Parenting: How to Nurture Yourself and Others 01:04:02

Okay, so a good night's rest is so important for any athlete. I speak from experience, obviously, but sometimes the place you're in doesn't allow for that. For instance, you may have seen all these wild videos online about how ridiculously uncomfortable the cardboard beds are in the Olympic Village.

It's not just a problem at the games, but anytime you're competing and traveling, playing soccer or any other sport, having a comfortable bed and a place to rest, relax, meditate and focus is really important. It's pretty much the most important thing and you just can't get that in a hotel. Staying in an Airbnb just makes more sense for those trips where you want to relax without the discomforts of a hotel. Welcome PodSquad.

Thanks for coming back to We Can Do Hard Things. We have what I think is an exciting episode for you today, and it is all around parenting. And if you are a person who now is thinking that this isn't about you because you are not a parent,

I want you to understand that when I say parenting, I mean something that is very wide and very deep and that applies to every single one of us because even if we are people who do not have little beings in our home that we are responsible for, we once were little beings that other people were responsible for. So parenting is

in all of its beauty and pain and hits and misses, affects every single one of us because all of us were parented imperfectly and are spending a whole lot of our life, whether we know it consciously or not, trying to reparent ourselves.

And loving the people in our lives and nurturing ourselves and others. And so parenting energy given and taken is something that is about every single one of us.

which is why you're going to hear all different voices in this episode. You're going to hear about people who are parenting biological kids, people who are parenting bonus kids, people who are reparenting themselves, people who have decided to never procreate, people who are really thinking of parenting as the universal art of the nurturing of self and others, which is, I think, what it is.

at its core. And I hope that this episode speaks to each and every single one of you pod squatters. So we're going to kick off with a story that I told about a very personal experience I had with parenthood.

And then you'll hear other conversations that have stuck with us forever. Parts of the podcast where we've answered calls from you about parenting, conversations that have been so helpful and lush and beautiful with people like Tracy Ellis Ross, Michelle Obama, Becky Kennedy. And then, of course, we're going to hear my favorite parenting moment that has ever happened on the pod squad, which is when my wife, Abby, discussed parenting.

her Christmas miracle story about kind of the most beautiful moment of parenting I've ever seen that happened between Abby and her bonus children. I hope you like it. We love you. Today, we're talking about parenting. So a lot of you know my story of how I became a parent. I

19 years ago, I found myself on a cold bathroom floor holding a positive pregnancy test, shaking from terror and a vicious hangover. I was so broken, so alone. I'd been an addict for a decade and a half at that point. And as addicts often do, I'd burned every bridge in my life. I just remember thinking there could not be any worse candidate for motherhood on earth than me.

And yet I so badly wanted to become this one's mother. It was the first thing I ever wanted more than I wanted to be numb. And I stayed numb because being human just felt too brutal to survive. It all, all of it just hurt too much. But that day, staring at that test, I realized that there was beauty to be had too.

And that if I wanted this beautiful thing called motherhood, I was going to have to accept the brutal too. That life was brutal. Both or nothing. So that day, I got sober. I decided to open myself up to love, to annihilation, to come back to brutal life. My son Chase was born eight months later. He is the boy who brought me into the world.

When Chase was a toddler, Craig lost his job and I was teaching, but money was tight. So we moved back in with my parents to my childhood home. Just as the 17-year cicadas arrived in Virginia. If you have not experienced the cicadas arrival, it's as if you wake up one morning and the entire world is covered in a layer of black and the air is filled with a sharp screeching sound, like a constant alarm. I was terrified. Chase was enchanted.

He begged to go for walks and he'd stop every three seconds and bend over and pick up a cicada and pet it with his eyes wide and all lit up. And I would walk beside him with my smile frozen on my face, trying to keep my hand steady so I could hold his. I was just desperately trying to hide my fear because I didn't want him to catch it. Because I wanted him to love the world, to live in awe of the world instead of in fear of it.

I just wanted him to live less afraid than I did. When Chase was three, his sister was born. And then when he was five, his other sister was born and all beautiful hell broke loose. Those days of three little ones at home were the most holy and hardest of my life. Every day was far too much and not even close to enough.

I was somehow constantly both completely overwhelmed and thoroughly underwhelmed at the same time. I so loved being needed and yet I was oversaturated by touch and other people's needs. And every day was a lonely eternity. And then this very weird thing kept happening back then. I'd be in Target, dripping with the children, just trying to buy diapers and get the hell out of there.

And I'd be in the checkout line and a kind looking older woman would stop her cart and look at us for a long moment. And then while the kids were screaming for candy and climbing on my head like monkeys and I was panic sweating, she'd say to me, oh honey, these are the best days of your life. It goes by so fast. Enjoy every moment.

And I'd try to smile and say, thank you. But my heart would drop every time. There was something about that that made me feel so guilty because those days, those early days, they didn't feel like they were going by fast. They felt like eternal groundhog days, many of which I found myself crying alone in the bathroom. And so it always made me feel like, great. So not only am I clearly doing this all wrong, but now I'm somehow missing the best years of my life.

These are the best years of my life? And is it not enough to just try to be a decent mother, but now I also have to make sure I'm enjoying every sweaty moment? I vowed if I made it to Chase's adulthood, I would never be those ladies in Target. I'd remember how hard it all was. I'd remember the beautiful, excruciating reality.

of parenting young kids. I remember that parenting young kids is like climbing Mount Everest. You don't have to smile or enjoy every moment of the climb. You just got to stay hydrated and keep climbing. I remember one afternoon watching two-year-old Chase pet one of those god-awful cicadas with his chubby dimpled hand and thinking, whoa, the next time these cicadas come, he'll be 18th.

My little boy will be 18 years old. And I remember that felt like a fairy tale. No way. We will be this forever. So the cicadas are back. Last week, Chase graduated from high school. His hands are no longer dimpled and chubby. He has the elegant hands of a writer, often dirty from tending to his many plants.

He is a creator and a nurturer. He is in awe of the world he is about to go out into. He is less afraid than I am. It went by so fast. Parenting is like a roller coaster. The first decade is so slow. Every day, climbing that hill, just tick, tick, tick. And then

You're at the top of the hill. It's the crest. It's maybe around 10 years old. And then whirr. All done. Down the hill, the car jerks and you're in the station and you look up and they're walking out. Chase and I have been roller coaster partners since that day on the bathroom floor when he invited me back to life. And the car has stopped now.

He's climbing out of our cozy car and walking away. And I'm still in the car watching him go. And you probably assume that now is when I tell you how we're supposed to deal with this gorgeous, lucky heartbreak. And you would assume wrong. I don't know. I am Elsa this month. I have frozen my heart so I don't die from feeling all of this. And I know I'm the one who told you to feel it all. But what can I say? I am a human. I contain multitudes.

But here's something I can do. There are many of you listening who are just starting this ride, who are parents of little ones who still woke up this morning too early to dimple little hands in your faces in morning cartoons. You're just climbing onto the roller coaster, just getting strapped in in those eternal early days, crying in the bathroom occasionally, maybe.

Every time I see you in the target lines, kids screaming and melting down and climbing on your heads like monkeys, I send you love and strength and solidarity. I never tell you to enjoy every moment. But if we had time, there are a few things I'd tell you. Like, it gets better. There are far better times than these coming. You know what's interesting to me is while you're talking and you're talking about how you talk to yourself, and I know how you've talked to other people before,

In real life. And I was thinking about how you've mentioned twice that, well, I don't have kids, but, and I was thinking that the people, I have three people in my life who I consider to be the best mothers. Oh my gosh. You know what I'm going to say right now? Yeah. Who just have the most pristine mothering energy. And it's you, and these are the people in my life, you, Liz Gilbert, and Alex Hedison. And what do they all three have in common? They don't fucking have kids. Yep.

Yeah. They're all very good looking. Oh, they're also all gorgeous. Yeah. They're the best mothers that I know. I will say, I say this to people all the time. I'm a wonderful mother. Wonderful. And I'm very mothering. And it's been hard for me to claim that in a world where I don't have the thing that says, I mean, what did I, what was I just writing as I'm trying to, let me see. Hold on.

I can feel my body's ability. This was journal entry from like three or four days ago. I can feel my body's ability to make a child draining out of me. Sometimes I find it hilarious as if there's a fire sale going on in my uterus and someone's in there screaming, all things must go. And then I look down and blah, blah, blah, skip that. And then this is what's interesting to me. Um,

As my body becomes a foreign place to me that doesn't really feel safe or like home, and I don't know how to manage or control or fight the external binary narrative of the patriarchy that has hunted me and haunted me most of my adult life. Is it my fertility that is leaving me? Is it my womanhood? Or is it really neither? But I have to fight to hold my truth because I have been programmed so successfully by the water we all swim in, by the water we all are served.

And I feel fertile with creativity, full of power, more and more a woman than I've ever been. And yet that power that I was told I must use was not used. A power, yeah. I mean, just trying to figure out sort of what that means. Like, because my ability to have a child is leaving me, but like, I don't agree that that's

fertile means. I don't agree that that's what woman means, which is why the freedom that the expansion around gender has offered me and the knowledge that is being shared with us by the trans community is like, oh my God, thank you. Yeah.

Like, thank you for finally unpacking something that like I had no ability to unpack because of what was handed to me in a culture that like thought of it in such a limited way. And so trying to make sense of that at this age with my own limited point of view is really fun, honestly. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, it's gorgeous. Yes.

And what if that idea of fertility from so young, if it was handed to us and saying, what are you going to do?

with this fertility that you have. And one minute aspect of that might be that you choose to reproduce. That's it. But your fertility is this big. And then we would realize, God, how many generations and generations of fallow ground because we were never presented with our own creative potential.

forward-thinking, beautiful fertility. And then all the women who just have kids, who everyone looks at them and says, well, you should be freaking happy. You did the thing. You did the one fertile thing. And no, they maybe had a wide, vast of what their fertility could have birthed into the world. Now, it's really, it's heartbreaking. It's a heartbreaking thought. It's heartbreaking. And I'm grateful to be able to,

to look at it with curiosity instead of heartbreak. And the heartbreak does come up and I get to hold that gently and lovingly and then say, remind myself like I woke up every morning of my life and I've tried to do my best. So I must be where I'm supposed to be.

Well, thank you for speaking up too on behalf of the trans community. I've never thought of it that way. And being a person who won't have my own biological children, you just kind of gave me a little bit of a roadmap of work I need to do. And I just, I'm really grateful for all that you just said. That was unreal. This is a write-in. Glennon, did you ever feel guilty for just wanting to be alone sometimes? Oh God. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, but okay. I just, this is, this is a story I want to tell about this. It's quick. I promise. But, um, I was doing Dr. Brene Brown's podcast early in the untamed days.

Right. N-A, not applicable. Not applicable. Your needs and personality and none of that matters, right? Right.

Um, and Brene was talking about this situation where she had just come home from this long business trip. Okay. And she was freaking exhausted. She was freaking exhausted, but she got home and that night, one of her kids had the school event and

And she felt, she just felt like she could not go because she was so desperate for some alone time and she just needed a minute. But of course the mom guilt of like, oh, I've already been gone. And now I'm going to tell my kid that I can't go to a school thing. I probably missed three things this week and now I'm here. But she, her, her, her need was so desperate that she just did it. She said to her son, I'm so sorry. Like I can't go to that thing. I have, I need some alone time. Right. Okay. Okay.

A week later, her kid, there was something that he was supposed to go to for school. And he said, no, I'm not going to go. I can't go. I don't want to go. He came to her and told her a story about how he feels like he's an introverted person. And

And sometimes he feels like there's no space for him in the world, that he has to go to all of these things or he's being mean or he's being antisocial or he's being whatever. He didn't know that you got to say, no, I have needs. I need alone time. He didn't know that until Brene did it, until Brene modeled it for him.

And her saying, no, I'm not going to her own kids thing allowed him the freedom to say, oh, I see. We are human beings who have needs and personalities and we get to assert them. We get to say no. So I would just say to that caller, like,

or that write-in, maybe switch it. Instead of saying, oh, I have this need that is going to take away from my child. It's a zero-sum game. It's like, no, I have this need and I need to show it to my child so my child knows that whatever needs they have, they get to get met also.

That's so good. Cause same, same with every other need. If you need to cry in this moment, cause you're so overwhelmed. I'll do that sometimes where I'll just, I used to try to keep it in and then I'll just like get super upset. And I'll just say, I'm having a really rough time right now. It's not you guys. It's just, I'm having a really rough time and all it's, it's just for any need that you're modeling, then they don't have to be secretive about

their own needs or feel like there's something wrong with them. That's good. So then one day when Bobby or Alice is feeling overwhelmed and they just need to break down, they get to because they've seen their mom have that freedom and they get to have that freedom too without shame. So yeah, that's my answer to that. Sweet. Just be alone. Talk about your need to be alone in front of your kids. Great. Here's another write-in. Glennon, why do they just keep talking? Oh,

My God. Because we taught them that. We steered them so wrong. This is my thought about that. So when I was growing up, I felt we all had different parents. Our parents were raising us in different generations. Okay. Right. So I always had this feeling that there was not enough room for me to speak or to have big feelings. Right. As a kid. So in...

response because so many of us are just parenting in response, right? Everything that our parents did, we're just doing the opposite. Okay. So here's what happens when that's the way we parent. I taught my children to express every freaking thing that comes to their freaking minds to talk about every feeling that they have. And sometimes sister, you know, this, sometimes I'm listening. I'm looking at my child who has been speaking at me for two hours about their feelings and

And I'm just looking at them thinking, oh, I have done you so wrong. Like I should have taught you the benefits of suffering silently. I have over corrected. And now you think that everybody cares about every single thing that you think or feel. So I still prefer that to not having enough room.

And I think in the long run it works out, but it's just this idea that we're really just like pendulum parenting. Actually, we should do a whole episode about that. Just this idea that we're pendulum parenting, that whatever childhood trauma we have, we just go the absolute opposite and just screw them up the other way. Yes.

That's exactly right. Kind of like how we were like, there was very, we knew what we were supposed to do and what we weren't supposed to do. And there was a lot of discipline in our house. And I feel like I go the opposite way where I'm like,

well, I know, I realized why this would be so frustrating to you. And I know it's so, and then I'm like, oh, I accidentally made assholes. So because I'm just so, I don't want the like hyper disciplined environment and it's going completely the other way. And it's so fascinating because if you really, I know this is off the talking concept, but

I was talking to my friend who also had a very disciplined household and she was like one of very many children. She, they all the, it was all like work ethic, taking care of yourself, taking care of the family. So at six years old, she's, she is baking the entire family's bread consumption for the week. They literally have the chickens she's baking for the family. Very. So needless to say, she's a very self-sufficient person has been through a lot.

So we were talking recently about, you know, we did, we've learned to take care of ourselves so much. And we were growing up raising these kids who are going to have other people tying their shoes until they graduate from college because they were just handing them everything in response to that. Correct.

And I was like, I just don't know. They're just going to, are they ever going to get a job? And she's like, you know what? I don't know if that's true. She's like, we tell ourselves that, but is that true? And can we just, might they just be happy? And is that okay? And it made me think of this idea that sometimes we reframe our things that we've been through, our difficulties, and

And we create this like causal link between those difficulties and our strength now to make sense of it, right? To say it's because of that, that we're like this. But it's just super interesting to think, is that always the case? And do we actually...

Does the pendulum, because there's always this guilt, right? The same thing with now my kids have no discipline and I have this guilt because they're not going to have the self-discipline I have. Like, is that true? Or is it that we just...

Is it that we just create a story about the stories of our life and about how we came out and that they're not everything and we're raising our kids and not everything our kids are need to be in response to our own stories and our own experiences. Yeah, that's so true. It's like we're creating the pendulum out of air. Like maybe the stories aren't really at all. Yeah. That's interesting. Cool. But yes, they talk way too much. Yeah.

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I really thought I was a really good parent when I had my first kid. I did. People would complain and I'd be like, oh my God. And then I had the second and I was like, this has nothing to do with me. That's right. It's the good news and the bad news. And Barack goes through that because our first Malia, they're both brilliant, of course. Malia was more of the

she's more of an appeaser. She's a people pleaser. She was in many ways. So I think Barack thought that he was really interesting to young people. You know, the difference in like when they were teenagers where Malia would say, all right, I'm going out this weekend. I think I need to go in and give dad like 15 minutes. Right. And he would, she would go into a treaty room in the white house and she'd ask him,

So tell me about Syria. And well, I saw that you gave a speech on blah, blah, blah. You know, she'd just go in and he'd come out with his chest pumped up, you know, and I'd be like, do you know where she's going this week? And he was like, oh, no, I didn't even ask. It's like, oh, that's some jujitsu on you because you were so thrilled with the fact that she took interest in your presidency that you don't even know what she's doing. Right. Right.

Then Sasha shows up and Sasha's totally like, don't touch me. Don't look my way. I don't need to please you. You're annoying. He got a lot of that. He was stunned, you know, and I tell him it's like, she's going to come around, you know, and now at 21 there, they just got off the phone last night. Yeah. She called him looking for advice and it just took her longer, but he was devastated. We used to joke. He's like,

Borak is so scared of Sasha. You know, he's so desperately trying to win her approval. And she was having none of it. So it's like that they're different kids. And so that can take you for a loop, right? Yes. We don't know how they think the way they do. And if you care too much about them liking you, you're already losing. That's right. Yeah.

Okay. Yes. So what I hear you saying then is the inverse of that is if they don't like us, we're nailing it. Or you want some balance. Yes. Right. One of my sayings, which I hear myself saying it is like,

Don't talk to me that way. I'm not one of your little friends. You know, it's like we're not friends. I love you. I love you desperately. But we're not on the same plane. And they don't even want you to be on the same plane. They want boundaries and authority. So I urge young people who are thinking about having kids. It's like, think about why. Right.

you're having kids. Because in my view, we're not supposed to have kids to fulfill something in us that we're missing, right? As my mom, Marianne Robinson said, we are here as parents to raise individuals. And we have to be thinking along those lines. And if you have a baby because you need a friend, well, you're going to be sorely disappointed because with your friends, you make accommodations for your friends, right? Right.

And with kids, you can't make accommodations. They're three, four, they're unreasonable. They don't know anything. You know, I mean, they have no facts, no logic. So we can't treat them like they have sense all the time. I mean, we want to treat them like they're capable.

In my view, kids aren't supposed to be your friends because the job is too big to worry about whether they like you or not. And no matter what you do, they will find a reason not to like you. That's their job, to push against us. And if we get pushed a little bit and we cave, well, then we're giving them no foundation. We're giving them no base. And a lot of times that's what they're testing. They're trying to test, can I push you like I can push my friends? Mm-hmm.

And the answer has to be no, absolutely not. You know, there's some consistency. There's some predictability in how I'm going to react to you. And we don't do that with our friends. That's right. So you mentioned your mom. So on this podcast, we're always asking this question of, are we supposed to change our kid for the world?

Or are we supposed to change the world for our kid? Okay. This is like a repetitive theme. You, through your mother's wisdom, give us a third way, which rocked all of our worlds and is one of the many things about the book we haven't stopped talking about. So you write that whenever you or your brother complained about how people in the world were responding to you, who liked you and who didn't, your mother would say, come home and

We will always like you here. Yeah. It's simple and so not simple. It's such a brilliant way of refusing to either change other people to like your kid or change your kid to be more likable. And instead, it's just offering your very self as a safe, accepting, celebratory sanctuary from this unpredictable, uncontrollable world.

How did knowing, come home, we will always like you here, help shape who you are? Oh, wow. Profoundly. Profoundly, because when you have a base of love,

you know, and not everyone has it, right? You have a place to come where people are glad to see you. They're happy to hear your voice. They're happy that you're alive. I grew up with that. So it didn't take away the pains, the fears, the hurts of the world, but

It gave me a safe place to land, to lick my my wounds, to build, you know, up my courage to go back out into the inevitable chaos. And that is more powerful than death.

book knowledge, what I find myself falling back on and have fallen back on throughout my life. It's that general enoughness that my parents gave me at home that helped me settle myself and learn how to heal myself from the inevitable, you know, flux of the world. Mm-hmm.

I fall back on it to this day. I try to emulate it with my own kids. I try to replicate it for kids that I come in contact with. Just this notion of we cannot control the world, nor should we. So all we can do is control our own selves to protect our own light.

But if no one has shown us the value of our light, it's hard to do it. You know, if we didn't, you know, and it doesn't have to be apparent. I say that because I know that there are people who don't have it in their homes. But that light, that feeling of enoughness, that feeling of gladness can come.

at school from a teacher. I just want young people to search it out and to, and, and to run after it whenever they see it and they recognize it. Um, because that's all we can control. I wish I could fix the world for my kids. I'm no different than any other mother. I, I am a mama bear. Um,

to this day, my kids come to me with a problem. And the first thing I was like, well, who, give me a name. Yes. Well, thank you for that. Thank you. Who's she? What's her last name? You know? And they're like, mom, mom, don't start Googling people. You know, I have that in me. I will fight to the death for my kids, but

They have to live in the world, you know, and they have to fight their own battles and they have to know that they can. My mother was good at that. I knew she always would have my back. My parents, I could come home. I could tell them anything. I could complain. And a lot of times when you're a kid, you don't even want them to do anything. That's right. You know, you just want to be heard. My mom spent so much time doing this that I didn't realize it was more like, yeah,

Mm hmm. Oh, really? What did you you know, that was most of my conversation. I was like, get another thing. And then and she let me spin like the Tasmanian devil. And I just run out of energy. And she would end with, well, do you need me to do anything? And the answer was usually no.

Well, no, I actually felt better after letting it all out. Right. That's what my poor little working class home life was like. And we had no money. My parents didn't go to college. They didn't have networks. They didn't have any of that. But they had that understanding.

That enoughness, that enoughness in themselves to be confident that what was going on at 7436 South Euclid was just as powerful as what might have been going on in the White House or somebody else's nicer house, that our world was secure because we had love and respect for each other.

Um, that's like so much more powerful than trying to fix the world so that your kid never experiences pain, never experiences failure. There's nothing wrong with those feelings, with those experiences, if they have a safe place to land and they learn how to build

that for themselves as they become adults. Yes. That's where the kitchen table comes in too. If you have it at home, now you know how to replicate it and build it for yourself when you go out in the world because it's not just coming from your mom, your dad, your home life. You got to...

know how to build relationships with people who sustain you. Right. And that's part of that kitchen table. My parents taught me that. So I, my relationships are just as valuable to me with my friends as they are with my parents because I need them desperately. I need the enoughness that I get from my girlfriends. Right. So I was able to go out into the world with that tool and

And that's that tool has sustained me through being the first black first lady, having people call me fat and names and, you know, meeting the bully down the street or the professor at undergrad who didn't think I was smart enough or the counselor who told me I couldn't go to Princeton. My attitude towards all that wasn't that it wasn't supposed to happen.

I didn't feel like I was entitled never to experience that. But what I had was, I'll show you, you know, I will show you because I know what failure feels like. I know how to go home and get the reassurance that I need. And I will come back and I will prove all of you wrong.

To me, that's a better tool than being hurt or being afraid or shying away from the negative things the world inevitably has waiting for our kids out there in the world. Yes. Repair is, it's really the act of returning to a moment where you were disconnected from someone. So you're returning to that moment.

You're taking responsibility for your behavior and you're acknowledging the impact it had on someone else. And in doing that, and I'm sure we'll get to just so many amazing things become possible. Okay, like what?

I think the best way to explain the powerful impact of repair has to actually start with what happens when we don't repair. Because actually just understanding that alternative shows the gap between not repairing and repairing. And that gap is just massive. So I'll use an example, not with kids. It's, you know, late one night, I've had a long day. And I don't know, my husband asked me some relatively innocent question. And I snap back at him.

right? Oh, you're the worst. Or why would you ask me that? Or you're always criticizing me, something like that. And then I kind of walk out of the room. He's probably left being like, okay, you know, I don't know what just happened. And maybe I go to bed and then I wake up the next morning, like nothing happened. But I think we all know there's just, there's not like a closeness between us. Like we both are just holding on to what happens. So what will happen if I don't repair? Number one for me

I'm just carrying around this like icky feeling. Like that didn't feel good to me. I didn't like the way I showed up. Even if I'd say, hey, honey, I wish you asked in a different way. I'm not, I'm not certainly not proud of my behavior. I'm carrying that around, right? I probably also feel a little ashamed of it, which always makes us hypervigilant.

to seeing other people and worrying that they're thinking that about us as well. So it actually almost makes it more likely. Oh yeah, my husband really does think I'm the worst person ever, right? So I'm hypervigilant to interpret kind of ambiguous situations in a negative way. I'm holding myself in a negative regard. That's not great. But then for someone else, when you've had a moment you don't feel good about, kid or adult,

that moment lives in their body too. We forget that, right? If I yell at my husband or yell at my kid, like they've already registered the feeling. That does not make us a bad person. It's just information. So once that feeling has registered,

Either I can go back to that moment and provide a story and offer connection and, you know, coherence and love on top of that moment. Or that moment just kind of lives on its own. And then the other person has to tell themselves a story about why that happened.

Right. And if you think about the story, especially kids tell themselves when their parents don't repair often after yelling, it's not a good story. Like kids have to gain control. They're like, this is my parent who I love and it's supposed to make me feel safe, but I feel bad. You know what story they tell themselves? I'm a bad kid. Yes. It's my fault. That's my fault. Or they tell themselves another disturbing story.

I'm not so good at perceiving things. I can't trust myself. That couldn't have happened. So they either tell themselves a story of self-blame, it's all my fault, or self-doubt. I can't trust my feelings.

And those are probably the two most powerful stories adults still tell themselves in a way that holds them back. And they're not stories we tell ourselves as adults. They're actually the legacy of those moments in childhood. Versus if you do repair, what I get to do, and to me, the image of this matters, is I get to go back to that moment. It's a chapter in my kid's life. It's a chapter in my husband's life. And I kind of get to like reopen the book. Like I literally get to reopen the book and I get to go back.

back to the point in the chapter. And instead of that being the ending, it's like magic. I get to rewrite a very different ending to the story. And we all know when you write more of a chapter, the theme of the chapter changes, the title of the chapter changes, the lessons you learn completely change because instead of that bad moment being the end point, that moment is just the part of a much larger story.

Okay. So this is my question to you about that because it's actually like magic. Yes. Like you're kind of changing the past. Okay. Because in my, in one of my many therapies, I have experienced this thing where the therapist takes you back to a moment in your life, like in your childhood. And they're like, okay, talk me through the moment. And then they have me

add things to the memory that weren't there like how would that go if you could rewrite it now so I might say okay well this person would have been here and this person would they would have said this instead of that and so this is a thing you do over and over again because memory is the thing that happened plus every time you thought about it yes memory isn't what just happened

It's what happened plus every time you thought about it. So if you think about it differently, if my 47-year-old self thinks about a memory from when I was eight differently, it changes the actual memory of the thing. So I think what you're saying, Dr. Becky, okay, let's just throw my parents under the bus here because that's what we do on this pod. So let's say the thing happened when I'm eight. Mm-hmm.

If they come back a week later and sit me down and say, okay, we're thinking about that moment where we lost connection. Here's, we want to talk to you about it. This is what we could have done differently. That memory is changing then instead of me having to wait until I'm 47 to change the memory. It's like Photoshopping life. It's like,

magic. It's changing the past for them as they go forward, correct? That's exactly right. Yes, that is completely scientific. Memory is not a recollection of events. It's events plus every other time you've remembered that event. And the thing I'd add or shift a little is it's not just how we think about it. It's new experiences. It's really how we're feeling and those new experiences. This is why therapy is effective. If you actually think about therapy, why

Does it change people's life? Because the events in our past that impacted us still happened. It's because when you have a series of moments where you're recalling events in the context of a new, safer relationship. Hmm.

The events remain and your story of the events change. And you all know this. Stories are what matter to us. Events never actually were the thing that traumatized us. The story we told ourselves about events traumatize us. And they only traumatize us in the first place because we were left alone with it and had to make up the stories ourselves as kids.

This is why at 43 years old, I am literally going back into my life trying to figure out what is real. Because the story I have, I am now realizing might not actually be real because I was left alone to my own devices to create the story. And so for so long, I've been in some ways blaming other people when in fact, a lot of this story I have told myself throughout my life

is my own doing. And that's a responsibility. So not only going back and trying to shift that story in some way, but it's also important that that is my doing. That is my psychology. And that is how all of this, obviously we want to repair this stuff, but there's so many of us that didn't get that opportunity. How do we do that now in our 43 year old tough bodies? And it's important to say, so let's say it's my kid. I yell at my son in the kitchen. He's alone in his room.

if I don't go repair, it's like kids are so amazing. They're so crafty. And so for all of us as adults listening to this, who say, I do tend to blame myself or doubt myself. Oh, why do I do that?

Like, I really mean this. We should come at that with deep respect and appreciation for our childhoods. Like, I was alone and overwhelmed in my room, and I figured out some way at my own disposal to tell myself a story to then operate in the world again and assume things were safe enough to continue and grow. That is so compelling. And actually, we can start to really shift things in ourselves when we do start to approach ourselves with that deep respect.

not just compassion, but deep appreciation for what we figured out how to do. I say this quote in my TED Talk. To me, it's just so powerful. I want to share it here. Ronald Fairbairn said it many, many years ago that for kids, it's better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the devil. To me, this explains almost everything in child development.

That when you're caught in a moment as a kid where something happened, especially if it's with your caregivers who are supposed to keep you safe, that doesn't feel good. You have two options. The badness can be outside of you or the badness can be inside of you.

And as sad as it seems to say, oh, why would a kid put the badness inside? What if a kid put the badness outside? You'd be literally psychologically unable to function as a small, helpless child. And so you take it in. You assume it's your own. And when I go repair with my son, you guys know I'm a very visual person.

What motivates me more than anything else to go repair? Because me too, I'm like, but he was so difficult. And again, we all have all of our reasons. We want to not do it. It's just human. I literally imagined myself snatching the self-blame and the self-doubt out of his body. I do. I'm like, I'm going to go get that. I'm going to go get it out. I'm going to take it out.

And he's never going to really thank me for it. I don't think he'll understand. But I will know over the course of his life that that is one of the biggest privileges I can actually give him. To think that sometimes when bad things happen in relationships, it's not my fault. I can't trust my assessment that something didn't feel good in a relational moment. I know that's true. And it isn't something I caused. Like, that is going to help my kids, right?

my daughter, like so much. What is the difference between a repair and apology? So yes, I think the difference is how we feel. I think like language around it, how I think about it is apologies often in our life serve to shut a conversation down, right? And we can go to our kid and we say, I'm sorry I yelled. Okay. Can we move on? Or we say, I'm sorry you felt that way.

Or we say, I'm sorry I yelled, but listen, if you just got your shoes on when I asked, I mean, it wouldn't have happened. Right. That is not a repair. And I think, again, the visual of the difference is an apology is like my kids sitting on a couch and I go up to them and say something and like run away. I'm like, oh, good. I got it over with. Where a repair is like sitting next to them on the couch and actually looking at them and like lingering and like kind of staying. Yeah.

I think because we as human beings don't trust pain, like we are taught as a culture that we should just, that like there are a few feelings that are okay to have, which are all like the comfortable feelings, like happiness and gratitude and yada yada.

And that any painful feelings or failures that we should just not admit we have or deflect or numb, then that's what we pass on to our kids. Those ideas about pain. So this is this, and this was part of our parenting memo for my generation. It was like, your job as a parent is to never let your kid feel any pain, to fix their sadness, to protect them from discomfort, to never let anyone be mean to them, to be

never let them fail. Just like, just like the clay will melt. The clay. Yes. Or like, it was like in eighth grade. I remember we had to do this. It was this parenting, um,

experiment or something. And they gave us- It was the don't get pregnant scare tactic. Yes. They tried to scare us by giving us an egg. And it was like, if you can keep this egg not cracked for a week, I don't know. But I had to carry this freaking egg around. I was terrified all the time that this egg was going to break. And that is literally how we parent.

Like the egg experiment in real life. Like they give this human and we're like just panicking. Like what do I do not to break it? Because successful parenting is if I return this egg unbroken, right? But like once again, listener, you came here

To hear the earth shattering revelation that your child is neither clay nor an egg. Okay. So like, I'll never forget being at this parenting convention.

And this woman stood up and she was amazing. And she started crying and she said, Glennon, my family is broken and there's nothing I can do to fix it. And every day I look at my son and he's in so much pain. And all I can think of is it was my one job to protect you from pain. And I couldn't do it. And I'm such a failure. I feel like such a failure. And all of the other parents are just like nodding and nodding. First of all, they're at a parenting convention. So we know they're fine. Their kids are fine. Probably just best to relax. But anyway...

So I said to her, it was this moment of understanding. The problem is not that our kids have pain. The problem is that we have the wrong memo of what parenting is. She said it was my one job to protect them from pain. That's why she felt like a failure. But actually, when you think hard about what kind of people humans were trying to raise, right? Everybody says, I want to raise somebody who's kind. I want to raise somebody who's wise. I want to raise somebody who's resilient, right?

It's always some version of those three. And when you think hard about what is it in a human life that creates wisdom and kindness and resilience, it's pain. It's the struggle.

Right? It's not not having anything to overcome. It's overcoming and overcoming and overcoming. Right? That's what builds kids. People who are kind are people who have felt the sting of unkindness and don't want to pass it on. Right? People who are resilient are people who have screwed up and failed and gotten back up and saw that that doesn't kill you.

Right. And people who are wise have sat in the ickiness of making mistakes and being human and like gleaned, you know, the gold that comes from that. So it's just this idea, which is it is not our job nor our right to protect our kids from their pain.

Right? It's our job to just actually like let them sit in it, sit beside them through it. Just say to them over and over again, like, I see your fear and it's big, but I see your courage and it's bigger. You can do hard things. We can do hard things because that's the dream, right? That when we're gone, they aren't these people who are just constantly avoiding every fire of life because we've taught them they can't handle it. That they know that they are fireproof because they've walked through so many fires and they're still standing. Okay.

Have you ever had a moment where you have received love in the moment and you could feel it immediately? Like, click, that sinks in. I get that. This takes. Yeah. Well, it happened a couple of months ago, an unsuspecting Christmas morning.

The kids are going around, they're unwrapping their gifts. And all of a sudden, Glennon's like, Abby, it's your turn. And I was like, adults go later in the morning. You know what's happening. So I'm opening up this present and it's this letter from a lawyer that is essentially, Glennon has started the process with consent from Craig that the kids want me to adopt them as their parent.

Legally. And there's like a lot of mixed feelings in that because, you know, we've talked before that like there is a grief that I will live out with the rest of my life for not biologically carrying a child of my own. But that gets completely overshadowed with like the love and the joy of parenting these three children that Glennon and Craig brought into the world. And, you know,

I guess it's hard to explain for like a step parent who might not have like a biological connection to their step kids or bonus kids, like we call it. But I don't know. It was like one of those moments. It was like one of those moments in life that no offense, honey, but it's one thing to have your romantic partner

show you, tell you, marry you, and make you believe that you are lovable. And it's like a whole nother level of proof that I am a lovable person when these three children, 14, 16, and 19 at the time, and their father and Craig, you know, I'm like,

It's essentially like the most crying I've ever, like the hardest crying, like the whale cry. Like there's a similar cry when I first got sober. Like, I don't know how to describe it well enough. It's just, if it makes sense, there's like brief moments in a person's life where all of your heartache makes sense. Like every single heartbreak and issue that I had

was because I didn't know that I would be chosen. I first had to figure out how to love myself well enough and I had to find a love. But like the kids don't have to do that. Our life would have been, would have gone forward with no problems. Like they want that. They like, they want, they want me.

In a person way, in a parent way. And so that happened. And so we're in the process right now of getting me added and not taking away any parental rights of Craig or Glennon, but getting a third parent added to our kids' birth certificates. And it was just, obviously it means a lot to me. It's just, I don't know how, I just don't know how I'll ever thank you all. Yeah.

And I know that that's not how love works. It's just, I told Glennon, she better not leave me because now I'll take the kids. And in the moment when I was listening to the kids read the letter and then I opened the letter from the lawyers, of course, I immediately burst into the kind of cry. Like, I don't know. It was like a primal cry and I'm hugging the kids.

And then on your knees, you're like, you turned into like fetal position on the floor. Yeah. And as I'm hugging the kids, I realized, oh my gosh, Craig had to agree to this. So then I turn and Glennon is sitting right beside me. Craig is sitting next to her. And I just like,

let go of the kids. And I grabbed both Glennon and Craig and I just like wail into both of their arms. Craig was crying. We all were crying. Sister was crying. John was crying. John was crying with a little bit of fear in his eyes because he had been given the job to video it by sister. And you can imagine how terrified he was. Don't fuck this up. Don't fuck this up. Don't fuck this up.

Bubba and Tisha were crying. We've had a lot of beautiful Christmas moments and it was for me, was the most beautiful Christmas moment. What was your take, Sissy, that morning? It was just such an honor to be there for it. I was so thankful that you all chose to do it in that moment so that we could be witness to it. It's rare in life that you know in the moment that something is

magical and pivotal and one of the most special things you'll see in the moment itself. It was just overflowing joy, gratitude. I loved the way the kids were so light about it too. It was clearly such a profound moment, but they were just happy and laughing and smiling. And it felt like just a celebration of what is rather than this remarkable moment.

oh, we're going to go do this thing that's monumental. It just felt like an acknowledgement of how truly remarkable it already is. I think legally speaking, just to be very, very clear, cover all of our basis. The letter from the lawyer,

It was kind of cute and funny because Glennon was approached, approached the lawyer on on my behalf because I'm the one that has to seek adoption. Right. And so this was all as because it was going to be a surprise for Christmas, et cetera. The lawyer said, assuming you agree to assuming the possibility. Surprise!

Because Glennon just swears. Glennon swears you want this, but I don't know. And by the way, it's going to be a process. We have to go through the legal proceeding of it, but the unveiling of it was just absolutely the most special moment of my entire existence on this planet, in this body. It is so... It's like... Okay, listening back to old clips, it's like...

going through an old photo album of your parenting where you see a lot of good shit you did. And you're like, that's right. I might not feel like I'm crushing it today, but we have done some good work. It just makes me feel like we have done some good work. And it

offer up the most beautiful parts of themselves. To me, it's so beautiful to have all of these beautiful moments from all of these beautiful different episodes with different guests in one place. Yeah. Because...

If I could piecemeal something together around any kind of subject, now we're talking about parenting, but this to me is so good so that I can just go, oh, I need to know the biggest, the best hits from parenting. Boom. And here we are. We're giving this gift to you. I needed it. I needed this gift for myself. Yeah.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for being with us through all of this. Not just through the podcast, but through parenting. True. It doesn't just take a village to raise a child. It takes a very large village to survive as a parent. So thanks for being our village. Bye, PodSquad.

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We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey. Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren LaGrasso, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz. Also by Allison Schott and Dina Cabana. ♪