Hello, and welcome to Something to Talk About the Stella Podcast. I'm sarah La marquind your host, and every week I sit down with some of the biggest names in the country. Because when celebrities are ready to talk, they come to Something to talk about. It's easy to assume Glennan Doyle has all the answers, but over the past two years her world has been unraveling. In twenty twenty three, in
her late forties, she was diagnosed with anorexia. That same year, her wife, former US soccer champion Abby Wombach, was grieving the sudden loss of her brother, and her sister Amanda, was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was the kind of year when no one could be the strong one.
But it felt like I was drownding, and I looked over at the shore and both of the lifeguards were like passed out.
You may know. Glennon is the author of Untamed, a book that changed or quite ploss saved the lives of millions from her podcast We Can Do Hard Things, which she co hosts with Abbi and Amanda. Now they've turned that space into a book also called We Can Do Hard Things, pulling together insights from over one hundred conversations with people like Elizabeth Gilbert, Esther Perel, t Rana Burke, and Jane Fonder. On today's show, Glennon joins me to talk about being confined to the self help pile.
My books will be in the self help aya. My counterparts, men will be in leadership. Okay. Do you ever hear a man's work described as self help? No? No, no, because men they're good to go.
How to make peace with your body in a world that's always telling women to shrink.
Just get smaller and smaller and fix yourself before you can even approach the world.
Navigating the messy politics in her home country, and how she felt when Avanka Trump recently endorsed one of her books.
We're the first person to ask me about it. I just was stunned.
And before we begin, a note that this conversation discusses disordered eating. If you need support, you can find more information in our show notes. Glenn and Doyle, Welcome to the Stellar Podcast.
Thank you Sarah for having me. I'm delighted to be here.
We can do Hard Things is a book that you have co written with your wife Abby and your sister Amanda, Now of course, the three of you have created a very interconnected creative world. You have books, podcasts and incredibly strong community the pod squad, all anchored in the truth that we can do hard things. And as I say, now you've turned this mantra into a book. It seeks advice to twenty key life questions. And there are a lot of people featured in the book. I believe one
hundred and eighteen spiritual leaders. There are per actors, artists, pop culture icons, just a bit of a role call. Includes Hannah Gadsby, fellow Australian Martha Beck, Elizabeth Gilbert, Esther Perell, Tarana Burke, Alanas Morrissett, Glenn and I have to ask about the logistics of this book. We know it's stella. What it's like wrangling high profile people all to be in the same space, getting people to respond to questions. How on earth did you guys pull this off?
Wow? Thank you. No one's asked me that question and it was very hard. Yes, you know. The beautiful thing is that almost all because some of the passages are actually from texts between that I got from friends, but most of them are from conversations that we had on our podcast and we can do hard things. So the beauty of it was my team would is just four
of us for women. We just over time, the conversations we had on that podcast really changed, rewired us, rewired our minds and hearts and the way we saw the world. And as we poured through those conversations, we just realized people are really talking about the same twenty questions over and over again from their particular slice of life. And the beautiful situation was that we already had all the conversations.
So all I had to do was wrangle all these people and say, how about this incredible, brilliant thing you said be put in print? And most of them were like, great, I sound very smart in that printed. So that part was And these people, I mean, as you can see, the people in this book, the people that we have chosen to have on the podcast are just some of the most heart wide, open minded, justice minded, love minded,
community minded people on the earth. And it just feels like, especially I don't know if you've noticed, but we got a lot going on in this country right now, it really feels like the whole idea of self help and individual optimization has failed us. And so what I'm very proud of is that this book is about collective wisdom. It's about we cannot figure this out by ourselves, that we have to look at the world from as many different perspective as there are people. And I just think
that is the power of the book right now. Why it's resonating so much here is that it's about collective. It's about the collective.
I was going to actually ask you about that, is that, if ever we needed a guidebook for these things, that surely is this moment in time globally, but particularly yes in your home country of the United States.
First of all, it's a nightmare here. It's awful. It's we are seeing our neighbors be rounded up in front of us. I see it with my own eyes all the time. We are I was just in children's immigration court watching two year olds represent themselves in court having been separated from their families. It's it's a nightmare. All of I mean, my family and every LGBTQ family I know is terrified. Parents with trans kids are leaving if they can. It's
a really scary time here. We we actually with the with this book took we took we did a tour, we went, I did not, you know, Sarah, I did not want to do that. That's so much leaving of my house.
That's right, that's airports, that's the that's the whole thing. You've got flight attendants coming up to you saying, we can do hot things.
Yes, literal stages, not just answering my door on actual stages. Okay. But the incredible thing was, I think we have this feeling in the States right now. A lot of media is being suppressed, and so it feels very much like you can feel like the only one who cares, or the only one who's afraid or angry or wishes for
something better. And this tour was so important to me because it was just auditoriums and theaters full of people who were so hopeful and so angry and so united and so beautiful, and that really, I don't know what kind of it just gave. You know, they say, hopelessness is just the feeling that nobody else cares, that you're alone.
And so that tour that we did with that we can do hard things book, I think reinvigorated a lot of us, just reminded us there are still a lot of people here who care and who will not stand for what's going down right now here.
Glennon, just since the issue of Paula has come up on what's going to ask because you have been somebody who has used your platform to advocate for many causes close to your heart, and that also involves speaking out against the Trump administration, particularly during the November twenty twenty four election campaign. Recently, Donald Trump's daughter Avanka Trump posted on Instagram and she's holding your memoir Untamed, which I've already mentioned, And I really wanted to ask you how
that feels. How does the moment like that sit with you.
We are the first person to ask me about it. My team said it to me, and I just kind of looked. I just was stunned. I just didn't process it completely. I can tell you honestly that my best guess is she didn't read it all the way through. There's an entire essay about her dad in it that is about how unbelievable it is that this man is being seen as a leader of what is it supposed to be Christian nationalis. It's an entire essay about that. So I think she probably didn't get all the way through.
But I guess all I can say is. I hope she reads it. I hope she reads it really, really carefully. That's what I'll say about that.
Absolutely, we have spoken about the background of the world and particularly your homeland with the release of We Can Do Hard Things. But it also was created in the backdrop of a very very difficult time for the three of you that co wrote this book. Yourself Glennon had an anorexia diagnosis, your wife Abby had lost her beloved brother, and your wonderful sister Amanda had a breast cancer diagnosis.
That is a lot. I'd love to ask you a little bit of that in terms of, of course of creative process watered on taped for the three of you individually and collectively in creating this work, but also as that close unit. The three of you are so close and going through that sort of very different trauma. At the same time, the people that you rely on are also grappling with stuff.
When you were saying that, I was thinking, you know how you have little friend groups or family groups, or a best friend or somebody. I mean, I hope everybody has somebody, and we kind of depend on the other to like have their shit.
Together a little bit.
When we lose ours like you. Just I have never had a time. My sister and my wife are my people. Those are the ones like I kind of have. I don't know. I think maybe because I depend on the two of them. I don't actually have as many like friends in a wider circle than those two. I depend on those two, probably maybe a little bit too much, but I am used to that one of them being steady, absolutely, And I kind of felt like when I got my
new anarexia diagnosis. And I have been dealing with eating disorder since I was ten, so this is not It was just I felt I felt just actually I felt humiliated. I think embarrassed is the word I felt the most, Just that I could not believe I'm still dealing with this, Like do I have to actually tell people? Do? I just felt like everyone in my life was going to be like get over it. Like that's how I felt.
But it felt like I was drowning. And I looked over at the shore and both of the lifeguards were like passed out. That's how I felt. In the moment, my lifeguards were also having their own moment, and this interesting thing happened than where I don't know if this happens to you. But it feels like a very bad design of life that when trauma comes, that's the time we can't remember anything we know, Like, that's the time we can't call up all the wisdom we've learned about
how to make it through. And that sucks. But I have learned that that actually is what happens in trauma. Trauma causes this little mini dissociation. I used to just think. My family used to call me Dory. I don't know if you know Dory from Nemo, where it's like every day it's just like here, I am brand now, I remember yesterday. Yes, But that is how I felt during that time, like I couldn't access anything I knew about how to make it through hard times. And unfortunately Abby
felt the same way, and so did Amanda. So we were just kind of staring at each other, blinking, and this cool thing happened, which is that I started writing down little sentences or quotes or paragraphs that we had said to each other on the podcast and sending them to my sister to help her through the cancer thing. And it was like some of the things were things
she had said. You know. It's like people would come up to me in the grocery store during that time and say, oh my god, your books help me through so many hard times. And I used to say to them, Sarah, can you remember any of the things I said that helped you?
That I write it to me now.
So then she started writing down things about grief for Abby and we had this little file going around. Abby started writing things down for me about body, and you know how that it became the make how Do I Make Peace with My Body? Chapter? So we kept this kind of file that we were just using as an anchor outside of ourselves. Which is so funny because I've spent my entire life telling people that they have all the answers inside of them. I'm no longer positive that's true.
And then a friend, like three months later, my friend was going through she was going through this horrible breakup, and I sent her on an email the file we had about grief and she wrote back and said, Glennon, can you just make me this for all the categories of life? This is what I need? And I thought, yeah, I actually can do that. That's how the book started.
That's how the book was born. Yeah, and that's great, and it really feels like that it feels like you are deeping in and out of conversations between these incredibly wise people but also very vulnerable and people that are just in the middle of it. And there's moments where people go, this is just I don't know what to do. Well, then there's moments where someone has a realization and the other person will say, yes, exactly, that it's great.
This is what I want to ask you if this comes through, because I actually can't stand it when people pretend to have all the answers, like I'm allergic to it, anybody who is. I don't. This whole genre can feel very snake oil salesmany and like five Steps to Enlightenment,
all this crap that I cannot stand. And so I feel like what I needed it to be was not people telling you how to walk a path, but like people who have been on the path and just showing you snapshots, like showing you polaroids of what they've seen on the path or what you might see or what but that it's not in any way prescriptive.
That is absolutely how I have experienced a book. So I have the hard copy with me for research purposes, but I've actually been listening to the audio book, and that's why it has that real conversation component, and there are parts that are really relevant and resonant to the point that you almost can be a bit overwhelmed take a moment, and there's other moments that aren't necessarily your experience.
And obviously this is me responding, but I would imagine everyone would have that whatever their own path is, And that is exactly it is not this sort of guru on the mountaintop. It's lived experience, which I know can be an overused word and is a bit of a buzzword,
but it genuinely is that. And Glennar, I just was thinking when you were saying that, how when I was doing that Google search on Avanka and those headlines that I saw, and one of them described you as self help guru, And I thought, I have to ask Glennon about that, because having read we Can Do Hard Things, I don't imagine that is at all how she would self identify, because that is not how this work is reading.
Sarah, don't get me started on the self help okay, Sarah. I have so many male counterparts, okay, who write about the same things that I write about, who write about power and power dynamics and life and relationships, even and politics and community. Do you think that any of them are ever labeled self help? My books will be in the self help aisle. My counterparts men will be in leadership. Okay,
do you ever hear a man's work described as self help? No? No, no, Because men they're good to go, they just need some leadership skills. Women are just a mess and they just need help with their little selves. That distinction is it's in every area, right, It's like that's the literary version or the but even okay, bodies. You know, men are taught to.
Like bulk up, bigger, bigger, bigger.
And women are taught to get smaller and money. Men are taught to invest, women are taught to save. Every single category is about men. You're good to go, Just get bigger, get bolder, go for it. And women self help. You're not even ready to leave the room. Just get smaller and smaller and fix yourself before you can even approach the world. So yes, I have many issues with the self help title, and I think it is a has a lot to do with gender.
It's unbelievable that we're still here in twenty twenty five.
And you know what, The whole navelgazing thing is so interesting, Like God forbid a man do a little bit of self reflection. I would like Cement to look harder at their navels. Honestly, I think that would do it all a little bit of good.
Glennar And I love the way that you spoke about yourself and Abby and Amanda and everything happening at that same time. One of the messages I got from the book is almost like resilience and survival is what happens when you're making other plans.
Or when you're making friends. I am not good at that. I am very socially anxious. I a solitary person. So even doing the I mean as a writer, I go into a small room for years. That's and then I write about humanity without ever talking to humans. Okay, to expose myself constantly on the podcast to other people and other and then and then make friends with some of them and then organize with some of them. My entire it's not comfortable for me, but my entire life has
changed because of it. And I think my sister and I always talk about like we used to just say, I don't have enough time for friendship. How do people have time for this? How do people have energy for this? And I'm like, oh, I get it. It's the friendship that gives you energy. It's I think there's something about it that is the answer to what we're talking about before,
to everything that's going on in our country. It's just like the individualism and the even our wellness obsession that always has to do with just like drinking more smoothies and red lighting in your house, and it's like, wait
a minute, wellness is about collective liberation. Like our wellness, we're red lighting and cold plunging while all of our bodily autonomy is taken away in the courts, like our wellness has to be tied to protests, has to be tied to holding hands with each other and being in the streets knowing our neighbors, leaving our little gems and being embodied. I mean, Sarah, I was doing this the first interview I ever did about this book. It was
a TV show. I was in New York and the woman looked at me and said, opened up to the chapter that said how do I make peace with my body?
And she was like, I deal with eating disorders too, How do I make peace with my body, and I just froze, And what flashed in my mind is all of the Americans who are on the streets lined up with their bodies protecting their neighbors from ice, who are with their bodies in the streets protesting, who are with their bodies going into high schools and saying, where's the queer alliance? I want to stand with these kids. And I thought, oh my God, that that's the way I
want to look at that question. How do I go out into the world and make peace with my body, not an individualistic way, but in a way where I just like enter into this beautiful energy of people showing up for each other and use my body to protect us. And I'm thinking about that all the time. In terms of where we are in the country right now, it feels like I think it's more important than ever for all of us because you are all dealing with the
ramifications of what's going on here. The whole world is feeling it. It feels so important that we hold tighter than ever to the things that actually make us human, to the things that actually make life worth living. Friendship and romance and food and dance and art and love, and all of it, because that's the fuel, that's what keeps us fighting. Because if we don't remember in our bodies what makes life worth fighting for them, and we give up the fight. So these two things are just
inextricably linked. And it's very tempting right now to be hopeless or to work so hard and forget the joy that the best, the best, most powerful activists I know are also the most joyful, and that's because they remember that that's all part of it. Right. So I do think that I'm thinking more than ever about friendship and community and softness and love and joy and art and all of it. And I want to say even during this time, but I think it, I mean, especially during this time.
There were also some really practical, uh, I think experiences where it was don't just say to somebody what can I do to help? Or I'm here if you need me, but actually there were people who had sent list of his's what I need. There's real generosity and bravery in us asking for help as well as reaching out and giving one another help when we need it.
Yeah, it's so interesting you're saying that, and I'm thinking we're all so good at saying I think and then saying our opinion. I think that is we live up here. We think we can think or hot take our way to enlightenment or goodness or but we have a hard time saying I need or I want, or I feel or I love. I'm trying to get out a little bit of all I think blah blah blah, and get more in my body and tell my people what I need, tell the world what I love, write about what I imagine.
I think there's a lot and there is such specificity to love. And Abby recently was talking about how she's in year two after having lost her brother and she's noticing that fewer and fewer people are talking about him
and that's really hard for her. And she told me the other day that so many people write to her and say I don't know what to say, or I can't imagine how hard this is, or text me if you need anything, And these are well meaning things to say, but they're not helpful, and sometimes they're not they're worse than not helpful. They're giving her a job, help me if you need anything, I'm so sorry. So then Abby has to say to them, well, it's okay, like what but she told me the other day that the most
beautiful thing that people do. She has two friends who every once in a while text her a story about Peter just out of the blue, will write to her and say, I remember when we came over in high school when Peter was like, you know, doing a keg stand and wouldn't or or like I remember when Peter, you know, just these little stories, and I thought, but that is I need to tell people that when you don't know what to do because someone has lost somebody, tell them a story that's giving them a gift as
opposed to asking them to do something else for you.
And coming up Glennon on the red Carpet moment that prompted her to speak out about the reality of her recovery from anorexia. Glennin, I wanted to go back a little bit too, something you said earlier when you felt embarrassed with your anorexia diagnosis. I remember listening to the episode We Can Do Hard Things, where you shared with your community the story of your diagnosis.
When I got that diagnosis, first I didn't believe it at all, thought that they were being completely dramatic and ridiculous. And then a few days later I was looking. I went to look through pictures of me on tour because I just on the unteamed tour and I just actually saw myself for the first time and was so embarrassed.
I was on stages talking about freeing ourselves from gender norms, and I looked emaciated, and I just I think it's tricky, And I've never talked about this publicly, but it's tricky to know as a woman whether you're killing it or dying because so many of the ideals that are held up for us are not healthy, like you know, being super skinny, working yourself to death, hustling constantly, all of these things that are all connected by the way, this
like toxic perfectionism that is kind of just a flavor I don't know about. I know it's a flavor of American white woman culture.
So I mean Astralia, it's not like, Okay, I.
Was hoping guys had a different vibe.
Okay, Unfortunately not I wish Okay.
So, but do you know what I'm saying of like, there's a fine line between she's killing it or she's sick. I mean the other day and I would I will just tell you I'm not I'm still recovering. Okay, I'll say it that way. I tend to when I feel I guess i'll just oversimplify this by saying when I feel afraid, I tend to be hyper vigilant, and the first thing that goes is like food and self care. So in this country right now, there's a lot of fear and I am not relaxed, and that my eating
stuff flares up when that happens. But I had to do this. I wanted to do this public thing recently, which was it was called it was a it was an event for queer kids. It was it was a glad a word thing, and I really did want to talk to my queer family, and so I went to a public thing even though I didn't want to. And one of the reasons so I didn't want to is because whenever I am in an anarexia flair and I go out into public, especially at a glamorous event, everyone
tells me how amazing I look. That's the first thing. It's like, oh my god, you look amazing. And I didn't want to deal with that in real time because it's so confusing. But I had this great moment where we were on a red carpet, which is my effing nightmare. And this woman walked up and said, oh my god, you look amazing. What's your secret? I can tell she like, looks down at my ribs. She's clocking my ribs through my dress. Not her fault, this is just what we're
conditioned to do, right. And Abby was standing next to me and Sarah. I go, so, my secret is that I am very mentally ill. My secret is that I have a severe eating disorder called anorexia. It's not amazing, it's illness. And I just want to tell you this because she had a kip, she had the microphone in
my face. I just want to tell you this because there's lots of reasons for eating disorders and women, but one of the reasons is that since we're little, this idea just gets hammered into us that the smaller we are, the more amazing we are. And so when I go out into the world, I become complicit. I become a
messenger of the very message that is killing me. So I have to if I'm going to take this body out into the world, I also have to explain to you over and over again that this is actually not amazing. This is really unhealthy. And I don't want anybody to look at me and think anything other than, oh, she's struggling and you can see her thing. You know, everybody has a thing. You can just see Mine kind of
annoys me, but that's what I'm doing now. I'm just trying to, like, even in those moments, tell the truth about it. That feels a little bit different to me. It's all I can do right now.
Because if we had all been raised in a culture where people felt that they could say that more often, and that we didn't have this instinct of saying to one another women that we know and women that we don't know and we'll never meet, oh my gosh, she looks amazing, and everyone knows that's code for visible ribs. If we could change that dialogue, how much would we change around the conversation about the way that we punish our bodies.
When we punish our bodies, that's it, And like, I don't want, I don't, I can. This is cool. I don't look at emciated bodies or even like overly sculpted bodies where you can tell that woman spends ten hours in the gym to day. I don't look at that as an ideal anymore. I'm like, obviously, she spends most of her life in them. That's not how I want to spend my one, wild and precious life, like I want. I'm looking at ideal bodies now when I look at a woman's body, and I'm like, she looks like she
enjoys her trips around the sun. She looks like she has ease. She looks like she likes food and enjoys it. She looks like she cares more about how she feels than how she looks. That she is enjoying this experience on this planet. I actually did say that too. When we walked away from that woman, I Abby looked at me. We were silent. The woman goes, wow, thanks for sharing, and then we walk away and Abby goes, that's going to be on your tombstone, Glennon Doyle, Wow, thanks for sharing.
And how would you feel about that? I mean, I think that's pretty cool.
I think that would be just fine, Sarah, that would be just fine. The whole her laundry is finally done. Oh, I like Timstone.
Have you ever gotten to that day, Glennon? Have you ever gotten to that day?
It's ali jl all day it's children'slaundry.
Same. The book really starts with again, this is going to intercept with some of what we've talked about, but this notion of the work never ending, and the fact that we sort of feel like, maybe at points in our life, like we're here, I've done the work. It's a little bit like laundry, isn't it. Yay, that's done. The laundry is done. Two minutes later it's all filled up again, and it's like that metaphor for life, and so especially then with someone like you, who so many
people be like, great, I read that book. Glennon's got it all together. I've got all the answers, and then it's like, and now this has happened. I love this sort of idea. Maybe if it's all accepting, Glenn, I think you're really sort of at again the forefront of this conversation that it really just is a circle laundry, live discovery. We learn things, we do, work, we recover, and then we sort of go back in a whole
other loop. How are you reconciled or not reconciled with that concept at this point in your life and your work.
Well, I think i've recently accepted it more like, I will tell you that I do believe that three years ago, I thought that I was going to have a victory. I was going to have a finish line with the eating stuff, with the anxiety stuff, that I was just going to nail it one day and there was going to be an after. And I do think that this time around, I have realized that that is not the case with this These are my things, and that I am going to live this incarnation with this particular nervous
system and my particular trauma and my personality. And I will never start up trying to grow and trying to break patterns that's really important to me. I will never stop that. But there is a level of acceptance I And what's new for me is that I used to when I had when I got weird. I mean I call it get weird, so that means like my eating stuff is flaring up, or anxiety or whatever it is, I'm getting weird. I used to just stop everything public until I could kind of get my feet underneath me.
And one time I didn't do anything public for two years. I really and this time around, I realized, oh, there's
no time for that. I can't. I cannot go back home and therapize my way out of this and then show up for my community and my country and my I just have to go out there all jacked up now, because if if the people who are broken hearted by everything that's happening in this country don't show up broken hearted, then the only people that are showing up are the ones that are not broken hearted, and that would be a freaking nightmare, right, So Abby and I laugh because
we have we have three kids, and when they were growing up, the older two could always kind of pull themselves together, like I would say, you guys were leaving the house in ten minutes, and the older two would show up all dressed up nice and ready to go, and the youngest one would show up with like I don't know, like a pizza box on her head, stash painted on her and just just a freaking mess, like pajamas, you know, just and I would it would be too late.
So I would just look at them and be like, Okay, you're good, you're good, and you just you're you're gonna have to go like that, honey, You're just gonna have to go like that. And I think when I think about like whatever God is. I think that God looks at my other spiritual activist friend and she's like, you're good, You're good. And then God looks at me and it's like, honey, you're just gonna have to go like that.
You're walking around with the pizza box on your head the whole time, just too late.
You just have to get in the car and go. So I'm just showing up in pajamas with the pizza box I've had, with my anxiety and my all my stuff. And maybe that's okay. Maybe that's just the way we're going to do this the whole way through.
And I think that's a lot of the energy and the mindset that is at the heart of we can do hard things is that no one is waiting to be perfect or have it all together, because first of all, ain't going to happen. And as you say, we have a very small group of people that are actually showing up if we're waiting for that day, and it does feel like people are unpacking and learning and evolving it at different stages of their stories and their experience in real time, because that is what life is.
Yes, And then if we had people showing up at all different stages. We would get rid of this whole lake you gotta be or whatever a guru is on the whatever. It would just be everybody showing up with big open hearts, messy and perfect and we'd get on with it.
Glenn, and I wanted to ask before we finish up
about your relationship with Abby. It's coming up to ten years since you and Abby first went public with your relationship, and I was thinking about on this Stella podcast, we've had about two hundred episodes, and one of the episodes that was the most impactful and that it was a huge conversation here in Australia, was that there was a very well known Australian actor and performer, Natalie and she had gone through a public divorce with her husband, who's
a fellow entertainer, and they had two children, and she sat down with me to do an interview for the first time and then she just really took a very long beat and something happened in real time again in that conversation, and she I believe that's her story to say, but my understanding she's since told me pretty much in the moment decided to actually come out publicly and that she had actually left her marriage because she had fallen in love with another woman, Pip, and they're still together,
and the reaction to it was profound. Was probably coming up to two years ago, and Glenn, and the bit that I wanted to ask you about was how aware are you and Abby if at all this your relationship. It's your life. It's not like a you know, it's
not a case study, it's not a lesson. But the impact of that and the conversation I think has had a ripple effect, and I would argue probably helped change the environment in which that conversation with Natalie it was really met with a really warm, welcoming, safe space in
the Australian community coming up to ten years ago. Would love to know, like I say, what you think about the role that you and Abbey have played in visibility and do you think that the environment is becoming a little bit out for the people that will follow you?
I mean, that makes me really emotional. So I'll just I I have been thinking about that differently in the last year or so year. I guess I feel so grateful that you know, when Untamed came out, I went through a lot. I was a lot of my readers and community were Christian. It was a very Christian base, and so there was there's a difference between somebody who comes out. There's a difference between that and somebody who comes out from a fundamentalist religious place. It's like infuriating
to people. I think they don't understand why, but I think they're afraid that other people are also going to realize that they are free. I think that is what the fear like there. Go If I make this decision and stay true to myself and go out into the world and I don't get struck down by or bying God, that then other people might see that they too can be free. And that is very scary for institutions that
keep people stationary through fear. So there was particular circumstances that made my coming out challenging, just like I think there are particular circumstances for everybody. I also had an unbelievably supportive family and an incredible community. For every person who was telling me I was going to go to hell, there were five who were saying we love you, we love abby, we are with you, we believe in love.
So there was as much beauty as sadness. I think right now, I can tell you that I am so grateful that Untamed is out in the world, because even as we speak, the book bannings and the silencing of LGBTQ voices is just relentless and every day, And so I feel more grateful now than I did before that Untamed is out in the world, that a kid might hold it and feel seen, or a young woman might read it and feel free. And I can't when I was so scared and terrified that how what am I
going to do? I'm going to lose everything. I can't be true to myself. I can't do this with Abby. I have a few wise friends Abby my sister to other ones are Liz and Martha back you mentioned them earlier, And I called Martha and told her all the reasons that I could do this, that I was never never had felt so alive, never had felt so sure of anything, never had been in love before, never had been so happy, And wasn't it a shame that there was nothing I
could do about it? And one of the things she said to me was, you don't have to do anything but love Abby. If you and Abby get together and love each other well and out loud, you won't have to do another damn thing in your life. Just you two loving each other well and out loud and being yourselves will do more than anything you could do if you tried to whip it up yourself. And I remember thinking, well, that's bad, shit, crazy, what is she talking about? Absolutely right,
she was absolutely right. When I make decisions, even if they're about war or the kids or whatever, where I'm somehow basing it in this love that Abby and I have, it always turns into beauty. So oh, I'm going to look up that Natalie and that Pip. I'm so glad you told me that story.
Glenna Doyle, it has been such an absolute delight to talk to you. Thank you so much for making the time, and congratulations on the book, to yourself, to Abby and to Amanda, and thanks again for joining me today.
Such a thoughtful, beautiful interviewer. Thank you so much. I loved every minute of this.
And We Can Do Hard Things is available wherever you buy your books or via the link in our show notes. I'll be back in your ears with another exclusive guest for Stella next week. Thank you for joining me today. Before you go, we'd love it if you take a moment to leave a review or maybe send this episode to a friend.