We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 19. SISTER ACT: Who is Amanda—and seriously, how does she know all the things?

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

1. The Pod Squad is peeved that Glennon refers to Amanda as “Sister”—so what should we call her? 2. How Glennon and Amanda both spent their college weekends in jail—but for very different reasons. 3. Getting to know Amanda and her innate obsession with the link between our personal experience and our location within systems of power. 4. What’s making life a little easier for the Doyle sisters this week. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back, everybody. So every once in a while, someone comes up to me and says, I love your saying, I can do hard things. It helps me so much. And I always say, oh my gosh, that's not what I said. I never said I can do hard things. I do not believe I can do hard things. I do not believe I can do hard things. So the important part of that is the we. The we can do hard things, right? That there's

this idea that all of us together make life somehow easier, that life is this extremely lonely thing that happens to us that we go through all alone. I know, remember Tish came to me one night in my room in the middle of the night and she said, mommy, I'm all alone in here. And I said, no, honey, I'm right here. We're right here. We're right here. And she said, no, I mean, inside my skin. I'm all alone in here. I know. Which is the human condition, right? We're all so alone in here. But the we and we can do hard things reminds me that we're alone together, that we're doing these hard things next to and alongside and at the same time as all these other people who are having this human experience. And so actually,

none of us are alone. And sister and I have been talking about that concept so much in regards to this podcast because the most exciting part of this podcast, besides the fact that I get to talk to my sister every day about things that, I don't know, we maybe haven't talked about in a decade or ever, is the community that's building around this podcast. I mean, the comments you are writing, the voicemails you are leaving, the posts you are making, the questions you are asking, it's just, we just spend our entire afternoons reading what you have to say. the posts you are making, the questions you are asking. It's just, we just spend our entire afternoons reading what you have to say.

This pod squad, I know I love the word, the term pod squad sister thinks it's the cheesiest thing in the world, so whatever. But we have been so excited about you that, well, as you know, we decided to do another episode every week just to celebrate this community and just to talk about the things that you're saying and asking. So here we are, the PodSquad episode. What I want to talk about first is this phenomenon that has been happening inside the We Can Do Hard Things pod squad community. And that is what I can only describe as an uprising, a bit of a rebellion, a bit of a, I'm so proud. Okay. It's against me. It's an uprising that is against me, but I'm so proud of it because it feels so cheetah-ish. And that is that much of the pod squad is concerned.

Some are furious about the fact that we on this pod, I refer to you as sister. And so everyone else refers to you as sister. So here's, here's one comment of 7 million, um, from a pod squatter. I think sister should be called by her name. She is of course valuable as your sister, but she is valuable in her own identity as a human being with a name. Just my thoughts. It's been amazing how many people have said that they, they feel like I am diminished by that. My favorite ones are the ones saying, um, I think they don't worry. I think they just say sister to protect her anonymity. Um, as if I am, you know, like. Angelina Jolie.

Yeah. Just walking around, I'm going to be bombarded because, but it's very, it has been interesting and people are, people are upset by that. I know. And listen, I have been thinking about it a lot because at first I thought, oh my gosh, what? Okay. They don't understand. I've been, I've been calling you sister since you were born.

And also I call you sister as well. So that it has been very, we tried to not do it for a minute and then we had to go back and edit every episode a hundred times and try to eliminate half of the sisters because it was so upsetting for people. But it's just- Which we still do. Yes. It's still a process. Yeah. Yeah. And so, but it is interesting. I hear you, is what I'm saying to the people. I hear you and your valiant attempt to free sister, I mean, Amanda. And so what I thought we could do today is let's talk about you, Amanda Doyle, human who was born Amanda Flaherty Doyle, named after our fierce grandmother, Alice Flaherty.

Born Amanda, often in the beginning you were called Mandy. You hate that. My children still call you Aunt Mandy. Mom and dad call you Mandy. Some people call you Panders. Allison calls you Panders. Amanda Panda. I named my daughter after you, Amanda, and then tried to think of a nickname for her and changed her name so often that when she was five, she was coloring and she looked up at me and she said, mom, what my name again? It was while you were checking into a camp. She was trying to sign her name and she looked up at you. What my name again? What my name again? So we decided on Emma then. Sister, first of all, what should we call you? What should the pod squad call you?

What should I call you? And also, who the hell are you? Would you please talk to the people and introduce yourself? Yes, I will. I am good just so everyone knows. I am great with sister. I am great with Amanda. That is where I stand on that.

Who am I? So do you want me to talk about, what do you want me to talk about? Okay. One thing I want to talk to you about is that a lot of the pod squatters are writing and saying, how the hell does she know all of these things? Like, why, where are all of these facts? People who listen to me are not used to facts. Okay. They're used to my general feelings and hunches about things. And, and we have always had this dynamic, right? Where I come to you and say, here's what I'm noticing in the world. As if I am an alien who has just landed on earth and is observing. And you say, yes, Glennon, that phenomenon you're observing has been proven. And here's the support for that. That's how we live. I think in colors, you think in spreadsheets, right? So why don't you start and tell them about what you studied in college, all the things, how do you know all of these things? Okay. So the reason I get so many invitations and I'm so fun at parties is because I have always been innately obsessed with how personal experiences are inextricably linked to our location within

systems of power. So I don't know. Some people like to ice skate. I love power dynamics. So I, power dynamics. So I, specifically interpersonal violence against women and girls. So in college, I was a studies, my double majored in studies of women and gender and political and social thought. So all of, I got to do all of that, that I was obsessed with. And it came out in a lot of ways. So a lot of the things we talk about, I think are fascinating because it's all how this very personal experience that people are having are located within these dynamics. Tell them about what you did on the weekends in college, which is so similar to how I spent my weekends in college. Um, so during my last year of college, first of all, I was writing my, um, thesis on the defense of the violence against women act. And I graduated 2001. It had been in 2000 struck down by the Supreme Court that the ability for women

who were survivors of interpersonal violence to take their claims to federal court had been struck down. And so I was writing my thesis in defense of that, which is- And for people who are listening, those fancy words are what we hear commonly called domestic violence. Right. But however, that is, I hate that term because domestic violence, the way that violence against women and girls is perpetuated and validated by power structures in the judicial and legislative systems is that it is, we assign that violence to the domestic sphere. And therefore that's a way to validate it as personal instead of the very, very political issue it is. And so that is the reason that Supreme Court struck it down because they said that it couldn't be enforced under the Commerce Clause because that was about economics. So you have this, this is true for all of women. You've always had the

domestic sphere and then the economic market sphere and men belong in the latter and women belong in the former. So it would be as if, it would be as if, okay, Congress doesn't have the power to make any laws about COVID because that is a personal thing that happens inside of your body. But no, of course that's ridiculous. They've passed all of these laws because it is an economic and health phenomenon that is happening across our country. The same is true. The economic consequences for our nation is of violence against women in their interpersonal relationships is tremendous. But because we've assigned it to the domestic sphere, that is the lens through which the world sees it. And they say that's a personal problem.

Like it's not real violence. It's not real violence because it's happening inside your home. So it's like if a man, if men usually are assaulted at bars or out in the world, that's real violence. But since women are usually assaulted inside their homes, that's just like, you know, pink cursive violence. And it makes us think of it differently. It's a personal problem. And in fact, it affects how women see it themselves that I have a personal relationship dynamic problem. And, and therefore, um, it is not worthy of being defended by the systems that are supposed to protect me. The course of true love doesn't always run smooth. She got really like upset, and then I got super upset, and we were like screaming at each other.

I'm Dr. Laurie Santos. And in a special Valentine's Day season of my podcast, The Happiness Lab, we'll explore the science of making our intimate relationships more harmonious. This is like the worst possible way to spend a relaxing vacation. Journalist Charles Duhigg will help us all become super communicators. Everyone knows that experience, right? When you've had a great conversation and you just feel like you're on cloud nine afterwards. And we'll hear from husband and wife relationship experts, the Gottmans. I turned the phone off. You didn't turn it off. On why we should argue better. I did, yeah.

Uh-uh. Listen to The Happiness Lab wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to the Happiness Lab wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so what did you do on the weekends? On my weekends, I went to the Virginia's only maximum security prison for women. And I was interviewing as part of the federal women coping in prison study, the women who had killed their abusers, they'd tried to get help in for the violence against them in the court systems. And that was unavailing and they had eventually killed their abusers. So I was interviewing them about their histories. And amazingly, what I found is that there is no, there is no innate kind of male-female violence pattern that happens. So

often these women were coming into the prison, they were there for life, most of them, and they were repeating these interpersonal violence patterns with their new relationships in the prison. So it is just all about these learned patterns of behavior that we perpetuate over and over. And it was fascinating. So are you saying that we make up the idea that those behaviors are gendered in any way? Is that what you're saying? They're not really about male, female. They're just about repeating human patterns. Well, I think that it is fair to say that they are gendered in practice in our world. I think that it was fascinating to see that even in a world devoid of men in the all women's prison that we were in, the fact that learning that a relationship is about power and control and violence enforcing that violence and coercion and control are learned behaviors as integral to relationship. And that we then assign where there is male, female

power imbalance, we assign the man that role to enforce it because he's allowed to. the man that role to enforce it because he's allowed to in an environment without men where you haven't learned new behaviors and pair and paradigms of relationship that perpetuates at least in the case of what I saw. All right. I'll have to keep that in mind as I continue to design my male free female utopia. Yeah. Um, it's not. It's not as easy as I thought. It's not as easy. You can't just get rid of them. Okay. Well, that's fascinating. And this is also why our parents joke that both of their daughters spent their college weekends in jail, just in different capacities. So that's why I went to law school. That's why I went to law school because I was trying to figure out how all of the systems that are used to perpetuate these imbalances of power could be used to enforce appropriate balance of power.

And in law school, is there majors in law school? What were you in law school for? Is everyone just in law school for a law degree? This is a great question. What were any of us in law school for? A great question. I was in for surviving, man. Woo. No, you don't. You graduate. I mean, you can get a master's in things in law. I do not have one of those, but that's another, that's another degree after. No, you just, you just go to law school. Okay. So you went to law school and then you went to a job that was like a jobby job. It was just like you dressed up in a suit and went to do corporate law. And then what happened? So, yes, I went to a law firm. I did litigation there. assisting the Rwandese prosecutorial units to better understand sexual violence against

girls and children and how to prosecute those crimes more effectively. And then I came back and then I started working for you. Same. I also did that Rwanda thing you talked about earlier. Yeah. So people, do you see what I'm saying about this woman? You were correct. She does deserve a name. People who are listening might find it interesting that when Amanda left for Rwanda, that was a time where she had just gone through a divorce or was going through a divorce and things were very hard. And we were both really trying to figure out what was next for us. we were both really trying to figure out what was next for us. And this is when she came to me and brought me my first laptop computer and said to me, I am going to go to Rwanda. This is something that I have to do. And you are going to stay here and you are going to write every morning

because this is what you have to do. This is what you were made to do. And so that's how I survived from being gone for that year and a half is that I wrote every morning. And that's how the blog Mamastery started. So then can you just briefly tell the story of how did we start? You were in Rwanda and then you came home and you went back to that corporate job for a little bit. And then how did we end up working together? You just needed more.

You were writing a ton and we would, on the weekends, just use our little printer and print out all your pages and put them together and like write, make piles of chapters on the floor. And we are figure Googling like how to publish a book, you know, trying to figure out if we could print, like print some copies. We kept getting rejected. Remember, we would send them to the agents and they would say you suck in Swedish language. Yeah. Well, to be fair, that was once, but I do keep that email because I think to myself, very, very helpful to reflect back on that. Yeah. And then it just, things started going crazy and I was trying to help you on the nights and the weekends and it would just became, it just became that, that it was clear that, um, it was clear that we should try this and it was supposed to be a one year experiment. And that was 10, nine years ago, 10 years ago. Yeah. And so for 10 years, sister has been, Amanda has been, you know, I just hope that you can, while you're listening, you understand that everything that has, that momastery, that

together rising, that untamed love warrior, all of those themes that we are always talking about here in terms of power structures, in terms of women, all of that has always been informed by sister and her knowledge and her passion and our conversations. I don't know how to say this. I'll try to say it for the first time. I have personally, through my experiences with food and body and relationships and alcohol and all of it, have felt like I was personally in some ways, even with all of my privilege, experiencing what you're talking about in some ways, the way that power structures control and hurt women. And so you have always been a lens through which I can say, oh, that thing out there, it's not all me. I'm not crazy.

Yes. I'm just a goddamn cheetah who the world is trying to cage. And there might not be anything wrong with me. There just might be something wrong out there. Yes. not be anything wrong with me. There just might be something wrong out there because the world is constantly trying to make women feel like we are just these little balls of neuroses and that we have to save ourselves and we have to fix ourselves when actually we were born whole and powerful and perfect. And what we have to fix is out there. I think that's, I mean,

to fix is out there. I think that's, I mean, I think that's so important because there, there's a reason that there's a reason why we're not taught this. It's the same reason why the whole country is clamoring to not teach about the civil rights history of our nation and the, uh, the oppression of black people systematically throughout our history. It's the same, like you not knowing the frameworks and the history and the intention behind the systems that we live inside of is vital to making us all feel like we have personal problems. And so I think that if there's, I just feel so excited about this podcast because I feel like the way that even just naming, you know, the, you know, Betty Friedan's Femme de Mystique that blew up the whole world in a wonderful way

her whole premise was that women had a problem with no name yes right and just that just that brought women the second wave feminist movement together because so many women could relate to this problem

with no name. And I feel like what you're doing, Glennon, is naming all of these problems that have no name that we all feel. And even if we don't fix it, because honestly, we're going to have to take the ball down the field, but even in our generation, we may not fix all of this. Just knowing we all have this problem makes it not our problem. That's right. We, that's the we that we come back to, right? That, yeah. God, that's awesome. You know, it's just that thing that we figured out a while back that's like, know, it's just that thing that we've figured out a while back. That's like, you are not fucked up. You are just a deeply feeling paying attention, awake, alive person in a deeply fucked up world. So thank you. I love you, Amanda Flaherty Doyle.

Let's just, our idea for this was that we were going to answer a bunch of questions from pod squatters. But once again, we had to respond to the pod squatters who wanted to free you. So let's do one question and then we'll wrap up. We have a question from Sasha. Can we hear Sasha's question? Hello. I have two beautiful, sweet little girls that I'm raising. And my question is to ask you from a parenting perspective, what does this mean to raise wild cheetahs, in all the sense of the word, from being untamed,

human beings who can operate within the society and the systems that exist in the society and know what that's like to adapt and follow rules. What does that balance actually look like? Thank you so much. And thank you so much for the podcast. I love it. Sasha, thank you for loving the podcast. That makes me so excited and happy because I love doing this podcast. So please keep loving it. Okay. I think that sometimes the word untamed or the word wild is misunderstood. It's understood to be something different than what I meant it in untamed and what I mean when I talk about that. What I mean by wild is not this idea of ferocity and loudness and boldness. to your, each person returning to their truest essence, their truest self, to the person they were born to be before that world conditioned them to be something else. And what I mean by that is sometimes I feel like what people think I mean when I say get untamed, be a goddamn cheetah

is like, if you're a girl or a woman, you have to be loud and ferocious and break all the rules and all of those things. And that's not what I mean at all. I have two girls. One of them, her natural state is observer, quiet. She does the other thing too. But when she is in her truest self, she's more of a listener and an observer. And then I have another one who when she's in her natural essence, her truest, most, you know, herself, she's loud.

And so the untamed version of the first one would be the quiet observer. The untamed version of the second one I was referring to would be the loud, fierce go-getter. I don't mean that since the world tells women to be small and quiet, that we should all walk around rebelling against that and being loud and fierce. That would be another taming. That would be another acting for many of us. I am not that way in real life. If somebody is unkind to somebody else or to me or to what I can, my cheetah comes out in real life. But in generally in a room, I'm not a loud one. I'm a quiet one. That's where I'm most comfortable. That's where I'm most untamed. What I want is for everybody to not live in

for kiddos. Cause she's talking about kids, Sasha, your little one. I want your little one to not feel like she has to follow the rules of being a girl. And I don't want her to have to feel like she has to rebel against the rules of being a girl. Obedience is a cage. Rebellion is a cage. We are looking to live creatively and freely, right? From the inside out, not in response to who and what the world tells us to be. So I dream of a time when we're not like raising little girls to be fierce and we're not raising little boys to be sensitive and quiet. I understand we have to do some over-correcting now. Okay. I get that. But what I dream of is that we get these little beings

and we admit that there are no characteristics that are gendered, right? There are only human characteristics that are, we only have, we have permission. Permission to express certain characteristics is gendered. So my dream is that we get these little humans and we just think, what is the full spectrum of the human experience? And how do we get these little

beings to be permitted to have the whole experience which we're going to call easy things. Okay. What's making life easier? Because we can do hard things, but we can also do easy things. And so in this segment, we're just going to each bring you something, or maybe only one of us will if the other one is unprepared. We look out for each other. Something that we are reading or watching or experiencing or listening to that's just we're loving and it's just making being human a little bit easier. And so I would like to talk

about a book during this section, if it's okay, sister, because, and you're going to roll your eyes because I've been talking about this book for so long and it's all I talk about is this book. Okay. So what I'm doing right now is I'm rereading for, I think it might be the third time, this book that changes my life over and over again each time I read it because it's so dense that there's so much more I get from it. And it's called How to Do Nothing. And it's by Jenny O'Dell. Okay. Look, I think it's what everybody needs because it's about resisting the attention economy, us into paying attention to these little screens and these hot takes on everything and this angst and terror and fear and division through these little screens. And really, it's not benefiting us in any way. It's only benefiting a very few social media companies.

anyway, it's only benefiting like a very few social media companies. And, um, and so basically we've all been bamboozled and, and because we are choosing and, and have become addicted to paying attention to this other thing, we are missing real life, um, which is so beautiful and, and much less horrific and scary in many ways to be connected to the moment and to the human beings and to the place that we're in. And it's just, it's not about disconnecting and running away. And it's about staying present actually, and living in our communities and how to actually make an actual difference instead of making a fake difference online. Right. It's so good, y'all. It's so good. That reminds me that when we did the self-care episode and we were talking about the revenge bedtime procrastination of scrolling at night,

there were so many folks who commented on that, that, you know, I had posited that it was this idea that we don't get enough, any like alone downtime. And it's just our, so, but a lot of really smart pod squatters were saying, actually, it is a response to modern life, the just frenetic pace of modern life. And it's almost like a trauma response to that where you just disassociate for those hours because we're so kind of strung out from modern life. It was really interesting. And a lot of folks made that comment, which I thought was quite smart.

And it's like, because we don't know how to do nothing. So when we have this moment, we just are plugged in because we can't, the absence of anything is too unsettling. Well, it's the being still, right? It's the like how, if we can't, the absence of anything is too unsettling. Well, it's the being still, right? It's the like how, if we're still, then all of our shit's gonna come up and that's terrifying. But what I would say is in this book,

she does such a good job of explaining how everything is inside of nothing, how life begins inside of nothing. And the nothing she's talking about is not nothing, is all I can tell you. It's everything, It's life. It's like, how do we, we don't want to get to the end of our lives and realize we never lived. I didn't make that up. It's like throw or something. So, okay. We are going to stop there. And by the way, probably a lot of my things that are making life

easier are going to be books because I actually feel like, you know, when we talk about a problem with no name that is not gendered, it is this anxiety, this frenetic anxiety, um, that we are feeling because of our culture's addiction to screens. Like it just makes us all feel shaky. There's something that I feel when I put that away and pick up a book, I can just feel my whole self, just that. So I'm obsessed with getting back to books. I know sister has small children, so she's probably going to be really annoyed with me for even suggesting that right now. So. No, I've been putting them on audio while I do things. I like that option because it allows me to, well, it's probably not how to do nothing because it allows me to do two things at once, but I do appreciate that. Fun and function. Fun and function. Look at me. I'm

sweeping while I, no, I'm never sweeping. Um, I there. Okay. My one easy thing is something that you, um, suggested in the anxiety episode that has really, it's like a thing I can repeat over and over. You said to, to, to get us out of the terror of what if just keep coming back to what is, and I've just been doing that as a, like 20 times a day, if I need to, when I start getting super panicky and anxious about a thousand things, I just, what is not what if, what is not what if. And it's been helping me to see that these moments, actually right in this moment, it's okay. And I don't know if it's not going to get okay. So if I just keep staying in this moment, it will be okay. So thank you for that. That was super helpful.

I'm so excited about that because I always think all of my things are going to be way too woo-woo for you. But that's just actually logical, right? It is. I can get behind that. It's data-driven. It actually is okay right now. Right. And projecting towards the future or going backwards is actually not logical. Okay. I love you, Amanda Flaherty Doyle. Glennon Kishman Doyle. Likewise. I love you, PodSquad.

Don't forget, we can do hard things, but we can also take it easy. Okay. We'll try. Love you. can also take it easy. Okay. We'll try. Love you. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts. Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn't, don't worry about it. It's fine.