August 20, 2020 • 40 mins
FIRST THING: New York Times Best Selling Author and activist, Glennon Doyle, is on to chat with Amy. In this thing, Amy and Glennon talk about how they’re both in recovery from eating disorders and/or addiction. Glennon shares how she learned how to live with hard feelings that showed up in recovery. SECOND THING: Do you trust yourself or do you look to outside sources for direction and validation? Glennon and Amy talk about how easy it is to find our directions from everything outside of ourselves, but living authentically comes when we can learn to slow down and listen to our inner selves. THIRD THING: Does being a good mother mean making yourself a martyr? Glennon shares how she is combating this ‘mom-memo’ and learning that her daughters will only live as fully, as you give yourself permission to live. FOURTH THING: Time for a little gratitude! Glennon shares 4 things that she is grateful for in her life. Glennon also answers a listener’s question about regret.
To check out items mentioned in this episode…
Glennon Doyles books: https://www.amazon.com/shop/radioamy?listId=1C6KOQ5W6CASG
'4 Things' Pullover: 4things.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Okay, little food for yourself life. Oh it's pretty Bay,
it's pretty beautiful than that for a little moth kicking four.
(00:32):
Happy Thursday, everybody, hope you're having a great week. Today.
We've got glenn and Doyle on the podcast. I know
a lot of you are familiar with her, but just
in case you're not, she is the author of Untamed,
probably a book that you've seen posted on Instagram a
lot the last several months, but it's a book that
came out earlier this year that I actually just finished.
(00:53):
And Glennon is also the author of the number one
New York Times bestseller Love Warrior, which is a book
that I read a couple of years ago. And she's
written another one too, called Carry On Warrior. I heads up,
haven't read that one, but maybe some of you have
or you want to look into it. But she's an activist.
She's the founder of Together Rising, which is an all
women lead nonprofit that is raised over million dollars for women,
(01:17):
family and children and crisis, which is pretty incredible. Just
a heads up on our conversation. We taped it on zoom,
so the audio will sound a little bit different, but
the four things that we get into are feeling your feelings,
trusting yourself, mom memos that we've all gotten, and you
don't even have to be a mom to get a
memo of how you think you're supposed to live your life,
(01:40):
which is in an alignment with how you personally feel
you should live your life. But you'll you'll hear that
in the conversation. And then the last thing we get
into is gratitude. And then Glennan answered a email from
one of you guys about regret. So I hope you
enjoy today's episode. And I've got Glennon's books hosted up
on my Amazon page. If you want to check those out,
(02:02):
you can just go to Radio amy dot com. Scroll
down you'll see Amy's favorite Amazon Things. If you click
that those our books. It's it's under books and inspiration.
But I also have beauty things. Get a lot of
questions about the eye patches that I wear or the
air fryer that I cook with. All that's up on
my Amazon page. And then also I teased on Instagram
(02:24):
that we might have some four Things pullovers coming out
this Friday, which would be tomorrow the one, but we've
had to push that a week, so if you've been waiting,
which I know a lot of you have, which is amazing,
and we appreciate the support. To customize a four things
pull over, you gotta wait until Friday, so August those
(02:44):
will be up for a limited time and you can
pick out your four things and we can throw them
on a pull over for yourself or if you want
to make a gift for somebody, So be ready for
that coming at you from ESPOA and then, uh yeah,
I think that's all the housekeeping I got for you.
Uh um, oh no it's not. Because speaking of four things,
we finally put our teacher four Things on a T
(03:07):
shirt because you ask, you shall receive, and I know
a lot of you are teachers, and we had it
in a sweatshirt form and we have it on a tote,
but you really wanted a T shirt. So it says Cafine, Educate, Sleep,
Repeat and it's on a gray T So if you're
a mom listening and you've got kids, this could be
a great gift for the teacher in your life, or
if you're a teacher and you want to snag one
(03:28):
for yourself, for your best friend as a teacher, or
your sister or your mom could be a great little
gift and again you can find those at radiome dot
com or four Things dot com. And I just appreciate
you all so much being a part of our four
Things community and all that we get to do um
and the support that it spreads to people, which the
customized pullover is going to go towards helping our friends
(03:51):
down in Haiti A My life speaks, which they are
a special needs home for for families and they don't
call themselves an orphanage because is they they've got. It's
a home that they're not raising them that way. They're
raising uh families. So more details to come about them. Mike,
the founder, has been on the podcast before and he
(04:12):
is absolutely awesome. But they've hit some rough times because
of COVID. Giving is down, so we're going to try
to make up for some of that by uh you know,
sending some spawl of their way. So just appreciate y'all.
And I guess with all that said, I'll get into
my chat with Glennon. Here you go first, So Lennon,
(04:35):
I thought we would start today with feelings and a
lot of my listeners have listened to our outweigh series
within the podcast, which is about disordered eating and eating disorders,
because the reason why we called it outweighs because a
life without disordered eating outweighs everything. And as I've been
in recovery for about a year and a half, and
(04:58):
it's not like all the feel started coming up right away,
but I'm starting to feel now, and I know that
you have a lot of insight on this given your history,
So if you just want to share with us some
stuff from your past and then kind of what we
do at times to numb our feelings and how we
handled them when they come up. So, my goodness, I
(05:19):
also am in recovery from the eating disorder. So I
became balliem when I was ten years old and then
never got to the root of things, and so so
often happens. My eating disorder became alcoholism, and then alcoholism
became everything, and I was real sick until I turned
twenty five and got sober. And the thing that happens
(05:40):
when you've been an addict for a long time is
that everybody in your life wants you to get sober,
right because you're like ruining everyone's lives. Okay, so they
accidentally convince you that, sobriety or recovery is like the
promised land. Okay, So you start thinking, okay, so my problem,
THELM is the addiction, and once I kick the addiction,
(06:03):
then everything will be perfect and I'll be happy and
everything will be wonderful. Okay. So that is not my
experience when I got sober. It was after having spent
fifteen years, all of my formative years, for as long
as I could remember being human. What I did is
every time my big feelings swelled up inside of me,
I just shoved them down, right. So that is literally
(06:24):
how I dealt with the pain of being human, is
that I would start to feel permission droone calls at
the hot, loneliness, whatever it is at the moment that's
making you feel the pain of being human. I would
just use food or boost to get rid of it,
cry to numb it out. And so what happens when
you stop using that thing is it's seriously like defrosting, right,
(06:45):
Like It's like if you're frost bitten and then you're
slowly defrosting and all the feeling is coming back to you.
It is so painful, right because you're feeling for the
first time in a long time, and it's also very
panic inducing because you think, wait a minute. I thought
my problem was the addiction, and I thought I was
gonna be happy now, but now things are worse than ever. Right,
So I started going to recovery meetings in early sobriety,
(07:07):
and I'll never forget being at my fifth recovery meeting
and I finally got brave enough to speak, and I
stood up and I said, my name is Glennon. I've
been sober for YadA YadA, and I'm scared to death
because I always thought that my problem was the boost
and the food. But now I think that maybe my
problem was underneath the boost and the food, like maybe
my problem was actually me because I've stopped drinking and
(07:29):
I've stopped binging, and I still I feel worse than ever,
and I'm wondering if everyone else has a secret to
life that I don't have, because it feels like being
human is harder for me than it looks like it
is for everyone else. And I sat down. So this
woman comes up to me after the meeting and she
sits down and she says, honey, I just want to
tell you something that someone told me in early recovery,
(07:50):
and that is this, things are really hard for you
right now, not because you're doing them wrong, but because
you're finally doing life right right, because you're finally feeling
all of your feelings, and hard feelings are really really
hard to feel, which is why so few people do it.
The point of life is that being human is not
about feeling happy. Being human is about feeling everything right,
(08:14):
even the hard feelings, because all feelings are for feeling.
This sounds like basic information, but it blew my mind, Okay,
because I grew up in a family and in a
culture that teaches us that happiness is success right, that
happiness and gratitude and joy are for feeling, and everything
else like fear and anger and shame and rage and doubt,
(08:37):
that those are for numb and deflecting right and denying.
And so that is the day of my early recovery
that I made sort of a vow to myself that, Okay,
I'm gonna reject the idea that I'm supposed to be
happy all the time, and I'm going to embrace the
idea that I'm supposed to feel however the hell I
feel at any given time, and I'm going to insist
on my right to feel everything, even if it makes
(08:59):
me a little less pleasant, even if it makes me
a little less productive, And that has been the key
to my sobriety in my life is just giving myself
permission to feel like ship when I feel like ship,
and letting it come and letting it go, and not
grabbing for whatever it is in my view to numb
it out right, just just understanding that whatever pain is
(09:20):
here right now, it will not kill me. And in fact,
usually whatever we're meant to be next, whatever we need
to use, the fuel we need to use to become
the people were meant to be next, is often inside
the pain of now right, So when we numb it out,
we miss what's next. I was going to say, I've
heard you say before. Feelings are fuel, they're also instructive.
I mean, when we buy into this idea from our
(09:41):
culture that we're not supposed to feel angry, that we're
not supposed toee heartbreak, that we're not supposed to feel envy,
all of it, we miss out on knowing ourselves because
actually what makes us angry is pointing us towards what
change we're supposed to be making in the world. And
what breaks our heart is one of the greatest clues
of our life. Right when we go towards the people
who are doing the same world changing work to heal
(10:03):
the world about the thing that breaks our heart, we
find our purpose. Right. Envy, Oh my god, Envy is
one of my favorite emotions. Used to be my least favorite, well,
because you're only envy is that people who are doing
the kind of work in the world that you should
be doing. Like when I was drinking all the time,
if anybody handed me a book that was written by
a woman that was beautiful, I would not read it.
I could not read it. It felt to me like
(10:25):
looking directly into the sun or just burn right. And
that is because there was a part of me that
knew that a braver, healthier version of myself could do
that right. And there's nothing more painful than watching somebody
do what you were meant to do but you're not doing.
So when we study envy, when we sit with it,
let it work in us, Let it instruct us, instead
of deflecting and pretending like we don't have it, or
(10:46):
doing the thing where we just turned into snark about it. Yeah,
we're jealous, as everybody sort of like I never liked
her anyway. I do that all the time. It's it's
it's admiration matched with scarcity. It's when we admire somebody,
but we believe that there's not enough for all of us.
So what I have learned is when I sit with
my envy, it's almost always pointing me right towards something
that I believe deeply in my bones, that I was
(11:08):
meant to do. I need to probably spend time listening
to that and listening to feels. That part's new, feeling
the feelings and addressing the feelings, sitting with the feelings,
and now listening, but listening in particular to envy, because
I don't know that I've spent much time with that
other than maybe just something snarky with it myself, not
(11:28):
to anyone. I wouldn't want to be rude or hurt
somebody's feelings. But if I really sat with it and evaluated,
I wonder where the roots would be and maybe instead
of just I think we're taught to reject it. We're
taught to pretend we're not having it. We're taught we're
not supposed to have it, so the second we feel
it we're like, oh mmm, you know, we just don't
(11:49):
even let ourselves. But actually it's just totally a normal
human feeling, right the only people there's only two types
of people. There's people that admit their envy is sometimes
and then there's lighters, like we're all envious sometimes. So
the fact that it's there at all means it's worth exploring. Okay,
(12:10):
the next thing I want to get into is a
touch treat. Explain to people what that is. My husband
was in the Air Force for twelve years and I
was talking to him one time about for lost in
a while and my son were hiking in Colorado, and
my son was asking a bunch of different questions, and
I remember having a similar thought of there's no way
I would be able to get us back to where
(12:31):
we started. I just wouldn't. And my husband's like, sure,
you just have to find your point of reference. What
I mean, a picture. You know it's gonna be this
tree is gonna be that are we gonna make it
a point of reference. So I feel like when I
was in that situation, I just kind of let my
husband lead because that's his expertise and I trust him.
(12:52):
And I'm horrible with directions and point of reference. So
I feel like sometimes in life not that exact scenario obviously,
but and maybe it's not even my husband leading, but
I almost don't trust myself because I won't have my
what's what I go back to with what is true?
(13:13):
Because I'm second guesting all the time. Yes, I feel that,
I think everybody feels. That feels very familiar to me.
So my entire hobby is just watching really bad TV. Okay,
Like the level of TV that I watch is like,
if you look at the television, you try to find
(13:33):
what is the least productive thing you can do with
your brain. That's what I watched, Like Bravo is my Life, Okay,
so it's embarrassing. Actually, So it's watching this weird show
one day about I think it was called Survivor Man.
It was like a show about this guy who goes
out into the woods on purpose and he gets really
lost and then the whole show is about him finding
his way out. Okay, So it's fascinating this show and
(13:56):
watching it, and he explains to the audience that when
someone gets very lost in the woods, the main goal
is to be found, right to be found, and the
best way to be found is to stay in one place.
But if you are lost in the woods, you can't
stay in one place for long because you have to
(14:16):
go out and get food and water and like whatever
you need to survive. So this is a problem. You
have to stay in one place and not stay in
one place, Okay. So his solution was that if you're
lost in the woods, you have to find a touch tree.
And what a touch tree is is it's like a huge,
recognizable tree that you can go out into the woods
(14:38):
each day but come back to over and over again,
right because it's recognizable enough for you to find it,
so you can go out and come back, and go
out and come back. And this perpetual returning means that
you can never get too far gone. So what this
made me think of was that in my life, I
have been lost in the woods so many times, and
(14:59):
every time I think about those terms in my life
that I've been lost, I can trace it back to
my making something outside of my deepest truest self, my
touch strength like a person a relationship and identity um
an old identity, UH, dogma, religion, outer ideas of success,
(15:20):
something that I'm looking to outside of this to find
my way home, and it never ever works right. It's
always how we remain confused or lost. It's like this morning,
this is I'm just thinking about this as i'm speaking.
So Abby and I had this friend come over to
help us do a workout this morning. We did it
doing this crazy thing where we had to balance in
(15:41):
front of each other, right, and she said, find a
point of reference, find a steady point of reference. Abby
and I were looking at each other and we could
not stay on our feet right because I'm shaking and
she shaking, like so we're both falling back and forth.
And of course my ridiculous mind can't just be like
we're working out, So in my head, I'm like, this
is a metaphor for relationships, right, Each person has to
(16:05):
find their own point of reference, no matter how much
in love with each other you are, because when you
look at each other to be the point of reference,
you can't always study each other, right, That's not our
job in a relationship. So the idea of the touch
tree is that the only thing that's been consistently wise,
consistently returned me to peace and truth is making my
(16:30):
deepest self in the quiet my touch tree. Okay, the
one place that I can always find, the truth, that
I can always find. My next right move is when
I get quiet enough to turn off all the outer
voices in the entire world and I sit with myself
in the stillness right. And then when you do that something,
when you do that long enough, we just all have
this inner voice right, and we lose touch with it
(16:52):
because number one, we're so used to pleasing other people,
and number two, the voices on the outside are so loud.
So when we practice returning to this thing inside of us,
we find that thing that is always speaking to us.
And some people call it God, and some people call
it spirit, and some people call intuition, and some people
call it gut instinct. It doesn't matter what you call it.
But everybody who I know who is living a unique
(17:14):
shooting star of a life that they were meant to live,
is somebody who knows how to call it, regardless of
what they call it. How long did it take you
to find that in the world, Because I don't think
you someone can listen to this right now and think, oh, okay,
I need to be my own point of reference. So
that's where I'm gonna start doing. Like I don't think
it just happens or addicted to so many things, right,
(17:37):
And I think when I started to become my point
of reference was in sobriety, right. I mean, nobody who's
numbing themselves out will ever become their own point of reference, right,
because you're what you're doing is you're literally numbing that voice.
So that's the first step. Right, If you're constantly numbing
or deflecting, then you know that can take you freaking
years to figure out how to stop doing that. Okay,
(17:58):
But that's step one. And then it actually is really,
really unbelievably easy. Now I shouldn't say it's easy, it's simple.
It's actually not easy, okay, because I think that sitting
with yourself in the stillness is the hardest thing to
do in the world. That's why nobody does it. I
mean people start entire wars because they can't sit with
themselves in the stillness, right, Like being alone with yourself.
(18:20):
It's like we're those snow globes, and we just keep
ourselves shaken up, right all the time because we don't
want to see the thing, the little thing at the
center of the snow globe. Because the thing at the
center of the snow globe is the truth and we
get really still, that thing always pops up right. It's
that thing that we have to heal from our past
that we haven't faced. It's that person we have to
have the conversation with. It's that addiction we have that
(18:40):
we're you know, pretending that we don't have. It's a
it's a scary, hard truth, which is why so few
of us want to pretend that we don't know how
to return to ourselves because it's super simple but not easy. Gosh,
with a pandemic which we have no memo for at
all whatsoever. But so many people were forced to sit
(19:02):
with themselves and let the snow settle. And you know
a lot of people either yeah, we're continued the numbing
or they realized, okay, this is a time where I
can maybe put in the work. But a lot I
feel like in our home, a lot of stuff came
up because suddenly we're very busy, go go go, you know,
not necessarily what I think. The pandemic is off for
my family. And I'll just share this because maybe it
(19:24):
feels like our own family tuch Tree but becoming more
of a family focused unit instead and I've heard Burnee
Brown talk about it, of which sobriety. Now that I
mentioned her name and pops and into she's when you
bring up sobriety, she's said before. I heard her Tim
Ferris podcast saying that sobriety is her superpower. So whatever
(19:47):
you're numbing yourself with, maybe it's not alcohol, but once
you get rid of that, you feel like your powers back.
But you know, shocked about kids focused families, parent focused
families and family focused and for us, we had to
get still. It caused a pandemic, caused us to get
still enough to realize we are not family focused. I
(20:09):
had a parent focused, your kid focused. We were just
like shifting whichever needed to get done, focused out, focused
out or focused just whatever way the wind blows. We're
putting out fires all day. And now we've sat with it,
and I feel like our family globe has settled, like
well ship, Like we don't even know what we're doing,
(20:30):
who we are or we're doing what what do we
want to be together? So that's yeah, okay, I kind
of all like that's so you're stuck in my head
as you're talking of, like that's what's happened to our family,
our snow globe has settled, and now we're trying to
figure out what to do with what's been revealed. It's
so good, sister, because that's what happens to all of us.
(20:53):
And then and then when you when you what you're
talking about is slowing down enough to be intentional too.
It's just like we end up just unintentional, just whatever
comes to us, we do, you know, It's like and
once we did, once we we don't take the time
to stop and think, no, what do I want for
this family? Like not what does the world want for me?
(21:13):
But what do I want for this family? Right? Because
if we don't stop and get intentional about it, the
world will eat us up. The demands from the world
will eat us up. And especially as parents, the world
will tell us they have to be this, they have
to be this, they have to be infordnite activities, they
have to be doing like the things that we don't
even stop to think. Wait, is that success? Is that
(21:34):
how we measure success as a family? And I think
you're right. This pandemic all the hell and it has
I mean, the chaos at his Reek. It is also
forcing us all to ask ourselves what do we want
in the after? And I think people are going to
have different priorities, I hope, and I think if you
take the time to sit with it, that's what I
need to work on, is getting in touch with my
(21:55):
my touch dream yeah me, instead of like every thing
else and trusting other people to guide me, because I
feel like I'll get myself lost, right, So that's going
to take work. Which, by the way, before we wrap
this thing, before we get into some things that you're
thankful for in a listener question, you mentioned Bravo and
trashy Be. My therapist has told me, has kindly informed
(22:19):
me that that stuff for me is my self care.
Thank you to your therapists in the world, because that's
one of the things that actually I do it just
it does that for me. Self care looks different for
so many different people, and self care for me is
real Housewives of that really helps listen, Yes, and you
(22:42):
know what it's just, I mean, my family makes fun
of me to know end listen, Like all day all
I do is like trying to you know, foster sisterhood
and feminism. And then I watched the housewives tear each
other up all night. But here's the thing. I don't
have anything left. I quit drinking, I quit ninging, I
quit everything. I need something to turn this hamster wheel
(23:02):
of a brain off at night and Real Housewives doing.
We share with everyone your mom memo that you talked
about and untamed, Yeah, so, I mean I think we
(23:23):
get memos about everything about every area of our life,
and as when the memos are strong, right, so the
first thing we talked about, the memo would be you're
supposed to be happy, right, You're supposed to feel happy.
And the new memo is you're supposed to feel everything.
Then parenting with motherhood. I mean, those memos are so
strong and just like imprinted on our lives. When I
was what I wrote about what untamed is about. When
(23:43):
I was deciding whether to stay in a broken marriage
or leave and pursue a new love, I just really
had decided just to stay in my marriage and slowly
die because I was so afraid of hurting my children.
Right because I had received them, I'm allowed and clear
that mothers do not do anything that would disturb or
(24:03):
hurt for children. So one day I was looking at
my middle daughter and I was watching her get ready,
and I had this thought, which is, oh, my god,
I am staying in this marriage for my little girl.
But what I want this marriage for my little girl?
And if I wouldn't want this marriage for her, then
why am I modeling that love and calling that good mothering?
(24:26):
And the reason is because our parenting generation, and and
all of the mother generations before us, received a memo
that said that good mothering is about martyring yourself. The
epitome of mothering is martyrdom, which is burying yourself, your feelings,
your dreams, your ambitions, your hopes, all of it, and
(24:47):
doing that in honor of your children, which is real,
real hard legacy for children to live by. You know,
to know that deep down that they never know their
their mothers, and to also know that if they they
become parents, that they too will have to slowly die
for their children. Right, Because if we hold up martyrdom
is the epitome of motherhood, that is what they will
be aiming for. That's when I realized that motherhood for
(25:12):
me is not about showing my children how to slowly die.
It's about showing my children how to bravely live. What
my daughter needed was not for me to save her.
What my daughter needed was to watch her mother save herself.
Because our children will only they'll only give themselves permission
to live as fully as we give ourselves permission to live.
So I realized that the old memo for parent for
(25:34):
parenthood that's passed down to women, it's because of a
patriarchal culture. So men are not taught to be martyrs, right,
Men are taught to be conquerors. Women are taught to
slowly disappear. And called that. Look, I decided to reject that,
to examine that, reject that idea completely and switch it
to make an intentional memo for myself, right that strong
motherhood is about being a model, not a martyr. Right,
(25:57):
because they will do what we allow ourselves to do. So,
you know, at the end of the day, it's so fascinating,
right because I was staying in that marriage to be
a good mom, And then I decided, no, no, no no, no, no,
she's watching me. I have to go because I'm a
good mom. And if we don't examine these beliefs that
are passed down to us, these memos, we will just
keep disappearing in every avenue of our lives. Because the
(26:20):
memo that women get in every single scenario, as a partner,
as a wife, as an employee, as every memo just says, slowly, disappear, accommodate,
Please get smaller and smaller and smaller, so nobody else
becomes uncomfortable. So the goal of untaming is to do
what Whitman said, right. It's just to re examine everything
we've been taught in a book, in a school, and
(26:40):
a religion and dismiss whatever insults our own soul, which
is what that old motherhood memo did for me. It
insulted my soul. So I started over. Well, and for
some people, your yours with your marriage, and we want
to be for your daughter. For other people, there's different,
a number of different things that could be. That's not
they want to model, or how they're martyring career, staying home,
(27:05):
any insert anything. But it's examining, like where have you
raighed yourself down? And they're watching us, and so many
women will not tap into their own need to be
fully alive, So you can't even say that to him,
and you have to say, Okay, how fully do you
want your daughter to to live? However fully you want
(27:27):
her to live? Start doing it right. The reason that
the way you create children who are true to themselves,
who honor their joy and their desire, who live fully.
Are kids whose parents do that, and they pick up
on everything. And it's crazy too. Now is as you
start to put in work, if you're in any kind
(27:49):
of therapy, and you're going back to things you haven't
thought of in years, you think of things you didn't
realize that you were picking up on as a child.
That literally affect me now as as I'm almost forty
years old and a mom and a wife and an
employee and all the different things that I am doing
that I soaked up. I didn't even know I was
(28:10):
soaking up. And I kind of your Cheeta story to
which I think is a fascinating example analogy of we
were just trained to do from around the cage, or
you can share with people really quickly in case they
haven't read it, which I want people to read the book.
But the cheetah stories so great, and I think of
(28:33):
these things, I'm like, you know, I need to be
opening my eyes more. I need to like see life
and how it's happening. In examples, because when you were
there at the zoo and you brought away and that's
the gift of what of you and a lot of
people like you. You have a gift of taking real
life things where you see it and making it simple
for us doing that. So share the cheetah story real quick.
(28:56):
So you know when I was in that time period
where I was trying to were just trying to think,
you're out, like something's off about my life, you know,
like I'm I've done all the things I'm supposed to
do that the world have promised me would make me
so happy and fulfilled. Right like I did it. I'm
like perfect mom, perfect wife, the perfect whatever like and
I just I'm just restless and I'm fulfilled and all
(29:17):
of it. And I was at this I took the
kids to this safari park and we went to this
thing called the Cheetah Run, and all the families were
lined up and this zookeeper comes out and she's holding
the leash of a black lab. So my first thought
is if this lady tries to tell my kids that
that's a cheetah, I'm getting my seven dollar stuck. Okay,
that was my first thought. The zookeeper says, does this
look like to have the the cheetah and all the
kids say no when she says, you're right. This is
(29:39):
not tab the Cheetah. This is Mini, tab this best friend,
and Tabitha was born into captivity. So we raised many
alongside Tabitha to help tame her. Okay, and now everything
that Minnie does, Tabitha wants to do. So first, Mini
the Lab is going to run the Cheetah run, and
while Tabitha watches from that cage she pointed to a cage,
and then Tabitha will do the run. So we all
(30:00):
watch many of the lab line up on the starting
line and this there's this little jeep thing and it's
got this dirty pink bunny to attached to it. The
jeep takes off. Many of the lab chases after the
pink bunny and everybody claps, and then Tabitha comes out
of her cage. Okay, so Tabitha is this like huge, scary,
gorgeous like muscles just rippling under her fur, and she
(30:23):
lines up at the starting line. The jeep takes off
in Tabitha, this unbelievably powerful creature, chases this dirty freaking
pink funny down this well worn path that they have
made for her, while all the spectators clap. Tabitha crosses
the finish line and this zookeeper throws her this like
look like a Costco steak, right, she just flops down
(30:45):
and starts chewing it. Everybody's clapping and I'm just watching this, going,
oh my god, I felt sick to my stomach. I
was like this, I am Tabitha. It's like if a
if a majestic, wild, powerful animal like Cheetah can be
tamed into forgetting her wild, into forgetting who she is
and into chasing dirty pink bunnies all day and so
(31:07):
kind a woman, right, And so this is why women
feel tired and overwhelmed and underwhelmed and restless, because we're
chasing some dirty pink bunnies that our culture put in
front of us and said, chase these things. Bend your
entire life, chasing these ideals and these expectations. This is
(31:28):
who you are, This is what will make you happy,
This is what will make you happy. You are supposed
to do, and this is what is expected of you.
And we do it, and people board spectators clap for us,
right and everyone. So while somebody throws us an old
steak that's supposed to keep us happy and all the
while we're thinking, God, something's off about my life, Like
(31:51):
I feel like I was meant to sleep under like
star filled skies. I feel like I was supposed to
run and kill and hunt and blah blah. Like we
just have this thing inside of us that, just like
a cheetah, even born into captivity. You know, they say
that those animals who never see the wild, they never
see the wild, they're they're born into captivity, they still
(32:12):
have their instincts, right, they still have their wild. And
so I think that that while is what is inside
of us, creating that longing, right, creating that discontent. Okay,
(32:32):
So we are big on gratitude here at the podcast
and just trying to practice what we're thankful for. And
so given this the Four Things podcast, I often have
guests share four things that they were thankful for. And
also it helps us just get to know you or
your current you or your day or what's going on.
But it can be big things, small things, whatever things perfect. Well,
(32:54):
while we were doing this podcast, like fifteen minutes ago,
I saw my kids walk through the front door. So
they were at Craig's last weekend. They're back now. So
that's just always feels really good. So I'm grateful that
their home. I'm grateful for my wife. I'm so grateful
for Abby. She's just like I'm sitting here thinking right now,
she's out there doing all of the things that need
(33:15):
to be done for those kids. She's just step moms, man.
I mean, they get a bad rap and I just
I don't think I've seen a scrappier, more selfless holy
love than step parenting. I just think it's the most
beautiful things. I'm grateful for that. If you had asked
me a year ago what would be my ideal situation,
(33:36):
it would be being able to do my work and
without ever having to leave my house. And now that's
what I do. So while there's many drawbacks to the
pandemic that you know, not really ever having to put
on pants, but still having great conversations with smart people.
That's something that I'm grateful for. And I'm just grateful
that it's the weekend almost. It's almost the weekend. Yeah,
(33:58):
I have a question from a listen or two before
we wrap, which I love all that, by the way,
and even you know, the step mom thing, like my
dad remarried after he left my mom for someone and
they eventually ended up getting married, but I always she
was not my age, she wasn't even my step mom.
I felt as though she's my dad's wife. So there's categories.
You're either come in as the kids, as the spouse
(34:20):
of whomever, or you come in as yeah, the stepmom
or the or even I've had some people on the
podcast before referred to it as a bonus mom, so
that our kids color their bonus moms. Yeah, because it's
more than that, and there's such a they've taken on
that role and it's it deserves more than the word
step That's right. That's awesome because I definitely did not
(34:42):
have that in my family. So this question is from Jennifer,
and she said, what are your thoughts on regret? I
know that she loves the lessons she learned and of
course her children that came from her marriage, But does
she look back and regret not being true to herself?
Does she believe in regrets were appreciating the esson and
moving on? Would she change anything from her past? Okay,
(35:03):
I'll tell you this. Let me tell you what jumped
out at me with that question, because I think it's
to me, it's it's not true to how I look
at life. Okay, so the part of that being does
she regret not being true to herself? That is such
an interest. I don't. I don't look at a single
moment of my life as not being true to myself.
(35:24):
Maybe when I was drinking to the point of passing
out every night, but like in my sober life. When
I married Craig, I did that because I thought, this
is right, this is what we're doing, like this is
exactly where I should be. And then when the infidelity came,
you know, so many people were just wanting me to
leave right away, like the right thing to do, just
get out of there, be a good role model for
your kids after infidelity. Leave. So many people wanted me
(35:46):
to stay forever. I knew, like as a woman knows,
that there was still work to be done in that marriage,
and whatever the knowing was inside of me wouldn't let
me leave. Right. I thought that I was staying to
like Earn are happily ever after her. But in retrospect,
I can see that I was staying um so that
we could part ways respectful of each other. Right. The
(36:07):
work we did during those times, and not a moment
of it was wasted. Like we went through the trenches
together after that, right, we both grew up together after that,
And then when I fell in love with that babe, God,
being true to myself during that time meant honoring that
love but also going through the process of, you know,
telling Craig and the kids so carefully and doing all
(36:28):
of that um with as much honor and grace as possible.
So I think it's so funny because people sometimes I'll
read a review of the book and they'll be like,
oh my god, you know, unto him, just like she
said something totally different about herself and Love Warrior, Like
she said something totally different about herself and Carrie on Warrior.
She's totally different now. And I'm like, isn't that the
whole point of life? Like if I right now at
(36:50):
four am saying the exact same things about myself that
I was saying when I was twenty seven, God help me.
So I did think of things as like, now I'm
being true to myself and before I wasn't. I looked
back on myself the last twenty years and I'm like, damn, girl,
good job all of those selves that you went through
to get to this one. Regret. It doesn't make any
(37:11):
I can't get it to make sense in my mind,
like I change anything about the past, and this moment
is not here the way it is, like it scares
me to think of like if anything could have been different,
Like no, no, no no, I don't want anything different. And
when people ask it, like is Abbey you're soulmate, Abbey
you're soul mate? Yes, Abbie is my soul mate now,
but also Craig was a soul mate. Soul mate anybody
who is bringing you closer spiritually to the person that
(37:34):
you were meant to be on this earth. And sometimes
that work is hard and sometimes it's uncomfortable. But we
were exactly who we needed to be for each other.
So no, no, no, no no, no, no, no no no,
no, no no regrets. That's what I thought you were going
to answer exactly how But I thought that there was Yes,
there's these different stages and who you were at that time?
(37:54):
Was you being true to yourself then? And you know
we talk about as we if we're not growing, then
what are we doing? And also I said things you know,
just last year and I'm like, who, what? How I've
grown since thin and learned and try to do better,
and maybe sometimes I started a paragraph and by end
(38:16):
of the paragraph, I'm like, what was that crap I
was saying five minutes ago? Like no, no, no, we're
we're here to become true and more beautiful versions of ourselves. Right,
so if we're not becoming something completely different than we were,
I think one of the that's one of the problems
we have right now on this earth, is that everybody's
trying to hold so tight to ideology, right to dog
mother like, ignoring growth and truth to hold onto these
(38:38):
old ideas. I think it gets us in trouble. And
I wonder if what that person was writing. Sometimes I
think it's the gay thing that people are are hinting at,
because like I wonder if she's thinking, oh, because she
was gay the whole time and she wasn't, that could
be what what she's thinking. But that's just not how
any of this works. It's like, it's not like my
(38:59):
whole life, I've been like, oh my god, I'm in
the closet. Like when I looked at Abby, I didn't
My first thought wasn't oh my god, I'm gay. My
thought was, oh my god, there's my person. Right, It
isn't like there was this like deep dark secret I
was hiding my whole life. You know, I think that
we're getting away from those at binary ideas that often
(39:19):
sexuality is a fluid thing that changes in camp be explained. Right.
But if if I've been trying to do anything for
the last twenty years, it's been to try to live
as true to myself as I can. It just looks
different at different parts of our lives, right, and the
things we don't stay the same. Hopefully, if we're doing
life right, we do not stay the same. It's important
(39:39):
to remember, especially when I have teenagers to sixty. I
don't even know the oldest listener I have, but I'm
just gauging who I know I communicate with, so get
emails from in the sixties to teenagers. So all walks
of life are listening. And I think that that's an
important thing to remember no matter where you are. I mean,
my dad, I'll just say seventy three probably totally switched
(40:02):
gears and I was like, howello you thank God you
finally turn you know, done some work and turned a corner.
It took a long so I just, yeah, I just
wanted to be that encouragement to people that you can't
if you're listening to this right now, I don't you
to hear us talking about this and be like, oh,
well that ship has sailed for me, never too late,
(40:22):
never too They're still breathing. They're still breathing, still tired
for learning and growing and I'm learning. But so okay, well,
thank you so much for joining us today and taking
the time. And know that you're a very busy person,
but hopefully you get in some some good bravo and
what not this weekend. That's right, girl, let's see four
more hours, four more hours, so bravo, Thank you, Amy,
(40:45):
have a good weekend.
Okay, little food for yourself life. Oh it's pretty Bay,
it's pretty beautiful than that for a little moth kicking four.
(00:32):
Happy Thursday, everybody, hope you're having a great week. Today.
We've got glenn and Doyle on the podcast. I know
a lot of you are familiar with her, but just
in case you're not, she is the author of Untamed,
probably a book that you've seen posted on Instagram a
lot the last several months, but it's a book that
came out earlier this year that I actually just finished.
(00:53):
And Glennon is also the author of the number one
New York Times bestseller Love Warrior, which is a book
that I read a couple of years ago. And she's
written another one too, called Carry On Warrior. I heads up,
haven't read that one, but maybe some of you have
or you want to look into it. But she's an activist.
She's the founder of Together Rising, which is an all
women lead nonprofit that is raised over million dollars for women,
(01:17):
family and children and crisis, which is pretty incredible. Just
a heads up on our conversation. We taped it on zoom,
so the audio will sound a little bit different, but
the four things that we get into are feeling your feelings,
trusting yourself, mom memos that we've all gotten, and you
don't even have to be a mom to get a
memo of how you think you're supposed to live your life,
(01:40):
which is in an alignment with how you personally feel
you should live your life. But you'll you'll hear that
in the conversation. And then the last thing we get
into is gratitude. And then Glennan answered a email from
one of you guys about regret. So I hope you
enjoy today's episode. And I've got Glennon's books hosted up
on my Amazon page. If you want to check those out,
(02:02):
you can just go to Radio amy dot com. Scroll
down you'll see Amy's favorite Amazon Things. If you click
that those our books. It's it's under books and inspiration.
But I also have beauty things. Get a lot of
questions about the eye patches that I wear or the
air fryer that I cook with. All that's up on
my Amazon page. And then also I teased on Instagram
(02:24):
that we might have some four Things pullovers coming out
this Friday, which would be tomorrow the one, but we've
had to push that a week, so if you've been waiting,
which I know a lot of you have, which is amazing,
and we appreciate the support. To customize a four things
pull over, you gotta wait until Friday, so August those
(02:44):
will be up for a limited time and you can
pick out your four things and we can throw them
on a pull over for yourself or if you want
to make a gift for somebody, So be ready for
that coming at you from ESPOA and then, uh yeah,
I think that's all the housekeeping I got for you.
Uh um, oh no it's not. Because speaking of four things,
we finally put our teacher four Things on a T
(03:07):
shirt because you ask, you shall receive, and I know
a lot of you are teachers, and we had it
in a sweatshirt form and we have it on a tote,
but you really wanted a T shirt. So it says Cafine, Educate, Sleep,
Repeat and it's on a gray T So if you're
a mom listening and you've got kids, this could be
a great gift for the teacher in your life, or
if you're a teacher and you want to snag one
(03:28):
for yourself, for your best friend as a teacher, or
your sister or your mom could be a great little
gift and again you can find those at radiome dot
com or four Things dot com. And I just appreciate
you all so much being a part of our four
Things community and all that we get to do um
and the support that it spreads to people, which the
customized pullover is going to go towards helping our friends
(03:51):
down in Haiti A My life speaks, which they are
a special needs home for for families and they don't
call themselves an orphanage because is they they've got. It's
a home that they're not raising them that way. They're
raising uh families. So more details to come about them. Mike,
the founder, has been on the podcast before and he
(04:12):
is absolutely awesome. But they've hit some rough times because
of COVID. Giving is down, so we're going to try
to make up for some of that by uh you know,
sending some spawl of their way. So just appreciate y'all.
And I guess with all that said, I'll get into
my chat with Glennon. Here you go first, So Lennon,
(04:35):
I thought we would start today with feelings and a
lot of my listeners have listened to our outweigh series
within the podcast, which is about disordered eating and eating disorders,
because the reason why we called it outweighs because a
life without disordered eating outweighs everything. And as I've been
in recovery for about a year and a half, and
(04:58):
it's not like all the feel started coming up right away,
but I'm starting to feel now, and I know that
you have a lot of insight on this given your history,
So if you just want to share with us some
stuff from your past and then kind of what we
do at times to numb our feelings and how we
handled them when they come up. So, my goodness, I
(05:19):
also am in recovery from the eating disorder. So I
became balliem when I was ten years old and then
never got to the root of things, and so so
often happens. My eating disorder became alcoholism, and then alcoholism
became everything, and I was real sick until I turned
twenty five and got sober. And the thing that happens
(05:40):
when you've been an addict for a long time is
that everybody in your life wants you to get sober,
right because you're like ruining everyone's lives. Okay, so they
accidentally convince you that, sobriety or recovery is like the
promised land. Okay, So you start thinking, okay, so my problem,
THELM is the addiction, and once I kick the addiction,
(06:03):
then everything will be perfect and I'll be happy and
everything will be wonderful. Okay. So that is not my
experience when I got sober. It was after having spent
fifteen years, all of my formative years, for as long
as I could remember being human. What I did is
every time my big feelings swelled up inside of me,
I just shoved them down, right. So that is literally
(06:24):
how I dealt with the pain of being human, is
that I would start to feel permission droone calls at
the hot, loneliness, whatever it is at the moment that's
making you feel the pain of being human. I would
just use food or boost to get rid of it,
cry to numb it out. And so what happens when
you stop using that thing is it's seriously like defrosting, right,
(06:45):
Like It's like if you're frost bitten and then you're
slowly defrosting and all the feeling is coming back to you.
It is so painful, right because you're feeling for the
first time in a long time, and it's also very
panic inducing because you think, wait a minute. I thought
my problem was the addiction, and I thought I was
gonna be happy now, but now things are worse than ever. Right,
So I started going to recovery meetings in early sobriety,
(07:07):
and I'll never forget being at my fifth recovery meeting
and I finally got brave enough to speak, and I
stood up and I said, my name is Glennon. I've
been sober for YadA YadA, and I'm scared to death
because I always thought that my problem was the boost
and the food. But now I think that maybe my
problem was underneath the boost and the food, like maybe
my problem was actually me because I've stopped drinking and
(07:29):
I've stopped binging, and I still I feel worse than ever,
and I'm wondering if everyone else has a secret to
life that I don't have, because it feels like being
human is harder for me than it looks like it
is for everyone else. And I sat down. So this
woman comes up to me after the meeting and she
sits down and she says, honey, I just want to
tell you something that someone told me in early recovery,
(07:50):
and that is this, things are really hard for you
right now, not because you're doing them wrong, but because
you're finally doing life right right, because you're finally feeling
all of your feelings, and hard feelings are really really
hard to feel, which is why so few people do it.
The point of life is that being human is not
about feeling happy. Being human is about feeling everything right,
(08:14):
even the hard feelings, because all feelings are for feeling.
This sounds like basic information, but it blew my mind, Okay,
because I grew up in a family and in a
culture that teaches us that happiness is success right, that
happiness and gratitude and joy are for feeling, and everything
else like fear and anger and shame and rage and doubt,
(08:37):
that those are for numb and deflecting right and denying.
And so that is the day of my early recovery
that I made sort of a vow to myself that, Okay,
I'm gonna reject the idea that I'm supposed to be
happy all the time, and I'm going to embrace the
idea that I'm supposed to feel however the hell I
feel at any given time, and I'm going to insist
on my right to feel everything, even if it makes
(08:59):
me a little less pleasant, even if it makes me
a little less productive, And that has been the key
to my sobriety in my life is just giving myself
permission to feel like ship when I feel like ship,
and letting it come and letting it go, and not
grabbing for whatever it is in my view to numb
it out right, just just understanding that whatever pain is
(09:20):
here right now, it will not kill me. And in fact,
usually whatever we're meant to be next, whatever we need
to use, the fuel we need to use to become
the people were meant to be next, is often inside
the pain of now right, So when we numb it out,
we miss what's next. I was going to say, I've
heard you say before. Feelings are fuel, they're also instructive.
I mean, when we buy into this idea from our
(09:41):
culture that we're not supposed to feel angry, that we're
not supposed toee heartbreak, that we're not supposed to feel envy,
all of it, we miss out on knowing ourselves because
actually what makes us angry is pointing us towards what
change we're supposed to be making in the world. And
what breaks our heart is one of the greatest clues
of our life. Right when we go towards the people
who are doing the same world changing work to heal
(10:03):
the world about the thing that breaks our heart, we
find our purpose. Right. Envy, Oh my god, Envy is
one of my favorite emotions. Used to be my least favorite, well,
because you're only envy is that people who are doing
the kind of work in the world that you should
be doing. Like when I was drinking all the time,
if anybody handed me a book that was written by
a woman that was beautiful, I would not read it.
I could not read it. It felt to me like
(10:25):
looking directly into the sun or just burn right. And
that is because there was a part of me that
knew that a braver, healthier version of myself could do
that right. And there's nothing more painful than watching somebody
do what you were meant to do but you're not doing.
So when we study envy, when we sit with it,
let it work in us, Let it instruct us, instead
of deflecting and pretending like we don't have it, or
(10:46):
doing the thing where we just turned into snark about it. Yeah,
we're jealous, as everybody sort of like I never liked
her anyway. I do that all the time. It's it's
it's admiration matched with scarcity. It's when we admire somebody,
but we believe that there's not enough for all of us.
So what I have learned is when I sit with
my envy, it's almost always pointing me right towards something
that I believe deeply in my bones, that I was
(11:08):
meant to do. I need to probably spend time listening
to that and listening to feels. That part's new, feeling
the feelings and addressing the feelings, sitting with the feelings,
and now listening, but listening in particular to envy, because
I don't know that I've spent much time with that
other than maybe just something snarky with it myself, not
(11:28):
to anyone. I wouldn't want to be rude or hurt
somebody's feelings. But if I really sat with it and evaluated,
I wonder where the roots would be and maybe instead
of just I think we're taught to reject it. We're
taught to pretend we're not having it. We're taught we're
not supposed to have it, so the second we feel
it we're like, oh mmm, you know, we just don't
(11:49):
even let ourselves. But actually it's just totally a normal
human feeling, right the only people there's only two types
of people. There's people that admit their envy is sometimes
and then there's lighters, like we're all envious sometimes. So
the fact that it's there at all means it's worth exploring. Okay,
(12:10):
the next thing I want to get into is a
touch treat. Explain to people what that is. My husband
was in the Air Force for twelve years and I
was talking to him one time about for lost in
a while and my son were hiking in Colorado, and
my son was asking a bunch of different questions, and
I remember having a similar thought of there's no way
I would be able to get us back to where
(12:31):
we started. I just wouldn't. And my husband's like, sure,
you just have to find your point of reference. What
I mean, a picture. You know it's gonna be this
tree is gonna be that are we gonna make it
a point of reference. So I feel like when I
was in that situation, I just kind of let my
husband lead because that's his expertise and I trust him.
(12:52):
And I'm horrible with directions and point of reference. So
I feel like sometimes in life not that exact scenario obviously,
but and maybe it's not even my husband leading, but
I almost don't trust myself because I won't have my
what's what I go back to with what is true?
(13:13):
Because I'm second guesting all the time. Yes, I feel that,
I think everybody feels. That feels very familiar to me.
So my entire hobby is just watching really bad TV. Okay,
Like the level of TV that I watch is like,
if you look at the television, you try to find
(13:33):
what is the least productive thing you can do with
your brain. That's what I watched, Like Bravo is my Life, Okay,
so it's embarrassing. Actually, So it's watching this weird show
one day about I think it was called Survivor Man.
It was like a show about this guy who goes
out into the woods on purpose and he gets really
lost and then the whole show is about him finding
his way out. Okay, So it's fascinating this show and
(13:56):
watching it, and he explains to the audience that when
someone gets very lost in the woods, the main goal
is to be found, right to be found, and the
best way to be found is to stay in one place.
But if you are lost in the woods, you can't
stay in one place for long because you have to
(14:16):
go out and get food and water and like whatever
you need to survive. So this is a problem. You
have to stay in one place and not stay in
one place, Okay. So his solution was that if you're
lost in the woods, you have to find a touch tree.
And what a touch tree is is it's like a huge,
recognizable tree that you can go out into the woods
(14:38):
each day but come back to over and over again,
right because it's recognizable enough for you to find it,
so you can go out and come back, and go
out and come back. And this perpetual returning means that
you can never get too far gone. So what this
made me think of was that in my life, I
have been lost in the woods so many times, and
(14:59):
every time I think about those terms in my life
that I've been lost, I can trace it back to
my making something outside of my deepest truest self, my
touch strength like a person a relationship and identity um
an old identity, UH, dogma, religion, outer ideas of success,
(15:20):
something that I'm looking to outside of this to find
my way home, and it never ever works right. It's
always how we remain confused or lost. It's like this morning,
this is I'm just thinking about this as i'm speaking.
So Abby and I had this friend come over to
help us do a workout this morning. We did it
doing this crazy thing where we had to balance in
(15:41):
front of each other, right, and she said, find a
point of reference, find a steady point of reference. Abby
and I were looking at each other and we could
not stay on our feet right because I'm shaking and
she shaking, like so we're both falling back and forth.
And of course my ridiculous mind can't just be like
we're working out, So in my head, I'm like, this
is a metaphor for relationships, right, Each person has to
(16:05):
find their own point of reference, no matter how much
in love with each other you are, because when you
look at each other to be the point of reference,
you can't always study each other, right, That's not our
job in a relationship. So the idea of the touch
tree is that the only thing that's been consistently wise,
consistently returned me to peace and truth is making my
(16:30):
deepest self in the quiet my touch tree. Okay, the
one place that I can always find, the truth, that
I can always find. My next right move is when
I get quiet enough to turn off all the outer
voices in the entire world and I sit with myself
in the stillness right. And then when you do that something,
when you do that long enough, we just all have
this inner voice right, and we lose touch with it
(16:52):
because number one, we're so used to pleasing other people,
and number two, the voices on the outside are so loud.
So when we practice returning to this thing inside of us,
we find that thing that is always speaking to us.
And some people call it God, and some people call
it spirit, and some people call intuition, and some people
call it gut instinct. It doesn't matter what you call it.
But everybody who I know who is living a unique
(17:14):
shooting star of a life that they were meant to live,
is somebody who knows how to call it, regardless of
what they call it. How long did it take you
to find that in the world, Because I don't think
you someone can listen to this right now and think, oh, okay,
I need to be my own point of reference. So
that's where I'm gonna start doing. Like I don't think
it just happens or addicted to so many things, right,
(17:37):
And I think when I started to become my point
of reference was in sobriety, right. I mean, nobody who's
numbing themselves out will ever become their own point of reference, right,
because you're what you're doing is you're literally numbing that voice.
So that's the first step. Right, If you're constantly numbing
or deflecting, then you know that can take you freaking
years to figure out how to stop doing that. Okay,
(17:58):
But that's step one. And then it actually is really,
really unbelievably easy. Now I shouldn't say it's easy, it's simple.
It's actually not easy, okay, because I think that sitting
with yourself in the stillness is the hardest thing to
do in the world. That's why nobody does it. I
mean people start entire wars because they can't sit with
themselves in the stillness, right, Like being alone with yourself.
(18:20):
It's like we're those snow globes, and we just keep
ourselves shaken up, right all the time because we don't
want to see the thing, the little thing at the
center of the snow globe. Because the thing at the
center of the snow globe is the truth and we
get really still, that thing always pops up right. It's
that thing that we have to heal from our past
that we haven't faced. It's that person we have to
have the conversation with. It's that addiction we have that
(18:40):
we're you know, pretending that we don't have. It's a
it's a scary, hard truth, which is why so few
of us want to pretend that we don't know how
to return to ourselves because it's super simple but not easy. Gosh,
with a pandemic which we have no memo for at
all whatsoever. But so many people were forced to sit
(19:02):
with themselves and let the snow settle. And you know
a lot of people either yeah, we're continued the numbing
or they realized, okay, this is a time where I
can maybe put in the work. But a lot I
feel like in our home, a lot of stuff came
up because suddenly we're very busy, go go go, you know,
not necessarily what I think. The pandemic is off for
my family. And I'll just share this because maybe it
(19:24):
feels like our own family tuch Tree but becoming more
of a family focused unit instead and I've heard Burnee
Brown talk about it, of which sobriety. Now that I
mentioned her name and pops and into she's when you
bring up sobriety, she's said before. I heard her Tim
Ferris podcast saying that sobriety is her superpower. So whatever
(19:47):
you're numbing yourself with, maybe it's not alcohol, but once
you get rid of that, you feel like your powers back.
But you know, shocked about kids focused families, parent focused
families and family focused and for us, we had to
get still. It caused a pandemic, caused us to get
still enough to realize we are not family focused. I
(20:09):
had a parent focused, your kid focused. We were just
like shifting whichever needed to get done, focused out, focused
out or focused just whatever way the wind blows. We're
putting out fires all day. And now we've sat with it,
and I feel like our family globe has settled, like
well ship, Like we don't even know what we're doing,
(20:30):
who we are or we're doing what what do we
want to be together? So that's yeah, okay, I kind
of all like that's so you're stuck in my head
as you're talking of, like that's what's happened to our family,
our snow globe has settled, and now we're trying to
figure out what to do with what's been revealed. It's
so good, sister, because that's what happens to all of us.
(20:53):
And then and then when you when you what you're
talking about is slowing down enough to be intentional too.
It's just like we end up just unintentional, just whatever
comes to us, we do, you know, It's like and
once we did, once we we don't take the time
to stop and think, no, what do I want for
this family? Like not what does the world want for me?
(21:13):
But what do I want for this family? Right? Because
if we don't stop and get intentional about it, the
world will eat us up. The demands from the world
will eat us up. And especially as parents, the world
will tell us they have to be this, they have
to be this, they have to be infordnite activities, they
have to be doing like the things that we don't
even stop to think. Wait, is that success? Is that
(21:34):
how we measure success as a family? And I think
you're right. This pandemic all the hell and it has
I mean, the chaos at his Reek. It is also
forcing us all to ask ourselves what do we want
in the after? And I think people are going to
have different priorities, I hope, and I think if you
take the time to sit with it, that's what I
need to work on, is getting in touch with my
(21:55):
my touch dream yeah me, instead of like every thing
else and trusting other people to guide me, because I
feel like I'll get myself lost, right, So that's going
to take work. Which, by the way, before we wrap
this thing, before we get into some things that you're
thankful for in a listener question, you mentioned Bravo and
trashy Be. My therapist has told me, has kindly informed
(22:19):
me that that stuff for me is my self care.
Thank you to your therapists in the world, because that's
one of the things that actually I do it just
it does that for me. Self care looks different for
so many different people, and self care for me is
real Housewives of that really helps listen, Yes, and you
(22:42):
know what it's just, I mean, my family makes fun
of me to know end listen, Like all day all
I do is like trying to you know, foster sisterhood
and feminism. And then I watched the housewives tear each
other up all night. But here's the thing. I don't
have anything left. I quit drinking, I quit ninging, I
quit everything. I need something to turn this hamster wheel
(23:02):
of a brain off at night and Real Housewives doing.
We share with everyone your mom memo that you talked
about and untamed, Yeah, so, I mean I think we
(23:23):
get memos about everything about every area of our life,
and as when the memos are strong, right, so the
first thing we talked about, the memo would be you're
supposed to be happy, right, You're supposed to feel happy.
And the new memo is you're supposed to feel everything.
Then parenting with motherhood. I mean, those memos are so
strong and just like imprinted on our lives. When I
was what I wrote about what untamed is about. When
(23:43):
I was deciding whether to stay in a broken marriage
or leave and pursue a new love, I just really
had decided just to stay in my marriage and slowly
die because I was so afraid of hurting my children.
Right because I had received them, I'm allowed and clear
that mothers do not do anything that would disturb or
(24:03):
hurt for children. So one day I was looking at
my middle daughter and I was watching her get ready,
and I had this thought, which is, oh, my god,
I am staying in this marriage for my little girl.
But what I want this marriage for my little girl?
And if I wouldn't want this marriage for her, then
why am I modeling that love and calling that good mothering?
(24:26):
And the reason is because our parenting generation, and and
all of the mother generations before us, received a memo
that said that good mothering is about martyring yourself. The
epitome of mothering is martyrdom, which is burying yourself, your feelings,
your dreams, your ambitions, your hopes, all of it, and
(24:47):
doing that in honor of your children, which is real,
real hard legacy for children to live by. You know,
to know that deep down that they never know their
their mothers, and to also know that if they they
become parents, that they too will have to slowly die
for their children. Right, Because if we hold up martyrdom
is the epitome of motherhood, that is what they will
be aiming for. That's when I realized that motherhood for
(25:12):
me is not about showing my children how to slowly die.
It's about showing my children how to bravely live. What
my daughter needed was not for me to save her.
What my daughter needed was to watch her mother save herself.
Because our children will only they'll only give themselves permission
to live as fully as we give ourselves permission to live.
So I realized that the old memo for parent for
(25:34):
parenthood that's passed down to women, it's because of a
patriarchal culture. So men are not taught to be martyrs, right,
Men are taught to be conquerors. Women are taught to
slowly disappear. And called that. Look, I decided to reject that,
to examine that, reject that idea completely and switch it
to make an intentional memo for myself, right that strong
motherhood is about being a model, not a martyr. Right,
(25:57):
because they will do what we allow ourselves to do. So,
you know, at the end of the day, it's so fascinating,
right because I was staying in that marriage to be
a good mom, And then I decided, no, no, no no, no, no,
she's watching me. I have to go because I'm a
good mom. And if we don't examine these beliefs that
are passed down to us, these memos, we will just
keep disappearing in every avenue of our lives. Because the
(26:20):
memo that women get in every single scenario, as a partner,
as a wife, as an employee, as every memo just says, slowly, disappear, accommodate,
Please get smaller and smaller and smaller, so nobody else
becomes uncomfortable. So the goal of untaming is to do
what Whitman said, right. It's just to re examine everything
we've been taught in a book, in a school, and
(26:40):
a religion and dismiss whatever insults our own soul, which
is what that old motherhood memo did for me. It
insulted my soul. So I started over. Well, and for
some people, your yours with your marriage, and we want
to be for your daughter. For other people, there's different,
a number of different things that could be. That's not
they want to model, or how they're martyring career, staying home,
(27:05):
any insert anything. But it's examining, like where have you
raighed yourself down? And they're watching us, and so many
women will not tap into their own need to be
fully alive, So you can't even say that to him,
and you have to say, Okay, how fully do you
want your daughter to to live? However fully you want
(27:27):
her to live? Start doing it right. The reason that
the way you create children who are true to themselves,
who honor their joy and their desire, who live fully.
Are kids whose parents do that, and they pick up
on everything. And it's crazy too. Now is as you
start to put in work, if you're in any kind
(27:49):
of therapy, and you're going back to things you haven't
thought of in years, you think of things you didn't
realize that you were picking up on as a child.
That literally affect me now as as I'm almost forty
years old and a mom and a wife and an
employee and all the different things that I am doing
that I soaked up. I didn't even know I was
(28:10):
soaking up. And I kind of your Cheeta story to
which I think is a fascinating example analogy of we
were just trained to do from around the cage, or
you can share with people really quickly in case they
haven't read it, which I want people to read the book.
But the cheetah stories so great, and I think of
(28:33):
these things, I'm like, you know, I need to be
opening my eyes more. I need to like see life
and how it's happening. In examples, because when you were
there at the zoo and you brought away and that's
the gift of what of you and a lot of
people like you. You have a gift of taking real
life things where you see it and making it simple
for us doing that. So share the cheetah story real quick.
(28:56):
So you know when I was in that time period
where I was trying to were just trying to think,
you're out, like something's off about my life, you know,
like I'm I've done all the things I'm supposed to
do that the world have promised me would make me
so happy and fulfilled. Right like I did it. I'm
like perfect mom, perfect wife, the perfect whatever like and
I just I'm just restless and I'm fulfilled and all
(29:17):
of it. And I was at this I took the
kids to this safari park and we went to this
thing called the Cheetah Run, and all the families were
lined up and this zookeeper comes out and she's holding
the leash of a black lab. So my first thought
is if this lady tries to tell my kids that
that's a cheetah, I'm getting my seven dollar stuck. Okay,
that was my first thought. The zookeeper says, does this
look like to have the the cheetah and all the
kids say no when she says, you're right. This is
(29:39):
not tab the Cheetah. This is Mini, tab this best friend,
and Tabitha was born into captivity. So we raised many
alongside Tabitha to help tame her. Okay, and now everything
that Minnie does, Tabitha wants to do. So first, Mini
the Lab is going to run the Cheetah run, and
while Tabitha watches from that cage she pointed to a cage,
and then Tabitha will do the run. So we all
(30:00):
watch many of the lab line up on the starting
line and this there's this little jeep thing and it's
got this dirty pink bunny to attached to it. The
jeep takes off. Many of the lab chases after the
pink bunny and everybody claps, and then Tabitha comes out
of her cage. Okay, so Tabitha is this like huge, scary,
gorgeous like muscles just rippling under her fur, and she
(30:23):
lines up at the starting line. The jeep takes off
in Tabitha, this unbelievably powerful creature, chases this dirty freaking
pink funny down this well worn path that they have
made for her, while all the spectators clap. Tabitha crosses
the finish line and this zookeeper throws her this like
look like a Costco steak, right, she just flops down
(30:45):
and starts chewing it. Everybody's clapping and I'm just watching this, going,
oh my god, I felt sick to my stomach. I
was like this, I am Tabitha. It's like if a
if a majestic, wild, powerful animal like Cheetah can be
tamed into forgetting her wild, into forgetting who she is
and into chasing dirty pink bunnies all day and so
(31:07):
kind a woman, right, And so this is why women
feel tired and overwhelmed and underwhelmed and restless, because we're
chasing some dirty pink bunnies that our culture put in
front of us and said, chase these things. Bend your
entire life, chasing these ideals and these expectations. This is
(31:28):
who you are, This is what will make you happy,
This is what will make you happy. You are supposed
to do, and this is what is expected of you.
And we do it, and people board spectators clap for us,
right and everyone. So while somebody throws us an old
steak that's supposed to keep us happy and all the
while we're thinking, God, something's off about my life, Like
(31:51):
I feel like I was meant to sleep under like
star filled skies. I feel like I was supposed to
run and kill and hunt and blah blah. Like we
just have this thing inside of us that, just like
a cheetah, even born into captivity. You know, they say
that those animals who never see the wild, they never
see the wild, they're they're born into captivity, they still
(32:12):
have their instincts, right, they still have their wild. And
so I think that that while is what is inside
of us, creating that longing, right, creating that discontent. Okay,
(32:32):
So we are big on gratitude here at the podcast
and just trying to practice what we're thankful for. And
so given this the Four Things podcast, I often have
guests share four things that they were thankful for. And
also it helps us just get to know you or
your current you or your day or what's going on.
But it can be big things, small things, whatever things perfect. Well,
(32:54):
while we were doing this podcast, like fifteen minutes ago,
I saw my kids walk through the front door. So
they were at Craig's last weekend. They're back now. So
that's just always feels really good. So I'm grateful that
their home. I'm grateful for my wife. I'm so grateful
for Abby. She's just like I'm sitting here thinking right now,
she's out there doing all of the things that need
(33:15):
to be done for those kids. She's just step moms, man.
I mean, they get a bad rap and I just
I don't think I've seen a scrappier, more selfless holy
love than step parenting. I just think it's the most
beautiful things. I'm grateful for that. If you had asked
me a year ago what would be my ideal situation,
(33:36):
it would be being able to do my work and
without ever having to leave my house. And now that's
what I do. So while there's many drawbacks to the
pandemic that you know, not really ever having to put
on pants, but still having great conversations with smart people.
That's something that I'm grateful for. And I'm just grateful
that it's the weekend almost. It's almost the weekend. Yeah,
(33:58):
I have a question from a listen or two before
we wrap, which I love all that, by the way,
and even you know, the step mom thing, like my
dad remarried after he left my mom for someone and
they eventually ended up getting married, but I always she
was not my age, she wasn't even my step mom.
I felt as though she's my dad's wife. So there's categories.
You're either come in as the kids, as the spouse
(34:20):
of whomever, or you come in as yeah, the stepmom
or the or even I've had some people on the
podcast before referred to it as a bonus mom, so
that our kids color their bonus moms. Yeah, because it's
more than that, and there's such a they've taken on
that role and it's it deserves more than the word
step That's right. That's awesome because I definitely did not
(34:42):
have that in my family. So this question is from Jennifer,
and she said, what are your thoughts on regret? I
know that she loves the lessons she learned and of
course her children that came from her marriage, But does
she look back and regret not being true to herself?
Does she believe in regrets were appreciating the esson and
moving on? Would she change anything from her past? Okay,
(35:03):
I'll tell you this. Let me tell you what jumped
out at me with that question, because I think it's
to me, it's it's not true to how I look
at life. Okay, so the part of that being does
she regret not being true to herself? That is such
an interest. I don't. I don't look at a single
moment of my life as not being true to myself.
(35:24):
Maybe when I was drinking to the point of passing
out every night, but like in my sober life. When
I married Craig, I did that because I thought, this
is right, this is what we're doing, like this is
exactly where I should be. And then when the infidelity came,
you know, so many people were just wanting me to
leave right away, like the right thing to do, just
get out of there, be a good role model for
your kids after infidelity. Leave. So many people wanted me
(35:46):
to stay forever. I knew, like as a woman knows,
that there was still work to be done in that marriage,
and whatever the knowing was inside of me wouldn't let
me leave. Right. I thought that I was staying to
like Earn are happily ever after her. But in retrospect,
I can see that I was staying um so that
we could part ways respectful of each other. Right. The
(36:07):
work we did during those times, and not a moment
of it was wasted. Like we went through the trenches
together after that, right, we both grew up together after that,
And then when I fell in love with that babe, God,
being true to myself during that time meant honoring that
love but also going through the process of, you know,
telling Craig and the kids so carefully and doing all
(36:28):
of that um with as much honor and grace as possible.
So I think it's so funny because people sometimes I'll
read a review of the book and they'll be like,
oh my god, you know, unto him, just like she
said something totally different about herself and Love Warrior, Like
she said something totally different about herself and Carrie on Warrior.
She's totally different now. And I'm like, isn't that the
whole point of life? Like if I right now at
(36:50):
four am saying the exact same things about myself that
I was saying when I was twenty seven, God help me.
So I did think of things as like, now I'm
being true to myself and before I wasn't. I looked
back on myself the last twenty years and I'm like, damn, girl,
good job all of those selves that you went through
to get to this one. Regret. It doesn't make any
(37:11):
I can't get it to make sense in my mind,
like I change anything about the past, and this moment
is not here the way it is, like it scares
me to think of like if anything could have been different,
Like no, no, no no, I don't want anything different. And
when people ask it, like is Abbey you're soulmate, Abbey
you're soul mate? Yes, Abbie is my soul mate now,
but also Craig was a soul mate. Soul mate anybody
who is bringing you closer spiritually to the person that
(37:34):
you were meant to be on this earth. And sometimes
that work is hard and sometimes it's uncomfortable. But we
were exactly who we needed to be for each other.
So no, no, no, no no, no, no, no no no,
no, no no regrets. That's what I thought you were going
to answer exactly how But I thought that there was Yes,
there's these different stages and who you were at that time?
(37:54):
Was you being true to yourself then? And you know
we talk about as we if we're not growing, then
what are we doing? And also I said things you know,
just last year and I'm like, who, what? How I've
grown since thin and learned and try to do better,
and maybe sometimes I started a paragraph and by end
(38:16):
of the paragraph, I'm like, what was that crap I
was saying five minutes ago? Like no, no, no, we're
we're here to become true and more beautiful versions of ourselves. Right,
so if we're not becoming something completely different than we were,
I think one of the that's one of the problems
we have right now on this earth, is that everybody's
trying to hold so tight to ideology, right to dog
mother like, ignoring growth and truth to hold onto these
(38:38):
old ideas. I think it gets us in trouble. And
I wonder if what that person was writing. Sometimes I
think it's the gay thing that people are are hinting at,
because like I wonder if she's thinking, oh, because she
was gay the whole time and she wasn't, that could
be what what she's thinking. But that's just not how
any of this works. It's like, it's not like my
(38:59):
whole life, I've been like, oh my god, I'm in
the closet. Like when I looked at Abby, I didn't
My first thought wasn't oh my god, I'm gay. My
thought was, oh my god, there's my person. Right, It
isn't like there was this like deep dark secret I
was hiding my whole life. You know, I think that
we're getting away from those at binary ideas that often
(39:19):
sexuality is a fluid thing that changes in camp be explained. Right.
But if if I've been trying to do anything for
the last twenty years, it's been to try to live
as true to myself as I can. It just looks
different at different parts of our lives, right, and the
things we don't stay the same. Hopefully, if we're doing
life right, we do not stay the same. It's important
(39:39):
to remember, especially when I have teenagers to sixty. I
don't even know the oldest listener I have, but I'm
just gauging who I know I communicate with, so get
emails from in the sixties to teenagers. So all walks
of life are listening. And I think that that's an
important thing to remember no matter where you are. I mean,
my dad, I'll just say seventy three probably totally switched
(40:02):
gears and I was like, howello you thank God you
finally turn you know, done some work and turned a corner.
It took a long so I just, yeah, I just
wanted to be that encouragement to people that you can't
if you're listening to this right now, I don't you
to hear us talking about this and be like, oh,
well that ship has sailed for me, never too late,
(40:22):
never too They're still breathing. They're still breathing, still tired
for learning and growing and I'm learning. But so okay, well,
thank you so much for joining us today and taking
the time. And know that you're a very busy person,
but hopefully you get in some some good bravo and
what not this weekend. That's right, girl, let's see four
more hours, four more hours, so bravo, Thank you, Amy,
(40:45):
have a good weekend.
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