Welcome to The Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
I think one of the things that we have in common, which it feels like there's a lot of things, but as I go back to my childhood, I'm like I was hungry. I was hungry for food. I was hungry for love, I was hungry for acceptance. I was queer. I had to get out of my body because there was all kinds of danger there.
Hello, Hello, Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Laverne Cox Show. My name is Laverne Cox. Okay, here we go. Glennon Doyle is just She's such an incredible human being. We love her books, we love her podcast but like what I love most about her is her willingness to sit with discomfort, to process and create space. And it's my hope today that I can hold space with Glennon Doyle to do potentially some really hard things. Glennon Doyle is
an author, activist, and podcast host. She is the author of the number one New York Times bestsellers Love Warrior and Untamed. Glennon hosts the award winning, super popular We Can Do Hard Things podcasts with her wife Abby Wambach, and her sister Amanda Doyle. Glennon is also the founder and president of Togetherizing and all women led nonprofit organization that has raised over fifty million dollars for women, families
and children in crisis. Please enjoy my conversation with Glennon Doyle. Okay, folks, just a quick heads up. This was recorded in March twenty twenty three. Glennon and I talk about eating disorders, addiction, and re recovery. If you think this may be triggering for you, just go ahead and skip this episode. We'll meet back here next week. Hello Glennon, Welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling.
I'm feeling good. This is the first other than my podcast. This is the first thing that I've done in like six months.
Wow.
I've made a no events or public interviews or anything rule for myself this year. So I hope I remember how to do this.
Leverne, Why did you make that rule for yourself.
While I entered recovery six months ago?
Yeah, I'm aware. I've been listening.
Oh so I don't know that there was something about I mean, I think probably early recovery for anybody requires a cutting out of a lot of things, just to focus on the one most important thing. But I am in recovery for ann and there is something that feels inherently like self objectifying about constantly putting yourself out there. I just needed to like live in my body for a good long time and not worry about an outer
image or projection or any of that. I don't think I've been in my body for a very long time. So I actually found myself on stage liver and after I had been doing a lot of embodiment stuff, and for the first time, I was like, what the hell am I doing up here?
This is terrifying to actually be in your body on stage. Yes, had you felt embodied before and then something took you out of your body? Or do you think you've never felt embodied?
It's a great question. I became believemic when I was ten years old.
Do you remember what was the trigger for the bliemia? Do you have an understanding of like, Okay, this is why I started doing this at ten.
Well, I am in the middle of in this new level. I'm on a new level of recovery, and I'm in the process right now of looking back at my life and kind of revising the narratives that I have had about that. For example, Laverne, I have always said and written in memoirs, I just was born really extra sensitive. I actually wrote in my first memoir, I was just I had a magical childhood. I just was born broken.
And I think when I got sober, because I've eating disorder turned into drug addiction and alcohol, and so I got sober when I was twenty five and I found out I was pregnant, and I just quit everything cold turkey, Like one day. I quit puking, I quit drugging, I quit drink, I quit smoking. It was just like everything
at once. And I think I just like I jumped into eventually this writing career, in this public situation, and I just kind of wrote a tidy story for myself, like I didn't really want to look back at all of it.
It's hard when I look back on for me, like food was love for me, So food was love my mom. My mom is amazing, and she did the best she could. That she was not affectionate, she was not loving, she was emotionally abusive. That she fed us, and like food was the way I felt love from her. So and so many of my trigger foods are childhood foods that
I ate that evoked love for me. I was also sexually abused, I was bullied, and so recovery for me is about and I think I have heard you say something on one of your podcasts about like getting back to that child who is not traumatized, giving that child space to heal, reparenting her, caring for her, giving her other tools to use that are more adaptive than maladaptive. And yeah, does any that resonate with you around your every word?
Okay, every word and so much of this round of recovery, Cliverne, I thought I was. I've been sober for twenty five years. I got sober, I haven't been drinking, I haven't been puking. I thought I was good. And I think this is an oversimplification, but I think I kind of solved my bolimia with anorexia.
That's that's not unusual, right. So the binging enpuraging for you was, I'm assuming there was binging. Usually there is when you're a bleimic. So that was like having an out of control relatelationship to eating and then wanting to get rid of that food to stay thin. Was that about staying thin, controlling your body, just control. What was that about for you?
I mean, as I look back with this new you know, I feel like sometimes we just look back on our lives and we're like, we just get a wider perspective, you know, when you see a picture and you can only see this one little piece, so you think, I think you've got it, Like maybe it was this, I mean I grew up. Part of the work of this time is to look at the narratives I've written and be like, really, Glenna, and were you just really sensitive and broken or did you grow up in a pretty
tough house? Was it pretty rough? And then did you also grow you know, in a place where there was a lot of anger and a lot of complicity about that anger, and a lot of control in terms of food and bodies, and a lot of fat phobia, and
a lot of just control, man, just control. And I think that the way I kind of feel now is that Bolimia was like a rebellion against all of it, because you just like, you can control yourself for a while, and you can like be good and you can not have an appetite and you cannot have desired You can be a robot. And then there are these moments where you're just like fuck it and you're like indulging. You're like, well I would have called it animal self, now I'm
just it's human self, right, like indulging your hunger. It's just this rebellion against all the fake and all the control. And then there's a panic because because it's true a lot of it. We do live in a culture that does not want women, especially to show any proof of life, or any proof of appetite, or any proof of desire, any proof of being human. So the puke, the purging is like I have to get rid of the evidence.
Yeah, oh gos, the fat phobia is really really real. I interviewed Virgie Tobar, who's a fat activist, on my podcast last season, and she says in her book that just floors me still to this day, that most of us live and even though I'm weary of binaries, she says that most of us live in a culture where we are experiencing bigotry for being fat in a fat phobic culture, or we're living in fear of becoming fat
and experiencing that bigotry. And the way she puts it in and captures it in terms of discrimination and a structural issue is really helpful in terms of how we in turn realize those things and how unconscious it is on so many different levels. Another thing that came up for me was what you just said, is that my therapist says to me is that if I do not give my inner child attention, if I don't give her spaces to play, she will go and run the show.
And I think so much of my acting out historically has been about my little kid, that rebellious fuck it. So you're not going to pay any attention to me. I'm gonna just rage and I'm going to destroy you and like that. It's like that, fuck you, It's like this little kid. So, but if I can give her space, if I can give my inner child space to play, what do you need today? Oh you need to play dress up? Oh you need to post, or you need to dance, or you need to listen to music, whatever
she needs. If I can start giving her that, if I can start listening to her and integrating her instead of abandoning her, Instead of abandoning her, I might cry on this one. This is this is we're doing hard things, talking about that we're doing real hard things really are that I can't abandon her. Oh my god, I've abandoned her so many times. Me too, And so much of my dysfunctional behavior, acting out addictive behavior has been about
abandoning her. And you know, she was told that she didn't deserve to live or be here for so many different reasons. But she does. She does, and she's alive, and and she needs me.
She needs me, you know, I just, uh, since you're being so vulnerable, I'll just tell you this, even though I can't believe I'm about to tell you this, but I have been doing the same work that you're doing, and about a week ago, I'm just like, when you're in recovery, you kind of pick up some other weird things because you lost yourself soothing thing, you know, it's like there's this first layer of recovery that's about stopping the thing that you're running to, which is like the booze,
the food, the drugs, the what overshopping. For people who are less dramatic, like whatever it is that people do, it.
Could be very dramatic overshopping.
Yeah, that's your lives have been ruined.
It's very dramatic. And I think, yeah, I may need to talk to somebody anyway, go on.
And then there's this second level that is the worst part. The first part's terrible and withdraws horrible, and but this other level of the recovery, which is like whether or not you stop the thing you're running from. And that's complicated because it's always a million different things. But I think that's one of the reasons why in the beginning, when you ask me why I stopped doing things publicly, I think maybe there's a version of me in the
future who can handle it. But like what you said before, my child does not want to be on stages, does not want to be She's scared shitless all the time.
I can't believe you're talking about as much as what you're talking about in your podcast, as raw as it is, as real as it is, as in the moment as it is the moment and the day you talked first about the relapse that was that was so that was hard, like that was hard to listen to. That was just it was brilliant that you were able to process it in the support that you had, I know, the support that you had from Abby and from your sister in that moment with like the way they held you in
hell space for that. It's such what I That's the thing I probably love most about your podcast is how you're modeling holding space for the hard things like that, that you can have that you can have people in your life who you can be a will mess with, that you can be fully vulnerable and just broken with and they can hold space for you and love you even more and lift you up. I mean, it's like, So that is so fucking powerful what you guys are
modeling on that podcast. That is like and I just I'm so grateful for it because I'm lucky that I have that in my life. But it's it's new for me. So I'm like, oh shit, this is like the real shit, Like this is like, oh my god. But they're doing it and they're loving and it's hard, and then you have kids on top of it. I'm doing this without children, and I'm doing this only in contact with my mother and my brother all the rest of the dysfunctional family. Girl,
we don't do it. We don't do it. And my mom and I are in are good place now. I went back to Alabama for the first time for Thanksgiving and left un triggered for the first time. I'm fifty years old years old, so that's like that was a miracle. So but I don't fuck with like a lot of my family, and I don't have kids. That's a whole I don't really even know. I don't know how people have children, and I don't know how you have three. You're doing this and you have children.
I mean, girl, but look, I find it oppositely amazing, like for you to be choosing to do this shit without the little people who are staring at you shaming you, Like I have to do this shit. I have to do this work because.
So you don't raise dispunctional children.
Yes, I have to break some of this generational shit. You know. Sometimes I get so pissed at the generation before me, my parents, for not doing the work so
that I had to do all the work. And then and then I think about, maybe there's just moments generationally where there's a person in the line who just has enough space, power, privilege, money, because therapy costs so freaking much, so much money, support, like an amazing wife and sister, and like maybe generations of women before me are like, oh do it, like we couldn't.
They did the best they can where I got to them. With my mother, she really did the best she could. And as I heard more stories about her childhood, her abusive, abusive father, who grew up on a plantation, and just I was always like, oh my, there were absolutely no tools. I mean, my grandmother was amazing, thank God. But it was, of course, of course, when I forgave her and continue to forgive her, and I'm like, she did the best she could. She's doing the best that she can. And
oh my god, I love that Brene Brown moment. I've interviewed Brenee. I'll try to convince the story. But Brene basically says, if we believe that people are doing the best that they can, and she she's hardwareed to believe people are sucking up on purpose, independs are off. But if we believe that people are doing the best that they can, then what do we need to do? And boundaries becomes that thing that we need to do, and the boundaries are like I love boundaries, me.
Too, I love boundaries, my favorite and but but it happened to me. I think, well, for solivern, I can become addicted to anything, me too, Like there is nothing, nothing is safe for me. Okay, So I think that I became addicted to boundaries, like I think when I found boundaries, I was just like, oh, this is the solve, this is how you know. I'll never forget my I think I think I mentioned this on my podcast. I
don't know if I did. My therapist said to me on one of the first like anorexia beginning therapy sessions, how is how you deal with people the same as how you deal with food.
Oh oh oh, oh oh oh. I'm sorry that question just like, yeah, that question just stucked me up. Okay, I'm gonna write that down.
I was like, oh, well, I have like three safe foods and then I protect myself from every other food because I have decided what's good and what's bad, and what's safe and what's dangerous, like I had. There's a million ways, and I have like three people that I trust in the whole world, and everyone else is not safe. I have so many boundaries.
The wait three safe foods?
I was so weird.
What was it? Where were three safe foods? I don't know if I don't want to trigger anyone out there, but no.
They were like anything to do with vegetables, like it you know, antarexticy just becomes like this religion of restriction, and it's just you know what it is. It's to me if if bulimia is like rebellion against the rules of control and food, nott phobia and all of it, then anarexia is like extreme compliance. Right. I was like, I'll be bad, and then I got pregnant. I was like, Okay,
i'll be good. I'll be good. I'll be good. I'll be good, and I just like controlled, controlled, controlled, controlled.
Well, it's interesting to me when you talked about getting pregnant and stopping everything. There are a lot of people who, particularly in AA, stop drinking but don't deal with the underlying issues, and they're basically dry drunks. Do you think that you were like, uh, dry drunk dry, you know, yeah, eating disorder or I don't know what the legue may be eating disorder.
I don't know what the word is either, but yes, I think so.
Yeah, and created a nice, neat story that worked for you and has been very successful for you, and then it all sort of has kind of fallen apart a little bit. I don't know, fall apart might not. That may seem judgmental, but no, fall apart feels relief to me. Okay, good when you.
Say fall apart, that feels like I don't know why, but in my body that feels like, yeah, it feels like the opposite of trying to keep is.
This, Like, Okay, I don't have to be perfect anymore. I don't have to keep up appearances anymore. I can just be.
The jig is up.
Yeah, this is a good time to take a little break. We'll be right back though, Okay, we're back. So goshka perfect. I mean, I feel like that there's so much about around perfectionism, and I think about that like the thing to keep it all together, right, Like I have to keep it together for you, if with kids, with the children. For me, it was I mean, god, it was just shame.
It was like being black and trans and all of this sort of misconceptions and things that people have about black women, black trans women, wanting to make my mother proud and then becoming famous and needing to represent my community and doing it and I've done it imperfectly, but like having that pressure of like I can't fuck up because this is going to reflect badly on an entire community.
The pressure of all that and I wonder too for you, and you talk a bit about it on the podcast that like so many people look to you, and you've always said, from my understanding of your worked that like you don't have all the answers and that you're in process. But do you think that even as you confess that that there's like I still have to be perfect from
my audience, or do you give yourself permission? Obviously you give yourself permission to be imperfect in theory, but in fully in practice, do you feel like it's fully there or is it slippery?
It's slippery. And here's a weird thing that I've noticed recently, so it's been six months now where I've been completely offline, because here's a weird thing to learn, is that I not only didn't want to see the criticism of the eating disorder and the imperfection, I didn't want to see the praise of the vulnerability. Because there's something about public women where the more busted up you are, the more
beloved you are. And like I see it. Sometimes I'll see a friend who's famous and a woman and doing things and it's like the second she becomes too powerful or famous or something shiny happens, you'll see them post like, oh, I'm like a busted up thing.
Yeah, it's not relatable to people when you seem too perfect, and when we are messy and revealed, you know, the struggles. I let's say the struggles. It's human and people can relate to it. But then also people want to tear that perfect woman down and it's it's women. And why is it always women? I mean, it's just the way
patriarchy seems to work and peerreless. Why supremacist capitalist patriarchy to quote Bell Hooks, It's just the way it seems to work that if you are a woman and you have it all together, people really are really said about it. I's like, but they are.
Said about it. But I also think there's a little bit of truth in it, because anyone who's acting like they've got it all together and perfect, I mean, I feel like I've met a lot of people now in real life, whether they're regular people or famous people or whatever, and I still haven't met anybody who in their real moments is like feels like they're nailing it, feels like they are at peace, whatever the hell that is. Feels
like I still am Laverne. I don't know if you've noticed this, but I mean, I talk about it all the time. It's like our world calls successful people people who each a certain level of capitalism, right, and then we think, because of the way we're brainwashed, that those are going to be the people who are happy. Yeah, yeah, and they're always I shouldn't say always. All we keep finding is that it's the inverse.
What I realized in two thousand and nine had a show on VH one and I was starring in my own show for the first time, as a makeover show, and I was producing it, and it was my dream realized. And I thought my childhood self thought when that happened, all of my childhood trauma would go away, and it actually got worse. It was like I was acting out like crazy, and I was like and that's when I went into my journey of trying to recover and figure out what the fuck was going on because I didn't
want to sabotage my dreams. So I guess my dream is like my kids. It's like the equivalent of your kids, like my dreams, you know, of the life that I'm living now. I didn't want to sabotage it, and so that was like okay, and then I realized it was an inside job. Nothing outside of ourselves can actually fix us. We can have tools, we can have wonderful therapy, we can have wonderful ways to regulate our nervous systems, we can have love in our lives that can come you know,
come in. But ultimately even like I mean, I had a moment with my aunt, with my amazing, incredible boyfriend who just his emotional intelligence just blows me away. And I had a moment with him one night. We were talking and and it's been two and a half years and I had I went into this shame spiral. We were on the couch and I and I started talking and over explaining and I was just like, WHOA, what's going on. I was like, babe, let me go to
the bathroom and get myself together. And I have tools to regulate from my trauma resilience work, and I was I was like, what's going on in my body? And I know when it's hysterical, it's historical. So this actually is not about what's going on right now. He's amazing and he's supportive. This isn't him. This is my own narrative. And I fucked myself up like in that. I just I was such a it was a shame spiral and
I felt it in my body. And I love what Brenee says, when you're in shame, to get out of the room, don't text, don't call anyone, try to you know. And that's what they did, and that's what I was able to do in the moment. I come in the bathroom for a while and I'm like, okay, and i'd subtle and I'm like, okay, this is shame. And when we name shame, it dissipates, you know, eighty five percent. When the shame is met with empathy. It's even better, according to Brenee, than a lot of Brene Brown work.
Then I go back, go back into the living room and I'm like, Babe, I was in a shame spiral. I'm better now. I just need to like, let's just let's leave it.
Look at that that's huge.
He was like, Babe, it's okay, and he just held me. But knowing when you're in it, being able to bring yourself out of it if you can, and having someone whole space for you and meet you with empathy and then that like the the stuff is still there even when it's better, and how it's really stories. And there was one of the one podcast recently we were talking
about letting go of the thoughts. You know, we know in recovery, like feelings aren't facts and then thoughts aren't commands, right, And there was a moment in one of the podcasts when you sort of talked about the soul. We were talking about like two different parts of your brain having this conversation, this fight with itself, and then you're watching it and then it's like, I think you used to
metaphor with the three ring circus. I think it's what we're thinking, what we're feeling, and then what's going on in the outside world, and then our consciousness is observing all those things, and so it's like, how do I detach from all three of those things and just be
in pure consciousness? Is that? I think that's the work, And as I I mean so many so much of my work lately has been about letting go of thoughts, just letting them go because none of them, none of them are serving me, like honestly, and this is the thing about being someone Obviously you're very analytical you're very You're like a very smart woman. I you know, I'm a thinker. I'm a you know, and some and that's wonderful.
But then sometimes that can kind of just we can think ourselves into insanity.
Yeah, my mind is good for when I give it a job. Okay, if I'm like mine, we have a job. We're gonna do an interview with so and so. We're going to read this book. We're going to figure out what's important about this person. We're gonna we're going to put together a beautiful thing. We're going to write a book. We're going to do this. That fine, But like when I when it doesn't have a job, and it's just
like I'm not controlling it, it's controlling me. No good, we go nowhere good And for me, I will always be obsessed with narrative. I will be trying to figure out who the hell I am and telling stories until the day I die. I'm sure of it.
In the absence of evidence, we create stories. I think that's a right something like that.
But what you're pointing at is that is not the most evolved way to be. That is not the most peaceful way to be. Whenever we're talking about narrative or story. We're still in the thought mind. We're still you know what we are in the past.
Yeah.
The thing I love about this round of recovery for me is that it is about living from inside of my body. It is about rejecting this old idea that we are our minds and we're just like wearing our body. That the mind is a more real us, more strong us, more evolved us, and the body is just something to overcome.
It's very Cartesian and it's very exactly it's very old school. It's very sort of patriarchal too. There's so much feminist thought around thinking through the body, and we know the body keeps a score. But my therapy, the therapy I'm doing is somatic work that's based in trauma resilience, So it's really all about the body. It's all about tracking
the body. My therapist likes to remind me, and I remind myself that twenty percent of my information comes from the brain down and eighty percent comes from the body up. And then on the Doctor Becky podcast, but she said is that the memories that we have between birth and three years old, our bodies have that memory that like our bodies are really this hardwiring. It really is about the body, and the body's not separate from the mind.
They're all connected. And so the somatic work that I've been doing and sensing into my body and finally being able to, like, after what is it seven years with my current therapist, kind of being able to like the fact that I was able to regulate with my boyfriend in the way I was that night and not completely sabotage the relationships, start a fight and break up because that would have been girl, that would have been me, like maybe five years ago, you know, definitely ten years ago,
that would have been it. I probably wouldn't lasted two and a half years with this man because I would have started a fight, because I would have done some crazy stuff because of my historical trauma. But to be able to sit in my body to track which is one of the tools of the community Resiliency model, one of the six tools, to track what's going on in my body, to be able to like identify that I was out of my zone. That's the whole idea of zones. Do you know this work? Do you know? Oh girl?
It's kind of everything. But basically the idea is to be in your resilient zone. And this is created from the Trauma Research Institute. I did two podcasts with my therapist Jennifer Burden Flyer in the last season. People can reference it well. But our work is to track what's going on with our bodies and to begin to regulate and so we can stay in our zone and then ultimately widen our zone. My therapist also said that our collective resilient zone because we can co regulate too. What's
so beautiful about what you do? What I see you doing in your podcast with abing with your sisters, that you guys are co regulating. You co regulate each other's nervous systems with that support, which is great. But we also want to be able to self regulate, to be able to identify what's going on in our bodies if we're bumped into high zone and low zone, and what can I do to get back into my resilience. The techniques are grounding, gesturing, shift and stay tracking is one
of them. Resourcing, Oh, resourcing is huge, and I think I'm forgetting one and all these tools. Oh I'm helped now help now it's a sixth one. All these different tools can basically, get us grounded, get us in the moment, get us in our bodies. It's all about being embodied. And I think that a lot of therapy. I've been in therapy for twenty three years. A lot of therapy is awesome and great. But if it's not embodied, if we don't feel it in our nervous systems, it's not
going to land. And so that's the hardwiring, the rewiring that has to take place in the trauma resiliency work that I think doctor Becky talked about on your podcast, that we're in the maladaptive heartwiring. I love that moment. I had never heard that there where our bodies are constantly looking for ways to rewire in healthy ways that I had never heard. Isn't that amazing. We're on our own side, we're on our own sides, and when we don't want to do something, it's our bodies tell telling us.
It's that was genius. That was genius. Because I don't like working out either. I I try to move now for energy and like I'm fifty and I just want to stay mobile, But I hate working out. It's like I don't have a trainer. I can't go to a zumba class again, I can't.
I don't do anything. I have. My podcast is we can do hard things, and I do no hard things. When it comes to I'm so done. I just don't believe in it anymore. I am done believing it. Like I no longer think when I look at somebody who has a perfectly chiseled whatever body, I no longer think, oh, they've got it figured out. All I think is how much hustle and time of their life it took to create that, and how much rest they missed out on, and how much beauty they missed out on. I mean,
this is so judgmental, but that is what I think now. Like, I don't look at somebody who's made it to the top of like a beauty or hustle culture and think they've got it. The pinnacle of that doesn't look like successful me anymore.
Well, it's interesting to me about all the beauty hierarchy, and I love that you put it that way. Kimberly Foster talks a lot about that. Founder for Harriet talks about the beauty hierarchy, and I love that I'm able to kind of like understand that some people might think I'm attractive and other people might not. And then because I'm trans I'll never be attractive to some people. And so I'm able to keep that in perspective and relationship
to me. And then I look at other people and there's I mean, I was thinking about one specific celebrity who has just had so much work done and keeps having work done and the body shifting all the time. It just seems like it's like never going to be enough, you know enough.
That word is not that. Let us please just sit with that for a minute. I am convinced that that is the answer. Is like everyone figuring out what is enough and like because in terms of you know, capitalism, public life, beauty, there's no it's like the house always wins. Yeah, it's set up that way if you're lucky enough to like get a great hand out to you. And like that's how I think about my work, Like a lot of freaking luck there. Like just know when to fold and look at your life and.
Be like enough. I think it's enough with dieting, it's enough with surgery. It's enough money, it's enough fame, it's enough. Like Brene, I'm sorry I keep talking about Brenne now, but she says, she says so many good things. She has diagnosed as as living in scarcity culture where we're never enough, We're never been enough, rich enough, relevant, enough enough attention. I mean, like I didn't get enough engagement on this post. Why didn't I get a lot of engagement?
What's going on? You know? So and just being like girl, it's not that sorious.
Yeah, and sometimes we just have to give ourselves a break, Like I don't think that because there's something wrong with me. I think that because that's the way the system is set up for us to think.
Absolutely, that's why.
These algorithms exist actly because we are like those little mice. The game is set up for us to keep coming back for more, to never think it's enough to know so, you know, sometimes we just have to step away from it to protect ourselves. Like that is what this time is for me, is just like wait, let me get back to my life and look at it and see how much beauty and enoughness is here, because I actually only start to feel the scarcity interestingly enough, when I'm in media.
Explain what comes up when you're in media? What do you think that's what's going.
On in my real life. There's a lot of different kinds of bodies. Like when I'm at the store, I live in LA Like when I'm at the store, when I'm out, like, I see a lot of different shapes of bodies. I see a lot of different ways of being.
When I get on media, I feel like there's something that's being poured into me is that there's just one way to be, that what I'm supposed to be doing is hustling, that I'm supposed to be perfecting myself in all these areas, and that scarcity thing comes up that you're talking about, And I feel like when we talk about embodiment, right, I have to live right now from the inside out, like I can't. The second I like start worrying about a post, then I'm literally self objectifying.
I'm no longer living in the moment and looking out at my life. I'm looking out from my life at myself because I'm looking at this picture, I'm looking at this post or I'm like, I just can't do it for a while, Like I can't. That's why I can't be on stage. That's why I'm only doing an interview with you, because I was like, I'm only going to do interviews with people who if they came to my house, I would want to sit with them on my couch and talk to them for real.
Thank you, thank you so much for that.
And it doesn't feel like a thing that I'm doing like an object out in the world. It feels real, you know.
And I think they think of objectifying ourselves. It's like such a It's something I've wrestled with, like wanting to be body positive and embrace and love my body, but then like where's the line between that and objectifying myself? And there's just something about being a woman in media, like a host Red Carpets now, where it's that's just
kind of the job. Like it's almost inherently even if you're like you're this feminist, you know, because I'm an intersectional feminist as well, and so it's like I should be above all this, I should know better. I mean, the shame of that, that story, that's that shaming story. But there's something about being in the media as a woman,
no matter what you're doing. You could be running for president, you could be in Congress, you could be you know what, a nuclear scientists, and people are going to pick apart your parents and that is that's cis normative, heteronormative, impeeriless, white, supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy. We have to name it. It's fat phobia, it's colorism.
It's all these systems that are affecting our lives that people are imposing on us, and we internalize and impose on ourselves, and so there has to be a critical awareness around that, at least to the extent that it doesn't drive us crazy. There's so only so many interventions that I can do with this normative, heteronormative, impeerless, why supremacist, capless, patriarchal, fat phobic culture. But what can I do with me so that I'm okay? And I mean I'm working in
that system. I mean I've got my wigs, and I do my makeup and I do all my glam shit, and a lot of that is about so much of that is about survival. So much of that is about for me as a trans woman, and even before I was famous, it was about survival and a world, really hostile world. It's about it's work. I mean, it's cultural currency. It's work. But there's the other part that loves to dress up, and I love fashion, and I'm trying to
like get back to that I did. I'd like this morning after I was I was prepping and I was like, I have to say I was triggered and some of the preps for this podcast, and I was like, girl, what do you need right now? What is little Lavernie? And I've put on some muglayer, I've collected finches muglairer, and I've played dress up and I danced in the mirror like I did when I was eight years old.
And so there's that piece of like, yes, there are all these systems in place, but there's something that's pure where I find joy in the beauty of it and the art of it. And I can honor that and understand all these other things are operating, but I can honor that. Okay, it's that time again. We'll be right back.
We are back. Can you talk a little bit about like your relationship to being a feminist and the ways in which you've internalized, if I might say, internalized, these ideas about how you're supposed to look and that you're struggling with this eating disorder that is I think partly a product of a misogynist, bat phobic, absolutely patriarchal culture.
Well, a couple months after I went into recovery therapy, I came home from a walk. I go for long walks by myself every morning. It's my thing. And I said, Abby, down, I said, I figured out what I'm going to do. I figured out the answer. And I think I was feeling a lot of shame for being inter exic. It was not like super comfortable or cool or a proud moment to have been the author of unt aimed, of the feminist whole thing, and then to announce that I have been inner exic. I felt like such a like
a fraudulent feeling or something. And so I was. I said to Abby, I am on the beach. I figured out no more. I'm never having botox again, I'm never dying my hair again. I'm going to get off social media completely. And there was something else, some other beauty rule. I wasn't going to buy any clothes for a year, Like this was the answer. Okay, like I had been. I had been a bad feminist role model. So Abby
just looked at me like okay. So I talked to my therapist, like two weeks later, I report this to her, as if she's going to be proud of me right, because I actually think I've I've figured it out, I've nailed it. And she says, okay. You know a lot of times people who don't have an internal locus of control are constantly making outer loci of control m And I was like, okay, whatever, I'm not even I'm amazing at not hearing what I don't want to hear and
continuing on. It took my sixteen year old sitting on my bathroom floor a couple weeks later, and she said, Mom, do you think it's a good idea, this early in your recovery to be making all of these rules for yourself?
Jesus Christ, the children.
This is what I did. I just put my finger up and said hold on a second, and I picked up my phone that was on the counter in the bathroom, and I texted my hairdresser before I even answered my child, and I was like, I'm coming back in. When's the soon as you can get me in?
Okay?
And thank God, Laverne, I had just gotten botox before I made this role, so I never even had missed an appointment. But what I want to say to you about that I love it is that I don't have an fing clue. I don't know. I'm just but here's
what I'm going to do. I hope I will get to the point or I think maybe because I'm committed to learning and I'm committed to being open any volment, that maybe I will get to a point where I won't want to get botox and do all these things because maybe my life will be so full and I'll be so whatever that I won't even want to. But I'm not going to make myself do anything until I actually want it, you know what I mean. I'm not making rules because that's just like another version of anorexia.
Like it's not it's a fake outside control thing, and I want whatever this internal locus of control is the vern this is what I'm going for. I think it's embodiment, right, It's what you're talking about. It's checking in, it's honoring the inner child. It's going back to when we were a kid. I mean, I think one of the things that we have in common, which it feels like there's a lot of things, but as I go back to
my childhood, I'm like, I was hungry. I was hungry for food, I was hungry for love, I was hungry for acceptance. I was queer. I had to get out of my body because there's all kinds of danger there.
The disassociation is so real for me, and a lot of people who have struggled with eating disorders, with weight issues or whatever talk about the difficulty of being in their bodies, and as a trans woman like I did not feel in my body for a really long time. So there's something so powerful about being able to be embody, to be in your body, and to live present in it. It's kind of everything that is really the healings in
the podcast. We've run out of time, but I like to end the podcast with the question what else is true? And this actually comes from my trauma resilience therapy, the idea of both, and specially even though we're struggling, even though the world is on fire literally right now, something else is true. There's something that gets me through, There's something that brings me joy, a resource, one of the tools of the community resiliency model. So for you today,
Glennon Doyle, what else is true? Well?
Today, I guess what's true is that I can show up for an interview like this and have it feel real and feel connected and be embodied oh oh, that's pretty nice and new for me.
A day at a time, A day at a time. Oh, thank you so much, Thank you so much for being so open and vulnerable about this. Thank you for protecting yourself. I think that's so important when you're struggling, and particularly in you're early in recovery, to like just protect that and like not put yourself in any situation it's going to compromise you. So brava, brava. Thank you for joining me. It's this been really special.
You're just so wonderful and so honest and so real and so beautiful. Thank you for trusting me with this hour.
I believe what makes us human, what connects all of us, is that we all struggle. We all struggle with something and having the courage to reveal what the struggle actually looks like. When you're trying to heal from and recover from an eating disorder or whatever it is you're struggling with your life, this is what it looks like. It
is messy, it's scary, you don't always know. You take it a day at a time though, when there's hope, and what was really beautiful about Glennon today is that she's like, I have no idea, I have a lot of questions, but I'm hopeful. Oh it's so beautiful. And one of the things she says in our podcast is that we often will hear about the struggle, but we don't really get to witness the messy process, the messy pieces and parts of what it means to really heal
one's self. And I think the story is, if there's any conclusion, it's that it's all okay. You know, it's okay to be struggling. One of the beautiful things though, for people who are in recovery, is that relapses are I learned years ago. When you have a relapse, it is a wonderful opportunity to grow that relapses are part of the process. It doesn't mean that you're a failure. It actually is an opportunity to deepen your recovery, to
deepen your healing. And this is what we're witnessing with Glennon, and that is actually a beautiful thing. Every now and then I fall apart totally clips of the heart, Bondie Tyler, we can fall apart and put ourselves back together. And actually the falling apart, the falling apart, actually can be what Glennon implied and actually I think taught us today is that the falling apart is like, that's the shit, that's real, That is the stuff of what it means
to be human. So yeah, fall apart, be messy, that's life. Thank you for listening to The Laverne Cox Show. Please rate, review, subscribe and share with everyone you know. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok at Laverne Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox for reel. Until next time, stay in the love. The Laverne Cox Show is a
production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.