18:15):
write a little bit about an encounter. I just want
to find the page because I think it was so interesting.
You talk about being at a town hall type event
in the Midwest, and I'll just read a little bit
of it. A woman with short gray hair and gentle,
serious face of deep wrinkles slowly stood. She wore a
sweatshirt with an American flag and the word Grandma Puffy
(18:38):
painted onto it. Her hand shook a little as she
held the mic. I loved her instantly. And then she
talks about this experience of her nephews coming out as
as transgender as now her niece, another family member turns
out to be gay, and and she says, I don't
mean any offense, It's just why is everybody so gay
all of a sudden? And you're write about her are
(19:00):
with a lot of compassion. So I wonder, just more broadly,
how do we think about the people that maybe are
quite where we want them to be, but also are
clearly wanting to move into a place of acceptance or growth,
And does that have any lessons for some of the
different political contests that are going on right now, where
it feels like sometimes America is being sliced up in
(19:23):
some people's view into good Americans and evil Americans. And
I'm thinking, if we can't reach just about every American,
we're never going to make it. M I think that's
the thing I missed the most right now about pre
COVID life is um, those kinds of gatherings, because that's
what I spent my whole job doing. It is just
gathering people in one space and being like, Okay, here's
(19:47):
the place. Bring all your questions. It's too scared to ask,
appreciate meeting or church, right, bring them here, ask them
because I think, like I just really I know what's
happening on Twitter, know what's happening online, but it's just
not my experience with actual human beings and actual it's
so much eat harder to to demonize each other up
(20:09):
close and so UM. My experience is more that people
are curious and confused, and people are afraid of change. Okay,
people are afraid of What that woman actually thought is
what a lot of people think right now is that
there's something in the air. It's making everyone gay all
(20:31):
of a sudden, right, and if this is contagious, like
what's everybody's gonna go? And then what's next? It's like
it's it's like fear, which by the way, is the
energy that make America grading and taps into that all
that is. It's directional, right, we know it's everything is directional.
Like if you think things are, let's go backwards too.
(20:56):
So the idea is to for me is to talk
to people in a way that is actually what is
true about like you know the fact that gayness is
not contagious, it's just just. But freedom is contagious, right,
So what is happening is that people are not getting gayer,
(21:16):
people are getting freer to express their queerness. Right, Because
some brave person somewhere along the line was like, actually,
I don't think that this is my jam, Like I
know this is the only thing that's been presented to me,
but I'm not feeling that love thing like I exposed
two with this particular group of humans, but this particular
(21:37):
group of human right, And then that person was just
somebody else was like, oh my god, me too. Somebody
else was like, oh my god, I thought it was
just me and so it's like this chain reaction of
freedom that people have always been fifty shades of gay, right,
Like this is they were just slowly dying inside because
they didn't have the freedom to express it. Just that
shift for people, it's like nothing's changing at all. People
(22:03):
are just having to change themselves less right. So, UM,
I don't know. I just feel like those actual conversations
are so much, are so important to have. Um, just
these all these unasked questions and curiosities become prejudices and
that turns into like blocks of fear. You know that
(22:23):
people just moved into resistance mode. You could not have
known when you wrote the book how much racial justice
would be at the forefront of the country's consciousness and
(22:47):
conscience after the murder of George Floyd and everything that's
taken place in the summer. But you write in a
way that I think really anticipates a lot of the
conversations that were happening. And I think it's a really
remarkable piece of writing that white people who don't want
to think that we're mixed up in any way in
(23:08):
racism really ought to spend some time with. Especially interesting
because you related to experiences of addiction and illness. Um
you talk about detoxing from racism, and it really resonates
with me because I've found that part of what's making
this a real struggle among white people, which is of
(23:29):
course where the change has to happen is among white people,
is this inability to acknowledge that any of us might
have imbibed any racism from our surrounding, because that would
mean that we're bad. And in particularly, I spoke to
our police department in the wake of a police celling
(23:51):
here in South Bend and talked about systemic racism, and
I could tell that I just immediately lost most of
the white officers I would speak too, because they felt
that I was telling them that they were back. But
you say, in America there are not two kinds of
people racists and non racists. There are three kinds of people.
(24:12):
Those poisoned by racism and actively choosing to spread it,
those poisoned by racism and actively trying to detox, and
those poisoned by racism who denies very existence inside them.
And I feel like that breaks us out of this
idea that the only people who are involved in racism
or have any responsibility when it comes to racism. Are
(24:33):
the Confederate flag waving militant, consciously racist racists, And actually
there's a much wider group of people who, as though
overcoming an illness, need to change. You also say we
must decide that admitting to being poisoned by racism is
not immoral failing, but denying we have poison in us
(24:56):
certainly is. So I'd love to know how you read
this understanding and also has your understanding change between when
this book was published earlier this year and now, when
there have been so many new and different conversations, hopefully
better and more powerful conversations than America was having in
the past, about systemic racism. Well, years and years ago,
(25:19):
I was sitting on my couch with my two daughters,
two girls and a boy until they tell me different,
and um, we were looking at a book with pictures
of the of civil rights marches in it, and they
were asking questions, and my youngest daughter pointed to a
white woman in the in the sea of marchers, and
her face lit up and she said, Mommy, would we
(25:41):
have been marching with them? And I fixed my face
to say, yes, of course we would have, right, And
then my older daughter said, oh, no, Emma, we wouldn't
have been marching with them then, I mean, we're not
marching with them now. And it was a moment of um, well,
I would call sobriety. It was a sobering moment. It
(26:02):
was a moment where I just realized, oh wait, I
am not the person that I thought I was. Like
for some reason I thought that I was a person
who would have been marching with Martin Luther King Jr.
Like what makes me think that about my life right now?
Like what is so radical about my life right now
that makes me think I would have been that radical? Then? Right? So,
because of course, all of us white people support martinly
(26:25):
the King Junior now, right, because it's so much easier
to love a dead civil rights activist than it is
to love a live civil rights activists, because the dead
one is no threat to our privilege and comfort right now? Right,
But the only is that right of white people supported
Martin Luther the King Jr. Then, right, So the question
right now, it's not like if we want to know
if we would have supported Martin Luther King Jr. Then
we don't ask ourselves do we support him? Now? We say,
(26:47):
do I support Collin Kaepernick now. Or if you want
to say how do how would I have felt about
the Freedom writers? Then you don't say how do I
feel about them? Now? You say how do I feel
about Black Lives Matter? Now? So just that moment with
my girls just sent me on this reading frenzy, and
I found the letters from the Birmingham Jail and I
read when Martin Luther King Jr. Wrote that the greatest
threat to freedom is not the ku klux klanman, it's
(27:10):
the white boderate who was more committed to order than
to justice. And that is when I first had language
for what I was right. It was just a white moderate.
What what did I think? I don't know that I
was a civil rights activist because I was a nice
white lady. That's what I thought about myself. Right for me,
perspective change usually just starts with tons and tons of reading.
(27:32):
That he says, my life is just reading interrupted by
reality every once in a while. And Um, when I
started reading a different version of American history than the
one than the whitewashed when I had been presented, it
just all started crumbling in front of me. Um. The
difference is now and how I would write it, I
think I'd probably would have focused a lot more on
(27:53):
whiteness and what whiteness has done. I think I just
figured out in the last few months that there's just
like some kind of deal with the devil that white
women make early on, and it's not conscious. It's just
somewhere along the line we learn that, Okay, we will
accept our proximity to power and all the comfort and
(28:17):
and safety and belonging that that will get us, but
in exchange, first of all, we'll never ask for any
real power. We will stay quiet and grateful and accommodating.
We will accept things like the protection and safety that
the police offers us, but we will never look over
there and ask what the police are doing to them.
(28:40):
We will go into our kids elementary schools and we
will demand nine iPads for every one of our kids,
but we will not turn our heads and ask why
the school down the road doesn't have clean water. We
will over and over again accept our relative comfort and safety,
and the cost of that will be our full humanity,
(29:01):
and um, we will just become less and less human.
And I think that's what my black activist friends are
trying to get up. It's it's the idea of don't
come here to save us, You people need to save yourself.
You have lost your humanity, right, White supremacy has cost
you your souls. It's compelling to hear you describe this
(29:25):
in a way that we've heard a lot about what
needs to change among white people, But the power dynamics
you're describing explain how it may also be different for
white women than it is for white men, who have
our own task of I think introspection, but also redemption
and change. And it sounds like the biggest thing you're
describing that needs to happen as a kind of a
(29:47):
readiness to sacrifice certain things that have gone with the
old arrangements in order to get to a better place.
But that better place is better for everybody? Yeah, or
is it? I mean, here's one of the questions, right
Or we talk talking about zero sum game or are
we really talking about a future where everyone's better off?
I think I believe fully that it's a future where
(30:08):
everyone's better off because the same situation that we could
say for white men, like the humanity that they have lost.
I mean, the conversations that I'm having with white men
right now, I think it's because now that I'm married
to a woman, the like tension is gone or something.
I have no idea what's happening with me and men
right now, but they're telling me stuff, just like telling
(30:29):
me stuff. And I think that men are so freaking trapped,
Like somebody is right untamed for men, like they just
they are not allowed to be human in any way, right,
the the misogyny that's tied into you are not allowed
to be merciful. You're not allowed to listen, You're not
allowed to be curious, You're not allowed to be vulnerable.
You're not allowed to be human. We will shame you
(30:50):
if you are. The toxic masculinity is not just killing
the entire world, it is killing individual men. And this
conquering power attitude has a cost to it. And it's
everywhere you describe, even all the way down to the
shampoo right you're comparing you notice your teenage son's shampoo
bottle is pretty agreed to your daughters. I mean it
(31:14):
picked up the bottle, Pete. It's like drop kick dirt,
slam dunk, you know, kill embarrassing like this, It's just
like is he preparing for what is he doing in
the shower, Like we're shaming them out of their community
before they even freaking put on their underwear in the morning. Right,
So no, I believe that it is not a zero
(31:34):
sum game. Everybody needs freedom from this. Like the victims
are the perpetrators. The perpetrators are the victims. There's no
such thing as one way liberation. So we're just in
terms of a nation. We're just talking about a larger
macro situation there. But I'm a white woman, so I'm
focused on what is my piece in this, and I
think that there's something in it that's like we have
(31:56):
just misaligned ourselves, Like we have aligned ourselves with the
wrong side. Like my goal is, how do I betray
white patriarchy supremacy in this moment. How do I take
all of my training and turn on my trainers, Because
in the beginning, that's what's going to take, and white
women are right there at the center of it. If
(32:18):
we start defecting and moving over, the whole system breaks
down and something powerful is happening. When we've reached the
point that it's no longer the white nationalists who are
the only people interested in whiteness. I almost wonder sometimes
if those who deceive themselves saying that they don't see color.
The most dangerous thing is not just that they see
(32:40):
color in people of color, but the one area where
it really is true that they don't see colors in themselves,
because you don't have to think about being white if
you're right instead of fault. And even that is so
freaking racist, right, we actually think we don't. I talk
to people all the time who don't know they are
a race, like who don't even think of white as
a race, because it's so everybody else has a race,
weren't you. We're neutral, We're the standard. It's so fascinating.
(33:04):
One last question I want to put to you. Your
your youngest is twelve, is that right? So one of
the things we'd like to talk about on this podcast
is to really envision the future. How do you think
her future will look different from your past? What do
you think are the biggest differences, and what are some
of the things you think will be similar? Well, Pete,
(33:24):
I don't know if you've noticed in notice in your life,
but I have noticed that we tend to pendulin parent,
which to me means like everything you thought your parents
did wrong, you just go to the other side completely
and screw them up a completely differently. Okay. So, like
I didn't feel like I had enough room in my
family to express my feelings. So I have trained my
(33:46):
children to share every feeling in Pete. Sometimes, when my
twelve year old you just mentioned is on her third
hour of describing her sadness, I just want to look
at her and say, dear God, I have done you wrong, Like,
why didn't I teach you to suffer silently? Right? So,
so this is one way their lives will be different.
(34:06):
They are so comfortable being fully human and bringing me
all their stuff. I mean, one thing I am so
in love with is you know. It was such a
tricky decision to regardless of how you think about sexuality,
it was a choice to decide to be open to
this new love with Abby and I had to, like, really,
(34:29):
I had to get a divorce. I had to go
through some things that caused my children a lot of pain.
And that was the most difficult thing I've ever done
in my life. And there was a lot of oh God,
is this right? Is this you know? Um? And so
a year after Abby and I got married, our son
sat us down and said, I need to tell you
(34:49):
something and he told us that he's gay, my baby,
the one that I um got sober when I was
pregnant with him and I didn't know, which is a
whole nother story, Like I cannot believe that you can
be staring at your child and obsessing about him every
day of every every minute of every day and be
gay and still be so clueless. But that's fine, Yeah,
(35:12):
that's for a different day. And a week later he
told his dad, and so his dad called us, and
Abby and I pulled over the car and we were like,
oh God, like what how is this going to go?
And the first thing Craig said was, you know, I
just keep sitting here thinking what if you hadn't have
been true to yourself, then maybe our kid wouldn't have
(35:34):
been true to himself and wouldn't have been brave enough
to tell us who he is. And that was, first
of all, such a freaking generous and like response from
Craig from my ex husband, like just that's just his heart,
his he's amazing. But also it just made me think
that'll be a difference, right, A difference will be because
(35:56):
we have burnt them, because I have brought things to
them that have said to them even though this makes
you very uncomfortable, even though this is going to hurt you,
it is that important to be true to yourself, right.
So I'm going to tell you something that's going to
make you sad, and it's going to, you know, make
you rearrange your thoughts and your family, and I'm going
(36:17):
to do it anyway. I think that they're going to
do that with us. They're going to know that they
have the right to disturb our expectations, to disappoint us,
to challenge us, and that they can do all of
that because it's a family value that everybody gets to
(36:38):
be who they are. What a fascinating, moving conversation with
Glenn and Doyle. I love that we were able to
explore in depth some of the values and topics so
important in our moment, questions of belonging and trust, ideas
(36:58):
that have shaped my life work and shaped hers in
both similar and very different ways. I'm grateful for her
openness and her kindness towards others, for her honesty, which
has unlocked honesty and so many others about their own lives.
I think the truth yields further truth, and she's an
example of that. And as we think about the decade ahead.
(37:20):
It's my hope that next generation leaders take a page
from her book, lean into their power, untamed themselves, and
unapologetically fight for what they want. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(37:41):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi, I'm Pete Buddha Jedge, and this is the deciding decade.
One thing I found in life is the way that
huge transformation can happen even in moments in your life
when you thought you had the big things established. I
was already mayor of my hometown when I experienced a
life changing deployment to Afghanistan as a reservist, and it
(00:28):
was in the wake of that experience that I made
the decision that it was time to come out. I
was already in my thirties when I confronted the fact
that I was too old not to know what it
felt like to be in love, and then and finally
being ready to date who I wanted to date, learn
how to open up trust and be comfortable with myself
in new ways. Nothing about that was simple. Now we're
(00:48):
in a moment in our country where it's becoming more
and more common to see people sharing extraordinary turns in
their personal journeys. I know personally how difficult that could be,
but I also know how rewarding it could be in
my own and it was the road that led to
my now husband, Chaston. I think a version of this
is going to have to happen across the country. In
(01:09):
order for this deciding decade to go well, navigating what's
ahead for us, it's going to take a new level
of self knowledge for all of us. It's going to
mean being ready for transformation sometimes when we didn't expect it.
And my guest today has an amazing story about that
kind of self knowledge and about the kind of courage
we're going to need more than ever, wherever we can
find it. Many people have been falling in love with
(01:30):
Glenn and Doyle's story, especially since the release of her
remarkable book, Untamed. She has written with honesty, clarity, and
humor about her experience as a parent, author, and activist,
overcoming addiction and eating disorders, and coming to terms with
the truth that, with a husband and three children, she
had fallen in love with her now wife. She's also
(01:51):
helped raise millions of dollars for families in need through
her nonprofit Together Rising. She's been an inspiration to so
many encouraging people too, as she says, quit fearing themselves
and start trusting themselves and to live out their truths,
something that certainly resonates with me. I know so many
are grateful for your leadership, and I'm grateful for your time, Glennon,
(02:12):
thanks for joining us, Mayor Pete. This is such a
treat my entire fan My mom is cannot believe that
I'm speaking to you right now. I'm going to call
her right after this and tell her everything, So I'm
going to make sure to tell her the Style and Untamed.
One of the things that I think makes it so
readable is that there are these very short episodes, but
(02:32):
they add up into a big and powerful story. These
things you describe breaking out of and becoming more of
yourself as you conquer addiction, as you fall in love
with your wife Abby. You don't describe the world you're
coming out of as being sort of obviously and compelling
lee awful, even though it turns out it's not where
you need to be. So I wonder that tension, especially
(02:55):
for people who may read this book and think, you know,
that same thing that you're kind of bathed in this
existence that maybe feels fine from minute to minute, but
from hour to hour, but it's not where you need
to be. Yeah, when you said bathed in it, it
made me think of you know, how they've done that
experiment where there's a water and there's a frog in
(03:15):
the water, and if they if the water is boiling,
the frog will save itself and get out. But if
the temperature is just turned up slightly a little bit
each day, the frog will die. Because it's like that life,
that good enough life, you know, where everybody's telling you
to be grateful, you have more than other people. I mean,
this was my life. I was in a broken marriage
(03:37):
to a good man. That's the slow water temperature turning up.
That's like, you know, he's a good person, and you
should be grateful and you have you have a good life,
and you have these three beautiful children, and you have
a career. And we were recovering forever from infidelity, okay,
and I have seen some people recover from that beautifully.
(03:58):
My experience was that I was doing all of the
things I was supposed to do to forgive, and he
was doing all the things he was supposed to do
to get me to forgive. We were in therapy, we
were doing all of the things. I was just waiting
for forgiveness to fall down on my head as a
reward for all of my suffering. Like I was just
like a dormant volcano with lipstick on, I was smiling
(04:22):
and like, oh, this is okay. We have this little
family that I was piste off all the time, and
and and the piste off adness came up the most
when there was any sort of like when we were
supposed to be trusting each other again, when there was
intimacy or any of that that was supposed to make
me feel like I could trust again. It just I
just was angry. Did you experience that as a being
(04:45):
piste off at something in particular or that general piste
I mean, you know one thing that you know? Sometimes
Chaston all say you know, what's the matter, I'll be like, nothing,
what do you mean, what's the matter? What's the matter?
What's the matter? Right? Like the um can you talk
about the relationship the general to the specific? Uh? And
and and how you see it and who helps you
see it? Yeah? Okay, So if you want to talk
about the general and the specific, let's go to the cheetah.
(05:08):
So years ago, I'm at the Safari Park with my kids,
and my kiddos wanted to go see the the Cheetah run,
which was like the big event for the day. So
we're sitting there watching and the zookeeper comes out and
the zookeeper is holding the leash of a black labrador cheaper.
So the zookeeper says, hi, everybody, do you all think
that this is Tabitha the Cheetah And all the kids
(05:29):
go no, and she says, you're right. This is many Um,
Tabitha's best friend. And we raised Many alongside Tabitha to
team Tabitha. So Tabitha the Cheetah is right there in
that cage and she and us are gonna watch Many
do the cheetah run, and then Tabitha is going to
do it. So we all stand there and Many the
(05:51):
lab lines up on the starting line and this little
jeep takes off with this pink bunny. Mini takes off,
chases the pink bunny crosses the finish line and everybody claps,
and then Tabitha stalks out of her cage and she's
gorgeous and huge, and her muscles are rippling beneath her skin.
And then this majestic creature lines up on a starting
(06:13):
line and the jeep takes off, and this gorgeous animal
chases this dirty pink bunny down this well worn path
uh with all the board spectators clap and the zookeeper
throws Tabatha this like Costco steak or something, right, and
Tabitha lays down and gnaws on it. And while all
these people are clapping, I'm just like full body goose bumps,
(06:37):
kind of nauseous actually, because I was like, oh my god,
that is my life. Right, Like if a wild majestic
animal like a cheetah can be conditioned, can be tamed
into forgetting her wild, into forgetting who she is, then
so can a woman, and so can a human being. Okay,
(06:57):
because Tabitha was born into the zoo, like, she never
are new in her material life anything different. So general
wisdom would say, she thinks she's a lab. She's fine,
this is a good enough life for her. She's safe,
she's whatever. But what we know is that these animals,
even the ones that are born into captivity, they have
(07:18):
an instinct that they were born for something else. Something
in them knows they shouldn't be doing general piste off
in nous. This is what you're saying, right, This general
feeling of like wait a minute, I know all I
can see in my life or these cages and these
store bought steaks in these labs, but like I just
have this weird feeling inside of me that I was
(07:39):
made to run on open land and like hunt and
kill and sleep under stars. However, that must be crazy
because this is all I can see. And so the
gas lighting of Tabitha, the gas lighting of all of us.
We're supposed to be grateful for the good enough life.
I was supposed to be grateful for this really sationship
(08:00):
that I had, because it was good enough, even though
there was a wildness and restlessness inside of me that
was my wild that was like, I think, it was
supposed to be more beautiful than this. So this brings
us to I think one of the central themes of
the book, certainly something I've been thinking a lot about,
which is trust. Because the question then becomes, how do
you decide whether to trust that voice that's describing something
(08:24):
you've never even seen, and how do you weigh that
against trusting all the voices telling you you know, as
you say, you should be grateful, like you're you're good
where you are, don't burn this down, don't blow this up.
You had a lot to lose coming out, and with
the changes that you made in your life, how do
you reach that level of trust? And what or who
exactly is it that you're trusting when you take that leap? Okay?
(08:48):
So I think the way that I would describe that
trust is the word faith. But when I say faith,
I don't mean a bunch of dogma, Okay, I don't
mean like a bunch of rules that were made up
by powerful white men a million years ago to control people.
One of my favorite definitions of faith is the unseen
(09:10):
order of things. So like, there's the seen order of things,
that's the material world, that's what we see on the news,
that's the injustice, that's the war, that's the imbalances of powers,
is all of it, right, So it would make sense
actually that we would all just be like, that's the
way it is, but we're not like that. There's something
inside of us that rejects it, and and all of
(09:32):
us of conscious like, regardless of what religious background you were,
you were raised with, regardless of there's something inside of
us that when we see that order of things, we
go that's not it. There's something off there, right, and
that thing inside of us that's insisting, that's rejecting it
is the unseen order of things. Okay. So to me,
this would be what the Christians called the Kingdom of
(09:54):
Heaven or you know, we'd call enlightenment or nirvana, or
we'd call you know, atheists who called love. The thing
is the same, right, and that's why we said, you know,
the Kingdom of Heaven is not out there, it's in here.
My faith ridition would say, our job is to bring
heaven to earth. Okay, So to me that means our
job is to bring the unseen order of things into
the vision visible order of things. So you could also
(10:16):
call this thing inside of us the imagination. It's the
part of us that says I have a different idea
of the way that things ought to be, and how
do I get that idea from inside here outside here,
which is what you're doing in politics, which is what
activists are doing. It's like having faith in that because
(10:37):
it's so important, especially for marginalized groups, to depend on
the unseen order of things, because if we only look
at what's already been created, we will have no hope.
We will continue to rebuild and recreate what was builded
and created without us in mind. Right, which is why
Dr King said I have a dream because he had
(10:59):
never seen in the visible order of things, this unseen
order that he was convinced he was born to bring
to earth right, Oh my Gloria sign and says dreaming
is a form of planning. M consider real these ideas
and imaginations we have unfolding inside of us. Instead of
thinking that they're pipe dreams. We have to consider that
perhaps there are marching orders if I understand how these
(11:35):
things relate. You talk about imagination is a way to
kind of have access to that kind of bigger I
guess realm, you might say, where we belong. You also
have I think, really powerful vocabulary for talking about God
or what some call God. You you use the word
knowing with the capital K. If I could play back
to you a little bit of how you describe this
In On Tame, you say, why do we worry about
(11:56):
what to call the knowing instead of sharing with each
other how to call the knowing? You go on, you say,
some call the knowing God or wisdom or intuition or
source or deepest self. It doesn't matter what we call
our knowing. What matters if we want to live our
singular shooting star of a life, is that we call it.
So what would you say to those who are struggling
(12:18):
to figure out how to call it. I think that
experiences with God, with the divine, with the truest, deepest
self might be as individual as every individual. This is,
this is just a terrible plan. I would have done
it differently, so that we could help each other more,
you know, without sounding you know, judgmental of Whenever I say,
(12:42):
without sounding judgmental, I'm about to say something terribly. What
I have experienced is that inside of fundamentalists, or fundamentalism
in any form, whether it's religion or political or whatever,
is this need for leaders to separate followers from their
(13:04):
deepest self. The way I experienced that inside of fundamentalist
Christianity was this campaign to make sure that I never
trusted myself. We learned that with you know that the
heart is wicked. That might be how you feel, but
the heart is wicked, you know, that might lean into
thine own understanding exactly exactly. So, So I can't trust
(13:25):
my heart because my heart is wicked. I can't trust
my mind because I can't lean on my understanding. Well,
what can I trust? Oh? You? Okay. So so the
argument is don't trust yourself, trust God. Okay. But the
people who are saying that, what they really mean is
don't trust yourself, trust us, which is different than God. Right.
(13:50):
That reminds me of a pattern I've been thinking about
with conspiracy theories and conspiracy thinking, because one of the
things I've noticed, especially with something is really weird to
disturbing groups out there, is that they actually, even though
their languages, you can't trust anybody. Everything's you know, deep state,
and there's a system. It's calling all the shots. Be wary. Right.
(14:13):
They're also saying, listen to me, I'm telling you the truth.
No one else wants to tell you. Right. You won't
see this in the media. This is the thing they
don't want you to know. And I realized that when
somebody in that way says, you know, trust no one,
they're really saying trust me. They're they're offering a kind
of the only word I can use for it is membership.
And I wonder if actually that that search for belonging
(14:36):
that I think is a struggle in so many ways
for all of us, is actually ironically part of the
appeal to these groups that are an expression of mistrust
or distrust is that they're asking you to trust them.
But there's also this misplaced trust, right that that we're
often called to. I believe is happening with the president,
certainly happening with some of these efforts, and as you're saying,
(14:58):
has happened in a troubling pattern with a lot of
fundamentalist movements too. I don't see much difference in any
of it. I think it's all religious in terms of,
you know, we just are so desperate for somewhere to belong.
It's like that the dilemma of being human, which is
it almost feels like we want to be individuals, but
we want to belong. And that's what I wanted so much,
(15:21):
as you know, church after church after churches, I wanted
to belong. I wanted a group. I wanted people, and
I was willing to pretend for a while, I was
just willing to find I'll just pretend I don't have
that thought, I pretend, I'll believe that, I'll say that
I'll do I'll do this just in exchange for some
people to belong to, right. And it is easier I
(15:43):
have because I have been part of these groups. I
know that it's almost like the less individualistic you are,
the easier it is to belong to these crews, and
the more well It's like, it's why progressive Christians or
progressive groups have so much less solidarity. We you know,
the conservatives have nailed this right. It's like they are
(16:05):
just moving like a school of freaking fish in everything.
It's like it disturbs me at a deep level and
also impresses me. And no one is allowed to raise
their hand and think differently. I know, I've been a
part of those groups, and so it becomes very easy
to vote in blocks, to think in blocks, to think right.
And then you've got these progressives, which now I'm a
(16:26):
part of these groups. Jesus, you can't keep us. We're
like Dory from Nemo or like over there, what about this?
But what about like the questions are eternal, the like
different perspectives, like we can't agree on anything, which is
part of the beauty of it. So that that brings
me to the family that we're part of, the LGBTQ community,
(16:48):
which is I think an example of a family that
has a lot of belonging and also a lot of
jostl ng and can actually be kind of challenging and
in the way that people treat each other. Sometimes one
thing you and I have in common is is coming
out a little bit later in life. Uh, you know,
I felt very strange. As I'm a grown as man,
(17:09):
I'm in a position of responsibility. I've been to Warren
back and now I've got to start from scratch on dating,
and i gotta go out and tell the world who
I am. And there was a part of me that
of course, it was probably the part of me that
had kept me tamed, if you will, for a very
long time, which is a part of me that was
fearful of being harmed or attacked for being gay. Growing
(17:32):
up in Indiana, serving in the military, joining under Don't Ask,
Don't tell. I was It was actually during the time
I was figuring out exactly how to come out that
here in Indiana there was the religious freedom so called
Religious Freedom Bill under Mike Pence. That it was horrible
in the way that it marked out our state is
one of the most anti LGBTQ places in the country,
(17:52):
but it was also remarkable and that a lot of people.
I saw a lot of people find their way a
little closer to acceptance. And often it was not the
way I would put acceptance. It was not exactly what
I was hoping people would would say, but you could
tell for them it was movement, somebody who had been conservative,
someone had been brought up to reject gainness. And you
(18:15):
write a little bit about an encounter. I just want
to find the page because I think it was so interesting.
You talk about being at a town hall type event
in the Midwest, and I'll just read a little bit
of it. A woman with short gray hair and gentle,
serious face of deep wrinkles slowly stood. She wore a
sweatshirt with an American flag and the word Grandma Puffy
(18:38):
painted onto it. Her hand shook a little as she
held the mic. I loved her instantly. And then she
talks about this experience of her nephews coming out as
as transgender as now her niece, another family member turns
out to be gay, and and she says, I don't
mean any offense, It's just why is everybody so gay
all of a sudden? And you're write about her are
(19:00):
with a lot of compassion. So I wonder, just more broadly,
how do we think about the people that maybe are
quite where we want them to be, but also are
clearly wanting to move into a place of acceptance or growth,
And does that have any lessons for some of the
different political contests that are going on right now, where
it feels like sometimes America is being sliced up in
(19:23):
some people's view into good Americans and evil Americans. And
I'm thinking, if we can't reach just about every American,
we're never going to make it. M I think that's
the thing I missed the most right now about pre
COVID life is um, those kinds of gatherings, because that's
what I spent my whole job doing. It is just
gathering people in one space and being like, Okay, here's
(19:47):
the place. Bring all your questions. It's too scared to ask,
appreciate meeting or church, right, bring them here, ask them
because I think, like I just really I know what's
happening on Twitter, know what's happening online, but it's just
not my experience with actual human beings and actual it's
so much eat harder to to demonize each other up
(20:09):
close and so UM. My experience is more that people
are curious and confused, and people are afraid of change. Okay,
people are afraid of What that woman actually thought is
what a lot of people think right now is that
there's something in the air. It's making everyone gay all
(20:31):
of a sudden, right, and if this is contagious, like
what's everybody's gonna go? And then what's next? It's like
it's it's like fear, which by the way, is the
energy that make America grading and taps into that all
that is. It's directional, right, we know it's everything is directional.
Like if you think things are, let's go backwards too.
(20:56):
So the idea is to for me is to talk
to people in a way that is actually what is
true about like you know the fact that gayness is
not contagious, it's just just. But freedom is contagious, right,
So what is happening is that people are not getting gayer,
(21:16):
people are getting freer to express their queerness. Right, Because
some brave person somewhere along the line was like, actually,
I don't think that this is my jam, Like I
know this is the only thing that's been presented to me,
but I'm not feeling that love thing like I exposed
two with this particular group of humans, but this particular
(21:37):
group of human right, And then that person was just
somebody else was like, oh my god, me too. Somebody
else was like, oh my god, I thought it was
just me and so it's like this chain reaction of
freedom that people have always been fifty shades of gay, right,
Like this is they were just slowly dying inside because
they didn't have the freedom to express it. Just that
shift for people, it's like nothing's changing at all. People
(22:03):
are just having to change themselves less right. So, UM,
I don't know. I just feel like those actual conversations
are so much, are so important to have. Um, just
these all these unasked questions and curiosities become prejudices and
that turns into like blocks of fear. You know that
(22:23):
people just moved into resistance mode. You could not have
known when you wrote the book how much racial justice
would be at the forefront of the country's consciousness and
(22:47):
conscience after the murder of George Floyd and everything that's
taken place in the summer. But you write in a
way that I think really anticipates a lot of the
conversations that were happening. And I think it's a really
remarkable piece of writing that white people who don't want
to think that we're mixed up in any way in
(23:08):
racism really ought to spend some time with. Especially interesting
because you related to experiences of addiction and illness. Um
you talk about detoxing from racism, and it really resonates
with me because I've found that part of what's making
this a real struggle among white people, which is of
(23:29):
course where the change has to happen is among white people,
is this inability to acknowledge that any of us might
have imbibed any racism from our surrounding, because that would
mean that we're bad. And in particularly, I spoke to
our police department in the wake of a police celling
(23:51):
here in South Bend and talked about systemic racism, and
I could tell that I just immediately lost most of
the white officers I would speak too, because they felt
that I was telling them that they were back. But
you say, in America there are not two kinds of
people racists and non racists. There are three kinds of people.
(24:12):
Those poisoned by racism and actively choosing to spread it,
those poisoned by racism and actively trying to detox, and
those poisoned by racism who denies very existence inside them.
And I feel like that breaks us out of this
idea that the only people who are involved in racism
or have any responsibility when it comes to racism. Are
(24:33):
the Confederate flag waving militant, consciously racist racists, And actually
there's a much wider group of people who, as though
overcoming an illness, need to change. You also say we
must decide that admitting to being poisoned by racism is
not immoral failing, but denying we have poison in us
(24:56):
certainly is. So I'd love to know how you read
this understanding and also has your understanding change between when
this book was published earlier this year and now, when
there have been so many new and different conversations, hopefully
better and more powerful conversations than America was having in
the past, about systemic racism. Well, years and years ago,
(25:19):
I was sitting on my couch with my two daughters,
two girls and a boy until they tell me different,
and um, we were looking at a book with pictures
of the of civil rights marches in it, and they
were asking questions, and my youngest daughter pointed to a
white woman in the in the sea of marchers, and
her face lit up and she said, Mommy, would we
(25:41):
have been marching with them? And I fixed my face
to say, yes, of course we would have, right, And
then my older daughter said, oh, no, Emma, we wouldn't
have been marching with them then, I mean, we're not
marching with them now. And it was a moment of um, well,
I would call sobriety. It was a sobering moment. It
(26:02):
was a moment where I just realized, oh wait, I
am not the person that I thought I was. Like
for some reason I thought that I was a person
who would have been marching with Martin Luther King Jr.
Like what makes me think that about my life right now?
Like what is so radical about my life right now
that makes me think I would have been that radical? Then? Right? So,
because of course, all of us white people support martinly
(26:25):
the King Junior now, right, because it's so much easier
to love a dead civil rights activist than it is
to love a live civil rights activists, because the dead
one is no threat to our privilege and comfort right now? Right,
But the only is that right of white people supported
Martin Luther the King Jr. Then, right, So the question
right now, it's not like if we want to know
if we would have supported Martin Luther King Jr. Then
we don't ask ourselves do we support him? Now? We say,
(26:47):
do I support Collin Kaepernick now. Or if you want
to say how do how would I have felt about
the Freedom writers? Then you don't say how do I
feel about them? Now? You say how do I feel
about Black Lives Matter? Now? So just that moment with
my girls just sent me on this reading frenzy, and
I found the letters from the Birmingham Jail and I
read when Martin Luther King Jr. Wrote that the greatest
threat to freedom is not the ku klux klanman, it's
(27:10):
the white boderate who was more committed to order than
to justice. And that is when I first had language
for what I was right. It was just a white moderate.
What what did I think? I don't know that I
was a civil rights activist because I was a nice
white lady. That's what I thought about myself. Right for me,
perspective change usually just starts with tons and tons of reading.
(27:32):
That he says, my life is just reading interrupted by
reality every once in a while. And Um, when I
started reading a different version of American history than the
one than the whitewashed when I had been presented, it
just all started crumbling in front of me. Um. The
difference is now and how I would write it, I
think I'd probably would have focused a lot more on
(27:53):
whiteness and what whiteness has done. I think I just
figured out in the last few months that there's just
like some kind of deal with the devil that white
women make early on, and it's not conscious. It's just
somewhere along the line we learn that, Okay, we will
accept our proximity to power and all the comfort and
(28:17):
and safety and belonging that that will get us, but
in exchange, first of all, we'll never ask for any
real power. We will stay quiet and grateful and accommodating.
We will accept things like the protection and safety that
the police offers us, but we will never look over
there and ask what the police are doing to them.
(28:40):
We will go into our kids elementary schools and we
will demand nine iPads for every one of our kids,
but we will not turn our heads and ask why
the school down the road doesn't have clean water. We
will over and over again accept our relative comfort and safety,
and the cost of that will be our full humanity,
(29:01):
and um, we will just become less and less human.
And I think that's what my black activist friends are
trying to get up. It's it's the idea of don't
come here to save us, You people need to save yourself.
You have lost your humanity, right, White supremacy has cost
you your souls. It's compelling to hear you describe this
(29:25):
in a way that we've heard a lot about what
needs to change among white people, But the power dynamics
you're describing explain how it may also be different for
white women than it is for white men, who have
our own task of I think introspection, but also redemption
and change. And it sounds like the biggest thing you're
describing that needs to happen as a kind of a
(29:47):
readiness to sacrifice certain things that have gone with the
old arrangements in order to get to a better place.
But that better place is better for everybody? Yeah, or
is it? I mean, here's one of the questions, right
Or we talk talking about zero sum game or are
we really talking about a future where everyone's better off?
I think I believe fully that it's a future where
(30:08):
everyone's better off because the same situation that we could
say for white men, like the humanity that they have lost.
I mean, the conversations that I'm having with white men
right now, I think it's because now that I'm married
to a woman, the like tension is gone or something.
I have no idea what's happening with me and men
right now, but they're telling me stuff, just like telling
(30:29):
me stuff. And I think that men are so freaking trapped,
Like somebody is right untamed for men, like they just
they are not allowed to be human in any way, right,
the the misogyny that's tied into you are not allowed
to be merciful. You're not allowed to listen, You're not
allowed to be curious, You're not allowed to be vulnerable.
You're not allowed to be human. We will shame you
(30:50):
if you are. The toxic masculinity is not just killing
the entire world, it is killing individual men. And this
conquering power attitude has a cost to it. And it's
everywhere you describe, even all the way down to the
shampoo right you're comparing you notice your teenage son's shampoo
bottle is pretty agreed to your daughters. I mean it
(31:14):
picked up the bottle, Pete. It's like drop kick dirt,
slam dunk, you know, kill embarrassing like this, It's just
like is he preparing for what is he doing in
the shower, Like we're shaming them out of their community
before they even freaking put on their underwear in the morning. Right,
So no, I believe that it is not a zero
(31:34):
sum game. Everybody needs freedom from this. Like the victims
are the perpetrators. The perpetrators are the victims. There's no
such thing as one way liberation. So we're just in
terms of a nation. We're just talking about a larger
macro situation there. But I'm a white woman, so I'm
focused on what is my piece in this, and I
think that there's something in it that's like we have
(31:56):
just misaligned ourselves, Like we have aligned ourselves with the
wrong side. Like my goal is, how do I betray
white patriarchy supremacy in this moment. How do I take
all of my training and turn on my trainers, Because
in the beginning, that's what's going to take, and white
women are right there at the center of it. If
(32:18):
we start defecting and moving over, the whole system breaks
down and something powerful is happening. When we've reached the
point that it's no longer the white nationalists who are
the only people interested in whiteness. I almost wonder sometimes
if those who deceive themselves saying that they don't see color.
The most dangerous thing is not just that they see
(32:40):
color in people of color, but the one area where
it really is true that they don't see colors in themselves,
because you don't have to think about being white if
you're right instead of fault. And even that is so
freaking racist, right, we actually think we don't. I talk
to people all the time who don't know they are
a race, like who don't even think of white as
a race, because it's so everybody else has a race,
weren't you. We're neutral, We're the standard. It's so fascinating.
(33:04):
One last question I want to put to you. Your
your youngest is twelve, is that right? So one of
the things we'd like to talk about on this podcast
is to really envision the future. How do you think
her future will look different from your past? What do
you think are the biggest differences, and what are some
of the things you think will be similar? Well, Pete,
(33:24):
I don't know if you've noticed in notice in your life,
but I have noticed that we tend to pendulin parent,
which to me means like everything you thought your parents
did wrong, you just go to the other side completely
and screw them up a completely differently. Okay. So, like
I didn't feel like I had enough room in my
family to express my feelings. So I have trained my
(33:46):
children to share every feeling in Pete. Sometimes, when my
twelve year old you just mentioned is on her third
hour of describing her sadness, I just want to look
at her and say, dear God, I have done you wrong, Like,
why didn't I teach you to suffer silently? Right? So,
so this is one way their lives will be different.
(34:06):
They are so comfortable being fully human and bringing me
all their stuff. I mean, one thing I am so
in love with is you know. It was such a
tricky decision to regardless of how you think about sexuality,
it was a choice to decide to be open to
this new love with Abby and I had to, like, really,
(34:29):
I had to get a divorce. I had to go
through some things that caused my children a lot of pain.
And that was the most difficult thing I've ever done
in my life. And there was a lot of oh God,
is this right? Is this you know? Um? And so
a year after Abby and I got married, our son
sat us down and said, I need to tell you
(34:49):
something and he told us that he's gay, my baby,
the one that I um got sober when I was
pregnant with him and I didn't know, which is a
whole nother story, Like I cannot believe that you can
be staring at your child and obsessing about him every
day of every every minute of every day and be
gay and still be so clueless. But that's fine, Yeah,
(35:12):
that's for a different day. And a week later he
told his dad, and so his dad called us, and
Abby and I pulled over the car and we were like,
oh God, like what how is this going to go?
And the first thing Craig said was, you know, I
just keep sitting here thinking what if you hadn't have
been true to yourself, then maybe our kid wouldn't have
(35:34):
been true to himself and wouldn't have been brave enough
to tell us who he is. And that was, first
of all, such a freaking generous and like response from
Craig from my ex husband, like just that's just his heart,
his he's amazing. But also it just made me think
that'll be a difference, right, A difference will be because
(35:56):
we have burnt them, because I have brought things to
them that have said to them even though this makes
you very uncomfortable, even though this is going to hurt you,
it is that important to be true to yourself, right.
So I'm going to tell you something that's going to
make you sad, and it's going to, you know, make
you rearrange your thoughts and your family, and I'm going
(36:17):
to do it anyway. I think that they're going to
do that with us. They're going to know that they
have the right to disturb our expectations, to disappoint us,
to challenge us, and that they can do all of
that because it's a family value that everybody gets to
(36:38):
be who they are. What a fascinating, moving conversation with
Glenn and Doyle. I love that we were able to
explore in depth some of the values and topics so
important in our moment, questions of belonging and trust, ideas
(36:58):
that have shaped my life work and shaped hers in
both similar and very different ways. I'm grateful for her
openness and her kindness towards others, for her honesty, which
has unlocked honesty and so many others about their own lives.
I think the truth yields further truth, and she's an
example of that. And as we think about the decade ahead.
(37:20):
It's my hope that next generation leaders take a page
from her book, lean into their power, untamed themselves, and
unapologetically fight for what they want. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(37:41):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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