We Can Do Hard Things Crossover

You.

I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good Inside. So I just put out a book and as part of my book tour, I talked to a lot of different people on a lot of different podcasts. Maybe one of my all time favorites was being a guest on We Can Do Hard Things, the podcast hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle. If you haven't heard of We Can Do Hard Things, definitely go check it out. Wait, wait, wait. Not right now, because you're here and I have an amazing episode for you. I asked the Good Inside community for questions they wanted the four of us to discuss, and that's exactly what we're going to do together in this episode. Let's jump in right after this. I have Ms. Amanda Doyle, Ms. Glennon Doyle, and Ms. Abby Wambach right here. We're all waving as if you could see us, but because we're all excited. So if you want to wave back and you're not driving, please do. And the other really special thing about this episode is that I went to the Good Inside Membership community to source questions and we received so many, so many amazing questions for Abby and Amanda and Glennon. And really, I just want to jump in and hear from them so you can hear their brilliant answers. No pressure. All right, let's jump into questions. I am really curious what you're going to say to Brooke's question. So let's hear from Brooke.

Hey, Dr. Becky. And hey, Glennon, Abby and Amanda. I listen to both of your podcasts.

Regularly and love them.

My name is Brooke. I have a six year old son and a three year old daughter and I would love to know what is the best parenting decision that you ever made?

Do you all want me to go first? Yeah, I can go first. Okay. So I don't know if you're going to have to, like, cut this answer. I don't know if this is what we were expecting, but I think that with a lot of nuance, I would say that the. The most important parenting decision I ever made was to get divorced. I was in a really broken marriage to a good man, which is a tricky place to be because we're all supposed to be grateful for what we have, right? And much ensued. I fell in love. I almost didn't go. For what? For you? For Abby. I almost didn't follow the great love of my life because I was so afraid to hurt my children. I was raised in a family that was together that was never divorced, and divorce was considered to be such a failure in my mind. And one day I was looking at my daughter, and I've told this story in the book, but I just remember thinking, oh, I'm staying in this marriage for her, but would I want this marriage for her? And I realized that I was modeling bad love for my children and calling that good parenting. And that was because I had this idea in my head that a mother was a martyr, right? That we just do whatever we have to do to avoid our children having any discomfort. And so I did. Well, I guess I just decided I have to. If she came to me in 20 years and described this marriage to me and then said, mommy, what should I do? What would I say to her? And I would say to her, get the hell out. You have one life. You know what to do. And so I got divorced, came out as Queer Married Abby. And it was really messy and hard and horrific, as divorce always is in the beginning. And I think that in the end, what happened is that our kids learned that we are true to ourselves, even when it causes discomfort to other people. And that we have decided together that a broken family is any family, regardless of structure, even if they're still together, where people have to break themselves to fit in. And that a whole family, regardless of whatever structure it is, whether it's a single parent, whether it's divorce, whether whatever it is, is any family, regardless of structure, where everybody gets to bring their full selves to the table. And I think that our family is messy and weird and imperfect, but it is a place where everybody gets to be themselves, even if it makes everybody else uncomfortable, and even if there's a constant balancing of the collective. So that I think getting divorced and coming out were my best parenting decisions, which, interestingly enough, didn't have anything to do with direct parenting, but did.

I.

Don'T know if it's a decision as much as it's a constant effort to redecide on a daily basis. That is my answer. But I think the most powerful thing to me as a perfectionist, performer person, and that has brought a lot of good and a lot of pain into my life, is practicing the decision on a daily basis that my kids triumphs and quote, unquote, successes and achievements are not a reflection of me and that their behavior and struggle are not a referendum on me. Because I think that that when I look underneath my reactions to some of their struggles, what is really driving that is that I think that it is receipts of me failing to parent them correctly. And then when I take away the me centeredness of everything, their struggles and Their triumphs are their own. And I can just react and be with them and guide them through that as their own thing instead of taking the perspective that this is either something I've done or failed to do. And I think it allows me to actually be in relationship with them instead of being in relationship with myself via them.

Oh, that's good. That's really good.

I would say my favorite parenting decision, or my best parenting decision was when I made a mistake early on in our marriage with a child, with a kid. I didn't go and comfort her. I had like the. I parented in the way I was parented, kind of an avoidance, you know, our kid was having knee pain, injury, and I was just kind of like, suck it up sort of thing. And I, Glennon and I were talking about it in bed that night and I was like, I just don't feel that good about it. And Glennon, she suggested maybe I talk to Amma about it tomorrow. And I looked at her confused. I was like, what, like a parent? Like, I'm gonna apologize to a child? Like, that had never happened in my life. I had never known that that was even a possibility. And so the next morning, I prepare my whole speech in my head during the night and I talk to Emma and I tell her all the reasons why I didn't respond in the way that I wished I had responded and I was so sorry and that I would keep working on it in the future. And of course she was like, you know, getting ready for school. And she was like, yeah, no problem. Like, it was no big deal to her. But the art of repair had been something that I had never experienced or practiced before. So I think that that has helped me learn how to constantly go back and try to repair things that I've done, faults that I've had, issues that I've made in our kids lives.

Cool. And being in therapy, I think the best decision any parent can make is just be in therapy themselves.

Which I always tell my community weekly therapy. Like, me too. Like, I just always want to make sure everyone knows that and not to like, be like, look at how amazing I am. Like, no, I don't have it all figured out. Therapy is hugely helpful for me. And when I think about my best parenting decision, I guess I'm thinking, like, what has been some of the most impactful ones? And I feel like when my kids are struggling, the decision, like, nothing's wrong with my kid. And I really, really do believe that, like, so much comes from these two paths. Like, am I looking at my kid. And they feel it.

Yup.

Like they're a bad kid doing bad things. Or am I looking at my kid like they're a good kid? Having a hard time. And especially with one of my deeply feeling kid, it was a struggle in those, oh my, those tantrums, the animalistic, the caged animal, the viciousness. And just deciding over and over in the moment as much as I could after, in the way me and my husband would talk about it and how I talk about it with friends and what I thought to do. I have a good kid. I have a good kid. I have a good kid. Good kid. And like trying to decide that just.

Over and over, I think that would have made a big difference for me. I think I had a beautiful family. I also had parents who I think were afraid of me. I think I had parents who were afraid of me and who were trying to protect me. But what I always felt like they were doing was trying to protect me from myself, which made me afraid of me. And so my entire life has been trying to figure out that am I bad? Am I bad? Am I bad? And so I think that that is everything.

You're good.

Well, these kids, these deeply feeling kids, which I know you identify. There's a lot of us deeply feeling adults. That is such a core thing in our approach for these kids or my passion project that even saying to kids in those moments, I say this to, I recommend all the time. And people tell me, their kids, the way they look when they hear these words, it is everything. I am not scared of you right now. I am not scared of how you're feeling. I'm not scared how big they are. That's why I'm staying here. I know you're screaming at me to get out. You don't have to like it. I'm not scared. I'm sitting here, I don't even have to look at you. But we are going to get through this together. And your presence and you're showing them exactly the feelings that overwhelm you aren't actually so toxic and destructive in the world. And if you can't show that to your kid, of course, of course they can't internalize that about themselves. It's everything.

And you can say that even if you don't feel it, it's true. What if you're.

I mean that really, Honestly?

Yes.

Like, if you. Like sometimes I. I naturally get scared when I don't know what to do. Cause I feel like in 95% of my life, I know what to do. And sometimes I feel like I hide from parenting because it is the one area that I don't know how to do exceptionally. And so when I'm in those situations, I am I not necessarily afraid of them. I'm afraid of how I feel in that situation because I don't know what to do.

So two things. One shorter, one longer. I'm sending you my deeply feeling kids workshop. And bring the tissues and bring the pause button because you'll have to digest it, but like it. I mean this more than I would say about anything else I do. It will change. It will change your conceptualization and it will change your sense of knowing what to do. And when you're overwhelmed, it's very different to say to a kid in those moments, you are crazy, or, I can't stay here when you're acting this way versus saying, I need a moment.

I love you.

You're a good kid. I'm going outside and I'll check on you in a few minutes. Totally different. Totally different. And that is another way of kind of removing the I'm too much for people and removing the blame because you're owning that. And then I really think with these deeply feeling kids, the more you actually understand their core fears, the more clarity you have. And then the more clarity you have, the more you can use those skills in the moment. All right, let's hear from Kristin. This is a good one. Hi, my name is Kristen, and I'm so excited that Glenn and Abby and Amanda are here. My question is about faith and religion. I know the three of you were raised in somewhat stricter religious environments and have chosen not to continue that with your kids. So what does that look like?

I want to pass on my faith.

To my children while making sure that they don't soak up any poison in the pews.

Thank you. Oh, God.

Literally?

Yes. Right. I mean, I'll tell you my things. They're not necessarily right or, you know, they might feel awful to some people and good to some people. I don't know. I mean, I am a person with such wild, passionate, fierce faith. Do I know what that means? No. Can I put it into words anymore? No. Does it have a religion? No. But I at some point had to get to the point where I had to lose my religion to keep my faith because it kept getting bigger than whatever container I was trying to put it in. Okay. I have my kids. I have. In the beginning, I was a Sunday school teacher. Okay. So I would go to every new church, and then I would be Scared about what the Sunday school teacher is going to teach my kids about God. So then I would become the Sunday school teacher, and then everybody else was terrified about what I was going to teach their kids about God, which I preferred. So I had a child. And I want you to picture this like I would be teaching the Sunday school in front of the whole church congregation because we did part of the lesson in front of everybody. And so I would be reading a passage, you know, like about Jonah or something, okay. And, you know, he got swallowed by a whale. Okay. Allegedly.

Allegedly.

Allegedly. Well, listen, so my kid. My child would raise her hand in front of the whole church while I was reading the scripture, and I would not call on her because I knew that she was gonna.

Yeah, she's a heretic.

Yeah.

And so she would wave her hand and wave her hand, and then I would start to look ridiculous. So I would go, what? And she would go, so, mom, so you're telling us that this guy got swallowed by a whale and lived in the whale and then got spit out? And I would just be sitting there and I would go, I guess so.

Do not rely on your own understanding child.

Right, exactly. So here's what I think. I think that if you can find a religion to share with your children that is not based upon them doubting themselves. What I have found about a lot of religion is that in order to keep the collective, what is taught to the person is, do not lean on your own understanding. This is what I was taught you. The heart is wicked. God works in mysterious ways. So whenever you have an instinct, a knowing, a personal, then you are taught no. It's like sometimes religion can be a perm, a complete gaslighting right of the self in order to buy into the collective. And that is also what a cult is. So what I decided was that I kept trying to tell my children what relig what faith was, as if it was math, okay? Like, I could tell it to them. And my. Our family's faith life opened up very much when I stopped telling them and I started asking them. Yes, I ask my children stories. I mean, questions about what they think about God, what they think about the afterlife, what they think about this, what God is to them now, what faith means. Can they put it into words? And they have the most beautiful answers, and it starts beautiful questions and conversations that the answer to all of those questions is, we don't freaking know. So let's have beautiful conversations about how we all don't know and how we just have beautiful guesses and Faith is more like an art than math. And so there are no answers. There are just beautiful questions that we can all ask together. Yeah.

And just because you have a specific faith or religious angling doesn't mean your kid will. Right. Like, we all do get indoctrinated by our parents as much as the churches and the temples and all of the institutions in religion. And so just make sure that it's their choice. I think that that's when our kids talk to us about their faith. I'm like, that is so cool, because I don't. I don't have it. I was indoctrinated Catholic, you know, was told I was going to hell. So I was like, fuck you, religion. And now I'm, like, curious about them. Like, that makes sense to me. I could get on board with that. So it's kind of like this. They're teaching us now.

And if you do choose a religion, please, God, make sure that it's one that is not accidentally or purposefully teaching your children that anybody on earth is out of God's favor or is flawed. One of the things I think is so revolutionary about Dr. Becky's work is the good inside framework, because that can sound soft, and it is not. What I learned in Christianity is that I was bad inside. Original sin. The idea that we are all, especially women, put here to lead people astray and that our badness is inherent in us and that we are shameful feeling. And being taught that you were bad inside is something that it takes a lifetime to recover from. And in a lot of institutional religion, women, gay people, people of color, a lot of religions are just patriarchy in concrete and with a God decal on top. And so make sure that if you're bringing your children into pews or to wherever you're bringing them, that you actually believe what is being taught because it's being imbibed into them, whether you know it or not. And it is not okay to bring your kids to a place where you. I don't know how many people I know who bring their kids to churches where women aren't allowed to teach and speak, and then they don't actually believe that. But what are you teaching your kids by doing that? So be intentional about it.

There's a whole theory that is. In spite of the. In spite of the. I love 90% of it. There's just this 10% that I have to overlook because there's so much good of it. And I think it's important to be real careful about that because you are an Adult human that can make those distinctions. And a child may not be able to. So if you are asking them to swallow the 90%, the 10% is going down with it. And that's very, very hard to get out. And the studies that have shown that it's actually much harder for people who come out later to recover precisely because the 90% was so good, they really feel disembodied and cut off from their communities and from the safety of their home base. Two other things about it I think there's also this idea of, like, well, it's all or nothing. Like, our kids are either gonna have a faith, and that means we have to find a church and get involved in it, or they won't have any of that. And I was a kid who was very. That was a big deal to me when I was young. Like, I would pray all the time. It was a source of comfort for me. It was a source of peace for me. When I was a little kid, I would get scared and I would pray. And so I think that it is really cool to think about, like, what Glennon's thinking about, that it isn't all or nothing. It isn't like that you can be talking about those things, be even suggesting that there might be a source of power and comfort for them and a way of processing the world around them, and that isn't tied to this whole other structure. And then I also just throw out, because I think that people don't think about this as much. Talking about our bodies and sex and sexuality is such an important piece of all of this. And so, yes, to the LGBTQ affirming, yes to the having leaders of color, having women of color, having women. And it's also be very, very careful about the messages that your kids are receiving about their body and their desire and their worthiness. And what about them has value? Because that sets up like we are our bodies. And so you cannot say that you are teaching people that they are good and that their bodies are bad, and you're teaching them that they can have everything that they want in life and that all of their dreams and their desires can come to and that they need to kill the part of them that has desire. And it's just I have spent a lifetime trying to undo that piece, and I haven't done it. And I think that it is very important to not overlook that piece of what you're learning in churches.

That's good.

So on this topic of bodies, I'd love to hear from another member from Genevieve.

Hi, my Name is Genevieve and I'm mom to three year old Adelaide and one year old Eva. And something I'd love to hear from you all about is I've really just been feeling the weight of responsibility when it comes to raising these two girls and just believe so strongly, as does my partner, that we want them to be raised from an early age knowing that, that they are made for more and just to have the space to grow up untamed and just to be able to embody that and have this, be that safe and supportive space. And at the same time, I know that as they are increasingly out in the world, they'll be exposed to spaces and to voices and experiences that give other messages like diet, culture and kind of patriarchal structures and all of those things. And so would love to hear from you all kind of what you think about that and maybe any experiences that you've had with those situations yourself.

I haven't had any of those experiences. No. No experiences like that. I think we should move to the next question.

Oh, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good.

Genevieve.

I just sometimes feel like I shouldn't have named that book Untamed. It should have been Untaming because it just feels like nobody's untamed and I sure as hell I'm not. And it's just an actually a process each day to enter as opposed to something that you can be or not. I can tell you some things that I feel like we did right with our kids. The first thing that I would say that I to Genevieve is that if I could do anything over, it wouldn't have been anything I said or didn't say to my girls or boy. It would have been that I would have had myself in therapy about all of this earlier. Like I, I wish that I there I was saying all the right things with this. There is nobody, there is no parent out there who wasn't saying more untamed things to my kids. I just accidentally had raging body issues the whole time. So perhaps had I. In all seriousness, I wish that since our kids don't take in as much what we say as what we are, I wish that I had been working harder earlier on my own taming what I will say that we did that seems to have manifested in our kids so far is that I always think about that quote that probably isn't true, but the one about all the water in the world can't sink a ship unless it gets inside. And sometimes I think about the toxic messages about women being just all the water in the world, we can't even see it because it's the water we swim in. We're like fish and we're in it and we don't know it because it's incessant. And it's like in every single thing that anyone says to us. And it's on every billboard, it's in every commercial, and it's everywhere. And. And so one of the things we try to do is that everywhereness really made me very sick as a kid. And still. And I'm still trying to get unsick about it because it all got in because I couldn't see it. And so one of the things we're trying to do with the kids is make everything that's invisible visible. Which means we did the opposite of what I think we tend to do as parents, which is try to hope they don't notice it and turn it away from them and turn the commercial off and turn them away from the billboard. And instead we would always point them straight toward it. We would like stop and be like, oh my gosh, you guys, look at that billboard. Look at that magazine. What do you think that magazine is trying to tell you about? What, what kind of woman's body is valuable? And you know, they would start thinking like, oh, it looks like they're saying that white bodies are more valuable or like skinny bodies or blonde bodies or whatever it was. It was like they started to develop this consciousness or they were becoming wise consumers of things as opposed to just swallowing everything whole. And I think like in the. They got, they got pissed for a while. I think in this culture, little girls either get really pissed or really sick. And so we chose pissed. And now they're older and they're critical of the culture they're in. And I think that they're less self critical because of that. And one thing I've noticed recently is their take on body positivity, which in lots of ways is as toxic as all the other shit. My daughter told me that she didn't even know that her cellulite was a problem until she saw this big thing online that said, love your cellulite. Your cellulite is not a problem. Hashtag body positivity. And she was like, well, holy hell, I didn't even know, right? So we have to analyze the body positivity just as much as we analyzed all the negativity, which is a whole nother layer. But I guess making the invisible visible and getting ourselves into therapy is my takes.

I think it's also just all day long. I think it's, you know, reading the books, noticing the pronouns that are used when we talk. I mean, I was. We were playing a new card game the other day with my daughter, and she was so excited to play it and got out the directions, and it was like, when the first player goes, he passes three cards to his left. Then the second player, he gives four cards to the third player. And she was like, why would they assume that the person playing this is a he? I mean, it's just the. I think. I think we think exactly like Glennon said, that it's going to overwhelm them and hurt them and kill a little part of their spirit that we identify the truth of how ragingly male heteronormative the world is. But it's not like they're not going to notice. And in fact, if they don't notice, that's worse, because if they don't notice, by the time they realize they don't fit into the system, they think it's because of their deficiency. But if we can say, yeah, this is bogus, that this says he and it shouldn't be that, and so we, like, wrote a little email to the person.

Yes. Turn it into action. Yes.

I mean, I will. She crosses out all the time on the ba. On books that she's reading. If it says he, she crosses out and says, slash she. On all of the books she's reading.

So she's.

She's putting herself where the world is not putting her.

And.

And I think that.

That.

I mean, the question before about religion, like, if you do choose to go to church, great. Trust yourself and your decision that you've made on that. That's awesome. And then if something comes up during a sermon, if your child wants to know, why, Father? Why, son? Like, maybe we can talk about that. Maybe we can talk about why is God a father? How come maybe. And I think just naming it is so huge. And naming the places where you still struggle is huge because they aren't missing that either.

Yeah. And it's like what Dr. Becky always teaches us. It's like if you are noticing it, you are not it. If they are not noticing it, then that's. Then they are it. But it's like what we talk about with. When you notice your anger, you know, suddenly you're not the anger. You're the wiser thing. If our kid is noticing it, that means they are not it, which is the whole shebang.

That's good.

And also not identify, like, the assumptions. We had a conversation With Hannah Gadsby. And she was talking about how a really moving thing where her mother who had a hard time cause of culturally the way they grew up with her coming out later in life and that she, she came around to saying that her greatest regret was raising her, assuming, raising her as if she was a straight girl. And I think we do a lot of that. The, the, the realization I came from, from a place of is that I was raising neurodivergent children as if they were neurotypical. So I was projecting on them the way they were experiencing the world and trying to protect them from it. But that was not the way they were going through the world. And I think that we do a damage when we assume anything with my daughter all the time or my son, I'll say, do you have any crushes on any boys or girls? Or do you like, is there anybody out there you have a crush on or who would you like to. And just not making assumptions because assumptions are burdens to them that they have to. It is an assumption is an expectation that they will either live up to or will have to come and confront you and let you know you weren't right about that and that's not a burden you want to give them.

And the one thing I want to add there for everyone listening, okay, is a lot of times we think we have to know something or be able to fix something as a parent to talk to our kids about, right? This diet culture, right Patriarchal structure. I don't think any of us task ourselves with single handedly fixing that or knowing everything. And actually that's the stuff our kids need us most. So just to raise a question, hey, what is that? Why do they have he there? What is going on there? You notice that? And again, I think we say and then what?

That's it, that's it, that's it. You've done the thing.

As long as you can question something, the water does flood in, you've already kept it outside. So to end one last question, it'll be short answer. I'm big on mantras, right? I think a go to mantra for me related to the stuff I'm working on is always like, Becky, right now you're doing enough. You're doing exactly what you need to be doing when I'm trying to not maybe be productive. And I'm curious if each of you could share, I don't know, some type of mantra or message that you feel like in your own, you know, personal development journeys. A quick one, like one sentence that you might say to yourself, we can do hard things.

Mine is you don't need to suffer to succeed.

Mine I'm working on is things can come easy to me because I think that I try to earn the good things I have by suffering for them. And Glennon said something earlier on that don't worry so much about raising good kids that you forget you already have them. That we can just rest in ease that our kids are good, that we are good. That good things can come to us without manufacturing all of the suffering for it.

Thanks for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com podcast. You could also write me@podcastoodinside.com Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world and parents deserve resources and support so they feel empowered, confident and connected. I'm so excited to share Good Inside Membership, the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like valued parents. It's totally game changing. Good inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsome at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhey, Julia Natt, and Kristen Muller. I would also like to thank Erica Belsky, Mary Panico, Ashley Valenzuela and the rest of the Good Inside team. And one last thing before I let you go. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves. Even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain Good Inside.