Speaker 1: This episode was recorded on Cameragle Land.
Speaker 2: Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life
Speaker 2: on Cut.
Speaker 3: I'm Brittany and I'm Keisha, and today we are so lucky.
Speaker 1: This guest that is joining us has been on our
Speaker 1: bucket list for I'd sell you a couple of years.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you guys know that I'm a bit of
Speaker 2: a football girlie. Now I'm a soccer girlie. I'm officially
Speaker 2: a wag as of the last couple of weeks. But
Speaker 2: today today's a bit of a flex for anyone in
Speaker 2: the football world. But I think even if you're not
Speaker 2: in the football soccer world, you'd be hard pressed not
Speaker 2: to know who our guest is. Abby Wambach. She's a
Speaker 2: soccer icon, speaker, podcaster, New York Times bestselling author, and
Speaker 2: activist for equality and inclusion. Abby is one of the
Speaker 2: most dominant sportswomen in the history of women's soccer, and
Speaker 2: she's a two time Olympic gold medalist and beever World
Speaker 2: Cup champion. Do you know it was actually so hard
Speaker 2: to write this intro because there was so many things
Speaker 2: that she's done and so many achievements.
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, we're to overachieve Abby.
Speaker 2: After winning the Women's World Cup in twenty fifteen, Abby
Speaker 2: retired and has gone on to be one of the
Speaker 2: most prominent voices fighting for equality and inclusion.
Speaker 3: Abbi has recently released her latest book that she co
Speaker 3: authored with her wife, Glennon Doyle and Demanda Doyle.
Speaker 1: It is called We Can Do Hard Things.
Speaker 3: The book is broken into twenty of life's biggest questions,
Speaker 3: like why am I like this? How do I figure
Speaker 3: out what I want? Why can't I be happy? And
Speaker 3: how do I forgive? This book you get bang for
Speaker 3: your buck. It's over five hundred pages, so it'd like
Speaker 3: cost per page, very very low, and.
Speaker 4: On YouTube I'm showing you now.
Speaker 3: It includes editions from some of the world's most interesting
Speaker 3: and influential people like Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Gilbert, who we
Speaker 3: have been lucky enough to chat with, Brene brown, Estaperel
Speaker 3: Reese Witherspoon, just to name a couple. So today we
Speaker 3: wanted to chat with Abby about some of the hard
Speaker 3: things that she has faced in life and what those
Speaker 3: challenges taught her about herself and the world.
Speaker 1: Abby Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 4: Thank you guys both for having me and I just
Speaker 4: want to say give a big shout out to my
Speaker 4: favorite azzie footballer, Sam Kerr. Yes, come on, Samkurr. I
Speaker 4: love her so much and what you all did with
Speaker 4: the World Cup was just so fun to watch last
Speaker 4: time around.
Speaker 2: It's actually been so incredible. And I mean Sam, here
Speaker 2: is like royalty. I don't know what it was and
Speaker 2: I'm trying to put my finger on it, but it
Speaker 2: just exploded in the football world here, Like the World
Speaker 2: Cup just changed everything for women's sport, not just in Australia,
Speaker 2: but I think around the world. But in Australia, I
Speaker 2: think football was always of interest, Soccer was always of interest,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't like the number one sport. And after
Speaker 2: that World Cup, it's all anyone talks about. It outsells
Speaker 2: the men's sports. It's actually so incredible to watch.
Speaker 3: And there were also such high percentage increases in girls
Speaker 3: that were being signed up to join like local league
Speaker 3: soccer teams and that kind of thing. It was just
Speaker 3: amazing and I think it was the most viewed thing
Speaker 3: in Australian TV history. Yeah, she's really really I will
Speaker 3: fact check that before this guy and the birth name
Speaker 3: for females of Matilda, Yes, went up like I'm making
Speaker 3: this up.
Speaker 4: Fifty I made up.
Speaker 2: We start every episode with an accidentally unfiltered your most
Speaker 2: embarrassing story. I can only assume for some reason you're
Speaker 2: giving the energy of that.
Speaker 1: You've got many.
Speaker 4: I've got a lot. And for the listener who has
Speaker 4: no clue who I am, just stay with me, stay
Speaker 4: with her here. I am hard. It is hard to
Speaker 4: embarrass me because I'm the youngest of seven children. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I've basically been abused and teased and battered my whole
Speaker 4: life around just being the youngest of seven children. And
Speaker 4: so it is very difficult to embarrass me. And by
Speaker 4: the way, like this is going to sound pretty serious
Speaker 4: when I say what I'm going to say, But don't worry,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of healing that has taken place. Here's
Speaker 4: what happened. I won the World Cup in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 4: was deciding on whether I was going to retire or
Speaker 4: continue on to play in the Olympics in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: I was living in Portland, Oregon, in the Pacific northwest
Speaker 4: of the United States at the time, and I made
Speaker 4: the very stupid decision to go golfing with some buddies
Speaker 4: of mine and I was drinking a lot of alcohol
Speaker 4: that day, and we went to a barbecue after the
Speaker 4: round of golf, and I thought that I was fine
Speaker 4: to drive home. I got in a car and I
Speaker 4: got a DUI, got pulled over and I get a dui.
Speaker 4: And I'm sure I think that most places other than
Speaker 4: the United States, like that is abhorrent behavior, Like I
Speaker 4: know in the UK, like if you get a dui,
Speaker 4: like you're like people, people are like, what the fuck
Speaker 4: is wrong with you? So I went to jail and
Speaker 4: I woke up and my face was on the ESPN,
Speaker 4: which is like the most famous sports television show here.
Speaker 4: Mugshot was on the ticker the bottom where they like.
Speaker 4: It was just like the most embarrassing thing that has
Speaker 4: ever happened to me, the most shameful, because it really
Speaker 4: pointed out a bigger problem that I was having with alcohol,
Speaker 4: that I was hiding and I was keeping secret from
Speaker 4: the rest of the world. A lot of my people
Speaker 4: knew that I had this problem, and I was kind
Speaker 4: of suffering and struggling with alcohol at the time. But
Speaker 4: you know, worst decision ever, Yeah, best outcome because I
Speaker 4: have not had a drink since that night. You know,
Speaker 4: almost ten years sober, which is the part of the
Speaker 4: story that gets better. Folks, congratulats. Most embarrassing thing that
Speaker 4: ever happened to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not gonna lot.
Speaker 2: This is the most serious, accidentally unfiltered we've ever had.
Speaker 2: But I understand it because before we started this conversation, guys,
Speaker 2: we you know, said to Abby, do you.
Speaker 1: Have this accidental filter?
Speaker 2: She's like, yeah, does it have to be funny? And
Speaker 2: I said, no, it doesn't have to be. And in
Speaker 2: my head, I thought, what could it be that could
Speaker 2: be that embarrassing because every story almost ends in laughter,
Speaker 2: and that one doesn't like that, that that actually you're like,
Speaker 2: then I went to prison and then the whole nation
Speaker 2: that I M. Yeah, I guess I see that roundabout
Speaker 2: way because it ended well for you. Now, I guess
Speaker 2: you can look back and I mean probably be grateful
Speaker 2: and I have a laugh at that moment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I think that. You know, I'm sure
Speaker 4: that there's a lot of people in the world that
Speaker 4: struggle with alcohol. I know Ozzie's love to party. Honestly,
Speaker 4: in the Olympic village, Ozzie House was like the one
Speaker 4: that was always going off like.
Speaker 1: Ohsie aussy ossy OI.
Speaker 4: Like it's so wild, they're like the biggest partiers. But
Speaker 4: I do think that, like, embarrassment comes in all forms,
Speaker 4: and if you knew what it was like to be
Speaker 4: me at the end of my retirement. When you're a
Speaker 4: professional athlete, there's this weird relationship you have the public
Speaker 4: where it matters to you more because so much of
Speaker 4: your livelihood is dependent on whether people like you or not,
Speaker 4: which is terrible, but it's just true, especially at the
Speaker 4: time for a woman footballer. I was making most of
Speaker 4: my money and endorsements off the field, and that has
Speaker 4: everything to do with if people like me and if
Speaker 4: people think I'm a good footballer, right, and so that
Speaker 4: is the biggest, for sure embarrassment of my life. I mean, look,
Speaker 4: I perioded on my pants during a couple of soccer games,
Speaker 4: like white shorts. I think now Nike and the national
Speaker 4: team doesn't allow their women to wear white shorts for
Speaker 4: this purpose, So you're welcome. I took one for the team.
Speaker 4: They just bleed on their pants exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't want to jump ahead too much
Speaker 3: because you know, we had planned on talking to you
Speaker 3: about alcohol and your decision to go sober and that
Speaker 3: kind of thing, but I can't remember the name. There
Speaker 3: is a like psychological term for this, and essentially it's
Speaker 3: around the concept of if things are medium bad, you
Speaker 3: don't tend to make change in your life, but things
Speaker 3: sometimes have to get so bad that you are forced
Speaker 3: to make a big change. Was that moment of getting
Speaker 3: a DUI having your face on every news program and
Speaker 3: you probably internationally for it, Like, if not nationally, it
Speaker 3: was likely in international news. I'm curious about how bad
Speaker 3: it had to get for you to be like, holy shit,
Speaker 3: I need to change everything about this and my relationship
Speaker 3: with alcohol is not a good one, and this is
Speaker 3: like the impetus for change.
Speaker 4: That was the only thing that was going to wake
Speaker 4: me up, right, you know. I tried a couple of
Speaker 4: times before to go, and as an athlete, like, look,
Speaker 4: I trained really hard, and when I was with the team,
Speaker 4: I never drank right, But then when I'd get home,
Speaker 4: I'd party really hard. And so my ability to have
Speaker 4: like a high functioning alcoholism was really difficult to even
Speaker 4: admit that I had a problem because I was winning
Speaker 4: like gold medals and shit, you know, like it's very
Speaker 4: difficult and it makes a lot of sense. I do
Speaker 4: understand why so many of us pro athletes struggle with addiction,
Speaker 4: because we're so accustomed to having our brains and the
Speaker 4: dopamine and the pleasures parts of our brains utilized a lot,
Speaker 4: Like when we're out in the field and you're being
Speaker 4: screamed for by fifty thousand people, and then you go
Speaker 4: back to your hotel room, you're like, well, this sucks,
Speaker 4: and so that's like an easy fix for it. So yeah,
Speaker 4: that moment needed to happen because it had to be
Speaker 4: so horrific and so shameful and so embarrassing. By the
Speaker 4: way I've processed through it, I don't feel that way
Speaker 4: about myself anymore because I was just like hurting, and
Speaker 4: I was suffering so much, and I was having a
Speaker 4: lot of mental health stuff I was coming up into.
Speaker 4: I was going into a retirement that I didn't plan for.
Speaker 4: I didn't know what the hell I was going to do.
Speaker 4: I didn't know what to call myself. I didn't know
Speaker 4: what to f feel identity wise. I was just having
Speaker 4: a total existential crisis. In fact, when I got this DUI,
Speaker 4: I actually ended up changing and completely reorganizing my entire
Speaker 4: life I got. I moved. I moved to Florida. I
Speaker 4: moved totally out of state. I don't talk to a
Speaker 4: lot of the friends that I had at the time
Speaker 4: for various reasons, but mostly it's due to geographical proximity.
Speaker 4: Here's the thing, Like, what does Oprah say? She said,
Speaker 4: life will send you whispers and if you're not listening,
Speaker 4: then life eventually will send you a big brick in
Speaker 4: the face. And that's what you go. That's what I got.
Speaker 2: Did you know that you had a problem with alcohol?
Speaker 4: Like? Was it?
Speaker 2: Were you every time you drunk? Were you, like, I
Speaker 2: know this isn't right. I know I'm drinking to excess.
Speaker 2: I know I need to change it. Or was it
Speaker 2: just a really normal part of your life because you've
Speaker 2: been doing it for so long?
Speaker 4: I had no idea. Yeah, for a long time. It
Speaker 4: wasn't until my first wife started to ask me questions
Speaker 4: about it, Like, and here's the thing, Like, I think
Speaker 4: that that alcoholism and addiction is a symptom to what
Speaker 4: something else that was going on inside of me. And
Speaker 4: I was suffering because I was struggling in this first marriage,
Speaker 4: and I didn't know how to fix it, and I
Speaker 4: didn't know what to do about it. I was struggling
Speaker 4: because I was coming upon this retirement. I did not
Speaker 4: know what to do. And that was the only thing
Speaker 4: that I had ever learned throughout my life that was
Speaker 4: able to soothe me quickly, was to soothe this desperation,
Speaker 4: this horror, this fear, and without guardrails of soccer, because
Speaker 4: soccer really did protect me from going into like a
Speaker 4: real full fledged addiction, because I had to go into
Speaker 4: camp every few weeks, I had to keep playing soccer
Speaker 4: for most of the year, so it in some ways
Speaker 4: saved me and also some ways kind of covered and
Speaker 4: like camouflaged the addiction for all the years. Because if
Speaker 4: I were to be really honest, I've been a problem
Speaker 4: drinker since the very first time I ever drink alcohol.
Speaker 4: I was I was drinking to get drunk as soon
Speaker 4: as it hit my lips. I didn't have like an
Speaker 4: off button like I watched, you know, being the youngest
Speaker 4: of seven kids. My dad is a drinker, and my
Speaker 4: brothers and sisters were all drinkers, and watching them do
Speaker 4: it kind of gave me this like aspiration for it
Speaker 4: in a way, And there's parts of me that still
Speaker 4: like think like, at least in the memory of the
Speaker 4: person I wanted to become, Like, there were parts of
Speaker 4: me growing up that wanted to be like my dad
Speaker 4: where he got to like go to the golf course
Speaker 4: and drink with his buddies during the day in his retirement.
Speaker 4: Like that was like the dream. And now I'm like,
Speaker 4: that is kind of an absurd dream.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean I think that's a really good
Speaker 2: place for us to go. Now is back to your childhood, Abby,
Speaker 2: But you do say you're one of the youngest of
Speaker 2: seven kids, which I imagine is a bit manic. What
Speaker 2: was it at that time that led you to get
Speaker 2: into football? And I know you speak about it pretty
Speaker 2: beautifully in the book, but for those playing at home,
Speaker 2: was it something that the rest of your siblings did?
Speaker 2: Was it, you know, you just something that your parents
Speaker 2: really put you into? Was it something that you found
Speaker 2: on your own?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I came from a family of athletes. The way that
Speaker 4: the brothers and sisters are oriented. There's two older sisters
Speaker 4: that are like ten years older and eleven years older,
Speaker 4: and then there are four boys and then me and
Speaker 4: so because all of them, my sisters included, were very
Speaker 4: into sports, soccer, basketball primarily those are the big sports.
Speaker 4: My brothers also played ice hockey. Interestingly enough, my sister
Speaker 4: Beth actually her friends were playing basketball when she was
Speaker 4: like really young, and she said to my mom, I
Speaker 4: want to learn how to play soccer. And my mom said,
Speaker 4: I don't know how to do that. Let's go to
Speaker 4: the library. So they like checked out a book on
Speaker 4: like how to play soccer for my sister Beth to learn,
Speaker 4: which is I think so important as to like how
Speaker 4: then I became the soccer player. I became like literally
Speaker 4: anything as possible for us.
Speaker 1: Is Beth pissed? Like yeah, she was a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean she's fine. She went to Harvard and
Speaker 4: played basketball and became a doctor.
Speaker 2: Like she's fine, She's like, fuck you, I did the research,
Speaker 2: real achieve is.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: Well, here's the thing. I saw what she did and
Speaker 4: I was like, I'm not going to go that route.
Speaker 4: I'm just gonna play She played basketball, I played soccer, Yeah,
Speaker 4: and I definitely don't. I went to the University of Florida,
Speaker 4: did not go to Harvard. But anyways, to answer your question, yeah,
Speaker 4: I think that being in a big family of athletes,
Speaker 4: it put me in an environment where I was like
Speaker 4: always on a team, and I think that it kind
Speaker 4: of gave me the ability to watch people and to
Speaker 4: learn a lot from watching. Even now and I'm forty
Speaker 4: five and I just started to play beach volleyball. And
Speaker 4: somebody can tell me how to do something one million
Speaker 4: times and I don't understand what they're saying, but if
Speaker 4: they literally visually show me how to do it, I
Speaker 4: can do that. And so I spent my whole like
Speaker 4: literal childhood before I could walk, and then I was
Speaker 4: like jumping off the diving board in eighteen months or
Speaker 4: two years. And then as time goes on, you know,
Speaker 4: I start to develop like actual interest interests in soccer.
Speaker 4: And I'm good because I've been playing against ten year
Speaker 4: olds and I'm five. I've been playing against my bigger
Speaker 4: brothers and sisters, ten, fifteen, twenty year you know, and
Speaker 4: as I'm getting older, they're getting older. So I'm always
Speaker 4: competing against somebody that's far stronger, taller, faster than me,
Speaker 4: which I think was really inevitably something that absolutely shaped
Speaker 4: me as a pro athlete.
Speaker 2: It also just sounds like you're probably a natural athletes
Speaker 2: as well, like some people can when you say you
Speaker 2: can just look at something and pick it up like
Speaker 2: some people just have that. But you write in your book,
Speaker 2: I really liked this, and I'm really interested. I became
Speaker 2: an athlete to get my mother's love. All I really
Speaker 2: wanted was love, full acceptance, and attention from my mom.
Speaker 2: But because I had these deep knowing about my gainess,
Speaker 2: I felt like my mom would never accept this part
Speaker 2: of me. So I developed an athlete persona to make
Speaker 2: up for my gainess and it worked. I was celebrated,
Speaker 2: but that kind of affirmation was something I could never
Speaker 2: really latch onto. I came home from soccer and my
Speaker 2: family would be so amazed at all of my goals,
Speaker 2: but I always felt like, what if I stopped scoring goals,
Speaker 2: will they be able.
Speaker 1: To love what's left?
Speaker 2: That is beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time to
Speaker 2: think that that is how you found yourself in sport,
Speaker 2: But then it sounds like you just felt like you
Speaker 2: needed so much validation and you were only getting that
Speaker 2: from football.
Speaker 4: Talk us through that. Yeah, some people ask me a lot,
Speaker 4: like why I played soccer and how I achieved the
Speaker 4: level of success that I did, And I think like,
Speaker 4: if I got to the bottom of it. It's basically
Speaker 4: like a bigger version of like, Mom, watch this, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know at the Olympics though exactly, like seriously, and
Speaker 4: I know that that, Like that's funny, but it's true.
Speaker 4: Like a lot of what motivated me deeply is just
Speaker 4: childhood stuff and being in a family that a lot
Speaker 4: of us, I would say, all seven of us were
Speaker 4: always wanting more attention than we were getting because God forbid,
Speaker 4: like my mom didn't have enough time to be able
Speaker 4: to give all of us the attention that we needed.
Speaker 4: She tried her best, but it's just impossible. There's seven
Speaker 4: fucking people that are looking to you for something, you know,
Speaker 4: and so yeah, it's like it's hard to say at
Speaker 4: this point. I've done a lot of healing around this
Speaker 4: because I love the family that I grew up in
Speaker 4: and I wouldn't change any of it because it's made
Speaker 4: me who I am. But I like wonder if I
Speaker 4: would have been as good of a soccer player had
Speaker 4: I not had that kind of motivation, Like I wonder
Speaker 4: like if I I had like Glennon has asked me
Speaker 4: a few times, like what if you had the kind
Speaker 4: of attention and love that your person needed that you needed,
Speaker 4: do you think you would have been striving so hard?
Speaker 4: And I'm like, I don't know, Like I kind of
Speaker 4: think that a lot of us pro athletes, we're out
Speaker 4: there to prove something, there's something, and yeah, I think
Speaker 4: greatness and being the best is one faction of it.
Speaker 4: But I also think that there's a deeper part of
Speaker 4: it that is truly heartbreaking. Like what we're actually doing,
Speaker 4: it's like watch me mom, or show up for me Dad,
Speaker 4: or whatever it might be. It's like there is some
Speaker 4: sort of unmet need from our younger years that we
Speaker 4: are trying to create in this avenue of professional sports.
Speaker 4: In fact, I think it's like I think it's probably
Speaker 4: pretty pervasive if you were to get I mean, it's
Speaker 4: hard to get athletes to be as honest as this,
Speaker 4: as open about their families and their childhood, especially ones
Speaker 4: that were famous blah blah blah. But it is a
Speaker 4: little heartbreaking to wonder if had I not had soccer,
Speaker 4: would I Because it's about self love at the end
Speaker 4: of it, right, Like I was always looking for external
Speaker 4: validation and in the end, I've had to really do
Speaker 4: a lot of work for myself around actually loving who
Speaker 4: I am because I get to take myself everywhere I go,
Speaker 4: and then I don't need I do need people, but
Speaker 4: I'm not like at the mercy of them. It is
Speaker 4: not going to kill me if they decide they want
Speaker 4: to leave, because guess what parents leave, right, they end
Speaker 4: up dying and what then? Like I need to be
Speaker 4: able to hold myself and hold my little kid heart too,
Speaker 4: that just wanted to have the attention she won't she deserved. Aby.
Speaker 3: I think it's so incredibly relatable, even though very few
Speaker 3: of us will take it to the extent of being
Speaker 3: professional athletes, but that question of like am I good enough?
Speaker 1: Am I doing enough for you? You know, like are
Speaker 1: you proud of me? Yeah?
Speaker 3: And I think it really impacts a lot of us
Speaker 3: in the sense that it's something that we tend.
Speaker 1: To carry throughout life.
Speaker 3: It can create anxious attachment styles, it can create kind
Speaker 3: of an insatiable need for validation. I know that this
Speaker 3: is something I very much experienced in my romantic relationships before.
Speaker 3: Like you said, you kind of do the work, you
Speaker 3: unpack where that's coming from. And yeah, I think that
Speaker 3: that's one of the most relatable things that a lot
Speaker 3: of us experience when it's just that question of like
Speaker 3: am I good enough? And with professional athletes, something that
Speaker 3: I know you experienced was a lot of change in
Speaker 3: a very short period of time, and it was when
Speaker 3: you decided to quit soccer, quit your marriage, quit alcohol,
Speaker 3: but when you were conditioned in a way to kind.
Speaker 1: Of still seek that validation.
Speaker 3: How do you go from getting all of that validation
Speaker 3: and being reinforced that you are fantastic, will adore you,
Speaker 3: and you decide to stop doing the thing that gives
Speaker 3: you that adoration and go into retirement. How did you
Speaker 3: adjust to all of that change?
Speaker 4: This is a great question, and actually nobody's ever asked
Speaker 4: me this question, and so I've never actually told anybody
Speaker 4: how I've done this part because there was about two
Speaker 4: years of my life before I felt well enough, like
Speaker 4: stable enough, i should say, post alcohol, where I could
Speaker 4: I felt strong enough to like actually want to start
Speaker 4: doing the real work. Like yes, I was like doing
Speaker 4: the work by just staying sober, Like that's hard fucking enough.
Speaker 4: And the only way I can describe this is like
Speaker 4: what I did so as an athlete. This is going
Speaker 4: to sound so freaking crazy, y'all, but I'm gonna say
Speaker 4: it anyway. The only metal that I ever kept up
Speaker 4: and out for me to see is this third place
Speaker 4: medal from the qualifying tournament for the two thousand and
Speaker 4: eleven Women's World Cup where we didn't straight away qualify.
Speaker 4: We got second place and had to play a home
Speaker 4: and away match against somebody to qualify for the World Cup.
Speaker 4: And that was a huge deal in the women's soccer world.
Speaker 4: I took a lot of responsibility for it because I
Speaker 4: felt like I let my team down. Anyway, this is
Speaker 4: the metal that drove me that. It was like the
Speaker 4: constant reminder things happen, you need to make sure that
Speaker 4: you're working harder than everybody else. You need to make
Speaker 4: sure that you're scoring the goals that the team needed
Speaker 4: to score the goals. So this was the symbol this motivation.
Speaker 4: This motivated me right and when I retired, I switched
Speaker 4: that out, especially going through all of what you just said.
Speaker 4: I switched it out with my gold medal as a
Speaker 4: reminder that if my ego started to get back online
Speaker 4: because my ego got like that, it was interestingly, like
Speaker 4: in the jail, like the light switch of my ego
Speaker 4: goes just got shut down. It just turned off, like
Speaker 4: oh no, like it was like the most humbling thing
Speaker 4: that's ever happened to me, Like, oh wow.
Speaker 1: But that perception of the shiny athlete was shutted.
Speaker 4: Not only for the external but for the internal. Yeah,
Speaker 4: like I'm untouchable, I am immortal. I mean the amount
Speaker 4: of times people as an athlete tell you that. And
Speaker 4: especially for me, like I was a big strong player
Speaker 4: for this moment to actually happen, to be able to
Speaker 4: open myself up to healing into doing this like work.
Speaker 4: That gold medal symbolized this remembering of like, wow, you
Speaker 4: you are a good person and you have done really
Speaker 4: good things. This one moment in your life is not
Speaker 4: going to define you, and you will also make it right.
Speaker 4: You will somehow find a way to make the best
Speaker 4: out of this. This is not this is a moment
Speaker 4: where a lot of people pivot in certain ways. And
Speaker 4: I just like I am a firm believer that things
Speaker 4: happen for reasons and also if things just happen, period,
Speaker 4: and what you do with what happens kind of cultivates
Speaker 4: your character. And yeah, so that was a really weird
Speaker 4: and wicked time. And when I got to it was
Speaker 4: about eighteen months that I started. I gave myself a full,
Speaker 4: like eighteen month break of not working out because my
Speaker 4: body literally needed like a total reset. And then around
Speaker 4: eighteen months later, I was like, you know what I'm
Speaker 4: gonna start. I'm going to start walking and like getting
Speaker 4: back into the embodied abby and then of course it
Speaker 4: like turns into like I'm running, and then I'm training
Speaker 4: for a marathon, and then I'm running a marathon, and
Speaker 4: so that addictive ego part of me gets back online
Speaker 4: and goes for it. And so when we moved to
Speaker 4: Los Angeles in twenty twenty one, I I said, Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm going to figure out how to love myself once
Speaker 4: and for all. And part of what I thought was
Speaker 4: was on the menu for how you love yourself is
Speaker 4: through suffering, like self esteem only came from the grind.
Speaker 4: But I didn't realize that my self esteem was so
Speaker 4: attached to my ego, and so I just took that
Speaker 4: offline and I was like, Okay, I'm going to spend
Speaker 4: the next year and a half to two years learning
Speaker 4: how to establish self esteem without engaging my ego by
Speaker 4: the suffering proxy, if that makes sense. So that's what
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 1: What did that look like in practice?
Speaker 3: Though, because like, I think everyone has an element of
Speaker 3: that where it's like, Okay, I need to learn to
Speaker 3: love myself internally.
Speaker 4: How yeah, do I.
Speaker 2: Write in a diary?
Speaker 1: Do I just write the things that I think I'm
Speaker 1: a good person for?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think that it's different for everybody. We all
Speaker 4: have our different backgrounds and traumas and the things that
Speaker 4: we're working through and dealing with blah blah blah. But
Speaker 4: the things that work for me, I can only tell
Speaker 4: you what worked for me is I have a very
Speaker 4: strong will, like I can do something for a long
Speaker 4: period of time, and I have an ability to maintain
Speaker 4: that suffering experience because I've had so much positive outcome
Speaker 4: from those suffering experiences. So when I was planning out
Speaker 4: the next like eighteen months of this search for self love,
Speaker 4: I decided, Okay, I'm not going to run. And it
Speaker 4: was also really good timing because the marathon that I
Speaker 4: did really messed up my ankle so I couldn't actually run,
Speaker 4: And I'm going to go to the gym five days
Speaker 4: a week and I'm not going to when I get
Speaker 4: my body into a state where I have the thought,
Speaker 4: I don't want to do this because I would have
Speaker 4: the thought this is so hard. I don't want to
Speaker 4: keep doing this set. Like I'm on, I'm on wrap
Speaker 4: eight of fifty pound chest press or whatever, like I
Speaker 4: go into this weird pain cave dark place that I
Speaker 4: can I can do it, I can wrap it out,
Speaker 4: but I just Okay, that's going to be my limit.
Speaker 4: I'm going to go to the limit and I'm not
Speaker 4: going to go beyond it. And like, over time, it
Speaker 4: was interesting because the first couple of weeks, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm kind of weak, you know, I'm
Speaker 4: like I'm weak minded in some way. But what's been
Speaker 4: able to happen is I've been able to like turn
Speaker 4: back about eighteen months later, and the suffering there's like
Speaker 4: a torture. I was like torturing myself. There was a
Speaker 4: torturing element to it. So how could I love myself
Speaker 4: if I'm literally torturing myself? How could those two things
Speaker 4: can't happen at the same time, at least for me?
Speaker 4: So when I would look back, I just thought, Wow,
Speaker 4: you really had a hard time for a lot of
Speaker 4: years a pro athlete, and it's psychologically wires your brain
Speaker 4: in a certain way that makes it very difficult in
Speaker 4: my experience to understand what self love could possibly be
Speaker 4: because you're always overriding your natural needs. You're always saying,
Speaker 4: oh that feels wrong, Oh that hurts, and you're just
Speaker 4: saying doesn't matter, Yeah, doesn't matter, doesn't matter. So I
Speaker 4: don't know how to do that. It's just being soft
Speaker 4: with yourself and like kind of being like your friend,
Speaker 4: you know. I think a lot of people work with
Speaker 4: a lot of psychedelics. I also have worked with psychedelics
Speaker 4: in my life and they've been really profound. And I
Speaker 4: remember during an experience, I was just like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 4: I'm so in love with myself. That's so good, I know,
Speaker 4: and I just think, yes, that's the energy we need, right,
Speaker 4: Like have you done ayahuasca? No, I'm a little bit
Speaker 4: scared of that, and I know everybody like, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I just don't know if I want to like shit
Speaker 4: myself and throw up no fame bucket.
Speaker 2: I was actually in the Amazon Jungle, booked in with
Speaker 2: a shaman, like ready to go, and then I pulled
Speaker 2: out last minute because I was like, I.
Speaker 4: Just don't think I want to shit myself and.
Speaker 2: Vomit and like and I get this thought of being
Speaker 2: stuck in that psychedelic world. And I've heard the horror stories,
Speaker 2: but you do talk a lot about the fact that
Speaker 2: this all stems back from because you didn't love yourself,
Speaker 2: and that's a lot of your struggle coming to terms
Speaker 2: with who you are. How much of that stems back
Speaker 2: to your sexuality and figuring out who you were as
Speaker 2: a teenager. And I know you grew up in quite
Speaker 2: a religious household. Yeah, do you I don't want to
Speaker 2: use the word blame, but do you come back to
Speaker 2: that being a really big driving force of your battles.
Speaker 4: I think one of the things that I've been taking
Speaker 4: into my daily life. My parents are aging, they're getting older.
Speaker 4: They were like little kids at one point too, and
Speaker 4: that form of compassion exercise has been really helping me
Speaker 4: with trying really hard not to blame them, because I
Speaker 4: do believe that they were given the set of circumstances
Speaker 4: they were given. They had, the parents that they had,
Speaker 4: they had, the time that they were born into. And
Speaker 4: in fact, when one of our kids came out to
Speaker 4: us when they were sixteen, I had this like profound
Speaker 4: experience in my body. You know, Glenna and I are
Speaker 4: like the gayest gays who ever gained like we are
Speaker 4: we are exactly. But then when when your child comes
Speaker 4: to you and they say, you know, I think, I
Speaker 4: think I'm queer, and I like, there was there was
Speaker 4: an extraordinary amount of fear that lived in me. So
Speaker 4: some of that is tied back into the conditions of
Speaker 4: my childhood. Some of that is also tied into my
Speaker 4: fear for him of the world because I have walked
Speaker 4: the walk. I have experienced what it is like as
Speaker 4: a queer person in the world, and especially during a
Speaker 4: time when it wasn't cool, right when it was uncool
Speaker 4: and unpopular and untalked about illegal and illegal exactly exactly.
Speaker 4: So when this happened, I was talking with Glennon and
Speaker 4: she was just like, wow, I think that this might
Speaker 4: mean a lot for you if you can really hear it.
Speaker 4: And what she said was maybe your mom was scared
Speaker 4: for you, honey, and not of you. And I mean,
Speaker 4: like it was like one of the most like profound
Speaker 4: and important things somebody could ever say to me, because yeah,
Speaker 4: like growing up in the Catholic Church. Look, I'm not
Speaker 4: a religious person anymore, but I do believe that like
Speaker 4: what the faith communities are trying to do like the
Speaker 4: good ones, like the good people, that they're not attaching
Speaker 4: themselves to the financial institution of it all. What they're
Speaker 4: trying to do is spread peace and love. Like I
Speaker 4: understand that language. But I do think that some of
Speaker 4: these institutions and religions have these like these rules that
Speaker 4: make you feel like you are either in or out,
Speaker 4: whether like you belong or you don't. And when you're
Speaker 4: a queer teenager and you are hearing it from the
Speaker 4: pulpit that the way you feel in your body is
Speaker 4: not the way of the parish, of the church, and
Speaker 4: that now you are going to not belong if you
Speaker 4: come out and be this way. And for me, I
Speaker 4: just remember being like I wish I could fucking help this.
Speaker 4: I wish I could choose, but it's just not an
Speaker 4: option for me. It just will never be an option.
Speaker 4: It's a hard way to grow up. And yet there's
Speaker 4: a part of me that's like a lot of the
Speaker 4: way that I love myself now is due in large
Speaker 4: part to the care and strength that it took for
Speaker 4: me to say not that religion, this life. I mean,
Speaker 4: I went against the grain, I went against what was
Speaker 4: expected of me, knowing that I was going to probably
Speaker 4: be in more of a public position in the world
Speaker 4: dealing with brands and partnerships that at the time nobody
Speaker 4: was coming out. This is like the early two thousands,
Speaker 4: So being closeted in the way in that way because
Speaker 4: it very much affected my livelihood. All of these things,
Speaker 4: when you stack them up, it's like, Wow, you're amazing
Speaker 4: for going through all of that for yourself. Yeah, you're incredible.
Speaker 4: And also I really wish you didn't have to do that.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I really like this sentiment or this idea of it's
Speaker 2: our parents' first time walking this world as well, like
Speaker 2: it's our parents' first time walking this path and making
Speaker 2: their discoveries and dealing with everything that life throws their way.
Speaker 2: And I think it's amazing that you can now go
Speaker 2: back and look at the way that your parents interacted
Speaker 2: with you or the lessons that they taught you and
Speaker 2: have a little bit of grace for it. I think
Speaker 2: that that's really important as well. And I don't know
Speaker 2: if that's something that you've even realized more now that
Speaker 2: you have become a parent.
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course, I mean when you're a parent, children
Speaker 4: are incredibly wonderful, But also incredibly annoying.
Speaker 1: And I've never heard true a sentiment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they just do things that you are just
Speaker 4: like what are you doing? And so patience is the
Speaker 4: thing that I think about parenting that I did not
Speaker 4: interact with my parents the way that our children interact
Speaker 4: with me with my parents, And I feel like I
Speaker 4: didn't tell them how much gratitude I had enough, Like
Speaker 4: I had this idea that them being my parents was
Speaker 4: their job, like this is what they chose to do,
Speaker 4: you know, like this is what they get. But it's
Speaker 4: a partnership, it's a friendship. And if I could go back,
Speaker 4: I think I would probably change that part of my childhood.
Speaker 4: But I was a stubborn asshole. I was like really
Speaker 4: wanted to do what I wanted to do all the time,
Speaker 4: and I didn't care what the consequences are. Also hallmark
Speaker 4: for addiction down the road. But yeah, having kids is
Speaker 4: a great humility and also the time I think in
Speaker 4: which you can have the opportunity to reconnect with your
Speaker 4: parents if they're still with us, Like, yeah, it's really interesting.
Speaker 4: Parenting is a fucking bitch.
Speaker 2: I think you're alone and put that feeling like I
Speaker 2: feel like every kid is an asshole until they grow
Speaker 2: up and they're an adult and they realize how fucking
Speaker 2: hard life is. Like life, I said to my husband, say,
Speaker 2: I don't want to adult anymore. I don't want to
Speaker 2: do it. I got so many bills on the table
Speaker 2: and I was like, I'm done with it. I was like,
Speaker 2: and I don't even have kids, kind of look after
Speaker 2: my dog. Do you speak about the shadow side? And
Speaker 2: I had never heard of that term before, honestly until me.
Speaker 4: Neither, by the way, yeah, neither before Suzanne Stabil, Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And you're right about the fact that you
Speaker 2: have this conversation with her.
Speaker 4: What is it?
Speaker 2: Tell everyone what a shadow side is.
Speaker 1: And like how it relates to you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So we were doing this enneagram interview with Suzanne Stabil.
Speaker 4: She's wonderful And if you don't know what the enneagram is,
Speaker 4: I'm going to totally botch how to describe it. But
Speaker 4: it's like an ancient BuzzFeed quiz about your personality, right,
Speaker 4: and so it's nine numbers and you do the test online. Nowadays,
Speaker 4: like back in the day, you have to like read
Speaker 4: a book and decide which short story felt most like you.
Speaker 4: But now you can do like the quiz online, Enneagram Institute,
Speaker 4: dot org or something, and it gives you this number,
Speaker 4: and this number is like essentially gives you an understanding
Speaker 4: of who you are and also parts of yourself that
Speaker 4: you might not be as aware of or in constant
Speaker 4: conversation with. So, for an example, I'm a seven, which
Speaker 4: means I'm like an enthusiast and I love to like
Speaker 4: have a good time, and experience is really important to me.
Speaker 4: And I can see the bright side of everything, and
Speaker 4: I'm very resilient and all of these really cool things.
Speaker 4: And in this interview, Suzan Stabil was just like, well,
Speaker 4: my son's a seven, and I do think it would
Speaker 4: be really good for you to work on your shadow side,
Speaker 4: like my dark side, essentially, like like the sad, the
Speaker 4: sad feelings, the sad part. You know. An In and Out,
Speaker 4: So I'm talking a lot of in like internal family systems,
Speaker 4: and I don't know if you've ever heard of it,
Speaker 4: but it's a psychological approach to understanding all of the
Speaker 4: different parts of ourselves that sometimes can be at war
Speaker 4: with each other. The movie In and Out is like
Speaker 4: one of the best ways to understand internal family systems.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I mean when you said in and out,
Speaker 1: I thought even if a joint.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, a movie inside inside out, Okay, most profound
Speaker 2: moments have happened at.
Speaker 4: The No, it's called inside out, inside out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Maybe I said it wrong. So inside out it's like
Speaker 4: it's the animation movie. I don't know if you've seen it.
Speaker 2: I thought it was a movie, yes, okay, yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: And so internal family systems, it feels like you have
Speaker 4: a team of beings of things inside of you yourself, right,
Speaker 4: and so sometimes like a part will come online that
Speaker 4: will be protecting yourself, right, Like anger can come online
Speaker 4: and it's because something's happened and you are in protection
Speaker 4: mode or joy or whatever. In my Enneagram world, as
Speaker 4: a seven, I don't allow sadness to come online and
Speaker 4: drive the bus very often. It's the sadness. It's a
Speaker 4: foreign body inside of me. I've not had a really
Speaker 4: great relationship with it, and so I have actually been
Speaker 4: spending the last two years since I talked to Susanne
Speaker 4: stabil in therapy in IFS therapy, discussing all of this
Speaker 4: stuff and trying to figure out what the shadow side
Speaker 4: is for me and lo and behold like a year
Speaker 4: and a half ago, my oldest brother Peter died of
Speaker 4: a heart attack, and talk about shadow side and the
Speaker 4: serendipity of the conversation with Suzanne and the timing of
Speaker 4: it when my brother passed away, and having already been
Speaker 4: doing this work on my shadows or the sadder feelings
Speaker 4: or the less muted parts of me, it really made
Speaker 4: going through the grief of my brother and losing him,
Speaker 4: I think probably much more fruitful. I actually had access
Speaker 4: to my sadness and anger and frustration and disappointment more
Speaker 4: than I ever had before, because I just like I
Speaker 4: just covered it up with joy and with overwork and
Speaker 4: with excellence, you know. And so that is I think
Speaker 4: I've probably done a terrible job explaining the enneagram. Just like,
Speaker 4: go watch a video on it. It'll be understand.
Speaker 1: We'll try and a link to the quiz. We also
Speaker 1: haven't done it.
Speaker 3: But Abby, speaking about your brother Peter and him passing away,
Speaker 3: there was a part of your most recent book that
Speaker 3: it really hit me in the heart, to be honest,
Speaker 3: and we've had many conversations in the podcast about grief
Speaker 3: and the fact that we really struggle in grief as
Speaker 3: a culture.
Speaker 1: I don't think that we're.
Speaker 3: Very good at talking about it. I don't think that
Speaker 3: we're very good at processing it for ourselves. And this
Speaker 3: one thing that you wrote about you said often we
Speaker 3: will say there are no words, you know, And when
Speaker 3: we're talking to people who have lost loved ones or pets,
Speaker 3: or like going through something really heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: We're like, Wow, I just have no words. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: I have no words to describe how I feel.
Speaker 3: And you wrote that that was not how you've learnt
Speaker 3: to feel and not how you've learned to act. Can
Speaker 3: you talk us through kind of this revelation you had
Speaker 3: about grief?
Speaker 4: Oh, I mean, I've had so many, and so you
Speaker 4: might get maybe even a different version because it's a
Speaker 4: beyond when the book was published version specifically about this
Speaker 4: one story. As a person who's been on both sides now,
Speaker 4: it is hard to come up with words that feel
Speaker 4: appropriate in moments that are completely devastating to a friend
Speaker 4: or a family member. I get it. I get not
Speaker 4: knowing the words and so not reaching out. I get it,
Speaker 4: I've done it. And then I also get now being
Speaker 4: on the other side where my brothers died, A lot
Speaker 4: of the messages or the words that were said to me.
Speaker 4: All were so appreciated, Like all were so appreciated, because
Speaker 4: when you say something, you are witnessing that person's pain,
Speaker 4: and that is all that you can do with somebody
Speaker 4: in grief, is to witness their pain. You can't do
Speaker 4: It's frustrating. I think that what gets people hung up
Speaker 4: is that they can't fix it. This hard situation, this
Speaker 4: thing that has happened. There's no going back. And so
Speaker 4: one of my friends actually taught me the most beautiful
Speaker 4: lesson in the whole world. And it makes me like
Speaker 4: tear up every time because I think about the story
Speaker 4: and it's so I just I love her so much
Speaker 4: for this. She wrote me this long text because her
Speaker 4: mother had passed away recently, and a lot of people
Speaker 4: write things that they don't mean. And you know, it
Speaker 4: was always darkest before the dawn and all of these cliches,
Speaker 4: and she said, but the things that mattered and meant
Speaker 4: the most to me is what I'm going to do now.
Speaker 4: And she just shared this beautiful, beautiful story about my
Speaker 4: brother and how he and what he meant to her
Speaker 4: and what kind of joyful, beautiful person he was to her,
Speaker 4: and how when that story came through and I read it,
Speaker 4: it was just like, oh my gosh, I am not
Speaker 4: alone because this loss, even though she was my friend
Speaker 4: and not his brother, his personality and his life I've
Speaker 4: shaped other people in similar ways that it shaped me,
Speaker 4: and it meant similar things, and it was just such
Speaker 4: an important It was such an important moment for me
Speaker 4: to learn about how to deal with somebody going through
Speaker 4: grief when somebody dies. And then ironically, when the one
Speaker 4: year anniversary of his death hit and this is like
Speaker 4: the second part. This is like the grief two point
Speaker 4: zero that I'm like learning right now about and going through.
Speaker 4: Our culture has like a stop clock, like a stopwatch
Speaker 4: on grief, like you only get one year, and once
Speaker 4: that year comes up, we are all moving on. We
Speaker 4: don't talk about it anymore. We just learned to live
Speaker 4: with it and accept that this thing has happened. And
Speaker 4: that has been the really big kick in the ass
Speaker 4: for because I'm like, wait a second, because I did
Speaker 4: it myself, I did it internally, and I'm also getting
Speaker 4: the external affirmation that this is the correct thing to
Speaker 4: do culturally because people stop talking about it, people stop
Speaker 4: asking about him, people stop because they don't know should
Speaker 4: I bring him up? Should I not bring him up?
Speaker 4: And all of this, And so I actually just had
Speaker 4: to ask Lennon a couple of weeks ago when we
Speaker 4: were doing a book tour event, can you ask me
Speaker 4: more about my brother? Oh, because I'm afraid to talk
Speaker 4: about him. Yeah, like I'm afraid to talk about him
Speaker 4: a little. And it would mean a lot to be
Speaker 4: able to know that I have the space to feel
Speaker 4: about this still because I'm still thinking about it and
Speaker 4: I'm still feeling about it. It's still something that is
Speaker 4: actually happening.
Speaker 2: We've spoken a lot about grief over the years to
Speaker 2: different kinds of people and had different kind of exposure
Speaker 2: to grief. But there's this one story that stands out,
Speaker 2: and it was not on the podcast. It was actually
Speaker 2: a Laura who had this interaction. And she met a
Speaker 2: woman at a pool on holiday and the woman started
Speaker 2: to play with her daughter in the pool like that,
Speaker 2: so like, sorry, this woman she met was playing with
Speaker 2: Laura's daughter. They got talking for a little while and
Speaker 2: Laura was like, I'm really sorry. If she's annoying, you
Speaker 2: let me know, and she said, no, I actually lost
Speaker 2: my daughter and this is really making me feel the
Speaker 2: feels and the conversation continues to say, people often don't
Speaker 2: know what to say. They get really uncomfortable with it,
Speaker 2: and they think that bringing up is going to hurt
Speaker 2: their feelings, but in fact, all they want to do
Speaker 2: is relive it.
Speaker 1: They not really live the pain, but relive.
Speaker 2: The person, and they want to be asked about exactly
Speaker 2: what you just said. And I think that's probably one
Speaker 2: of the biggest lessons that I've taken away from the
Speaker 2: conversation about grief, is like, people don't want to relive
Speaker 2: the pain, but they don't want to forget the person.
Speaker 2: It's not like you tick off exactly right, Yeah, And
Speaker 2: I think that's such an important lesson to say, like
Speaker 2: maybe you do need to ask your loved one to
Speaker 2: continue to bring up something, laugh that he's hot, so
Speaker 2: you can relive.
Speaker 4: It and to relive it in a way that feels productive, right, Like,
Speaker 4: because I also understand that there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 4: that people grieve, not not just losing people, but grieving
Speaker 4: I mean a lot of us in the United States
Speaker 4: right now. We're grieving the myth, the idea of what
Speaker 4: is to be an American. We're grieving the idea of safety,
Speaker 4: We're grieving democracy, we're grieving things. And I think culturally,
Speaker 4: and this is not true for every culture, but like
Speaker 4: death especially is hidden, you know, like in some cultures,
Speaker 4: like they keep the body out and they wash the body,
Speaker 4: and they and they do all of these beautiful ceremonies
Speaker 4: and these things that make death so real that we
Speaker 4: cannot not see it, which allows I think us to
Speaker 4: live more fully into our daily lives. You know, so
Speaker 4: many of us Western cultured folk who you know, the
Speaker 4: person dies and they just get like swept away. It's
Speaker 4: like this weird. It feels like death is shameful, Like
Speaker 4: this grieving of death is there's a shame attached to it.
Speaker 4: So that's what I want to unwind, and I want
Speaker 4: to continue to work through. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've always kind of been curious about this
Speaker 3: because I was also brought up in the church, and
Speaker 3: I am now non religious. Also culturally a lot of
Speaker 3: us are shifting that way. A lot more non religious
Speaker 3: people exist now, And I've wondered whether we deal with
Speaker 3: death in particular really differently when we don't believe or
Speaker 3: we don't have faith in you know, and afterlife. And
Speaker 3: I think it's it's something that I've kind of battled
Speaker 3: with myself where I'm like, well, now my belief system
Speaker 3: is that there's a bit of a full stop on
Speaker 3: this person, you know, and I don't really know.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 3: I no longer believe that they've gone somewhere else, and
Speaker 3: I kind of have.
Speaker 1: Been in a way.
Speaker 3: This is a weird thing to kind of come to
Speaker 3: terms with. But I've almost been jealous of people who
Speaker 3: still have faith and have you know, that understanding that
Speaker 3: their loved one has gone to a better place. And
Speaker 3: I wonder whether that's maybe a reason that a lot
Speaker 3: of us do struggle with with death in particular.
Speaker 4: Now, I think that what you're saying is exactly how
Speaker 4: I feel and have felt. I think that I like vacillate,
Speaker 4: if that's the word oscillate. Oscillate, yeah, vacillate might be sexual.
Speaker 4: Sounds sexual.
Speaker 2: It does sound pretty sexy.
Speaker 4: I think I oscillate between this idea of nothing, there's
Speaker 4: nothing after this, and the hope that there is something.
Speaker 4: And it's weird because I was I loved going to
Speaker 4: church when I was a little kid. I love singing
Speaker 4: the songs, I love the community. And then I got gay,
Speaker 4: and so God gay I got gay and became like
Speaker 4: a hardcore atheist because I had to reject You're not
Speaker 4: going to reject me, I will reject you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then I met Glennon, who I think kind of
Speaker 4: walks the walk that Jesus tried to teach us to walk,
Speaker 4: and she softened my edges a little bit. And I
Speaker 4: think that there's probably more than we know what's going on.
Speaker 4: Nobody knows. I think if you're atheist, I think Ricky
Speaker 4: Gervais has this really great line that he said he
Speaker 4: was debating religion with Stephen Colbert here in the US,
Speaker 4: and he said, but I just believe in one less
Speaker 4: God than you, Like you know what it's like to
Speaker 4: not believe in things you don't believe in a lot
Speaker 4: of religions. I just believe in one less and a
Speaker 4: lot of us millennial gen zers. The religious institution is
Speaker 4: giving them an us all the ick in a way.
Speaker 4: But I think that there is so much beauty in
Speaker 4: the hope, and through so much of my healing and
Speaker 4: my my therapy with the grief of my brother, I
Speaker 4: have learned that I am actually not worried about what
Speaker 4: comes after life. I am very concerned about losing this
Speaker 4: particular life, like I love my life and I have
Speaker 4: worked really hard for it, and I love the people
Speaker 4: that I love. And then one day over Christmas, Glennon
Speaker 4: gave me this Saint Christopher necklace or sorry, Saint Peter necklace.
Speaker 4: And I didn't know this, but Saint Peter evidently in
Speaker 4: the Christian religion, Saint Peter was like Jesus's best friend
Speaker 4: BFFs okay, And evidently Jesus gave Saint Peter the keys
Speaker 4: to Heaven. Now, Glennon says to me when she's handing
Speaker 4: me this beautiful medallion, is like, so your brother is
Speaker 4: Saint Peter, and now he has the keys to heaven.
Speaker 4: And if you are worried for any reason and about
Speaker 4: whether Heaven exists or not, or where we go, or
Speaker 4: whether you would be accepted, because all along you've been
Speaker 4: kind of getting told that you're going to hell for
Speaker 4: being gay, do you think your brother's letting you into heaven?
Speaker 4: And I was like burst into tears.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my god, hell yeah, he.
Speaker 4: Is not only that, but Peter my brother. Like if
Speaker 4: you knew him, dude loved a party and everybody was welcome.
Speaker 2: He Javen's going on right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So I don't even know what the question was,
Speaker 4: but I think that I answered something in there.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I don't even know if I asked
Speaker 1: you a question.
Speaker 3: I think it's just it's something I've thought about for
Speaker 3: a while and I don't think I'm at a point
Speaker 3: of resolution with it yet. And it's something that I
Speaker 3: think I'm trying to work out for myself in terms
Speaker 3: of dealing with you know, various forms of grief in
Speaker 3: my own life. And yeah, I was just curious about
Speaker 3: your thoughts, and it kind of is related to you
Speaker 3: writing the book. You know a lot of us and
Speaker 3: we speak all the time that we share things publicly.
Speaker 3: We share a lot with classic overshares, but often we
Speaker 3: won't share things until we're at a point of resolution
Speaker 3: with it. You know, we'll share from sca not a wound.
Speaker 3: But when you wrote this book, you were in the
Speaker 3: wound stage, and it was really interesting to read certain
Speaker 3: things that I don't think you've come to resolution with.
Speaker 3: How did you go? I mean, I guess you've written
Speaker 3: quite a few books. How is this one different? In
Speaker 3: terms of writing from that place?
Speaker 4: I think that if you've ever really gone through grief
Speaker 4: and done it without denying it and done it honestly.
Speaker 4: As we were writing this book all last year, I
Speaker 4: understood and have understood deeply that there is no getting
Speaker 4: over this, there is no end line. That this is
Speaker 4: an accepting This is like accepting to live with it forever.
Speaker 4: And that's also part of like the and why people
Speaker 4: don't want to deal with grief is because at the
Speaker 4: end of it, when you do all the work and
Speaker 4: you get all the way to the end and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 4: I want this to be done, it doesn't it. Grief
Speaker 4: doesn't die.
Speaker 1: It evolves.
Speaker 4: It evolves and it changes. And you know, my brother,
Speaker 4: it's the way that I live with him now, Like
Speaker 4: I don't get to call him on the phone. But
Speaker 4: this grief, the function of grief isn't always negative. Like
Speaker 4: the function of grief is also a reminder. It's also
Speaker 4: the thing that's connecting me to him, ironically, and so yeah,
Speaker 4: if you're wanting to do the grief thing correctly and
Speaker 4: not skip over any steps, like at the end, for me,
Speaker 4: it's just I've had to get to accepting that it
Speaker 4: is a it is a forever relationship. It is a
Speaker 4: forever part of me.
Speaker 2: Now, I think it's interesting just what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Just to touch him briefly. Well, I don't, I'm not
Speaker 2: really just at all. But I don't associate whether you
Speaker 2: believe in it afterlife with religion. Personally, I've never been
Speaker 2: really just assume I never will be. But I do
Speaker 2: believe there is something after, not necessarily heaven, but I
Speaker 2: believe that we live on. Maybe we come back in
Speaker 2: reincarnation or another life or sometimes I'm convinced that's what
Speaker 2: deja vous is, that we've walked this earth before. But
Speaker 2: I am leaving here to get married, so I am.
Speaker 2: I never thought that Abbi Wombak would be a part
Speaker 2: of my marriage day, but here we are. But we
Speaker 2: were talking before, Abby, just before we jumped on the interview.
Speaker 2: We're talking about the fact that I'm going to get
Speaker 2: married today, and you were giving me some advice just
Speaker 2: off the cuff. You said, Hey, I want to give
Speaker 2: you like a piece of advice surrounding weakness and fear.
Speaker 2: And I know that you had that advice in your
Speaker 2: own wedding vows to your wife.
Speaker 4: Glennon, tell us.
Speaker 2: What you mean by that, what your advice is and
Speaker 2: where did it stem from.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so both Glennon and I are on our second marriages, which,
Speaker 4: sadly for you, I just wouldn't recommend it enough, like
Speaker 4: it's like having to damn no. But in all seriousness,
Speaker 4: like the things that we struggled with in our first marriages,
Speaker 4: both in the relating part and in the interpersonal part,
Speaker 4: the stuff that we could control, we just put it
Speaker 4: all in the table because like neither one of us
Speaker 4: like really wanted to be back in the same scenario
Speaker 4: and we knew that we actually needed to figure out
Speaker 4: why that happened. So when we put all of our
Speaker 4: cards on the table, we were able to like figure
Speaker 4: out very very quickly what our hot button issues were,
Speaker 4: what were my triggers, what were her triggers, what were
Speaker 4: her fears, what were my fears, what were her wounds?
Speaker 4: What were my wounds? And then what we did, and
Speaker 4: not just the creation of vows, but in the creation
Speaker 4: of like the way that we live our life every
Speaker 4: day is that we never use those things against each other.
Speaker 4: We never try to capitalize on some other on her
Speaker 4: wound or her fear in order to get something that
Speaker 4: we want. And there's also I'm going to give you
Speaker 4: a second tip that we do this like who cares
Speaker 4: more rule when we're trying to decide, Like, you can
Speaker 4: also attach percentages to it. Some people like to do
Speaker 4: that game where it's like, hey, I want Indian food
Speaker 4: like sixty percent and I want Mexican food forty percent,
Speaker 4: and she's like, okay, but I want Mexican food seventy
Speaker 4: percent and I want Indian food thirty percent. The seventy
Speaker 4: percent wins. So whoever cares the more about the thing
Speaker 4: you don't even need to bring percentages to it because
Speaker 4: eventually you will start understanding who historically cares more about
Speaker 4: this one thing. It's like, Okay, we're going to do
Speaker 4: it her way. Making decisions. Yeah, making decisions about dinner
Speaker 4: every night is not the best part of marriage. So
Speaker 4: if you can break down the ways to make it
Speaker 4: the easiest and easier for each other, the better off
Speaker 4: you'll be.
Speaker 2: I love that the first tip was really profound, and
Speaker 2: the second tip was like, if you're a Mexican, you
Speaker 2: laid out there.
Speaker 4: You put that exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: You just said that that picking what you want for
Speaker 3: dinner is not the best part of marriage.
Speaker 1: What is the best part of marriage for you.
Speaker 4: It's interesting because I think relationship, I think love is
Speaker 4: different than marriage. I think love is this two way
Speaker 4: outward expression and internal acceptance of somebody else who cares deeply,
Speaker 4: who knows you deeply, who loves you deeply, with the
Speaker 4: good and the bad. Right Like, I think love is
Speaker 4: not all peaches and milkshakes. It's like love is the
Speaker 4: whole You're getting the whole package. And marriage is different.
Speaker 4: I think marriage is teammate, somebody that like you're gonna
Speaker 4: You're going to build this shit together. You're like you're
Speaker 4: in the weeds. You want to pull your hair out,
Speaker 4: You're so tired, but you just keep you just you're
Speaker 4: just trucking along. You're doing this thing. You've got these
Speaker 4: kids and one person who's going this way, the other
Speaker 4: person's going that way. You got business stuff going on,
Speaker 4: and you're tired, and and you figure out a way
Speaker 4: in marriage to not forget and prioritize the peace of
Speaker 4: love inside of the partnership and the teammate. Because that's
Speaker 4: that's how I see it. I'm like, you know, I'm
Speaker 4: a sports person, so I'm like, okay, like we're the
Speaker 4: co captains of this team of this whole unit or
Speaker 4: the CEOs of our lives or the CEOs of our
Speaker 4: children's lives for now, and like they're like the vice
Speaker 4: presidents right now they're teenagers, are like they're just like
Speaker 4: they're climbing the ladder of their own life and they're
Speaker 4: about to like go out in the world, and we're
Speaker 4: about to like hand them their own business. Go stand
Speaker 4: on business, kids, is what we want to say. And
Speaker 4: I think that that is that's marriage and love to me,
Speaker 4: best friendship, deep understanding, deep acknowledgment of the other, of
Speaker 4: their of their existence, of their life. I mean, there's
Speaker 4: nobody better to be in a marriage with and in
Speaker 4: love with than Glennon because she's such a We're so different.
Speaker 4: The way that we interpret a single experience is just
Speaker 4: so different, and it's so interesting, Like I'm never not
Speaker 4: interested in my day because she gets to tell me
Speaker 4: her story about her experience, and then I get to
Speaker 4: tell her my story. We kind of use each other
Speaker 4: as this mirror and this bouncing off ideas of two
Speaker 4: in a lot of ways come up with the best
Speaker 4: idea and the best path in the plan forward. So
Speaker 4: that's it.
Speaker 2: Abby, You're so fascinating, interesting, all at once. I genuinely
Speaker 2: wish I could talk to you for so long, but
Speaker 2: I do have to go get married.
Speaker 4: Like I'm so excited I have to get to my wedding.
Speaker 1: But I cannot thank you enough. I really mean that.
Speaker 2: This has been one of the most interesting interviews I've
Speaker 2: done in a very, very long time.
Speaker 3: I think the word vulnerability is thrown around like a
Speaker 3: hot cake, especially on social media.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you are.
Speaker 3: Someone who I think is so authentic again another buzzword,
Speaker 3: authentic and genuine in your vulnerability and.
Speaker 1: Nothing performative, nothing at all.
Speaker 3: It's like, this is just how it is, you know,
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of us accessing those actually,
Speaker 3: like especially the shadows side. You know, it's fine to
Speaker 3: be vulnerable about the things that you've come to resolution
Speaker 3: with and the things that you can kind of tie
Speaker 3: your bow on and be like I'm sober now, but
Speaker 3: it's harder to be honest about the darker parts of ourselves.
Speaker 3: And Yeah, I'm really grateful for that. I've learned a
Speaker 3: lot from you. I'm very grateful that we got to
Speaker 3: have this chart with you.
Speaker 4: Ah well, thank you for having me on your show.
Speaker 4: We're big fans and have the best. I'm so proud.
Speaker 2: You're going to be on my part of my anniversary
Speaker 2: for the rest of your life, every day, on every
Speaker 2: day every year. Today I'll be think you know, so
Speaker 2: you can rest easy. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: If anyone would like more details about Abby's social media,
Speaker 3: her podcast, or her brand new book We Can Do
Speaker 3: Hard Things, everything will be linked for you in our
Speaker 3: show notes. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Having thanks so I really appreciate having me