We Can Do Hard Things: The Podcast We All Need Right Now (and all the days)

Glennon's book Untamed shook me the first time I raced through it. Now, more deliberately, I have read her words slowly over the past nine months. She didn't know it, but she was writing a book that the world needed right now. And the world recognized it right away. 

She then started a podcast with Sister and Abby. There are sometimes guests, sometimes not. She takes cues for topics from us. Those of us who are doing hard things, too. This podcast y'all (and I'm not a podcastery person) is so good. So, so good. 

I was listening to one episode (is that even the term?) a few weeks back and I just wanted to write down every word. That happens a lot with Glennon. 

This week, I opened up my blog to write here for a bit and saw this draft waiting for me. I'm publishing it tonight for anyone that hasn't found Glennon but could benefit from having her in your world. 

From: Forgiving and Finding Peace with Ashley C. Ford, Abby Wambach, Amanda, and Glennon

"I believe loyalty goes both ways. 

In order to engage in a relationship, a friendship that includes loyalty, I have to know that we have the same definition of love and loyalty.

And if I'm honest, the thing that I'm always having to think about when I feel guilty, or the feelings I was conditioned to have, when I start to have those come up I ask myself: If I'm asked to the hide the ways I was hurt because if I talk about it it hurts the other person? Are they making a loving request of me? 

Is that a loving and loyal request to make of somebody who you love? To ask them to suffer in silence with the harm that you caused them so that you will not be potentially harmed by the damage to your image? Does that even sound like somebody who's sorry for what they did? Are they sorry or they do not want other people to know what they did? Are they sorry or do they not want other people to see them the way they are? 

Because you're not making something up when you tell the truth. You're not lying on them. You're not even really exposing them. They exposed themselves when they treated you that way. All you're doing is saying what happened.

And somebody who would ask you to temper your healing, somebody who would ask you to alter your story, somebody who would ask you to suffer in silence is not making a loving request of you.

That's not love. They may love you. And they may think the world of you and they may want to hold onto to you for dear life. But in that moment, they are not doing a loving thing. The action is not matching up with the intention. And it's ok for you to say the action is not matching the intention." 

-- Ashley C. Ford

From: How to Live a Little Happier with Dr. Laurie Santos, Abby Wambach, Amanda, and Glennon

"Many of us have decided at one time or another to sacrifice our happiness for someone else’s happiness – our children, our partner, our parents . . . 

But research shows that a very core mechanism of our emotions is that they are contagious.  

So is it even possible to sacrifice our happiness for someone else’s?  Or are we just passing along to those we love the remnants of our sacrifice: sadness, resentment, the pain of an unlived life?"

-- Glennon Doyle

Start listening. You won't regret it. https://linktr.ee/glennondoyle