Your Nervous System Needs This

Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Before we dive in today, Pod Squad, we want to send you off into this holiday season with so much love. Our hope for you is peaceful, cozy, slow days with your people, full of warmth, gentleness, and rest. This, however, will be our last episode of the year. We're taking two weeks off, and then we will return on the first Tuesday of the New Year, January 6th. Today, we're sending you into the season with something special. The conversation I had recently at the Kropalu Center in Massachusetts hosted by the brilliant, warm, and deeply wise, Isset Rose. She is an artist, a healer, a thought leader, and truly one of the most grounding presences I've sat with. We got to the heart of so many themes we've been circling lately on this pod in a room full of beautiful, beautiful people. We talked about how to not abandon our own agency, how to stay with ourselves in the hard moments, how to let the old scripts burn so something new and true work can grow, how to reimagine our relationships in ways that deepen connection, how menopause and midlife are horrific, and also somehow quite spiritually important, and how enoughness can feel like death when we've been raised inside of capitalism. And we talked about the work we will need to do, the grieving work, the healing work, the work of changing the metrics of our lives so we can live inside what is real and right now, and stop arranging our existence around the next thing. As we wind down 2025, it was a doozy, wasn't it pod squad, and once again we made it through together. We love you, we're grateful for you, we look forward to meeting you again on the other side of this holiday season. We'll see you in 2026. Let's jump right in to this conversation with Asset. [Music] So you've spoken recently about fury and joy dancing together. When fury shows up, not as something to push down, but as something to pay attention to. What helps you channel it into truth and creativity or boundaries instead of letting it consume you? Well, I think it's good that we're starting with an EC1. Thanks, love. Just get right on in there. I mean, first of all, I just want to say, I'm feel really grateful and amazed that we're all here right now. It just feels like, I mean, I'm grateful and amazed when I leave my house at all, but this, I just feel like I've been feeling so confused and stuck and lost and I just feel like this is a really big gift for me to just see all your faces and be here in the same place. And so I'm really grateful that you did whatever you have to do to make this happen because I know it isn't easy. It's really moving to me. I've been doing whatever it is I do for 20 years, I'm not sure what it is that brings us all here. I think that the sides, the kids and Abby, that the greatest honor of my life is whatever this is and I just don't take it lightly and I'm really grateful for you. So anyway, today I'm just going to try to tell the truth and do my best in honor of you. So, Fury, I think that the way that you channel that, I mean, I can tell you that I recently started, well not recently, a couple years ago, a new round of eating disorder recovery because now I think I understand that's going to be something I'm dealing with for the rest of my life. I thought until this recent bout that I was going to have like a victory line that I keep writing books and being like, "And now it's done!" Last word, I feel like that is my way of saying to God, like, "Okay, are we good? Are we good?" And it keeps resurfacing and I think that's all right. I think we all probably just have some sort of song or story that is our thing and we circle around it over and over again and hopefully we're getting like a higher perspective on the thing over and over again. Like, hopefully we're not doing this, we're sort of going up a mountain. That's what I'm going for here. So I was in another round of recovery and we hit Christmas and I had a relapse over Christmas last year and it was really confusing to me because I was talking to my therapist and I said, "Okay, I was just like sitting at a table eating and then the next thing I knew, I think my words were, I came to my senses and I was like full on the middle of like a huge binge and perch." And I had no idea how I got from the table to that situation, which I could not explain it. And so over time we started to try to slow down what actually happened in those moments. And the best way I know how to describe it is I was sitting at a table with my beautiful family of origin which is so full of love and so full of some fucked up stuff, okay? Patterns, old patterns and old stuff and this thing happens to me when I'm almost 50 but when I get back around my family of origin I'm seven, right? So I think what happened is that there was a moment at the table where a pattern rose up that made me upset and uncomfortable and angry and the problem was that I was seven again. So when you're seven or you're 10 you don't have any agency to deal with what is happening. You can't say your thing, you can't get up and leave, you are stuck in the dynamic and so my way of dealing with that was to dissociate. So dissociation is how you leave so you can stay and we all do it in different ways. Mine was always related to food, I just eat, I'm just gone, I'm gone. You have to leave so you can stay when you're a kid so the thing that I had to remember was in those moments that I'm not a kid anymore. So the thing that I have as an adult that I didn't have as a kid is agency. It doesn't feel like a lot of agency even when you're 50 and you're with your family of origin, I still feel scary. But the difference I think is that when I am feeling that I'm in a system, a group, a country that feels to me very much like a dysfunctional family, almost parallel to a lot of the dysfunction our own family. Some of us had fathers who didn't know how to regulate, fathers who were authoritarian and some fathers who were angry and then mothers who were afraid and complicit. It feels very much like the micro of our family is being reenacted in the country a lot and that is hard for all of us and that's why it doesn't just feel like it's happening out there, it feels like it's happening in our bodies because we're like seven again and feel like we don't have agency and all of this is just happening to us. And so the way that I know how to try now is to use some agency, whether it's with my family of origin or whether it's with my American family, it's too refuse to dissociate. I think that what we can do is decide what power or control we do have. Like what is a thing that we can say? What is a thing that we can make? What is a table that we can leave? What is a table that we can create with different rules? So I think for me whether it's in eating disorder language or in community language or political language, I'm just trying to refuse to abandon my agency and I'm trying to stay with all of it. I don't want to abandon myself anymore. I don't want to leave. If, okay, that's not true, I want to leave a lot of places but I guess what I'm saying is if I'm leaving, I want to take myself with me. I want to leave in alignment and in integrity and I don't want to leave in a way that's going to hurt me and leave myself sitting there where one day I come to my, I want to stay in my senses, I guess. Okay, that's that, about that one. Well done. Did it like literally any of that makes sense? It did. Okay, okay. And I love where you landed with agency as not self-abandoning and loving yourself enough to stay with yourself and trusting yourself to know that you can meet the moment. You got it. That was a good answer. Thank you. Thank you. I lived to be good. We're going to move into some relationship family kind of questions. You, Abby and Amanda, often model how family can be chosen and recreated. What feels most alive to you right now about reimagining family and partnership in ways that make space for truth and love? Well, I think one of the tricky things about the last year for me is that well, as many of you know, because I've mentioned this several times, several hundred times, is that the intersection that I'm living at, which is menopause, fascism, and empty nesting. (audience laughing) I find it upsetting. (audience laughing) And look, I'm gonna laugh about it and we should all laugh about it, but Jesus God, like what, I am so pissed that nobody's helping us with this. It's like a deep moral injury to me. I'm like, we hold up the whole sky. We take wiped your asses. We take care of your shit. We've carried this whole thing and then we get to this time in our life when we actually need medical research, support, ideas, and it's just not there. So I find it infuriating. Pyramidopause hit me really hard, maybe like four or five months ago and I didn't know what was wrong with me. I sat Abby down one night with a list of noises she makes with her body. (audience laughing) A page long list of the noises that happened in the morning, the noises that happened in the afternoon, the coughing noises, the clearing of throat noises, the whatever. And I said to her, we need to negotiate this. I need you to, Jesus. (audience laughing) I said, I need you to tell me which noises on this list are most important to you. (audience laughing) And it seemed completely logical to me. It seemed like this is what a wise loving partner would do. Yes, is negotiate the noises. And then the next morning, I woke up, I mean, right now I'm thinking of Abby's face when I was doing this and it was heartbreaking, okay? 'Cause it wasn't the first moment like this. We'd had many moments that led up to the list moment, okay? And she was like, where has my life gone? And so the next morning, I made an emergency appointment with my doctor and said, I'm not waiting for your freaking hormone tests. I need something, do something. Do something that will make me, my family not leave me, okay? (audience laughing) And then you guys, I got home and I couldn't find Abby anywhere. This is my favorite thing. It texted her, I said, where are you? What's going on? She had also made an emergency appointment with our doctor when in right after me to tell him he had to help her find a way to make less body noise. (audience laughing) So it was like a medical gift of the magi. (audience laughing) Each going help us, we can't help ourselves. (audience laughing) So that, and then we left, that's dramatic language, we didn't leave our daughter. Our daughter went to college. (audience laughing) And I don't know how to do this. I feel like I can be pretty logical about changes. Like I've had a lot of changes in my life, so I understand in my head that things are supposed to change. And that best case scenario is that your children go off on their own and wings and all that shit. Give them wings and that makes sense to me in my brain. But my body cannot handle it. I don't understand. I think that I became sober by being coming a mom. Just was like, I guess I'll be a mom now. And I just created just an entire identity around mom and then I don't have any groups that I ever feel belonging in. I always feel like I don't belong in this group. My friends who feel belonging all the time, I just don't even understand what they're talking about. Like I just always feel like I'm encroaching or uncomfortable or like looking in from the outside, but this little crew of these three kids in Abby is like the first little community that I've ever felt belonging in. Like I've ever felt like I could be my full self that they love me for exactly who I am. I mean, honestly, they're contractually obligated to stay with me. (audience laughing) They need money. (audience laughing) Well, actually, maybe that's it. Like they need me, right? They can't leave, they are so poor. (audience laughing) So this idea of them going off and becoming their own thing, I just don't understand how to be. I don't understand what I'm supposed to like make my decisions around or there's like scaffold plans around. I feel like when Tisha was walking away into her dorm, I just kept hearing the landslide song. Like the landslide, that's how it feels. It feels like a landslide and those lines about I'm afraid of changing 'cause I've built my life around you. Like can I handle the seasons of my life? Just absolutely not. (audience laughing) Absolutely not. And then relationally, like this stuff, one of the things that Abby and my sister and I are talking about, like the podcast is so beautiful and it is so beautiful and it means so much. But we've somehow allowed the two most important relationships in my life are with Abby and my sister and now they're like all we talk about is work. I go weeks where I haven't, we haven't talked about anything other than that. Or Abby and I now have like a, it's like way too much information. I haven't even, okay, so. (audience laughing) I should probably tell Abby first and then next year. I'm just joking, we've talked about this. I think that it's another thing that I'm gonna have to figure out. Sometimes it's something that is very beautiful and good. They can get in the way. That's another reordering that I have to figure out. Like I don't want my 50s, I'm almost 50 and I really don't want my 50s to be based on any sort of like arranging people I love to make work things or to, so I don't know what I'm gonna do about that. But what I'm saying is it's like landslide in a lot of areas and maybe it's beautiful in a way of like you know how they have those controlled fires of places because sometimes things have to be on fire for like absolute newness to come. I'm hopeful that that's what this is. And I feel like maybe Menopause is spiritually important because I am unable to tolerate stuff that I was able to tolerate before. And so now I think the problem isn't that I can't tolerate this now. The problem is that I tolerated this shit for so long. (audience applauding) And so it's like the body's way of saying, all right, we're not even gonna give you whatever chemicals you need to tolerate it anymore I guess. So I haven't gotten to the point where I can see what the beauty that's coming from it, but I can feel in my bones that it's spiritually important and probably for my best next life. I just don't know what the next life is. - Thank you. - Real. - We go on and on about Pary Menopause. Thank you. - Are you? - Is it, yes. - Like every morning I'm like, is this flash of rage inside me from the fallen, estrogen the fallen to democracy the fall? I don't know. I appreciate the last question you just speaking about 'cause I asked like, how are you reimagining and just speaking to the truth of like actually right now, I'm just in the landslide, I'm in the, it's coming undone, I'm bumping up against the like, oh, I don't know if this is working right now and just the truth of like, you know, in this moment where I think we all want so badly like something else. We don't know necessarily what that is. - We're just in not this. - Right. My friend Liz calls it not this stage. Like I don't know what the next is, I just know not this. Which is a really important stage. - It is, right? - It is because then we can start to like be with what not this is and then at some point we'll have some clarity about then what? Yeah, so thank you for presencing that. - And also it's so weird to be like a person who's really trying to be an integrity and then be trying to also be a capitalist. I'm like, I don't think I can do that anymore. I'm like, I feel like maybe the you can't serve God and money was not just a suggestion. I feel like the matrix just became clear to me and I'm like trying to get myself out of the matrix but I'm like, that guy who's always trying to, and you know, I'm doing my best but I'm on the podcast and like being my most vulnerable self and then I'm like, and also this to you is from, (mimicking) I'm like, what the fuck? Like this, you will know me, like I can't do this anymore. (audience laughing) It's becoming intolerable. Like the stuff that I was able to tolerate, they're like, no, this is brought to you by boat. Like I can't do any of it. I put the podcast on YouTube, just don't get used to that. I hate it so much, I can't take it. I'm like, I go to bed and I'm like, oh, there's this avatar out of me, just on the screen going, (mimicking) like, that's gonna end soon. (audience laughing) There might be two more episodes and I can't do it. I need to be disembodied. I think we've overdone it with embodiment. (audience laughing) I need my voice to come to you without my body involved. I don't wanna be perceived. I just want my ideas to get, and then I just don't wanna, I don't want, (audience applauding) my poor team, they're like, okay, so we're gonna stop that too now. I love your embodiment. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. There's just something that's tricky for me about it. Yeah. I don't, Get it. I'm pretty sure that I'm brand new here. Like I'm pretty sure that this is my first round at something on this planet. - When do you're birthday? - Well, I just did this, you guys will see if you do the piecast. We just did an episode with Sonia and Taylor who I'm obsessed with. - Yep. - And she was like you are just a brand new Aries. - Are you an Aries? - Well, I was a Pisces my whole life. So somebody came to my house last year and said also you're not a Pisces, you're an Aries. I'm like what the? I went your birthday. - Five years ago I thought I was a street Christian. (audience laughing) Pisces, bulimic. And now I'm so gay and I'm an Aries and I'm anorexic. And I told Abby if I find out I'm a Republican, I'm done here. (audience laughing) - When's your birthday? - When's your actual birthday? - I'm sorry, it's March 20th, like one minute after change. - Okay, so I'm like right down the cusp. - Okay, fair. - So I'm fluid, I'm astrologically fluid. - But it's also, I don't like to be labeled. - It's the sign of the times we're in the year of the snake and that is the transfiguration. So I would just say like you are evolving. - Thank you. - Yeah, that's one word for it. (audience laughing) - Oh my goodness, this is great. - It's interesting that you brought up belonging because I feel like with the pod squad and you create such community. And so I'm curious like how you feel like community and that level of connection can change people and in these times really help us survive and grow and meet this moment. - Well, community, I think it might be the answer. I just keep looking for a different one. (audience laughing) 'Cause it's so hard, it's so hard. - It's so hard. - It's so hard. - It's so hard. I mean, how we make it through this moment, I keep thinking about every day now. I think about this, there was this queer activist that was really speaking out a lot during the AIDS crisis. His name is Dan Savage and he during interview, (audience applauding) somebody asked him about community and about making it through this time. And he said, "What we do is every day we wake up "and we bury our friends in the morning. "We march in the afternoon and at night we dance." And I think that the answer is in that sentence. I think that we have to make space to grieve. We cannot dissociate from it. If this is a time that is sad for us, we have to sit with that. There's something about the facing the feeling, the sitting with the feeling, the not dissociating that creates fuel, right? It's like without that, you don't get to the afternoon. I know that. There's some kind of groundedness or directionality or realness that people who grieve bring to the afternoon work, which makes me trust them. It's like you've got to let your heart break to be worthy of the work. Otherwise, you're doing the work for different reasons. And I can't really explain it. It just feels like not real for show or for performance or something. So the grieving and then the working, we don't get to abandon the work. Whatever the work is for you is different for all of us. But there has to be the work. And then the work has to stop every day. And then the dancing. And whatever that is for us, whatever is the thing that brings us to life, whatever is the thing that reminds us that life is worth living. Because if life isn't worth living or celebrating, then the grieving doesn't matter and the marching doesn't matter. So the night, for me, this doesn't happen at night because I'm asleep. But it's, this is a metaphor you see. So you can change the times. But the dance is the thing we hold on to so that we remember each morning why all of this matters and why to grieve and why to work. And there's something about that Holy Trinity of grieve work dance that I think is the way forward. We cannot work our way through this. Like good luck. Like it has to stop every day. Like it has to be something that is done each day. And by the way, the work doesn't mean you're marching. Whatever the work is for you is that. But I feel like for me, I have to really do all of those things every day in simple ways. And sometimes the grieving is like, I'm going to paint my picture and just feel, right? And sometimes the work is a phone call or a project or something that is about collective good. Sometimes something with the family. But it's something that's about getting outside myself and working towards the collective good. And then the dancing is always something like, do you remember that activist in the, which I think this, it was the longest running vigil our countries ever had that just ended? But this man started a nightly candle that vigil by himself in front of the White House during the Vietnam War. And every single night he would go there and stand with his one little candle, just by himself, just stand there. And the media finally caught on and came to him and said, what are you doing here every night? Do you actually think that you standing here is going to change the administration or change the war? And he said, oh, I don't come here every night to change them. I come here every night so that they don't change me. So whatever is you, whatever is the thing that makes you feel like life is worth living, whether it's art or being with friends or dancing or single candle, whatever is that dance for you, you must do it each day. Because this whole slide we're in will require people to forget how precious life is. That is the slide. That is the slow-dutening thing we feel in our all our bones right now where the rage that we had, which was proof of life, is now settling in. And we don't even feel that rage, proof of life anymore. We just feel this lead settling into our blood that feels like a chill and is like scary as shit. We have to get the fire back. And I think we do that through our little candlelight personal vigils each day. As you're speaking, it's really reminding me of ancestral ways. I've done a lot of study with ancestral indigenous communities. And they speak of these very things and these practices of grieving and whaling and then going out and doing whatever the work is. And the job is for the community. And everyone has their job. And one elder was telling me like, if it was his job to go chop the wood and we need that wood to make the fire for dinner, he doesn't do it, we don't eat. And like we all sit with that, you know? So doing that work and then celebration and the dancing and how the dancing and the singing is also what moves the grief and allows us to meet the challenges of the moment. So much to me at this moment is about returning to these ways that are just so simple when there's so much madness and noise trying to pull us from what matters. And I love when you spoke of folks who are meeting their grief and their pain had on and feeling the feelings as being more trustable. As someone who grew up in a family of denial, my own self-trust was eroded because I couldn't feel my feelings. And then all the masks and all the things to perform and be good and be loved. And yeah, it's not trustable. Like the real stuff is getting in there and going towards that painful stuff that maybe some call your shadow or your darkness or whatever, but there's nutrients there. Back to ancestral way, it all happens in the dark. You know, all life starts in that place and we've got to go down and grow down to grow up and out. Yeah, and the shadow stuff. I feel right now that the sadness that people feel or the anger or the confusion, right now I feel like brokenheartedness is a badge of honor. I don't feel to me like my sadness or my anger or my bafflement at what is going on is a shadow. I feel like it's proof of the beauty inside me because it's like if there's something happening in the outer world and you're rejecting that. That is because you have an inner vision of something true and more beautiful. If you're not rejecting that, that's because that's okay with you, that's the vision. So for me, this is why sometimes artists have such a deep sadness. You know, people are like, why are artists always addicts? Which, all my friends are artists. I can confer, that is true. But there's a correlation of numbing sadness, right? It's because there's a great sadness. And I think sometimes the sadness is the distance between the inner vision and the outer world. The greater the distance is between those two things, the greater the ache, the greater the sadness, the greater the anger. I don't want to be around anyone right now who's not pissed off in the end. They scare the crap out of me. Like I-- [APPLAUSE] --want to be with the brokenhearted because I just know right away that those people have an inner vision that is aligned with mine and that is what's causing the brokenheartedness. And I also think we shouldn't hide it from each other. I mean, I just had an experience where our oldest just graduated from college but he was home over break his senior year. And I had been struggling with my own life. I had been struggling very much to like have my shit together each day and be like vertical. I told myself right before he got home that I was going to get-- I was going to tighten it up. Okay, because he's coming home and he needs joy and he needs-- he'd been through a lot of school and he needs, you know, a mom who's together and whatever. So he came home and I was like, sunshine. I was sunshine each day. I was music on. I was, yeah, doing the whole thing. And two-thirds of the way through the week, he just walked up and was just like, despondent. And I was like, what's going on? And basically, he was like, I can't be in this place. Like, what is going on? Do you people not know what's happening in the world? Like, what-- And I was like, God damn it! [laughter] Because then I couldn't be like, oh, actually, I'm just lying. I'm just-- [laughter] I've been acting for four days and I've actually really as good news as I'm so sad and miserable. I just had to like-- I mean, I just looked to each other across the room like, you've got to be kidding me. I let him feel so alone because he needed to see his broken heartedness reflected in his family and I gaslit him while trying to be a good mom, right? So I think that it's okay. We're not making this up. Like, all this is happening and we're feeling it in our bodies and it's okay and might even be our work to let other people see it so they can find their people and not feel so crazy and alone on their. [applause] Right? Yeah, I mean, I was sharing with you. I have this thing on my hand that I'm wearing and rocking with because right now, my big spiritual teaching has just been, you know, it's time to be able to show up with a broken heart and there's no sense that it's like that's coming to an end anytime soon. And so hearing you say, like, yeah, and that's what's needed now. But then it's like, but how to be vertical. How to be vertical? How to be vertical and serve. We just need stretchers to show up with each other on. Yeah. I mean, I do have friends who are able to pull it together in a way that, like, they're peaceful and logical and you know many of them and they go out in the world with a different demeanor and I love them and follow them. But that's not my jam. Like, I'm not. So the three kids, I have the three children and I have the oldest and the middle and the youngest one. And the two older ones were always able to, like, so I would say, you guys, we're going to leave in 15 minutes, be in the foyer in 15 minutes. And 15 minutes later, the three would show up and the two were ready and they were had clothes on. And then the third was just got just like a pizza box on her head and like two different shoes and like a mustache painted on her thing and no pants and just, you know, the whole thing. And but it would be too late. So I would always just say, look at them be like, okay, you two are good and you just, you're going to honey. You're just going to have to go like that. Okay. And I just feel like God is like that with me. Like, God looks at my friends and he's like, okay, you're good. You're good. And then looks at me and it's like, honey, you're just going to have to go like that. Right? And that's okay. Like, if we just wait till we're different to show up, I've been waiting to be different since I was five. Like, I don't think it's going to happen next Tuesday. I think this is just, there's many of us who are supposed to show up without tidiness and a bunch of different answers. And I feel like maybe it's even more important in this moment because if the only people who are showing up are the people who have their shit together and who are not deeply affected, that's dangerous. That's, think about that. That's really dangerous. If you're not brokenhearted and you're not messy right now, like, I'm not sure that's the void. Like, we need people who are brokenhearted out front. 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The Guide is free to you at NetSuite.com/hardthings. NetSuite.com/hardthings. [Music] There's a sense for all of us, I think, that we're going like, "And how do we build our capacity and our stamina?" And so I love that you give us permission to be messy. And I love that place is like her palu also give us the skillfulness to meet and carry and walk through the world with that messiness. That's like what I find myself in every morning. It's like, "Okay, just letting myself stay in bed one more minute, two more minutes." It takes me a little bit longer to get vertical, actually. And then I drop into my practice and I give myself what I need. And then just like, "I got to meet this moment and show, like part of it is just showing up brokenhearted." That's okay. There's something that's tied to all of that. I mean, the trick of what we're at, which is just this climax of late-stage capitalism, is like the trick of capitalism is to take all of these birthrights from us and then sell them back to us and make us earn them. Sex, food, rest, community. None of these things were ever supposed to be things we had to buy. So I think that that's kind of like the matrix that I'm trying to understand. And I think that the fact, I think we are doing too much. Like I don't think it's because we're so weary and wrong and whatever. I think it's because on the list of things we've been given to do with our life, 90% of them are utter horseshit and serving somebody else. Like I don't think they're real. So part of figuring out what's next is figuring out like what do I want and need that was mine to begin with and how do I get it right now? And stop. living in this fake thing that capitalism always sells us, which is like it's okay, it's we know you need those things and you can have them in five years. You can have them in 10 years, you can have them in what and that's a lie. So it's like the idea of I think Audrey Lord said look at what you're building today, it should look a lot like what you want to be building for the future. We cannot wait anymore, we cannot buy rest or love or enoughness or it's we have to demand it right now and that might mean that I just feel like everything right now is about enoughness. Yes, that leads me to my next question. Okay, so we're nailing this. Wow, okay. So many people struggle to feel enough, too much came up in the room today too, which to me is like the same thing. So we're not enough, we're not achieving and producing and it's all out there and your work has helped so many people survive what feels impossible, but this is the question that I've been wrestling with. Does it always have to be hard? And do you think that sometimes we get attached to the struggle and the suffering itself and how do we begin to trust rest and stillness and joy as a measure of worth and how do we step beyond surviving into the possibility of thriving? I've done a lot of therapy and I do feel like like probably in my notes, like in the notes the person takes, I would imagine that there's probably something about being attached to suffering and being attached to struggle and being like not able to let go of that identity. No one said that to me yet, but if I were her, I would write that down. Right now I'm thinking a lot about the roles we learn as kids in our families. I feel like that stuff is understudied in our lives. Like I think we get an identity in our family. Like it's like we're born into a family and a family is just like a cast of characters in an order for the whole play to take to gel. It's like here's your script, here's your script, here's your script. This is what you're going to play. This is what you're going to play and then you wake up in your 35 and you're like, is this even who I am? So for me, I know that one of my roles in my family was the like identified patient. So there's a lot of different escape code or bad one or whatever, but it's like the one who embodies all the sickness so that we can just have her be sick. Then we don't have to look at this sickness of the whole unit. And so people arrange their roles around that one too. Like then you have the hero. I mean I think my sister takes on a lot of that and she doesn't have a lot of permission to be human because she was always the one who had to distract from this mess of a sister that she had and be proved the family was still good because she could achieve. And you know all of these things that happen and I think it's really if you want to panic everyone in your life attempt to change your role. I don't even know if I recommend it. Everybody loses their shit because if you change your script nobody knows what to say. If you change your role, nobody knows what their role is. Yes, I think we can become addicted to the script we were given when we were kids and I think we can be forgiven for it being very difficult to let go of that script because it means the communities that we've depended on the most lose it and we kind of lose belonging and we mess everything up and it's I think it's probably the work of our lives. I think if there's a hero's journey for each of us it's probably undoing whatever script we were given when we were kids and I think if there's any freedom it probably has to do with that but it's not an easy freedom. It causes a lot of chaos. What was the question? Enoughness. I know there was so many there was layered. I was just saying that our enoughness is so attached to like achieving and doing right. So does it have to be hard and can we find worthiness in the rest in the stillness in the joy? Yes. Okay, so I will tell you a particular familial story that just happened a few days ago that I know is tied to this and I know that Abby would give me permission based on a lot of the other things that we just that I've talked about here what we're going to do to get our the sacredness of our relationship back to get capitalism out of our love to get work dynamics out of our anyway. A lot of that and Abby was talking about a project she wanted to do which had nothing to do with like relevance or attention or money or any of those metrics that we are taught to strive for and think that the only things that we do are worthy if they win those things. And basically she was like so is it okay if I make no money right? She said it more flowery but that's what she was asking. Now when when you hear the story I want you to keep the context of the story which is that we have a lot of money like way too like it's just enough so this is different for like and I'm telling you that so you can see the insanity that is there even when there is no scarcity okay. So I said yeah I think it's okay and beautiful if you want to remove money as a metric from what we do but that if we're going to remove that then I also need to remove the metric of wanting more needing more the next thing the next thing because we have arranged our life to only be aimed at what's next. So what are we like we need a grandma retirement house this is the thing we've made up in our head now our kids are 23 and have no partners so what we need is a lake house where lesbian grandma's live that we're going to call the homo stead that kids will play cornhole and I don't know it's made up there's no kids there's nothing so this is the trick of capitalism right to like sell you something that is not about that thing because okay so Abby wants a lake house so what is the lake house means rest it just means rest her it's just a symbol for stopping and being so then we're gonna get another job save up to buy this thing so we can rest or we could just remove the lake house and rest now okay now I was talking like this and saying is it possible that to change this metric we need to change this metric and is it possible that we have right now every single thing we've ever hoped and dreamed for and everything we've ever needed or wanted and is it possible that for the rest of our lives all we have to do is sit still and love the people around us and love each other and never strive for another thing and do you know what sweet Abby said I was telling you backstage she looked at me and she goes her face was just like ash in and she goes I feel like you're talking about end of life stuff but you guys like I think that was so important that she said that I think capitalism has fooled us so much that if we actually start talking about enoughness it sounds like death like people only have enough right before they die that's when you get to rest that's when you get to stop that cannot be right this whole idea this whole like western idea the expansion the more the the stuff we see playing out on the news which is greed and more and all that it's in us too like the agency that we have might not be that we can stop them but we can stop us we can stop this shit we can get this out of ourselves we can say okay maybe the American dream the problem was the dream maybe the pursuit of happiness the problem was the pursuit like we're promised that we're just gonna get there soon just just put your head down it's a dream it's a pursuit what if everything that we've ever wanted is somehow inside of now and what if the saving of our lives and our families and our planet has to do with everybody saying enough just enough and Abby's like I think we should start that right after we get the lake house and now it's time for our ads AG1 is the daily health drink that combines your multivitamins pre and probiotics superfoods antioxidants all into one simple green scoop i use this every single day it is my favorite way to start the day and make it make sure that i get all the right nutrients to keep me healthy and going they've made something that actually tastes good at the same time that it supports gut health and digestion things that make a big difference in how i feel every single day AG1 has their best offer yet if you head to drink AG1.com/hardthings you'll get the welcome kit a morning person hat a bottle of vitamin D3 + K2 an AG1 flavor sampler and you'll get to try their new sleep supplement AGZ for free which has been a total game changer for my nighttime routine that's drink AG1.com/hardthings for $126 in free gifts for new subscribers Hey, Pod Squad. We know that hard to heart and authentic conversations are important to you. And we'd love to tell you about another podcast you might enjoy listening to that embodies very similar values. Kelly Corrigan wonders as a podcast. It's hosted by Kelly Corrigan, New York Times bestselling author and PBS host. She sits down with big thinkers like Father Greg Boyle, Bono, and Brian Stevenson. Together, they talk about creativity, humility, love, grief, faith, and the quiet courage it takes to keep becoming ourselves. Kelly Corrigan wonders has more than 20 million downloads and thousands of five star reviews from listeners who say the show feels like sitting with a wise friend. The kind who asks the questions, you didn't know you needed. Her deep dives are one part inspiration and one part how to on getting yourself in the right headspace for a great 2026. If you're longing for conversations that delight and ground you, listen to Kelly Corrigan wonders wherever you get your podcasts. Parenting already asks everything of you and then somehow life decides to test your limits even more. I've had those days where it all piles up at once. The kids need you work once so down. Something unexpected pops up and suddenly you're just in survival mode trying to hold it a hole together. That's honestly why I use DoorDash. When life happens, DoorDash is there. I love how simple DoorDash has made it to cover meals sometimes because here and there, taking one task off the list is everything. So you can focus on what matters most instead of sprinting to the next thing. Oh, and when someone in the family gets sick, don't even get me started. I'm getting chicken noodle delivered straight to my front door immediately and maybe some bearded tacos too. Can't hurt. Real life needs real relief and DoorDash is there for whatever you need. Whenever you need. As someone with high anxiety and depression, it's taken me 40 years to open to it, accept it and grow from it. I now see it in my son. I feel guilty. He is six and anxious. I see myself in him. I want so much more for him and to not have him struggle like I did. How do I let go of this guilt that I gave him this? Yes, I love you, Glenin. First of all, I have a different kind of framing or way of looking at anxiety and depression. I know I have both. So I know that it's not an easy life, but I also honestly every beautiful person that I know and trust has some version of this. So I just don't know that it's like a curse we're passing down. I think that we don't understand it. I don't think we know what we're talking about. I don't know what I'm talking about, but there's something about anxiety and depression that also has to do with being someone who's awake and paying attention. So I don't know that it's a curse we pass on. I think it's a tricky life. It's tricky or maybe, maybe harder in some ways, but I wouldn't trade it. I wouldn't be different. So beginning with that, there are things that we are learning are not ours that were passed down to us. Then it's tricky to be a person who is then you know you're passing down stuff to your kids that is not theirs. I don't know exactly how to solve that, but I do have one story to tell you that I is the closest I've come. Okay, so my youngest was at the table and she was talking about this kid that is in her high school that I do not like. Okay, and I have a lot of reasons for feeling this way and when people bring up things or people that scare me, like when people I love signal to me that they are opening their lives to things or people that scare me, what I go to immediately is judgment. That is what I, that is my security blanket. I am a good arguer. I make a good case against people. If you bring up somebody who I think is unsafe, if you give me eight minutes, I can make a case that you will never text that person back. Okay, it's a skill that I have developed and it's not kind and it's not real and it is only because I'm very scared of letting people in. The first time I went to therapy for this new round of eating disorder recovery, the therapist looked at me and said, "Glennon, how is how you handle people the same way as how you handle food?" And I was like, "Shut up." What are you talking about? But the truth is that I only had a few foods that I decided were safe and everything else was bad and unsafe and I only had a few people that I decided were safe and everyone else is bad and unsafe and black and white and good and bad and not as that. So I watched my daughter who had brought up this person who was, you know, 13 and then watched myself starting to talk shit about this 13-year-old, okay? Making a full 50-year-old woman case against this person and I'm watching it and it's happening and for the first time I could see my daughter's eyes go dark. Like I could see something blocking or hardening. I don't know how to explain it like dulling, dimming, nothing. I kept going. But I noticed it, okay. And it stayed with me for like days and I couldn't, I was like, "Oh my God, I just saw, I saw the effect of me passing that crap on to her." And so a few days later we went to dinner and I sat with her and I said something like, "Okay, so here's the thing. Your mom, I have made this kind of like defense mechanism or this behavior that I do when I get scared." And that thing is judgment. And so I think that if I'm making a case against someone that you will stay away from them and so it's my attempt to protect you but it's not protecting you. It's like putting my dirty glasses on your clear eyes because I don't want you to be like me. I want you to be like you. Your way is better. I want you to be open. I want you to let people in. I want you to trust yourself enough that if they cross a boundary you can stop it. You don't have to cut them off at the past. You don't have to stop people before they even come into your life like I do because you have yourself so much that you know if they cross a line, you'll stop them then. I want you to have your glasses on. I don't want to keep putting my dirty glasses on you but this weird thing is happening which is that I can't stop. I know it. I feel it. I know it but I'm in this weird in-between time where I can tell that I'm doing it but I'm still doing it. So what I'm asking you to do is every time your mom starts doing that I'm pointing at somebody else. I'm pointing at that kid. This has nothing to do with that kid. Only look at me. Only think, oh my mom's doing that thing because she still has she hasn't learned how to not do that thing. She's just really scared. That and she was like, oh yeah. That makes sense. Like it was one of those, you know, sometimes you talk to your kids it's just like, no, it's not working. This was a moment where she was like, she got it. That is I think the closest I can come to expressing how I think we put a stop gap by actually knowing ourselves well enough and doing the work on ourselves to know when we're doing our shit, to know when we're doing our bullshit and then teaching our children what our bullshit is so that they know with love, oh my mom's doing her bullshit again and that's not mine. And you guys, my kids can like, they're like, hmm. She's doing her bullshit and then we get through it. The reason why it's important to do our own work is to know the things and express the things that we love and are good and we want to carry throughout our lineage and then to be able to express the things and identify the things that we don't want to be carried on through our lineage because it feels like it's just like a bunch of muddy water that hopefully with each generation some of the mud comes out and we just get a little bit clearer and clearer and clearer with each generation and that is part of doing that clearing work I think. I'm so looking forward to a future with our children. You know, because we are, we are doing this work of being self-aware and being accountable and having the ability to skillfully communicate and model what we didn't have and give our kids that and it's just, it's really profound and my son has, well, I think teachers would say he had anxiety. I never quite gave him that label. When he was like verbal first things he could say to me, he would always struggle to go into such a social situations and I was forced, you know, everyone had to be respectful and hug and kiss all my elders and all this stuff and I'm sure I was the same is him and we were going to another party and I was kind of dreading them. moment and as soon as he had words he said, "Mommy, I just need some time in the car before we go in." And I was like, "I need time in the car too!" "Thank you for seeing that!" Because you raised him to have the space to be able to express that to you. Right? Right. So now it's like, you know, people call him shy and I'm just like, "I don't call, I gave him none of those labels and he'll just go, "Mommy, you know I just need time. Now he's 11." And it's just like, "Wow, we have a future ahead of us where our children because of our permission giving and our self-awareness and our work and our practice, I feel good about it. I don't know. It's making me really hopeful. So good job to all of us. Yeah. And when capitalism goes down, I hope Mom goes down with it, by the way. They've got to be tied. I believe everything. So it does feel like the sky is following right now. And so it's a little vindicating for chicken littles. You know, I'm like, was I anxious? Motherfuckers? Right. Or am I just sensitive and attuned to what's actually going on? Hello. Hello. How you like me now? Everyone's why I do think about my therapist and think. So we don't have a lot of time. Maybe one or two we'll see. You met Abby and you're pretty instantly. What if there's no Abby? How do you know when and if to leave? I think I'm most amazed by people who leave situations that aren't for them without something else that is for them ready. I think that's the most badass thing you can do. The people who just like honor their own desire for freedom or for something better or just their hunch that it's supposed to be more beautiful without an actual eviction notice. You know because I got an eviction notice. Truly. And God, what would have happened? I don't know. I mean, I hope that my discontent, I think discontent is like the biggest gift in the world. I think that's why we have to practice sitting with ourselves. That's why we have to practice not numbing because I really think that the little numbing things we do each day, like the ways that we take the edge off, that the edge is exactly what is pushing us to make decisions that are freer and sure and more beautiful for us. So I get so scared about those little daily nummings. Like if you're a person who numbs each evening, even just a little bit, what if you're numbing the very energy that is in due to propel you to the next thing? And what if that little teeny daily numbing is like a big freaking deal. I have many people in my life who have left relationships, jobs, scenarios, friendships without knowing, like who just stepped off the cliff without knowing where they're going to land. And I've seen magic happen with that. So I think that's like a new frontier. I mean, all the excuses we need to leave are really bullshit. I mean, I used to every time, I don't ever, I've never listened to myself in an interview. I've never read one of my own books and I've never listened to my own podcast ever, not one time. One of my dear friends told me that when I was doing the tour for Untamed, that every time an interviewer or reporter would bring up me leaving Craig, I would immediately, within the next two minutes, bring up the fact that he had been unfaithful to me. And another thing I used to do all the time. If anyone in any interview mentioned my success, anything revolved around success, whatever the hell that means, but like a list or a book sales or whatever, within the next three minutes, you would have heard me mention my activism, charity work. And I wasn't doing that consciously. My body had a story that women are not allowed to do well unless they're doing good. You're not allowed. They will not accept this. They will not accept this success unless I also show my hair shirt, you know, unless I also show like how much I'm giving of myself. And I did not think that the world would let a woman leave her marriage unless she had I get out of jail free card. And neither of those things are true. Right? So when that was pointed out to me, I immediately was like biting my tongue and putting my, it's still hard for me. Because I don't want women or anyone who's listening to me to think, oh, she got to leave because her husband was cheating on me. I wish I could get to leave. Like the desire to leave is enough to leave. Someone who's just walked through that fire, it's brutal, you know, great man, two kids, dog, house, the whole thing looks perfect. But I'm suffocating and dying on the inside and like, oh, I'll just give it another seven years, but like, I'll be more dead. So yeah, desire to leave is enough of a reason. I know it's hard as all hell. Okay. Hands. Right here. What is your queer joy? It was the question. Oh, that makes me want to cry. And I don't know why. I think that the first thing that comes to mind when you say that is that I have, I think for the first time I might be like cultivating what people call a friend group. I've never had one in my life because it feels very trappy and confusing to me. And I never know group dynamics are really hard for me. But there's like these three or four couples that, Abby and I know, and they're all lesbians. And I feel like safe with them and I feel like I understand them and I feel like they understand me and I feel like I don't dread when they come over. And I think I love them. We just lost one of them. Andrea and I don't know, Meg was at our house last week. I have just some people now who I just feel are so grateful for and who I want to be in their lives and I want them to be in my life. And it's kind of a final frontier for me, this friendship thing. And I think that's what I want to do with my 50s is like figure that out. And can we move on to a different question? Thank you for that. When is a good time or a right time to have hard conversations? Okay. The only thing that I know that's true is that it has to be when you're not charged about it. This is something that I learned in therapy that I override all the time. Okay. So I just did this. Like I just did this. So about a week and a half ago after I should left from college, I think it's a very hard time in the world to launch a child into the world. It's just baffling to me. Something happened and I was so scared and I basically doesn't matter the details. But I called a friend who had some connection to Tish and decided I was mad at that friend for not doing something to support Tish, which was absolute insanity. Like it had nothing to do with my fear. But I needed an object of the fear and I needed to fix it and I needed to put it on somebody. I remember texting that friend and I remember thinking this is not a good idea. You are fearful, you are charged, stop texting. And I was like, as soon as I'm finished. I don't know why I cannot, I don't know. I don't freaking know. But the point is I sent the text and then the phone call came and then I had to spend nine days every night. I went to bed reliving what I said and in the discross and then I had to do an apology tour and I had to do the whole thing and it was a complete mess. When I have a feeling and then I think there's a way to fix that feeling and it involves someone else, it is never ended well. Because I think what I'm doing is I'm using a person to regulate myself. Like I think being a grown up is learning to regulate yourself without using other people like cat scratching things to regulate your own self. And every time I use another human being, I would use food, use booze, use drugs, I've tried everything, I've been to the mountain, I've been to it. It also doesn't work with people. And then the cleanup is awful and I think the brilliance of what you're teaching is the simplest hardest thing which is when the activation happens to sit with it and breathe through it and then wait until the activation passes and you can say to yourself, I don't feel any rage for this person. I don't feel any bitterness for this person. I don't feel it's like a more neutral place. and then you can have the conversation. And the couple times that I have tried that, it has gotten much better. (audience laughing) - Thank you so much for your generosity. - Thank you, you are such a beautiful moderator and human and you make me feel so safe and you're just really good at this. - That's so much. (audience applauding) - This was so much fun, I'm so honored to be able to be up here with you. - Thank you. - I'm a special. - Super special. Is there anything you've said so much? You've been so generous. - Is there anything on your heart left that you wanna say before you close? - I mean, I guess I'd just say that maybe we do need community. (audience laughing) And friends. And this is a pretty special group. So if there's somebody that you feel like asking for their digits you probably should 'cause we're all really scared and lonely right now. And I just really needed this, you guys. So thank you. (audience applauding) - We can do hard things is an independent production podcast brought to you by Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us @wecandohardthings on Instagram and @wecandohardthingsshow on TikTok.