Failure Throwback: Glennon Doyle

Author of Untamed and fierce truth-teller Glennon Doyle joins me for a raw and revelatory episode, first recorded in July 2020. We dive into: Why we chase approval instead of trusting our inner voice Her struggles with body image, love, and emotional resilience The failures that shaped her—from family breakdowns to learning self-protection Every moment is unscripted and packed with wisdom. No edits. No filters. Just Glennon, exactly as she is. Listen when you're ready for honesty that hits like a lightning bolt. ✨ IN THIS EPISODE: 00:00 Intro 01:59 Glennon Doyle's Early Life and Struggles 02:11 The Journey to Sobriety 02:35 Meeting Abby Wambach and Life Transformation 03:01 The Impact of 'Untamed' and Pandemic Challenges 07:47 Writing 'Untamed' and Embracing Wildness 12:54 Personal Transformation 17:11 Redefining Success and Family Dynamics 35:52 Generational Differences and Parenting 36:38 A Mother's Transformation 38:04 Struggles with Thick Skin 38:58 Navigating Feedback as an Artist 51:10 The Scarcity Mindset Among Women 55:52 Body Image and Control 💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER: "If a cheetah can be tamed to forget who she is, so can a woman." "This life is mine alone, so I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been." "The point of being human is not to feel happy—it’s to feel everything." 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Elizabeth’s upcoming one-off show at Cadogan Hall on 21 Sep for her new novel One of Us: ⁠https://www.fane.co.uk/elizabeth-day Elizabeth’s Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/ Join the How To Fail community: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content 📚 WANT MORE? Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – On feminism, failure, and the power of storytelling to reshape identity: https://link.chtbl.com/wqGlGUPi Mo Gawdat – Former Google exec turned happiness expert, sharing his journey through grief and self-discovery: https://link.chtbl.com/fnA5IzTi 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/ Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:10Elizabeth Day?

  Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast where we stop fearing failure and start talking about what it really teaches us. I first recorded this very special episode when we were emerging from that deep, dark, gloomy lockdown in July 2020. During the recording, I remember feeling like every sentence that came out of Glennon Doyle's mouth was a total revelation. So I released the episode at full length with no cuts because I wanted you, my cherished listeners, to hear exactly how it happened. I had just read her now multimillion bestselling book Untamed, and it had moved me and radically shifted how

• 0:52Elizabeth Day?

  I thought about life. So if you haven't had the opportunity yet to listen to this incredible woman speak, I promise you, you're in for a superb treat. And if this is a nostalgia trip for you, then please enjoy.

• 1:11Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things we talk about a lot on How to Fail is how difficult it can be to take that first step, and starting a business is no exception. With Black Friday approaching, it's a great time to turn an idea into reality. Shopify makes launching an online store easier with ready-made themes and AI-powered tools, including Sidekick, its AI assistant, which helps you set up your shop and plan promotions without needing coding skills. Whether you're exploring a new venture or finally acting on an idea you've had for years, Shopify gives you the tools and support to get started with confidence and make the most of the busy shopping season. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday,

• 1:53Elizabeth Day?

  go to Shopify.co.uk/fail to start your free trial. That's Shopify.co.uk/fail. Go to Shopify.co.uk/fail today to hear your first

• 2:08Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD, because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialised treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's Exposure and Response Prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable, so you can live more of the life you want to

• 2:53Elizabeth Day?

  live. If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail.

• 3:10Elizabeth Day?

  I have a habit of turning down the corners of a page in a book when I read something that strikes me. When I read Untamed, the third memoir by the author and activist Glennon Doyle, I found myself turning down so many page corners that the book has almost doubled in size. There are truth bombs in every sentence about how women live, how our liberties are encroached, how society seeks to restrict and tame us so that we remain nice and pliant and never too demanding, so that we are not messy, or explosive, or wild, or too threatening to the status quo. Doyle's writing is a rallying call to reclaim that wildness, just as she

• 3:54Elizabeth Day?

  did. She was born in Virginia, one of two girls. For much of her childhood, she remembers trying to numb feelings of discontent. She had bulimia, and then developed alcohol and drug addictions. She got sober when she found herself pregnant with her first child, and married her then-boyfriend Craig, with whom she went on to have two more children. As a wife and mother, she started writing a blog in 2009, which went viral, and two bestselling memoirs followed.

• 4:23Elizabeth Day?

  The second, Love Warrior, detailed how she and Craig had recommitted to their marriage after he confessed to multiple infidelities. It had been picked for Oprah's book club and had a first print run of 150,000 copies. But while she was on tour promoting it in 2016, she met and fell in love with a woman at first sight. Not just any woman either, but Abby Wambach, the former captain of the US women's soccer team and an Olympic gold medalist. Doyle's life imploded for the better. The story of what happens next and the journey of Doyle's own rewilding is recounted in Untamed,

• 5:03Elizabeth Day?

  which became a number one New York Times bestseller despite being published in the middle of a global pandemic. Never one to fit into easy categorization, Doyle is also the co-founder and president of Together Rising, a grassroots nonprofit that has raised over $25 million for women, children, and families in crisis. "Every life is an unprecedented experiment," Doyle writes. "This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they've never been. There is no map. We are all pioneers." Glenn and Doyle, welcome to How to Fail.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Elizabeth, I am sitting here and my greatest wish is for everyone on earth to have their life story read back to them by you. I am so moved by that. Thank you.

• 5:59Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, there was so much I wanted to say, Glenn, because I'm not lying. Your book, Untamed, has changed my life in such a profound way. Everything in it just spoke to me on such a profound level. And I just want to thank you for that work and for the work that you have done on yourself, but for other people. I struggled to find a quote, but I did settle on that one about there being no map and every life being an unprecedented experiment. Do you feel like a pioneer today?

• 6:28Speaker 01

  I do, as women, I think it's hard to see examples of where we're going in front of us. Mostly because we don't know where we're going. I don't see a lot of families like mine around me. I don't see a lot of love stories like the one that I have just lived, that is also a lost story, right? And every day I wake up and I have no idea what's in front of me or what the hell I'm gonna do next. So in that way, yes, I do feel like a pioneer.

• 6:57Elizabeth Day?

  I read this amazing quote. You were interviewed before the coronavirus pandemic hit. I think it's by the New York Times. And you were talking about how there'd been a seismic life event just pre-publication of Love Warrior, which we talked about in the introduction. And you said, "I'm kind of scared about the publication of Untamed because something big usually happens." And there you have it. There's a global pandemic.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Now we know whose fault it is.

• 7:23Elizabeth Day?

  Exactly.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  It's my fault. I dared to release another thing. Yeah, I know. It's so unreal. And that's another way we're all pioneers right now, right? We have no idea what the after is gonna look like. And so we're all just waiting to see, yeah, what this new world will become.

• 7:42Elizabeth Day?

  What was that like for you? Because I know that there was a big promotional tour planned. You were going to come to London with your sister for the first time. What was it like for you to have to reset those expectations?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  It was really sad, actually. I was on the road on a tour that my amazing team had been planning for over a year. Was going to have events all over the country and outside of the country was coming to you for the first time. We were so thrilled. And sometimes when you have a new project or thing in the world, you kind of think your thing is the most important thing in the world. And so that's how I was feeling. This was early on, it was before any of the stay at home orders started coming for America, but we just started reading stories about this weird thing that was happening. And one night in the hotel room, I was with my team and I was feeling sorry for myself.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  And I was saying, oh, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever created, Untamed. And now look what's happening. It was Abby, actually, who said, no, no, no, this isn't the most beautiful thing you've ever created. The most beautiful thing you've created in your career is this community of women who are going to show up at these places that you're asking them to, and we might be putting them at risk. So it was this cool, annoying moment where things became very clear that the right thing to do was to cancel and switch from promotion to service. That's what my team kept saying to each other. Okay, just switch to service, switch to service, which for us meant doubling down on Together Rising,

• 9:21Speaker 01

  you know, just serving the people who were writing to us that have lost so much. And then I just kind of started showing up on my social media feeds, just as a place to have people find community and comfort. And the wild thing is that Untamed did what it needed to do anyway.

• 9:39Elizabeth Day?

  Isn't that amazing?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  It's just amazing.

• 9:41Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah. And talk to me a little bit about how you wrote Untamed, because it has a structureless structure in a way that is unlike anything I've ever read and is a very, very brave thing to do. So it's not a memoir in the traditional linear chronological sense. You mash it all up and it works. But I know that you had a process to get to that point. Explain to us what happened.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Well, speaking of failure, here's how to fail with the first draft of a book. So I wrote Untamed twice, okay? I wrote Untamed, I think maybe for a year I was working on it. And I knew I wanted to write a book about this kind of returning to ourselves, this way that after we're born, we have this wild in us, but the world has to assimilate us into categories. And that categorizing of ourselves and the conditioning that comes along with growing up makes us feel caged and then we lose ourselves. And I wanted to write a book about how to get back to that wild. And so I set out to write many boring essays about that subject.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Okay? And listen, I knew when I was writing that I wasn't getting to the it of it. I knew it, I knew it kind of sucked, okay? I knew it was dry, but I was kind of hoping that no one would notice.

• 11:04Elizabeth Day?

  I've done that so many times.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  So my dear friend, maybe they'll let me by with this one, you know? And so one weekend, my dear friend Elizabeth Gilbert came to stay with me and Abby. And one night she said, okay, just read to me what you've got. And she was laying on my couch, and I'll never forget it, because I started reading her these essays. Now, as I'm reading, I know what Liz is gonna say. But I'm watching her, Elizabeth, and she is literally sinking deeper and deeper into my couch, as if she's slowly dying, okay? Now, I think, okay, she looks like she's dying, but she's not actually dying. I stop reading and she says these words to me.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  "Glennon, when you tell me stories, I come to life. When you read me essays, I slowly die."

• 11:56Elizabeth Day?

  Wow.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so she's subtle, this Liz, she's very subtle. And Elizabeth, I just wanted to just, I knew it, I knew it. I mean, look, I'm used to a lot of feedback, and there's probably only a handful of people that I trust with their feedback deeply, right? But the reason I trusted her feedback is because it's something I already knew deep inside, right? And so what we got to after I cried, because there's nothing like throwing away a year's worth of work, is that I was writing a book about how to break out of existing structures inside of an existing structure of writing.

• 12:38Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Okay, so I was trying to write a book about wildness with no wildness at all. What we figured out is that, you know, we started with that Tabitha story about the cheetah running. And I just looked at Liz and said, I need to write this like a cheetah running. So when the reader reads it, it feels like she's reading it with her body, with her toes, with all of her. I need to bring wildness to the medium. It can't just be the message, it has to also be the medium. Right? So Liz left and I started over. And what I realized is, I think as writers, we do this a lot, we're writing about the thing instead of writing the thing.

• 13:19Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, totally, totally. And the story of the cheetah is what you open the book with. And it's about how you went with your daughter to see this caged cheetah who was allowed out to chase a horrible like pink rabbit toy. But you got the sense, you saw the cheetah skulking around the perimeters, and you got the sense that this cheetah was desperate to be, as you put it, a motherfucking cheetah.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Yes, fight. It was this moment, Elizabeth, where I watched this cheetah who had been tamed. So the the cheetah had been raised alongside a lab. Okay. And this is how the zookeeper explained that they tamed the cheetah. They raised her alongside this lab so that the cheetah would think she was a lab, would behave like a lab, would chase pink bunnies like a lab. Right? And I kept looking at this cheetah, this magnificent, majestic, all powerful animal, thinking, oh, my God, if a cheetah can be tamed to forget who she is, so can a woman, right? That's how I felt. Like, I felt like my whole life had been spent

• 14:25Speaker 01

  chasing dirty pink bunnies, like, just chasing these stupid ass ideals that our culture gives women about being perfect and being pretty and being sexy and being accommodating and being pleasing. And the hustle to chase these things I never even wanted had left me exhausted and overwhelmed and underwhelmed and completely forgetting who I actually was.

• 14:50Elizabeth Day?

  I will talk about your failures in a second, but you talk in Untamed about this thing, the knowing. Will you explain to us what the knowing is?

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Okay, so the knowing, so hard to explain because it is, I think, by definition, beyond words. So when I was in the middle of trying to figure out how I would respond to my ex-husband's infidelity, I was so completely lost for what to do. I did not know what to do. I did everything, Elizabeth, that I thought I was supposed to do to figure out how to know. Okay, I asked every single one of my friends what they would do. I Googled every single article from an expert, from therapists, from ministers, from child psychologists. I read everyone else's opinions about this. I took BuzzFeed quizzes, of course, because

• 15:41Speaker 01

  that's what a wise, a wise woman does, until I found myself at three in the morning, Elizabeth, sitting on my bed, scooping ice cream into my mouth and Googling this sentence, what do I do if my husband is a cheater, but also a really good dad? And as I pressed Enter, I just had one of those out of body experiences where I understood, okay, this is some kind of rock bottom, okay, that I am Googling my one wild and precious life, that I am asking a bunch of bots and trolls what to do with the most important

• 16:20Speaker 01

  decision of my entire life. And I just sat there and thought, when did I lose myself? When did I start trusting everyone else on earth except besides myself? I didn't even know, Elizabeth, like, I didn't even know what I wanted for dinner, much less what to do with these big things. And so through a series of experiences, I realized that if I was going to make this decision in a, in a way that was true to myself and not to the rest of the world, in a way that was had to do with my integrity and not people pleasing, that I was going to have to find that self again. And the way that I started

• 17:00Speaker 01

  doing it is that I started quite literally shutting myself into my closet, which now strikes me as so funny, because I have since then come out of the closet in every way, yes. But I needed no distractions and I just forced myself to sit there and try to go inward instead of outward. Because all I knew how to do back then is go outward. And I think there's a very clear reason for that. I think little girls are taught to look outward for permission and consensus and approval instead of inward for wisdom. So just over a period of time, I tried to reverse that process. And over time, I figured out how to dive inward and kind of sense this knowing that, you know, people call

• 17:45Speaker 01

  this knowing, this thing inside that always tells us the truth, different things. Like, some people call it God, some people call it spirit, some call it intuition. My athlete wife calls it her gut instinct. I have a friend who calls it Sebastian because she has some God issues. I think it's unbelievable that we spend so much time on this earth arguing about what to call it.

• 18:06Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  When all that matters is that we tell people how to call it. Right? That it's just this process of diving inward and feeling around for this nudge, this directional pull that always kind of guides me towards the next right thing. And I just started living my life that way, just in every moment of uncertainty, resisting the urge to look outward and instead turn inward and feel for that next right thing. And I figured out that while it's a scary way to live, because it will never give you a five year plan this knowing, it does seem to consistently nudge me toward the next right thing, one thing at a time. And it becomes like this yellow brick road,

• 18:49Speaker 01

  where you can find your way home, just through the next right thing, one thing at a time.

• 18:53Elizabeth Day?

  It's so beautiful, then, that when you saw Abby, there was this knowing instantly, there she is. That's how you write about it in the book, that that's this inner voice came to you, there she is. And it's such an interesting thing, because it does bring us on to your first failure. And I'm super interested that you've chosen this as a failure, because you said, breaking up my family is a failure. Explain to us why you feel that, because it feels to me, from the little I know about you and what I've read about you, that actually, it's turned out to be a really beautiful thing, the family that you formed through this honesty.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, everything that is beautiful about me in my life, the world told me was a failure at first.

• 19:40Elizabeth Day?

  Wow.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  All of the things. I have failed to have a perfect family with a man and a woman that live happily ever after. I have failed to be a perfect, quiet woman. All of the things that the world has told me. I have failed to keep a faith that has to do with not asking any questions and toeing the line, right? Everything that I was told about how to succeed in every different area of my life, I have failed at, and that's why I'm happy.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  So, yes, from this perspective of where I am, I can look back and see that breaking up my family was not at all an ultimate failure. But Elizabeth, when I was going through it, every minute and day felt like a failure because I was just tamed, you know, not just as a woman, but as a mother, as a woman of faith, whatever that means, as of all of these different roles, I just understood in my bones, whether it was told to me directly or just came to me through osmosis or example, that my goal, my version of success was to marry and to remain married.

• 20:57Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  That a successful marriage was one that lasts forever, regardless, regardless of even if the people are dying inside.

• 21:06Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Success is togetherness, failure is apartness when it comes to marriage. And I was also taught that a good mother, that a successful mother does not break up her family, right? Regardless of what that family is, you know, it matters how it appears, not how it is. So deciding that that was okay, that I would embrace that failure in order to fully live, which it really did feel that dire to me. I was in a broken marriage to a good man. And that is a really hard place for a woman to be because we are trained to just be grateful for good enough. Right? And so I was just living and trying so hard

• 21:48Speaker 01

  and Craig was trying so hard and we were both doing all of the things that any couple can be expected to do in the wake of infidelity. I mean, he worked his ass off, I worked my ass off and we both just waited for this forgiveness thing to fall upon us from the skies, like as a reward for our hard work. Right? And we had our moments where it felt like, okay, but the truth is that I, on the inside, was always angry. I just had this like low level river of rage.

• 22:19Elizabeth Day?

  And did you, sorry to interrupt, but did you feel it as anger at the time? Or did it manifest as a more socially acceptable emotion?

• 22:29Speaker 01

  No, I felt it as anger. I don't think I always expressed it as anger, but I felt it. I mean, when you asked that question, I immediately came to mind, just kind of sitting on the couch, looking at Craig, knowing that he was doing everything he could do and still just feeling fiery hot rage. And there was nothing I could do about it, you know, just was there. Because you can add shame on top of your feeling if you want to. Like, you can tell yourself, I shouldn't feel this way. I should be grateful he's doing everything he can do. But layering shame on top of an emotion doesn't change the emotion. It just makes it worse.

• 23:08Elizabeth Day?

  Glennon, so much of this is speaking my language. So I also got divorced. And I think that not one moment went by that I didn't feel like that was a failure. And yet, it was absolutely the right thing. And I just think that that's such a profound thing for you to have explained there, that there is all of this sense of social disapproval, and yet you still need to do it. But the way that you talk about, and I know I say Craig because I've got an English accent, but it's Craig in American, isn't it? So I'm sorry about that. But the way that you talk about your ex in Untamed is so full of grace. And it feels like there's a lot of grace on both sides. Was that something that you had to work on?

• 23:52Elizabeth Day?

  Or was it there from the offing when you told him that you'd met Abby and what was happening?

• 23:57Speaker 01

  No, it wasn't always there. I mean, I think perspective and time has brought some of that. I also think that, you know, the first time I felt real forgiveness with Craig was when we were in the elevator after we finished our divorce mediation. And I think that's so interesting. I just looked at him and for the first time felt true tenderness, like true friendship. And I felt safe, maybe. I think this is what it was for me. I think I was expecting forgiveness to fall from the sky, like it was something that would just happen. It didn't. And I kept thinking, you know, this refrain in my head, how could he abandon me like this?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  How could he abandon me like this? And what I realized over time was what I should have been asking myself is how can you abandon yourself like this, Glennon? You know that you don't feel safe. And the reason you're angry is you have not restored the boundaries you need to make yourself feel safe. Right? I needed to figure out a way to forgive the father of my children. And what I needed to do to forgive the father of my children was divorce him. Because that is when I felt safe again. Because I had restored the boundaries. I had honored myself, my own feelings. And what you said about it being, and I think that's so important. I think that I still, Elizabeth, I mean, I have three kids. And yesterday I had to pack them up, as I have to do every single week.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  I stopped by the foyer and all their little bags are in the foyer and their little shoes. And I just look at that every time and think, kids shouldn't have to do this. This is sad. It aches me. It brings up this ache. And every time I just have to tell myself, things can be very hard and painful and still be exactly right.

• 25:44Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, yes. And you talk about that with your sobriety as well. There's this line in the book, I'm sorry, I keep quoting it, can't help it. Where you talk about, since getting sober, you have not had a single day of feeling fine. Explain what you mean by that.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think of that word fine all the time because that's just our refrain, right? How are you? I'm fine. I'm fine. Like, as if our goal is to be fine. Fine to me feels like a straitjacket. It's like a way of holding your breath so you don't feel too much. It's kind of like half-dead. And I get that because I was trying to be fine for so long. That's what I was doing with all the food and with all the booze and with all the drugs. I was trying to avoid feeling at all. Because I had this idea that I couldn't handle the feeling at all. That if I let myself feel the depths of my pain and my loss and my anger, that it would be like a black hole. That I had to do whatever it took to just keep that straitjacket on.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  So I didn't fall into the abyss of feeling. And I think the difference between that way of life and sobriety for me is really just, after a while in sobriety, you have to commit to feeling at all because you have no escape anymore. And that's the miracle of sobriety because what you find out is you actually can feel the depth of your grief. And you actually can feel the depth of your anger and you can survive it. I know that sounds so simple. When I say it, I'm like, duh, but.

• 27:13Elizabeth Day?

  It doesn't, it actually sounds really, really difficult. And I think some of the deepest thoughts are most simply expressed. It's society that makes them seem more complicated so that we don't have access to the simple truths. But when I read that line, I was like, oh, yes, that's so true. It's about feeling everything. It's about realizing that life is not a constant quest to be quote unquote happy. It's about feeling lots of different things so that you can understand what happy is when you get there.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Amen. I mean, that is one of the gaslighting of our entire world is this idea that being human is about being happy all the time. I think it's actually like from marketers. I mean, it's just incessant.

• 27:54Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  And that is not it. The point of being human is not to feel happy, it's to feel everything.

• 28:01Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Right? And we have to, I think, talk more about it. We have to teach children how to feel it all. One of the life shifting moments of my life was I went to my fifth sobriety meeting and I just, Elizabeth, beginning early sobriety is just a nightmare. I mean, and it's kind of a double nightmare because you become sober because you think after a while, your life is such shit and you've ruined everyone's life around you, right? When you get far enough into addiction. And so everyone speaks sobriety to you like it's some promised land, right? And then you get there and it's a nightmare. It's like, all I could think of every day was, oh yeah, this is why I started drinking, right?

• 28:45Speaker 01

  This is awful because it's like you're recovering from frostbite. Everything hurts so much. And so I went to my fifth meeting and I finally stood up to speak and I said, my name is Glennon and I feel awful. And I just have this hunch that everyone on earth has the secret to life that I never learned because I feel like life is harder for me than it is for everyone else. Thank you, that's all. And this woman came up to me afterwards. And I'll never forget her. She sat down next to me and she said, "Honey, I have to tell you something that someone told me in early sobriety." And that is this. If there's a secret to life,

• 29:27Speaker 01

  it's that life is hardest when you're doing it right. You're just finally doing it right. You're finally feeling all of your feelings. And that's really hard, which is why so few people do it. But I promise you that all feelings are for feeling, even the hard ones. And I'm telling you, Elizabeth, I know that also sounds simple, but I was like, what?

• 29:52Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  I thought I was supposed to be grateful and sweet and happy all the time, right?

• 29:59Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  It was life shifting for me.

• 30:04Elizabeth Day?

  And how did that realization affect how you parented your children in the aftermath of your first marital breakup?

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Well, the way my life actually works is I say these wise things on podcasts and then I promptly forget everything in my real life. Okay? So what I learned and know in my head is that all feelings are for feeling. And that beautiful people are not made through lack of pain and lack of struggle. That beautiful people are made from overcoming and overcoming. What that looked like in my parenting is I will protect my children from all pain forever. That they will never feel anything, that no raindrop will fall on top of their head, right? This is none of my spiritual knowledge translated to my real life. Okay?

• 31:00Speaker 01

  So when I fell in love with Abby, even with all of the pain in my marriage, I initially decided that I would stay in my marriage. And I could give a lot of reasons for that, but mostly it was just that I felt that I could not hurt my children in that particular way. And then one day I was braiding my daughter Tisha's hair. And I looked at her and I realized, oh my God, I am staying in this marriage for her. But would I want this marriage for her?

• 31:34Speaker 01

  And if I would not want this marriage for her, then why am I modeling bad love and calling that good mothering?

• 31:42Elizabeth Day?

  Wow.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Right? And Elizabeth, the answer is simple. It's the same as every other message given to women. It's because through osmosis, through modeling, through overt messages, I was tamed into believing that a mother is a martyr. Right? The good mothering is about slowly burying yourself.

• 32:03Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Your dreams, your emotion, your personality, your ambition, your desires, and doing that in the name of your children, which is so ridiculous, right? It's such a burden and it's such a terrible legacy to pass on to our children. Right? Because then they too believe that they have to become martyrs to prove their love, and it never ends. It's why Carl Jung said, "The greatest burden that a child can bury is the unlived life of her parent."

• 32:33Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  So yeah, eventually I just decided, okay, I just have to reject these cultural messages of goodness. You know, we all want to be good. That's because we are good. It's just that we have to define what good means for ourselves. Because if we default to the cultural messages of good for women, those messages will always tell us, in one way or another, disappear. So I decided for myself that what I wanted to be for my children, I don't want to slowly die for them. I wanted to show them how to bravely live. Right? I wanted to be a model, not a martyr. And I decided that what that meant is that my children will only allow themselves to live as fully as I give myself permission to live. So that means just trying to resist settling

• 33:20Speaker 01

  for any relationship, institution, et cetera, that is less true and beautiful than the one I would want for my children.

• 33:38Elizabeth Day?

  You talk as well about the island of your family. And it's funny because you're friends with heroes of mine. So the idea of you, Brené Brown, and Liz Gilbert all sitting around for dinner is enough to make me orgasm. I'm like, I want to be there.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Best sentence ever.

• 34:00Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah. You were on Brené Brown's amazing new podcast recently and you told the story of the island. And I think it's so interesting that you were talking to her about it because she's been so influential for me in terms of setting boundaries and how setting a boundary is not a negative thing. But we as women have been taught that it is. We've been taught that it's selfish and self indulgent and somehow unfriendly. But tell us about the island when it came to something your mother said about your new family setup.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. First of all, telling women not to have boundaries, the same same, right? It's just another way to say the good woman disappears. Don't have needs, don't have expectations, because that's all that boundaries are, is just saying, I have needs.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  But the thing about boundaries is that they're my best friend. The great loves of my life are Abby, the children, coffee and boundaries. But the interesting thing about boundaries is that they are harder to hold with people that we deeply love. When I first told my parents about me and Abby, my mom was scared to death. Okay. My mom and I are best friends, just completely codependent. Okay. We talk six times a day. Most of that I don't want to change. But she was so afraid and I could hear her fear in every conversation and every question. It was just, you know, what will the world think? How will the kids' friends

• 35:25Speaker 01

  treat them? What will the internet say? Just all this fear. Because mothers sometimes think that worrying is the same thing as love. It's not. But I fall into that trap too sometimes. So I found myself getting really defensive every time I talked to my mom, just like becoming seven years old again, you know, just incessantly explaining why I was allowed to do what I wanted, why I was okay. Because I don't think that it's the hatred from enemies that shakes us from our knowing. I think it's the quiet concern of those that love us. That's what's the hardest. And one day I was talking to my mom and I heard her say, "Your dad and I are coming to visit next week."

• 36:07Speaker 01

  And I heard myself say, "No, you can't come here because you are still afraid. And I can't let you bring your fear to my children because they are not afraid." Right? I taught them, they were raised to know that love in every form should be celebrated and that it is best to be yourself and let the world catch up. But if you come and you bring your fear to our home, they will see it in your eyes and they will help you carry it because they love and trust you. So I have to tell you this really hard thing, Mom, which is that your fear is not my family's problem. And my job as the mother here is to make sure it never becomes their problem.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  So go figure out your problem. And when you are ready to come to the island of our family with nothing but love and celebration, we will lower the drop bridge for you, but not one second sooner. And that was, out of all of the tellings, out of all of the telling the world about me and Abby, that was the moment, Elizabeth, that I became an adult.

• 37:17Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, just hearing you talk about it, I would find that so terrifying, Abby, to do. Isn't that stupid? That it's just, that's the thing that terrifies us.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  No, it's not stupid. It's universal. I know some of the fiercest activists in the world, they get up on podiums in front of thousands of people, they say the things, they preach liberty and freedom, they know it, and then they come home and they cry about their moms.

• 37:39Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  It feels like the ultimate untaming. It's just a reframing. It's like, of course, the best way to honor our parents is to trustfully the women they raised. Right? And of course, if we're not doing anything they don't understand, we are not living into our place in, in the world because we live in different worlds. Our parents were conditioned and programmed in a different world. Right? And they had us for the future. It reminds me of that Khalil Gibran poem that's so beautiful on children that says, "Your children are not your children. They are life's longing for itself." It's like we are, if we're not doing anything that our parents don't fully understand, we're not doing it right.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  And the terrible part of that is that if our children are eventually not doing anything that we don't understand, they're not living into their place.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Right? And so eventually, we will have to allow them to make their own islands and, and hopefully just approach them with nothing but love and celebration so that they will lower the drawbridge for us.

• 38:42Elizabeth Day?

  How did your mother take it?

• 38:44Speaker 01

  At first, on that phone call, she said, "I hear you and I will think about what you've said." I had the miraculous situation where my mother, now Elizabeth, for sure Abby is her favorite daughter, and she has two other ones. Okay? She has been to now more gay pride parades than we have. She is for certain the fiercest activist of our family. She works to plan trans remembrance ceremonies. She goes to every activist meeting in her town. She, something about watching me own myself. I just think that really, at the heart of it, people that love us just want us to be okay. Right?

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Her fear was her desperation for my okayness. And it turns out that the only way we can convince people we are okay is to just go about being okay. And so her watching me trust myself, watching us walk through the pain, but watching my family come out the other side truer and more beautiful than we've ever been, it's like that thing where you see a cheetah and it makes you return to your cheetah. Right? She needed to watch me untame myself so that she could do the same thing. And yeah, it's been so beautiful. But I know a lot of people who don't get that miracle. Right? And that doesn't mean that it wasn't the right thing to do.

• 40:05Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah. Oh my gosh, I feel like this might be the longest podcast of all history. I'm sorry.

• 40:12Elizabeth Day?

  I am, it's imagine me, because we're recording this remotely, obviously because of lockdown. But imagine me sitting at your feet, just raising my face up to you to imbibe your pearls of wisdom, because that's what it feels like. But your second failure, and I'm so glad you chose this one, because I think a lot of people who listen to this can relate, myself included, is your failure to build up thick skin.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Oh, Lord have mercy, Elizabeth.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I have failed to do whatever that thing is that they tell you to do, which is, what is it, keep a soft heart but thick skin? Like, I don't know what that means. I just, I want things to mean things. And I don't understand that. It just feels like this easy thing to throw out that for me has been impossible to do. All the things you're supposed to do as an artist or a public person, I don't do. You're not supposed to read your comments. I read every single comment because, because I've created a community, because I've been reading comments from my community for 10 years, right? Long before any of this, like, bigness happened.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  It's because it's like breathing to me. It's like I say things, offer something on social media, and then I inhale, that's like the exhale, and then I inhale from what people say back. Like, it's a sharing thing. And because of that, I have to see some mean things. And I can't say it never gets easier, because it does get a little bit easier. But it is supremely difficult, and by that I mean impossible, to be an artist whose entire being is about staying sensitive, right? That's what an artist has to do, is stay sensitive to the world so that you can notice things, so you can see things, you can hear things, so you can feel things.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  And also be insensitive to feedback. That's not how it works for me. And I've learned that that is another thing that I can survive. Right, that I've had moments where I've done things on social media, said things that have hurt people. So I've had moments where I just have had utter public failures. And what that looks like for me is not like a dusting off of it and a carrying on. It's usually like a couple of days of the fetal position. Right, it's like a process that is slow and painful every time. And even though there's a part of me that knows, oh, look, you're Glennon, look at you. You're in the time where you think that everyone will hate you forever and your life is over.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  I can see the process, but that doesn't make it hurt any less tragically. So yeah, I guess that is, I have learned that I'm just gonna have to live that way the whole time.

• 42:53Elizabeth Day?

  You said it had got easier in some respects. How has it got easier to deal with?

• 43:00Speaker 01

  Okay, so I think because I have been through it enough times. So I know that it won't kill me. Right, it's like that thing about feeling your feelings. When you realize after a time that you know that there's a process you're going through. So for me, the process looks like, first of all, if I read horrible feedback or someone hates me. First of all, I spend a little bit of time deciding that I am right and this person is wrong. And that they are terrible people and that everyone is always out to get me. And that no one understands me. So I have a good section of self pity like a three year old. Okay. And then it starts to feel a little bit just like exhaustion. Like I just need to go to sleep. Right.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  And then if I stay with it long enough. And let me be clear, Elizabeth, that here I'm talking about true feedback. Okay, like when people tell me all of the things that they tell women, like most of my feedback can be sorted into four categories. The first one is it's about my appearance. Okay, if you're a woman who's gonna show up in the world in any way. Women are taught to define their worthiness by their appearance. So first they'll say a million things like that. You're too ugly. You're too pretty, you're too fat, you're too thin, you're too old, you're too young, you're too botoxed, you're not botoxed enough, your hair's too, like, it's just, it's never ending. Okay, I just thought of this one thing that I have to tell you, I've never told you before. I've never told anyone before. So one of my friends, and by the way, don't do this,

• 44:27Speaker 01

  don't send your friends terrible things that internet says about them, okay? This, but this is what one of my friends did. She sent me this freaking, I don't know if it was an article or something, but it was a picture of me on my wedding day. And someone had zoomed in to my armpit. And the commentary was about how gross my armpits were. Okay, so I tell you the story, Elizabeth, just to tell the audience, you cannot win, okay? If you want to spend your life perfecting every inch on your body, including your armpit, they will still find a way, okay? So the category of appearance, that's junk mail to me, I don't pay attention to it at all. The second category, I have feedback I reject completely, is anything about my relationships.

• 45:13Elizabeth Day?

  Okay.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Okay, women are also told that their worthiness lies in their standing in their relationships to other people. So incessant messages about how I'm a bad wife, about how I couldn't hold a marriage together, about how I have no friends, about how I'm a bad mom, they'll definitely get you with bad mom. So as a woman out in the world, you can listen to none of that. Okay, when you receive ridiculous feedback about your relationships, you do not ask yourself, is this true? Okay, you ask yourself, is this feedback from a person that I'm in a relationship with?

• 45:47Elizabeth Day?

  Nice, yes.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  So you only take feedback about your relationships from people with whom you are in actual relationship.

• 45:55Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, I'm literally noting this down, by the way.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. No, it's so great, Elizabeth. I tell this to anybody who will, my friends, anybody who will listen to me when they decide to put their voice out in the world, because when you know what's coming, it's easier to sort, right? It's easier to know what to reject. The third category will be about your personality. You will be too, oh god, I don't know, too loud, too quiet, too know-it-all, too ditzy, just all of the things that have to do with your personality that don't have to do with your work. Because you see what's happening here, when a man puts his work out in the world, the world tends to say, is his work worthy? But when a woman puts her work out into the world, the world tends to say, wait a minute, is she worthy of putting work out into the world?

• 46:41Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, totally.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Okay, so the work is lost. None of the feedbacks, even about the freaking work, it's about you. How dare you put your work out into the world? So first, we will pick you apart and just see if you're even worthy. It will not be about your work. So third category is your personality. Reject it, take none of it. Which leaves you with this last category. This is really important. This is the feedback that's actually about your work. Okay, so one mistake I believe women can make is to reject all of it.

• 47:14Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Okay, you have to reject 80% for sure. You have to reject 80% of your feedback in those other categories. But you also have to be brave enough to bring inside that feedback that is actually about your work. Right, that will make you better.

• 47:29Elizabeth Day?

  And do you take that feedback about your work from anyone? So from someone?

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 47:35Elizabeth Day?

  You don't know? Okay, good.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Hell to the no. No, believe it or not, that section is also divided up.

• 47:43Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, subsections.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  Right, now, some people would say, like my dear brilliant sage friend Brené would say, only take advice from like your five people that you trust with your whole heart. I think she writes them down on an index card. I have a different situation because I have received criticism, mostly it's about my activism, by the way. Art is art, so like, if you don't like it, just find another artist. Like, I don't know, I'm not going to change my art for everyone. Like, everyone orders different things on the menu, right? But in terms of activism, being a white woman, speaking about injustice in the world, the feedback people give me about my activism is crucial. It's painful and crucial. And it often points out huge blind spots that I have.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  It often points out privilege that I have. It points out inherent racism that I have because of the way I was raised in this culture. It is painful, right? And if I can't take that stuff, then I'm not worthy of the title activist. So what I would say is, in that category, I don't judge it by whether it's a friend or a stranger, but first, I do judge it by whether it's mean-spirited or not. And this might be different for different artists and activists, but I do not take advice or feedback or criticism from anyone who's treating me poorly in the criticism. I feel very strongly that I'm a grown-ass woman, and if you don't know how to communicate with me, I'm certainly not going to take your advice about communication, right?

• 49:14Speaker 01

  So the reason why I don't internalize feedback from people who are being mean to me is because I don't have to, because I'm the boss of my own life, and I just don't have to. And how do you judge that? You just know. Everybody knows. You can read something that someone's written to you, and you can tell in a minute whether it feels nasty or feels like it's coming from a real, true place, from a person who is, I'm not saying is kissing your ass at all. I'm just saying that you can tell when communication is direct or when it's nasty, right? So I dismiss all nastiness. I am the judge of that, and I don't explain myself. And then the ones that I can feel are delivered with respect.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  I can usually tell because they hurt in a different way. They hurt not in a mean way, they hurt in a true way. Like, you know, when someone says something? It's like in the very beginning when Liz was like, "This sucks." And I was like, "You are correct. This does suck. This is painful, but I already knew that," you know? So I would say that truly, of course, there are no real numbers here, but Elizabeth, out of 100 pieces of feedback that I get, I'd say four of them I will allow into my heart and head and work.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  Two Girls, One Ghost. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. Where each week, we dive into all things strange, spooky and supernatural, and share stories of paranormal encounters from our community of listeners. Satisfy that spooky itch and entertain your inner witch with Two Girls, One Ghost. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and check us out on YouTube at Two Girls, One Ghost. But be warned, side effects might include a haunting or two. Listen at your own risk.

• 51:04Speaker 03

  Shelley Jensen was about to retire early after selling her veterinary practice for millions, but a moment of vulnerability became a way to take away her rights.

• 51:15Elizabeth Day?

  Don't you see how destroyed I am as a person?

• 51:18Speaker 03

  Her husband fought to save her before Shelley lost her freedom forever.

• 51:23Speaker 04

  This is a life or death matter. My wife's life is at stake.

• 51:27Speaker 03

  From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, this is Free Shelley Jensen. Available now on The Binge.

• 51:38Elizabeth Day?

  Another thing that I know you have talked about in the past, which I find super interesting, so as well as this podcast, I wrote a book called How to Fail, in which I

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 51:48Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, you're so lovely. In which I detailed some of my own failures. And one of the most mean spirited, to use a word, reviews that I ever had about that seemed to be complaining that I hadn't failed enough and I hadn't suffered enough. And I feel that there's such a thing, I mean, I know that you and I speak from a position of great privilege and that we're white women and we have a roof over our heads. But there does seem to be a thing where women aren't allowed a public voice unless they've really suffered. And I don't know who gets to decide that.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  And what does that mean?

• 52:19Elizabeth Day?

  Exactly.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's the suffering Olympics. We are all competing in the suffering Olympics and only gold medalists are allowed to speak.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  To me, that's one of those and both things. I hear that kind of feedback a lot and I understand it. I get it. I get how a woman who was raised in my country under completely different circumstances. My parents were both public school teachers. So we had enough money to have the things we needed, which gave me all kinds of opportunity. It gave me therapy. It gave me medicine that I needed. They had the skills to help me get into college, even though I was kind of a crappy student. They knew how to help me fill out forms. They were part of the educational system. I had people to fall back on when I failed dramatically.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  When my addiction took over to the point where I couldn't function on my own. I had people there who had resources to help me. So I really can understand how it would feel to look at that situation from outside and feel a certain way about it. And yet, I will never, ever let it stop me from speaking my truth about my life. So I just think that there are things in the world that we don't have to be either or about.

• 53:40Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Right? That we can say, I see that. I acknowledge that. And yet, I will continue. And also, you continue in a way that takes that into account. So you integrate that. You integrate that into your work in a way. That's why it was so important to me to make much of Untamed. So much of this work is about, yes, freeing yourself, but then also turning around and seeing in what ways you were freer than people who are standing right next to you.

• 54:09Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Right? It's like bringing that knowledge of people's different perspective into your work in ways that make you feel fiercer and not more afraid.

• 54:20Elizabeth Day?

  Amazing. I mean, that's another lie that we're told is that we have to be competitive with each other as women. And actually, I think what your work is so good at doing is showing that a rising tide raises all boats, particularly if you come from a marginalized experience.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Oh, first of all, we can be forgiven for that. I mean, whenever people are like, oh, I just, I'm a guys girl. I don't like women. First of all, I want to call 911. Okay? I want to call freaking 911 when I hear that. It makes me sweat. When people say that.

• 54:50Elizabeth Day?

  You said that, yeah.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 54:52Elizabeth Day?

  Hate it so much.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  I know, I know, but I get it too. I can understand because, you know, some people feel like, I've experienced this, you know, why are women such backstabbers? Why do we fight each other? Why, why, why? And I mean, the answer is that there's a why. The why is because if you experience life as a table, right? And there's 10 seats at that table. And at every single table, eight of those seats are for men and two are for women. You are going to over time be conditioned to fight other women for those two seats. Right? Why are guys more relaxed? Why can they work better together? Because they have eight fucking chairs.

• 55:32Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  Okay. Right? It's like, super simple, this idea of scarcity has, we've been tamed into it, right? It's been planted in us and among us. I don't know, the women that I work alongside with and work with, it's not that we don't feel that. I think it's important to admit that you feel that as a knee jerk reaction. I still, Elizabeth, after all of my decades long resistance of that and working to lift up other women, and I still can feel that knee jerk reaction of, oh, my God, she got that, that's less for me. Oh, my God, she got that, like.

• 56:05Elizabeth Day?

  Wow.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Right?

• 56:05Elizabeth Day?

  I'm so glad you're saying this because I feel that and I feel so ashamed that I feel that sometimes.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Yep, we all do. There's only two kinds of women, the ones who feel that way and the ones who are like.

• 56:19Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  We all feel that way. Because of our conditioning, like, we feel that way. And part of my work is to just not settle on that knee jerk reaction. I really think that what our knee jerk reaction is, is our conditioning. It's not our truest self, right? So when we can question that knee jerk reaction and remind ourselves, this is the part where you think that there's, you know, only a little bit in the world and she's gonna get the thing that you were meant for and everyone's gonna forget about you forever. Okay, take a second there. And then we move on. And the way that I have learned to move on is I just think that that feeling of scarcity, what it usually is when I look deeper is it's admiration. It's like admiration that's holding its breath.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Right? And what I have figured out is the way this manifests for me is I will read something amazing that a woman wrote, or something amazing that a woman made. And part of me will go, I wish I wrote that. I wish I made that. I wish I was getting the attention she's getting for this. Okay, yada, yada.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  What solves that for me, I'd say 90% of the time, is I either reach out to that woman and tell her what the thing meant to me. Or if she's out of reach and I can't do that, I share the thing that she made with my people. Okay? That is scary for me because mostly I'm thinking, but I just want my people to think I'm smarter than this person. Like, it's never ending. Okay? But what that does is it moves me from this feeling that I can only describe as like this tightness, this restrictiveness, this breath holding, to this like wider place of like abundance and there is enough room for all of us. And we create the abundance.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  It's not just there. Like, we have to create it. And every time we share something beautiful that another woman has done, or told her that the thing she made is beautiful, or we actually create that abundance that we so wish were true.

• 58:18Elizabeth Day?

  What about if someone creates something that you don't think is that good, but it's getting loads and loads of attention?

• 58:23Speaker 01

  Well, then you just secretly hate them. Okay, Elizabeth, that's what you do.

• 58:29Elizabeth Day?

  You have to be like that in your life. Just make me feel better.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:33Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, good.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  And I am sure that, you know, soon I'm going to become just evolved enough to also feel expansive about those particular people. Probably like next Tuesday, I think. I'm just gonna nail that. But I do have a few of those, sister. I sure do. And I talk to no one about those people except my sister and my wife.

• 58:54Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, well, tell me when you've evolved to a place of total enlightenment and then help come back.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Next Tuesday.

• 59:00Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, come back on Wednesday and tell me how to do it.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 59:03Elizabeth Day?

  Your final failure is about your failure to love and trust your body. And you wrote in this email to me, even after all these oh, so many years and therapists and books. So, yeah, I mean, clearly, it's a historical issue for you because as a child, you were a very beautiful child, and yet it seems to me that you didn't believe it inside.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Well, I think I did believe it when I was really little. And then every girl turns 12 and everything goes to hell.

• 59:32Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  I think when you are taught that your existence and worthiness are based on your prettiness and then you lose it, it's devastating. Whatever you're taught your worthiness is based on, if it's not just your existence, it's going to cause trauma in your life. So, yeah, I don't know. I know that this message about you have to stay small, it's like I've freed myself in so many areas of that, you know? I don't anymore believe that my voice has to stay small. I don't believe that my ambition has to stay small. But I have been thus far unable to get the memo about my body not having to stay small to really settle into my bones. And there are times in my life where it gets better and I feel freer and stronger and

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  then it gets worse. And I think that maybe right now, it's feeling really heavy because the more out of control things tend to get, the more I find myself obsessing about controlling my body. So I'm on kind of like a long time here where, you know, I was preparing for the book tour and I was going to have to go out into the world and be super vulnerable for a long time. And that always makes me, we call it get weird in my family, like I'm getting weird, which is like I'm thinking too much, sort of a compulsive thinking.

• 1:00:50Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  I think like from the outside, it might look like I'm kind of normal in my eating and my exercise, but from the inside, it feels like kind of constantly being harassed by this incessant reminder that you need to worry about your food and your body. And it's like this prank caller that's coming from inside the house all the time. And so I don't know, my hope is that at some point I will be able to truly love my body. And by the way, that doesn't mean to me anything that has to do with shape. Okay, I'm talking about like a deeper love that has to do with letting go of control. You know, I think control is the opposite of love.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  I used to think that I could control people and love people at the same time, but now I know I can't because love implies trust and we only control things and people that we don't trust. So my wish for myself is that I will get to the point where I love my body, meaning that I trust it enough to just feed it, move it and let it be whatever it is supposed to be.

• 1:02:00Elizabeth Day?

  And what is your greatest fear? If you don't do those things and if you don't exercise and you don't eat properly, what are you most scared of that will happen to your body?

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Such a good question. I don't know. I guess that it just gets out of control. I mean, this idea of control has been a theme of my life. I've learned it in my marriage, you know, my second marriage, I'm doing so differently than my first. I think I tried to control every aspect of my first marriage. I would have just called myself a leader. Okay, okay, but when I married Abby, one day she said, I was doing my controlling thing where I think that no one notices, but I'm like manipulating things behind the scenes. And she said, you know, when you do that, it makes me so sad because it makes me feel like you don't trust me. And I trust you so much and respect you so much, and I want you to trust and respect me.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  And I was like, damn, I guess I have not really been loving before. Cause I've always been trying to control things behind the scenes. I've never really fully trusted anybody. I thought I had to plan, control, worry my way to everyone's happiness. Like I was earning it.

• 1:03:12Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Right. And so I don't know. All I can tell you is that I have like this control issue with my body, which I know has to do with, it has something to do with like this wider idea of just embracing things falling apart. You know, that term wabi sabi in Japanese culture just means like, just letting things be what they are and decay in the beautiful way that they're supposed to and finding beauty in the un-control.

• 1:03:40Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  It must be enlightenment, which is coming next Tuesday.

• 1:03:47Elizabeth Day?

  I just think that is the message. I mean, we've been talking so much about the cages women are held in and the social conditioning. And I think weight and body image is one of the deepest, most ingrained messages that is so difficult to get rid of. And I relate to exactly what you're saying. And I think for me, the fear of losing control, whatever that means over my body, is the fear of ending up unlovable, which is such a strange thing. But I think it's because I've had a number of intimate relationships have just ended without explanation from nowhere for me. And so a lot of my life was spent trying to mitigate against that in advance. Like if I could be totally perfect, then no one

• 1:04:31Elizabeth Day?

  would ever have an excuse to leave me. And that included how I looked. And it's a very difficult thing to rid yourself of, even though my relationship now, as I'm sure yours is, is with this wonderful, secure person who loves me for the person I am, rather than the shape I come in. I hope. Anyway, better ask.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  Don't ask, don't ask.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Um, that's so freaking beautiful, that it all comes down to lovability. Yeah. And worthiness. And how that really, at the end of the day, it has to do with our own lovability.

• 1:05:05Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Which it's proof, because you know that your person, I mean, dear God, Abby would be so freaking happy if I just eat more burgers with her. Like if I would just, she wants me to be free more than anything, you know? So we know that it really doesn't have, at the end of the day, to do with anybody else. It's about self-love and self-worthiness.

• 1:05:27Elizabeth Day?

  Oh Glennon, I mean, as I said, I could talk to you for weeks on end, but you're going to come back on next Wednesday and just tell me the truth of enlightenment. So it's fine. Do you, do you, Brené Brown and Elizabeth Gilbert ever have dinner, the three of you?

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Oh God, I feel like I haven't had dinner with anybody for a long time. You know what? The three of us have never sat down for dinner together. But I'm going to email them after this happens and tell them that it is now a must.

• 1:05:54Elizabeth Day?

  It's destined. And if that ever happens, please can I come? I don't have to speak.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely.

• 1:05:58Elizabeth Day?

  I won't eat. I'll just like, quiet them in the corner.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  I will, I will add that to the email.

• 1:06:04Elizabeth Day?

  I think you are as close a woman as I know to a guru. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for Untamed, which is a beautiful work. And it's been so brave and honest of you to write it. And I thank you especially for coming on How to Fail and just making my day. Thank you so, so much, Glennon Doyle.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  This conversation has made my day. I have to tell you, I loved every minute of it. You are beautiful and wonderful and thank you for this opportunity.