Hey everyone, it's Eric from the one you feed. Happy Holidays to you. Whether you enjoy them or you hate them, I hope you're making the best of them. As a holiday gift and as preparation for the new year, we are rereleasing seven of the older episodes. If you're new to the show, all these episodes are over a year old, so you may not have heard these yet if you've
only been listening for a year. I picked the episodes because either a I think it's a really great episode or B I think it talks about behavior change, which we're heading into the new year, and that's on a lot of people's mind. Speaking of which, we are going to try something this new year. We're going to try the first one You Feed Group Transformation program. It will be a hundred dollars for a month. We're gonna limit
it to ten people. We will meet online four times that month, will discuss tips and tricks and different ways to ensure that you stay on track behavior wise. You'll be able to ask questions of me, and we'll do some things where you're paired up as a group so that you can get some support outside of the calls as well to make sure you get the new year off to a great start. So if you're interested, just send an email to me Eric at one you feed
dot net. I hope you enjoy these episodes. I listened back to a couple of them, and um, let's just leave it at we are getting better at what we do. In the very first one, I sound very nervous and I was so. Anyway, it's still a great interview. Enjoy these, have a happy new year. Thank you for listening, and
we will talk to you soon. Bye. What I keep discovering these days is that I have to run towards this year, and I actually have to sit with my anger, and I actually have to look my envy right in the eye, and if I can be still with it, it eventually transforms into something beautiful. Yeah, welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great tinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is glenn and Melton Doyle, found or of momastery dot com and the author of the New York Times bestseller carry On Warrior Thoughts of Life Unarmed. In the book, Glennon tells her story of being a recovering alcoholic addict and beliemic in a collection of confessional essays that lay bare the dark secrets of her past while maintaining a welcoming, inclusive, and hopeful tone about her
current life as a mother of three. Her work has been featured on The Today Show, Parents Magazine, and Reader's Digest. Here's the interview. Before we get started with the interview, I wanted to remind you that I am offering some one on one sessions. Confucius said that all men's natures are alike, it is their habits that separate them. So if you're looking for some help with your behavior, and habits to help you build a better life. Send me an email to Eric at one you feed dot net. Thanks,
and here's the interview. Hi Glenn, and welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I appreciate you taken the time to talk with us. So our podcast is called The One You Feed, and it's based on the parable The Two Wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us. What is a good wolf which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, but, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well. The interesting thing is, my dad used to tell me that story all the time. Yeah, yeah, so it kind of gives me the chills to hear
it again. I mean, I don't parable means something different? To me today, as I hear it, I think then it always has before. I mean, I've always understood that to to mean that we are to run towards um, the good and the interesting thing that that I keep learning the hard way and over and over again is for me, um, the good stuff. It's almost like I have to get through the bad wolves to get to the good stuff. Like I can't just run one way or another. Like for me, you know, I started this
whole journey. I kind of got lost to addiction when I was very very young, when I was eight years old, and and then it morphed. I was a loss to foot addiction, and then that morphed into some other addictions, and I didn't get out of it until I was twenty six. UM. And so this whole past eleven years has been kind of trying to unravel all of that
and figure out just what happened. And I really really believe that it all comes down to the fact that I was uncomfortable with pain, that I was so terrified of the hard parts of life, um, you know, my own anger and sensitivity and fear, UM, that I felt like I had to numb it all, that I just had to numb it all away and run from it.
And I ran from it for decades. And what I keep discovering these days is that I have to run towards the fear, and I actually have to sit with my anger, and I actually have to look my envy right in the eye, and if I can be still with it, it eventually transforms into something beautiful. You know. I just envy is on that list. And I just spent two hours writing about envy today and how oh gosh,
as a creative person, envy can just eat you alive. Um. But I actually have found when I don't run from it, right, when I actually run towards that wolf of envy and just admit that I'm envious and sit with it for
a while, I find these beautiful gifts inside of envy. Like, for example, when I was just drinking myself to death, I was so incredibly envious of writers, to the point where if somebody gave me a good book and said it was beautiful, I would not read it because I was too just brokenhearted by this envy for this writer. And now I know that, you know, I feel like we're envious of people who are already doing what we
were made to do. And so if we kind of use that wolf, that envy wolf as sort of a arrow pointing us towards um, you know, maybe our destiny. That's what a beautiful thing that can come out of staring that wolf down. So I don't know now, I see it as like I gotta get I gotta face those those bad wolves just so I can get to the good ones. I explore on the show all the time. Some of those dichotomy is really around UM. And you know,
your story is very resonant to me. I'm recovering how coholic and addict and uh, you know, I started into being sort of troubled very early in life. You know, by the time I was probably about the age you describe, I had, you know, challenges that were going I mean I wasn't you know, like kicking back a six pack of booze at at nine, But I was clear, you know, I could look back and go, well, there were some
things that really weren't working out well there. And you talk about how I've heard you say that you around that age you started to feel very uncomfortable and you
lost yourself to pretending an addiction. And one of the things that that we talked about on the show a lot, and I'm always interested in is the difference, you know, that line between positive thinking and delusion, like when when are we feeling what we need to feel in dealing with it, and when are we um So that's so one extreme is to sort of do that, is to is to wallow in our our feelings. And then the other extreme is to deny that that they're they're they're
at all and the world's a wonderful place. And if feels like somewhere in between those two things is the place to be. And it can be really challenging to find that right balance, at least for me. But don't you find Yeah, so it's like this um continued journey of valleys and mountains, right, Like it's you're in a valley on a mountain. And but I do think that people who won't let themselves experience the agony being in the valley also then don't get to experience sort of
the ecstasy of the mountain moments. I do think that there's a sort of a type of person that kind of numbs both you know, we call it so I call it the word brutiful, like that there's this these parts of life that are so so brutal and um, and they are also beautiful, you know, and that that you know, marriage, parenting, recovery, health, all of these parts of life, you know. I just had an experience recently where somebody asked me, tell me what talk about what
the word brutiful means. I am, my sister said a baby. Um. And the night before she had the baby, we found out that my grandmother was dying, and so I had flew to Virginia. My sister and I are in several boats, extremely close, and so I flew to Virginia and I was holding her baby and she named the baby Alice, after my grandmother. So I'm holding this brand new, a
little thing. And then that night I get on a plane, I fly to Ohio and there I am in the nursing home and I'm holding my grandmother Alice's hand, and the last thing she says to me is take care of my baby Alice. And I mean, just within twenty four hours, the most one of the most beautiful experiences and then one of the most brutal, and I just felt both. I just felt both so intensely, and it
was so hard. It was just the hardest day, but I was so grateful because I just felt human, you know, like I've numbered those feelings for so long, because I felt like I couldn't handle them, like the pain would be too much and the duty would be too much. And so to be fully present for something so beautiful and for something so brutal um in twenty four period just felt like victory to me. It's so like I'm doing this human thing. I've been doing it, you know.
Um So, I don't know I was. I was at this uh my marriage sort of just imploded two years ago and we're working our way back um to some
honesty and health and some good stuff right now. But a couple of weeks after the implosion, I was at this grocery store checking out, kind of like a zombie, and I was in that like depressed moode where I hadn't showered for a week and I was really bad, and uh, grocery checkout woman asked for my I D so I handed it to her and she looked at it and she said, oh, Glennan, that's a pretty name. What does it mean? And I said, oh, it's an
Irish name. It means a girl from the valley. And then I just started cracking up because I thought, oh my gosh, that's so ironic, Like, you don't know why I'm laughing, but I just figured out that this is hilarious because I basically live in the valley and I've never put that together before that that's actually my name. And so she she started, she just looked very serious, and she stopped me and she said, listen, don't knock
the valleys. She said. Everybody wants to be on the mountaintops, but up there the air so thin you can barely breathe, and all there is to do is stand still and try not to fall. But in the valley, that's where the river runs, that's where all the power is. Oh
my god, that's so beautiful. I felt like I handed dis leave this idea and she hand me back this whole new identity because the truth is that for me, in the valley times of my life, like my addiction recovery and during that time of my marriage falling apart, the hardest times are sometimes the times where I glimpse
the most power and beauty. And yeah, it's kind of my goal just to not numb it anymore and just sit with it, because pain is a really a harsh, horrible teacher, but a really good one, probably the best one I've ever encountered. Right, you say, there's a bunch of things, and what you just said there a that's probably the first chapter in the best wisdom ever dispensed in the grocery store chapter of for Sure. Um, but you've said before that a broken heart is not the
end of anything, it's the beginning. Yeah. I just talked to my kids about that recently, actually, about how we're all well, it's the same idea. I mean, how we're all just you know, so scared, holding our hearts so so so tight, like you know, they're made of glass, and that is if anything hurts our heart, we should run from it. My experience is that the opposite is true.
I mean I I was just with a friend who was telling me that, Um, it was so lonely growing up that you know, she was one of the kids that nobody played with, and um elementary school and then bullied in middle school and grew up broken hearted. And now she's a mom. And what she does is she starts these programs all over the country for kids to have these benches where kids who are cheesed can sit
and find friendships with other kids. And that just got me thinking about how every I mean, I get to travel a lot because I do a lot of nonprofit work, and so I get to meet people who are doing really good things to change the world, and I can't I really can't think of any of them who when I sit down with these incredible leaders who are changing the world for people, don't tell me that their passion
started with their own broken heart. It's always that way, but something happened in their life that hurt them, and then they used it as fuel to help others with the same pain. So I don't know. I think, you know, that's another wolf, right, broken heartedness like envy, and if we run from it, we could be missing kind of
a stepping stone to our best life. Well, I think the way, the way that I interpret the parable in in that way is that it's what we It's what we do with all those things, right, It's not about just feeling the good or the bad feelings, but how do we how do we interact with all those things in a in a useful way. But I have a question for you about this idea of um, you know, broken heart is not the end of anything. It's the beginning or that we find our passion and energy from
our pain. Because I believe that absolutely, because that's certainly been my experience. But I also know that there's a reason that lots of people numb themselves, and there's a lot of people who never find their way back up out of that. So what are some of the ways that you work with that pain so that it becomes transformative instead of being something that turns you bitter or permanently shuts you down. What are what are some of
the things that allow it to become a positive experience? Yeah, So I mean for me, I am a words person obviously, and I I just there's a word that every time I feel really really hurt, and it happened to me today, it happens to the other time. But every time I feel really really hurt, I have this instinct where I want to absolutely it feels like shutting down, Like I just want to shut down completely. Um. I want to close my computer and never go back up my blog.
I want to stop writing. I want to circle the wagons. I want to quit what I'm doing. I want to get hurt. I want to stop, and I just this this thing, this words, these words that stay stay open, stay open, stay open. The words stay open for me are some kind of magical thing. I don't know. Every single time that I've been hurt and I have refused to lash out, you know, because when we lash out,
it's just we're deflecting pain. It It's like sometimes I feel like pain is like a hot potato, you know, like you somebody passes it to us, and we just want to quick as quickly as possible, just pass it to somebody else, hurt somebody else, and get it out of our own hands. And I get that completely. I mean, I do that all the time, and I have to apologize for it. But when I don't do it, and I just force myself to be still, actually have that tattoo on my wrist constant reminder just be still in
it and let this pain turn into something beautiful. It always does if I can stay open and let the pain sort of. Um, I don't know what it does. To tell you the truth, it just morphs into widening my heart, I guess. And what is it, I don't know. It's forgiveness on the other side of it, I don't know. What it is on the other side of it. Um, But when I sit still with it and don't deflect it or not or run from it, I think that's growth.
Nitty growth is the right word. Yeah. I had a friend tonight I was talking to who is feeling kind of I guess lonely would be the word. And he said, well, okay, so I'm sitting with it now, what what do I do next? And I thought that was a really interesting. I think the only answer I had was, I guess you sit with it more. I'm sure you hear that all the time while I've sat with it, and it's still it's still here. Yeah. Well, I mean service and art are the two things to save me again and again.
I mean, you can't just sit forever. I get that, right, I mean I think that in order to well, I'm I given um my j others. I'm a completely destructive person like that. That's what I did my first half of my life, just destroy right. So for me to have basically a rule for myself that I'm going to do with my feelings now, things that are couldn't instructive to me, that's art and service. So you know, when I say something magical happens. Usually for me, it's a
new esa. It's I write something out of that experience of sitting with that pain and whatever it taught me, and I write something and what comes out of me after that experience touches a lot of people, and that for me seems like, um, that it was all worth it. Wow.
I love that art and service. I would say those are probably that's probably mine too, if I boiled it down, that would be the two constructive ways that I've learned, you know, besides feeling the emotion that's the other Those are the two other constructive approaches that have worked for me. Isn't that interesting? Right? So feeling it and then doing something constructive afterwards, I think that's the whole ball game for me. I think it's just that over and over
and over. Yeah. And I think there's one other component to it that you talk about a lot. You say that the only difference between your life in the past and now is that you used to numb your feelings and hide, and now you feel your feelings and share. And I think there's some element you've You've got that other piece, which is and I think that's maybe the service element of it, but it's also just the connection to other people. It's that not feeling alone element. Absolutely,
that's it. I mean, that's you know, that's what I experienced at me at my meetings the first time when I started going to meetings, and I thought, oh my god, I thought all of this nastiness inside of me and all of the sphere and you know, things are ashamed of. I thought this was just me. I thought everyone else
was fine, and I was living this horrible dark existence inside. So, you know, the first time I went to one of my meetings and sat around and listened to people telling the truth about themselves, I don't know if there's anything more wonderful than that, and just hearing the words me too, me too. Of those have got do. Some of them use freeing words that another human being can hear. They are I I remember my memory is so foggy for obvious reasons, for so many years, but I remember the
first time I ever came across a recovery book. It was a narcotics anonymous book, and I was still years away from getting clean. But I remember I read that book and I just sat and sobbed because I had never heard anybody describe what was going on inside me, and I was like, holy shit, like that is I could never have put it into words. I was so lost and confused. But when I read that and realized that other people felt that way, it was certainly Again, it took me a while to get there, but it
was certainly the beginning for me of recognizing what was happening. Yeah, because we don't even need, like you said, like, we don't. You don't have to figure myself out. Like that's another thing that I've learned, Like people don't even need for me. I mean, I have this community of people who depend on me right now to show up, and that's really all they depend on me to do. They don't need me to show up and fix anything for them or
figure out anything. Basically, we just need I don't realized a while ago that all we need is witness it. We just need to witness for each other. We just need to say I see your pain. It's real, Yes I see it, and we need somebody else to say that same thing for us, and we don't want anybody to snatch it away from us, you know, Like I think that's another really big mistake we make with each
other's pain and each other's grief. We we think that we have to fix it, or you know, a friend tells us about our pain and we just want to grab it. You know. It's out of love, I think, but we just want to take it from her. And and you're so uncomfortable with pain. But I think that pain is a you know, it's a gift. It's hotly, it's just like joy. I mean, it's it's a human um holy there for a purpose. And we don't actually
need to snatch it from each other. I think we just need to say I see it, Yeah, I see it. It's real. I feel that too. Isn't this hard? This being human together? You had a line that really struck me, and I think it's I think it's a useful thing to explore, particularly for people who might be wrestling with addictions of any different sort. And you said that getting sober was like recovering from frostbite. Oh god, yes, and the my coral area to that, as I always say,
you know, getting sober is terrible. Being sober is pretty wonderful, but get in there that process is really so painful. And but the reason I think that's important to talk about is so that people don't confuse what that feels like with what being sober is. No, absolutely, oh lord, I mean that's the oh the detox those draw I mean, you just you just realize every single hour why it
is you started drinking in the first place. I mean, you know, you're just like, oh, yeah, that's right, all of these feeling and all the stuff you've been numbing. And but and and then of course, I mean for those of us who've been drinking for decades before that, then you have to face all we keep drinking so we don't have to think about all the awful things we've done too. I mean, it is certainly, you know, um, physical,
and it's a it's addiction, it's real. But it's also the second we start getting sober, we have to face things that we are are uncomfortable, and messages we've made and bridges we've burned, and so, oh, sweet lord, have mercy that those first weeks and months and days are horrible.
And yeah, people need to talk about that because it's worse before it gets worse or whatever they like, so rough, but I mean, but oh gosh, I just I just I don't want people to to let the hard part of getting there keep them from how wonderful it is. On the other side, I remember, you know, trying to get sober and it would be that bad. And I go, if this is what sobriety is, forget it right, like yeah,
you feel like the smart one. Yeah, right exactly. And so I it's that it's that that there is really another side to that. That is that that that early part is is um, it's just not indicative of what being sober is. And I think I've stayed sober. Sorry, I think I've stayed sober before. Were just remembering how hard it is to get there. Sometimes, Oh my gosh, that is enough to do it, isn't it? That is enough to keep you sober for sure? Just not wanting
to go through the first few days again. I feel like the battles are things that people get addicted to. Also, you know, like my addictions are kind of like flashy and like so dangerous that um, they seem so like bold and wild and and put me in like a different category of addict. But you know, I also feel like they run into a lot of people who are addicted to unkindness and snark and um, jealousy and guilt
and false pride. You know, I think that those things, especially unkindness, like I think, I think that those things can be UM equally destructive in a life and can keep people from their best lives and from connection just as surely as boots can and drugs can. UM. And I think people use those things. I run into people all the time who I feel like are using unkindness as a pain deflector yeah, so they don't have to
they get hurt and then they automatically lash out. Um they are using They are keeping um, not allowing pain to transform them, just like somebody who's addicted to boost does. Yeah. I think there's a lot of a lot of different levels of that. And sometimes I feel grateful for the type of addictions that I had, because it certainly led me to a place that I had to do something about it. There was there was nowhere else to I mean it was there was nowhere else to go with it. Really,
I'm grateful for that all the time. I hear you completely. I was doing an interview recently and I said, I brought up my addictions, and the reporters said, oh, you know, we don't need to go back to that, Like your your past, that you're over, that that's in the past, let's move on. And so mad and I couldn't figure out why I was mad, and then I didn't think
of anything good to say, so I blew it. But later I figured out that I was just so upset that somebody would look at that rock bottom moment I had. I was on the bathroom floor. I just I was holding a pregnancy cast I it was the end of twenty years of being lost to student drugs and booze, and I was like being faced with this idea that I might need to become a mother, and it was just wow. And um, I think of that moment as
the best freaking moment of my life. Like it, I mean, I am grateful to God, the universe, who ever was in charge around here for forcing me to the ground. You know, It's like life just wants you to just say uncle already, you know, just wants you to say, I can't do it. I can't do it on my own, I need help. And some people never get forced to their knees like that, right, and so they just spend their whole life, which is good enough. And I would I would hate that. So I don't know. I'm good.
I'm so grateful. And the same thing happened with my marriage. You know, it's like another rock bottom moment. I was like, are you serious, I'm on the freaking bathroom for again. Basically it was my marriage, and I start I didn't have the perspective to be grateful for it at the moment, but I am now like we were forced our marriage was forced to the ground and we had to like deal with it. Man, we didn't. We didn't get to do that. Okay, we'll just be good enough for fifty years, right,
you know. And I don't think I don't think well, I don't think it's possible to to to be grateful in those moments. I mean, there's one of that's one of those like when you're in a in a bad space ands AND's like, well it's a chance to grow. You're kind of like I'm going to strangle you, like you know, but but it's it's such a true thing.
I mean, it's one of those things that's interesting, too helpful to try and get to that perspective, but isn't usually like to your point, sometimes the only way through the pain is really through the pain. Yes, and no one's allowed to tell you. No one is allowed to try to give you perspective when you're in the middle
of your pain. That's my rule. Even if everybody knows it's all going to be good, and if everybody knows it's all happening for a reason, no one's allowed to say it until the person who's in the pain says it exactly. You use the phrase a lot, just show up. But I've been exploring the idea of bringing our whole
selves to every situation that we end up in. It's it's easy, at least for me to bring one person to a consulting situation and a different person to playing music, or I mean not different people, but only certain elements of you know of ourselves, and you have a You said, the problem with surface conversations, which it's easy to get into and all those situations, is that you stay lonely
all the time because everybody's surface is different. But if you take the chance and a leap of faith and you go deeper, you find that at those deeper levels were all the same. Yeah, And I think the blessing of figuring out of that out is that I was forced to because I'm just a raging, raging introvert. Put me in a cocktail party with people talking about the weather,
and I can't handle it. I mean, my husband and I actually have these like hand emotions where he tells me that stop, like, you know, she just asked about you know, the kids. You don't need to talk about your depression or whatever, like because I tend to go it's like this, you know, this throat. It's like making the slash across his throat, like no, Gwennan, We're just at the playground. It's yeah, yeah. So I'm learning that there are, you know, places that are good for it
and are not. But I don't know, I find something logical between people. Seems to happen when I say the thing that I'm really thinking instead of the thing I think I'm supposed to say. You know, it's feels like going off script, you know. It feels like we all have to we're supposed to be. I sometimes feel like I'm like in a show, Like I'm on a in a play and I already know what everyone's going to say, and then I have to say my lines and all day it feels kind of crazy to me, like why
don't we all just say what we're thinking. I like that lady in the grocery store. I mean she changed my life, that lady who grabbed my I d and told me that little story. Like she was going completely off script with me. She was just supposed to say, here's your bag, haven't I stay? And instead she stopped and saw me as a human being and probably saw my pain and had something beautiful to offer me, and so she did it. Even it was kind of weird
and truly changed my thinking that day. So I don't know, I do. I do think that we stay on the surface with people. You know, we talk about our I don't know, religion and cars and countertops. Yeah, and I and that's fine. But I do think that's why were lonely, because those like you said, those serface things are all different. But I have learned because I tell my story so
honestly in my books and online. The most by far, the most transformative and beautiful and holy part of my work is not the writing, and it's not the speaking, although I do that a lot. It's the reading and the listening because I spend part of my day every single day reading letters from women all over the world. They write to me, they tell me their stories, like their stories, like the stuff they've never told anyone, And that daily practice of just I call it just being
broken hearted. Like I'm just gonna sit here and I'm just gonna be broken hearted for you. I'm just gonna read your story. I'm just gonna hold some space in my day and my heart to just hear you. So how that we're brave is is interesting. So you started writing, you know, you're. One of the things you're known for is how just very incredibly honest and upfront you are about what's going on in your life. When you started doing that, you were I believe you were a school
teacher at the time. How hard was it for you to start doing that? Um, did you wrestle with that in the beginning? You probably still do, But did you wrestle with that more in the beginning, And did you wrestle with it particularly because you're like, well, I'm going to go back into this school and you know, I'm going to work with these people that have just read these incredibly intimate things about me. How did you deal
with that? Yeah, Like my husband said, well, I hope this writing thing works out because you've rendered yourself completely unemployable, and I was kind of like, that's awesome. That is awesome. I accidentally can never get a job again. That's amazing. Um, well, listen, this is how that happened. It actually, so I was
feeling when I started dis jury being with babies. I had so many kids, and I was have been sober for um, I guess six years, and I was starting to have those moments where I remembered why I started drinking, you know, like, oh my gosh, life is so hard, and I started to get some shame, and that, of course, shame is like the kiss of death for addicts. And so I did know that art in service art and service, art and service, and so I really did want to
start writing, but I was lazy about it. So one day I was passing the computer and there was this um thing going on on Facebook called the Things, and so people were just listing quick things about themselves, and so I thought, oh, I could do that. I could make a quick list. So I made a list, walked away, came back to the computer like twenty minutes later, in my inbox smashed with so many emails and this list
had been shared so many times. Well, I of course did not read anyone else's list before I did mine. So this is okay, let me give you an example of my number six, because it's like etched into my brain forever. So I'm sweating right now as I'm trying as I'm telling you this, because it was so such
an embarrassing situation. But my number six was I'm a recovering food, alcohol, and drug addict, but I still sometimes miss a booze in the same twisted way that you can miss someone who beats you and repeatedly leaves you for dead. Okay, here's my friend Lisa's numbers. My favorite boot is hummus. Okay, that's how my entire list was. Everyone, all of the all the numbers were like that. No, it was. I remember calling my sister and saying, how do I get it back? And she she was saying,
you can't. That's it's out there, it's done. You can just step away from the computer. And so it was terrifying. But listen, the amazing thing was is that when I checked my email box and started reading these emails, there were some people that I had known my entire life, but who were like introducing themselves to me for the first time, they were saying, I just read your list. I can't believe it. My sister is so depressed. I wan't know how to help her. I just read your list,
and I'm struggling so much in my marriage. I don't know how to talk to it about it. I just read your list and my brother is an addict and we're so sad. I mean, it was like people telling me that, and I was like, I was almost pissed because I was like, what are we doing? Why are we even calling each other friends? We sit together and we're talking about these things that don't matter when you're in so much pain and I have the same pain, And the next got to be what we're here for
to talk about this stuff? You know? So I don't know that's it was an accident and I didn't really understand what I was doing, um when I put that list out there. But that was the day that I learned maybe this whole like shameless um revealing of myself could actually be used to sort of unlock people. It absolutely can, and yet still sort of a frightening thing. I mean, I'm at a point with the show where there's a lot of visibility, but it's not what what
I do full time. I still do some different consulting work, and occasionally I'll walk into a consulting place and people start me like, I listen to your podcast. I heard of your podcast, And my immediate reaction is oh shit, Like you know, like I I wonder what thing I said last time, but what's been to your point exactly. The amazing thing is that nine times out of ten they go on to say something about themselves that I
never would have known. I would have had no I mean, we would have just kept skimming along on the same level. And all of a sudden, now most of these people are are saying something to me. I'm like, well, I didn't pig that. I I didn't see that, but the level of relationship deepens. It's funny that for every nine experiences, the one one that is maybe more. I wouldn't even go so far as to call them bad, but maybe lukewarm is still sometimes enough to for that fear to
start to seek back in. And it's sort of an a conscious going against that consistently and saying nope, I'm you know, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. I'm gonna keep bringing who I am to every situation that's right, And if we didn't have that one that it wouldn't be breakin good point. If everybody was just telling us how awesome we were all the time, something would be missing in it, right, because there has to
be a struggle in it. I don't know, there has to be sort of there has to be a constant overcoming as kind of a truth teller and an artist. Otherwise, what's the point? I mean, I think that's part of the growth for us is to be is to be a little scared and do it anyway. So I've got just a couple more things. Although I could probably do this for about the next four hours, and I know that how long? How long before the kids go to bed? How much longer do we have to have? Well, I
don't even know. I'm not even in the well. I think we're trying to avoid avoid you having to put them to bed. So no, that's the point here. The point here is that we continue until they are sound trying to figure out, so then I just get to go out and watch. So how long do we have to keep this going forever? Balance your desire to do that with Chris's desire to go to bed himself here shortly.
Um so, but speaking to parenting, I haven't known your story that long, so, but it seems to me like there was a point where you wrote something about not always enjoying parent and there was there was some degree of controversy about that. But what I wanted to talk about in that where two things that I thought was was really interesting. One was you're not enjoying certain parts of parenting, which I think is a completely obvious statement, like, yeah,
it's not it's not always fun. I can't even you would think, so, yeah, it's It's just completely obvious to me. But what you talked about was the double guilt about parenting, about Okay, I'm not doing it well, which I think every parent has, right, I mean, that's at least I do on a on a consistent basis, as well as now I also feel guilty because I'm not enjoying it enough.
And and I talk on the show a lot about this idea of layering suffering on top of suffering, like I feel bad because I feel bad, like I'm depressed, and now I feel bad because I shouldn't be depressed. And I was really struck by that. So can you explain a little bit about what was going on, or it probably still does go on with you related to that. Yeah, so it things are a little different from me right now because my kids are a little bit older there, twelve,
nine and six right now. But there was a time when they were don't check my math, because I'm awful at numbers. I'm a words girl. But they were little. They were like five, three and zero, you know, they were just tiny, and I was, you know, like a friend stark. I was dripping with children, and man, I love my kids like everyone does. But there's something about parenting young children that just brings the anger. You know.
It's like you don't even know. I heard somebody say once you don't know how angry you are actually you have kids, and you don't know how selfish you are actually get married. Like I feel that to be true. We're not allowed to say that. I don't know why I think that. I think we make parenting harder by just walking around pretending it's not hard, you know. I think the one thing we could do to probably make it easier for each other is to admit out loud
that it gets really freaking hard and lonely and scary. Um, not because we don't love them, because we love them so much and so we're terrified that we're doing it wrong and not giving them what they need and not good enough for them. Um. So yeah, I mean, I don't know. I would be at target, and like I don't know if we people with young child them with a target. We all with a target, and we I would be checking out, and you know, there would be
like one tanting on the ground. I'd be like moving her forward like you do with your luggage and the you know, airport line, just like pulling her by her jacket forward because she was screaming. And one would you know, we have like a bra on his head. And then I'll be tangering and you know, I'm just like counting
the minutes until I get out there. And some woman who it was always an older woman would always stop me and just say the following words, Oh, honey, I just hope you're enjoying every moment because it just goes by so fast. And now I understand I get it, like I get their nostalgia. I already get the nostalgia. And my kids are you know, they're they're not babies anymore.
And I already feel it. I get it, but it's just an example of what we talked about before, how you don't like step into someone's painful moment and like shame them for it. It really did feel like a shaming, you know, because I would just want to say, what part of this looks enjoyable right now? Because now not only am I stressed and sad, but I'm also shamed because I feel like I'm not doing this right. And now I feel guilty because I feel like I'm supposed
to be enjoying it too. And you know, I think there's a I always knew, even when the hardest moments with my little ones, I always knew that there was something really precious um and something to be treasured and cherished about most moments, but as sure as hell, didn't enjoy a lot of it. And I think that is okay. It's like this idea of, you know, the end both of life, that you can find um, parenthood and your children to be absolutely beautiful and also completely brutal. All
the best things in my life are that way. In my marriage absolutely one of the most precious and beautiful parts of my life and absolutely one of the hardest. I think there's there's no doubt. And it's it's back to that sort of very fundamental idea of only two trying to recognize or find the good parts of something and deny that those other parts are there, which they
absolutely are. And and and I think it is that when we start feeling bad about the fact that we feel just like everybody else does, but since we tend to not talk about it, we don't know that everybody feels that way. I know now we feel so alone and ashamed, and I I do. Here's here's something that I think is true. It might sound obnoxious, and I've never said it before, so I'm just trying it out here, but I really do believe. I mean, I hinted at
it before. But I think that the fact that I am willing and able and often do step right into the how hard this is and how brutal this is and admit to you know, the down moments. Um, I feel like I am able to enjoy and like, um, grasp beauty in a way that I'm not sure everyone does. I really, I mean, I cry at freaking trees. I can't sit at church without crying six times. I mostly
just want to. I can be out at dinner and I just want to like stand up and clap for everyone in the room because I'm so proud of everyone for just you know, being vertical, and because life is so hard and we are doing such a good job, and just you know, I haven't made an intense um capacity for joy and beauty. And I don't think that's an accident, you know. I think it's because I'm also
willing to just sit in the valley. Well. One of the first things I heard in recovery that I well, I heard a lot of things, but I do remember that idea of you can't selectively repress um. You can't. It's like you just basically you you're gonna you're gonna repress everything. You're gonna turn the volume down on everything. And I know that's true, certainly in my case. So
I think it's I think you're absolutely right. I think that I never get into sort of like, well, I don't know how everybody else is doing, but I just know for me when I am that numb is sort of numb across the board is yeah, the bad turns down, but so does so does the good. So you do feel that way like you feel like the more the deeper you get into the sobriety. I like how you said the volume was turned up. It does feel like that. Doesn't like the color that turned up. The volume is
turned up. Sometimes the pain is turned up, but it kind of feels like, yeah, I mean, I go. But I mean I think it's not been a you know the mountains and the valleys, you know idea that it's I don't think any of this stuff is linear. It's not like I just keep getting better, keep getting better.
It's like it goes up, it goes down. And I think there are times that I've been more open to life and and more open to feeling things, and I do across the board, and I think there's other times where I get into more of a pattern of sort of just trying to turn it all down. Maybe not in the in the dramatic fashion as dramatically as I used to, but there's plenty of other ways to numb or to to lessen our ability to feel. And I think we it's very easy to use personal development and
spirituality in that way. We had a guest on who called it the spiritual bypass, and I was like, that's exactly it it's like and and in recovery programs that is a I think that's a very common one is you know, oh, it's all happening for a reason. We tell ourselves that so quickly, right, just to enough, just okay, God that'll you know, or or you know, I think
service is so important. But I know in in recovery there's sometimes it's like a bad mood starts to enter the room anywhere, and it's like you gotta work with another person, right, you gotta you gotta do something like like all right, let's just relax a little so I can get into that with work or anything. But I do think it's a true statement of you can't you can't selectively repress things and is just refusing to try
to fix things too fast. We had a guest on the of view hasn't come out yet, but he said something. His name is David K. Reynolds, and he wrote a book called Constructive Living, which is um it would be interesting to explore in context of what we're talking about here, but he has something that he said that really struck me. And he he's very focused on behavior. You know that that you you drive, you drive change in your life. By behavior, which I think is very much a a
partially true statement. Um. But what he said that for people who don't have their behavior under control, they're more afraid of feelings because those feelings have the ability to just lead you way, way off track. But that if you if you get to the place where you've got your behavior on some degree of control, you can feel that full range of emotions with less fear about what's going to happen. That really that really hit me strongly.
It's that idea I have a little sticky on my Um, what little mirror does my computers has struck sure liberates, and I feel like that is so important for me. I think that's important for a lot of people who are in you know, the creative world or recovering people. Oh my gosh, I have to stick to my like daily disciplines. I think people would be surprised by how structured I am actually. Um. And it does feel safe for being me and knowing that I'm going to have
a wide range of emotions throughout the day. It feels safe knowing that they're all going to happen within a structure that I already have and the experiense, Yeah, because I think, at least for me, you know, if I go way back into those really bad years, a particularly sad feeling could just lead to you know, weeks of even beyond the normal destructive behavior, right, and that's scary. Whereas now I think there's a structure in my life
that I go, Okay, well I can handle this. I don't. Yeah, I can feel that without going on a on a twelve day bender. Yeah yeah, But isn't it weird because it's like the second you think you figure something out, every nothing is black and white because it's like you're exactly right, and like, yes, we need to feel it all. But then in my head, I know I can hear my therapist saying, actually, glad, and you're not going to
feel your way out of anything. You have to just do something right, Like you have to do what you need to do, regardless of how you feel about what you need to do. So, um, yeah, there's a big gray area and it's all a balance of feeling and doing.
I guess that's such a common thing that that's one of the probably the most prevalent thing we talked about on the show is that, um, you know, you've got to take the phrase that that I use, and I probably got I'm sure I got it somewhere in recovery, as you can't think your way in the right act, and you sometimes you have to act your way into
right thinking. And I'm just interested in that idea of how thoughts, emotions, and actions all interact with each other in some extraordinarily complex way, but that sometimes we can use one of those. If we can get a handle on one of those, we can use it as a lever to work with the other ones, and different that different lever seems to work better for different types of
things or situations. I have to remind myself all the time that I am part mind, part body, part spirit, and that there's three lives going on every single day. And if if it were up to me, I would just stay in my mind all day and I would go I would be back where I was, you know, um, because the mind is a beautiful and terrifying place to live. So I have that's part of my discipline of my structure, is that every day I can spend I don't let myself right all day, and that would not be good
for me. I let myself write for a few hours a day and then I am doing some some kind of like body stuff my exercise, even though it's not my natural want to do that. But and I have to have some stillness every day because of that spirit part. And that's what tends to keep me healthy is just remembering that I'm a triangle and that I have to address each day the three different parts of myself. That's a very good way to think about it, and that
that resonates very much with me. And and when I'm doing the best is when it's all those things are being taken care of, don't you think? And then it's like this weird thing like I'll be having this this challenge writing and I can sit I could sit in front of my computer all day and try to figure
it out and it won't work. But then like if I remember that I have a body and I go for a walk or go for a job, like magically, halfway through the job, the mind thing gets worked out, Like I figure out like when you said the lever thing, I'm like, what is that? That's exactly right? Like why it's not even just I'm addressing my body right now. It's like, Okay, I'm going to remember I have a body and then my body will help take care of this mind thing. I can't figure out. It is all
so weird and connected. It totally is, and and I think that's why I'm always when people talk about, like, you know, is the is there a mind body connection, I'm always like, I'm yes, Like, how is that even a question? I've been listening to The Smiths and Old Band a lot, and one of the quotes is does the mind rule the body or does the body rule
the mind? And I think the answer is both. The answer is both, absolutely, and there's just people who tend to I think people who identify most with their mind have to work to live the life of the body. And you know, my husband's opposite. He's an athlete, He's an athlete his whole life. He would live his whole life in his body. He has to work to address
the mind part. And that's really been interesting and that's been part of the journey we've been working on with our but with our my own marriage is like we live two different ways. Yeah, um, and that's just been fascinating. I certainly have not even come close to unraveling all of that, but it's just a new journey. Yeah, I think The amazing part of that is when you've got that kind of difference, if you can find a way that those differences compliment and support each other, it's so powerful.
And then the flip side of that is when they don't, it's so so hard. That's right. We're hoping we're going to get to the beautiful part. It's going to be just amazing. But right now, all the time, totally totally amazing, all the time. Yes, exactly. We'll let me know when that happens. Right, that's right, I'll call you right away. We'll get you, we'll get you back on the show and you can solve this for all of us once and for all. Yeah, you'll have to get me on
real quick before it all falls apart again. Exactly that five minutes it that's all perfect. Well, thank you so much. This has been really a great time. And like I said, I could, uh, I could do it a long time, but we're already like double the normal show length, so I'm going to show some degree of discipline here, structure liberal as you say. I'm just grateful. Thank you. It's been a great conversation. Yeah, it really has. Thank you so much for taking the time to do it and
let's keep in touch. Let's please do and thank you. I just love you so I'm so grateful to be a part of it. And just keep doing your work. It's so important and so good and so helpful. Thank you so much, you too, Thank you. And as a reminder, if as a reminder, if you're interested in doing some one on one work with me, I might need a second here. And as a final reminder, if you're interested in doing some one on one work with me and you want some laughs, send an email to Eric at
one you feed dot net. Thanks. You can learn more about Glenn and Moulton Doyle and this podcast at one you feed dot net Slash Doyle