We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 253. Is it Real Love or Spider Love? With Martha Beck

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Brilliant life coach, Martha Beck, works her magic for our Pod Squad. In this treasure trove of profound insight and practical guidance, Martha teaches us how to find purpose in midlife, how to use our longing as a map, and how to know for sure if what we have is real love.  If you’d like to go back and listen to the episodes mentioned in today’s conversation, check out episodes:  252. Martha Beck Helps Amanda Let Go 238. How to De-Stress: Relaxation Intervention for Amanda (and You)! 121. Martha Beck & Rowan Mangan: Polyamory & Throuple Life 67. How to Get More Joy with Martha Beck 66. How to Come Home to Yourself with Martha Beck About Martha: Dr. Martha Beck is a bestselling author, life coach, and speaker – offering powerful, practical, and entertaining teachings that help people improve every aspect of their lives. She is known for her unique combination of science, humor, and spirituality. For over two decades she has been, in the words of NPR and USA Today, “the best-known life coach in America.” Her published works include several self-help books and memoirs, including New York Times and international bestsellers Finding Your Own North Star, The Joy Diet, and Expecting Adam. Martha’s most recent book, The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self, was an instant New York Times Best Seller. TW: @TheMarthaBeck IG: @themarthabeck 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 to We Can Do Hard Things. We are not going to waste a moment because as promised, the Martha Beck, the world's favorite favorite life coach is back with us to God just work her magic in response to some of our pod's waters challenges. I do life coach the hell out of me if you miss that episode, don't like your listen to it. She coached the shit out of me. Oh! You were perfect in every way, Amanda. So what we're recording right now is three bits. We're three bits. You, sister, Abby and me, and then Martha is our self. She's okay.

No pressure. You have to listen to the last episode to know what she means. That's right. That's right. Go back and listen to the last episode. And then, I feel like now we can have our big bonfire where everybody's raising their hand and asking Martha questions and then getting Martha's brilliance. Dr. Martha Beck is a best-selling author, life coach and speaker offering powerful, practical, and entertaining teachings that

help people improve every aspect of their lives. She's known for her unique combination of science, humor, and spirituality. For over two decades, she has been, in the words of NPR and USA Today, the best-known life coach in America. Her published works include several self-help books and memoirs, including New York Times and International Best Sellers finding

your own North Star and expecting Adam. Martha's most recent book, The Way of Integrity, Finding the Path to Your True Self, was an instant New York Times best seller. Let's get it started. Let's start the bonfire with Heather. Hi, my name is Heather and I'm 47 and I've been divorced for I think 13 years and my kids are all raised and out of the house and I don't think that I'm going to find my person in this lifetime on earth. And so I am trying to figure out kind of my purpose for the next space here, kind of how to proceed and to find meaning and value in myself and in helping others. And I don't believe that it is in what I've done,

as I was 21, and graduated from college. My question is, like, how do you find your next steps that are the best steps for you to grow as a human and to be able to help others when you're really pretty sure that is not going to be time invested in another singular person. I think that's my question. I hope that makes sense. Yeah, you know, if that sounds so sad and it doesn't feel like she is like grandstanding

with sadness, but I hear that. I've accepted that I won't have another person. So how do I best serve others? Again, it's that self-sacrificing thing that is very big in our culture, especially for women. And the whole idea, it's kind of like she's bidding farewell to the hope of love. And then saying, how much fuel can I add

to the fire of others' happiness? And it's the same trap that we get caught in over and over and over. Tony Morrison said, the function of freedom is to free someone else. And you actually can't free someone else unless you're free. So this is what we were talking to everybody. All of us here, we're talking about in the last session.

And what I said then, and what I'll say again to you is the longing that you feel for another's love is not something you should discount. It means there's a part of you that is conscious of being separate from love. Anytime there's a part of you that feels separate from love, you are in illusion. Hear me now and understand me later. When you come to the truth of your nature, you will find that you are love to such an extent that everything around you is bathed in the light of that love and becomes the lover, and you will also find that

improbable things happen to you. I have not discounted you having a romantic partner if that's what you mean for the rest of your life. I mean like fun and when you were married and you were busily out promoting love warrior and then you met Abby. Did you sit down at some point and say well yeah I'm gonna stay in this marriage forever and if I fall madly madly in love with an improbable person, I'm never gonna do that. Like, what was your reasoning? What was the feeling that said, in the middle of this book tour,

I am jumping ship, I'm going to a partner that I never thought I would find? Like gave you the courage to do that. I mean, the first word that comes to my mind is just like recognition. It was recognition of a truth that was indisputable inside of me. And in the light of that recognition, could you feel the part of you that had been starving? Oh, my God. I was Heather.

I decided that I was not meant for... Exactly. Romantic love. And I told myself that was fine. That I remember saying, I'm, you know, maybe I'm like, Gandhi. I just don't need to have, and I remember my therapist saying, I don't know a lot, but I know you're not Gandhi. So I wanted you to say that to Heather, because I also see it as being very similar in that sense. Yeah.

And a thing happened to you that you couldn't have predicted. No. And it's wonderful. And so what I would say to Heather is, allow your longing. I believe that our longing is the thing that has already happened to us, but we haven't caught up to it in time. Yes. It's loving something before we believe in it.

Yes. It's not being. Thank you. Abby knows what I'm talking about. I do. I do. From the time I was a little kid, I had long, I had long for Glenin.

And I kept looking for it. And I kept getting my heart broken. And I just got to realize, I just got to realize that the people that I was with before, Glenin, God bless them, but they just really weren't that into me because I was really into this like longing and I was like, this is got to fit this like brown peg in a square hole or round whatever. And then when I met Glenon, I was like, oh God, this is, this is, this isn't even close.

And I was right to long. I kept telling you, yes, I knew it. Yeah, you did. She said that every, she said it all the time. I knew it. I knew it. I love what I would just said. It is right to long.

It is right to yearn. It is our yearning that takes us forward toward our soul's desire. And the mind is always like, no, I'll come into this person who I don't really care about or I'll come into celibacy forever. Or I just, you know, like, it's always trying to make a big pronouncement that will fix everything in time. And I think the only real map of our lives is in our yearning. So it's hard to say, I'm at midlife, I'm yearning, to be a positive force in the world, but also to be loved. That hurts to sit in it. And if you can sit in it and say, you know what yearning, I believe you. I believe you are meant to be fulfilled.

You'll feel a piece of truth come into your heart and there will be freedom in that moment that you believe your yearning can be fulfilled. And I've done it both ways. I've lived with yearning that was totally unfulfilled for years, decades, and I've finally given into the yearning and said, you know, this is really what I want and I believe it's going to happen and it happened. I couldn't control the timing, but the yearning, you can't control it, so embrace it and know that it is your path through life and it is meant to be fulfilled. And if you get to the end of your life and it hasn't been, you can call me and like punch me in the face. I'm telling you, this works. Let yourself long.

And that's the way you can add the most to the world because somebody who's living that way Radiates that and then other people get in touch with it and you change the world. Yes, that's right. Oh That's beautiful. Let's hear from Lindsay Hi, this is Lindsay and I am calling From snowy Minnesota and moved here in the last year from Michigan, where I was born and raised. But my parents and all of my family are from Minnesota. Four years ago, right before the pandemic,

I got divorced and kind of made it through that process and healed myself and through therapy and friendships and support. And then the last year I met a man that lived here in Minnesota and we fell in love. So I decided to move out here, both to be closer to him, but also to pursue creative and professional opportunities and just build a new life for myself. Much to my dismay, my parents are extremely unsupportive. I have lived here almost a year now and they don't really talk to me.

They see this move despite the fact that I'm 35 as betrayal, they say that it's like I've died, and they are ignoring the fact that I've chosen my own happiness. Not just with my partner who I love, after experiencing such heartbreak and then healing, but they aren't allowing me to spread my own wings. And at the same time, it's so hard because I'm grieving a loss that I'm not choosing. I want them in my life, but they kind of have x communicated me. And my question is, how do you let go of people or family that you want in your life, but you're realizing aren't the best for you. And how do you choose yourself when those that you love are choosing themselves?

Okay, so as I talk about how our culture forces us to work, I also wanna talk about how it defines love. Now, if you ask a spider, how do you feel about flies? The spider will say, I love flies. And it will be telling the truth. I love the way it crunches. I love the way it tastes. And the way I express my love is that I wrap it up alive.

And then when I want a little hit of life force, I go suck some juice out of it. I love flies. I call this spider love, and that is how people often define love in this culture, whether it's, I love my parents, and I want them to always give to me, or I love my child, and she can never leave my web.

So, one thing I believe is that, here's how you can recognize true love. True love always has, as it's first priority, the freedom of the beloved. The freedom of the beloved. So, Wilka says we are the guardians of one another's solitude. The highest form of love is to guard another's solitude. So, when you're talking about your family acting this way,

that's not love. They're using attachment as a lever to bring you back to feed a hunger in themselves, which is not being met by life. As long as you feed that hunger, you allow them not to fill that with the life they were meant to have. And I know a bit about this. I was raised Mormon, left Mormonism when I was 29 and didn't speak to any of my seven siblings or my parents since. Also, my friends from high school, like I grew up in this really Mormon community. So when she said, I've been excommunicated, I had a smile because literally literally they would have excommunicated me if I hadn't quit. And it really was. I would walk

down the street in Utah and people would turn their backs to me, people, friends. So it's a very literal thing for me. And I can tell you, you have to be free. You cannot feed enough spiders. If you give every ounce of energy in your body, you cannot make the spiders happy. They need to stop being spiders. And the way you help them do that is to stop being spider food. So it's hard hard hard but on that note the Buddha often said wherever you find water you can tell if it's the ocean because it the ocean

always tastes of salt and wherever you find your awakening, your enlightenment, you can tell it because it will always taste of freedom. So not of coziness and not of like we're all the same or we're all together, freedom. Then when you're with each other, you are free to be with each other and you set others free. So we were talking earlier about all the little parts of ourselves, set them all free. Love them all as they run around doing whatever they do. And watch how love organizes it all perfectly. Once she figures out, okay, they're calling it love, it's not love. So really, you know, in terms of being careful of the stories you tell yourself, when you say, you know, my parents aren't loving me, or they don't love me, or they've pulled away their

love, that's actually not true, because it wasn't love. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about codependence, but how do you help people deal with the grief of that? Because you have to grieve. Yeah. Oh, damn it. I was hoping that I'd go. I was hoping that I'd go.

I was hoping that I'd go. I had to grieve every one of them. And it was brutal. And it took a long time. And I used to carry around this poem by Naomi Shahibnah. It says, before you can know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

And I walked around with enormous amounts of sorrow blended with this unbelievable liberation. So if you just get your freedom in little bits and pieces and then you run back to serve spiders, you actually don't have enough access to the good things in the world to handle the grieving. Yes, and that's how they getcha. That's how they getcha. That's how it gets you. Attachment gets you when you're you want to be free, but here's the thing. You would be grieving for the rest of your life if you didn't go. You'd grieve the life you were meant to have. Yeah, you're giving it their way, aren't you? It looks like a knowing situation, but actually it's win-win because all negative emotions are

the raw material for their opposite. So if you want courage, you have to have fear and go through it. And if you want compassion, if you want love, if you want freedom, you have to go through grief. And that's the nature of the world. But once you've gone through it and you understand that love holds it, it's not so scary anymore. It's just growing pains. It's just growing pain. So Lindsay, it's just the right kind of hard. Either way is hard and this is the right heart.

Yeah, and it sounds... Yeah. Oh my goodness. Lindsay's brave. Hi, it's Elise Luna, an author of Honor Best Behavior in the host of Pulling the Thread. On Thursdays, I interview cultural leaders and big thinkers, and on Mondays I'm starting to introduce special four-part series on topics like mystical systems or addiction. Follow and listen to Pulling the Thread on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. What's your name Sarah? Sarah, I'm Sarah.

Hi, my name is Sarah. After my husband passed away a few years ago, I was blessed to find the most amazing partner. We've been together for a couple of years and are deeply in love and committed. He also has three kids around the same age as mine and it has all the makings of a wonderful prairie lunch story except for one thing. He's very close to his ex-wife and we spend a lot of time with her in the kids. Now, she's a lovely human. I enjoy her company but I don't know what to do with the strong feelings of jealousy. I often feel around her. It's not at all romantic or sexual,

and I trust my partner 150% he's amazing. It's just a jealousy of their shared history and connection to their amazing kids, which I know I'll never have with him, because they were married for like almost 20 years, I guess. And also I'm just a little, I guess I want him ultimately self-he hate sharing him. She has really deboundaries and so is she.

I keep hoping the feelings of jealousy will fade, but so far they have not. Any guidance appreciated. Ooh, right. Top situation. Stop off. But you guys know, because in another episode, my partner Rowan and I came on and talked about our other partner, Karen.

So, we're in a thrupple. So, Karen and I had been together like 20 years and then Row came in and we all three fell in love and we were like, this is bizarre. It was not something I set out to do. But, you know, there it was. That's how we felt. And naturally, Rowan was like, you guys have been together 20 years.

I'm going to feel some jealousy. And so we talked about a lot. And what we found is that in all of us, jealousy is a result of wounds that came very early in life. So wherever we were wounded and we were trying to plug that wound by getting someone to be our love object. That part was vulnerable to jealousy. But when we addressed the little parts, we did this with a man that you find the parts that are sad or that are jealous and you listened to them and you love them and you ask them how they came by these feelings and it will turn out, it was long before you met your wonderful dude.

And you can talk to him about it. You can start to heal those wounds. And what happened with us is that I used to say to row when she was jealous, I'd say, watch, just watch, watch what I actually do and watch what Karen does because nothing that we do will add up to abandoning you in any way. And eight years later, going strong, that issue went away in like a year and a half because we addressed the childhood stuff and we learned to love ourselves. So is that how the jealousy goes away? Because I understand what Sarah's saying. It's like Sarah's listing all the logic of it.

And then she's like, so how come I can understand all of this in my brain? And yet I have this little homicidal self. Like, go on. You know? Like, so is that part? I think that's for you, Glenn. Right, right, right.

Maybe Sarah's not. Yeah. I also noticed the word lovely. I love that is the most passion Love you never say anyone's lovely who you actually think is you know okay so How does she if she were to identify The abandonment is jealousy the thought of abandonment Yeah, that's what that is okay Okay, so I can't, I won't get enough. Yeah, yeah. So if Sarah figures out where that originated,

then the idea is that that is an arrow that she has to figure out an arrow where it came from. I would actually tell her, check out part psychology. We just have this conversation too, because what you'll find is that the logical part of you is very different. It's really a separate self from the part that's feeling jealous, but they both need to be loved and understood. Where does that come from? Your husband. No, it comes from self with a capital ask. It comes from the part of you that is connected to so much source love, like the love of the universe,

that the idea of being separate from anything becomes frankly laughable, and the idea of needing something that won't be fulfilled becomes bizarre. It sounds bizarre from that perspective. And then that part of the self holds the part that feels jealous, holds the part that is logical, is compassionate to all of them has group meetings inside your head. It's about giving each part, the jealous part, the logical part, the tired part, whatever, the dignity and respect that every human deserves. nitty and respect that every human deserves. And if you listen to those parts, sit down and write them letters. Okay, jealousy, I'm gonna write a letter to you. What do you want?

What do you need? What makes you afraid? And it will tell you, this is what I'm afraid of. And you'll say, how old are you? Seven. It's never an adult. Yeah. And as you love and communicate

with the different parts of yourself, you become free to recognize yourself as infinite. And that's really, you can't have, oh, my infinite is lacking something infinite. Mm-hmm. No. You are the field of love. Nothing can be taken from you. And that makes sense. Like, if she had a part of herself that was jealous of like wherever the wound came from, but jealous of a shared history that you get to revisit in a decent relationship, which it sounds like her partner and ex partner have together, that's a loss. Yes. That is a real thing that you could grieve that you don't have. Yeah, it could be a loss.

It's more like a fear, I think, a fear that they have something you don't have. And the way we dealt with it in our relationship was one thing I tried never to say. Karen used to say it at first, but she learned not to. Is don't be jealous. I'm completely here for you. That just negates the other person's feeling. So I will give you a little script that you can use. Every time you feel jealous, sit down and say, why are you jealous?

And the part was, I'm afraid that they had 20 years together. And I'm, and you go, tell me more. This is what I, but, but, but, but, but, but, tell me more. And we would say this to Ro, how are you feeling? And just, of course you would feel that way. They had 20 years. Of course you're gonna be anxious and nervous.

Anybody would have, that's a really difficult situation. And I really see you in that. And what you're feeling is sane and wonderful. And I love you. And let's just see where this goes And so never never deny your your feelings the dignity of What they've been through it is real But if you listen to them they talk themselves out and then they're like oh, I feel better now

Yeah, yeah, and it better now. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so clear because you can know that it's internal because I've done this before many times where I say, okay, I'm jealous. So let me figure out if the problem is really them that they're making me jealous, I'm going to figure out how I can rearrange their behavior. Yes. What should they do so that I'll never feel jealous? And it's that shit crazy. Like I move them like they're on a stage. There's nothing they can do To untrigger me and if you can't

If you can't arrange it outside of you better You know it's inside of you That's the problem And you can't even control the inside of you. I can't control anything with my thoughts, including my thoughts. So what you do instead is say, tell me everything. Tell me what you're feeling. Of course you're feeling that way. That's what humans do. They feel things. And we're meant to feel things. And I want to hear about how you feel things. And then if you, somebody really genuinely listens to how you feel, those feelings at a certain point go and furthermore, I

Feel better and would like a snack The energy comes down when you don't resist the magic of non-fistions Okay, I love this one from Hadi because I think it's going to be a really good tie together of our last episode and this episode in my king. Okay, wait to get both of your takes on it. Okay, let's hear from Hadi, which I love that name so much. That's also our dog's name. Go ahead. My name is Hadi and I have a question for Amanda. I've just been listening to your latest episode about de-stressing and as an So strongly with sisters explanation of how she operates in the world. And as someone who is relied upon by my people to spin all the plates and carry all the things

and someone who has always identified my worth as a person who can do all the things for all the people. I'm wondering if Amanda feels that her value to the people around her is tied up in her ability to achieve and produce. produced. And if she has thought about looking into that anyogram conversation or tool of free organizing that thinking so that she can begin to understand how much of her work is tied up in herself and her being, and what she brings into a room, not what she achieved by being in that room. My heart was breaking hearing this podcast because I identified with it so strongly, and I've been so blessed by the tools of the NEA Gram to re-understand how people value me

in their relationships and how My biggest success the thing I can best achieve in the world and do the best is be with my people Has that has that strike you are man Yes Yes. It strikes me. It strikes me. It strikes me. With great velocity. It strikes me. Yes, yes, yes.

I was sick this week. And I have so much trouble being sick in my house because I feel like so useless and worthless and I feel apologetic to everyone around me. So I was just noticing that, especially this week two of like, oh, I feel like a barist of myself being sick in my house, which is interesting.

But I think that she is on to something really beautiful with that if it's, that's the worth, that I think that I'm bringing, but I'm gunning so hard for that to be the worth that I'm bringing, that I'm usually very heavy-handed with it. And then it is actually received by the people as the love that it's brought with. It's brought with love, but it's driven by fear. It's driven by fear of worthlessness,

fear of pointlessness, fear that you're not worthy in and of yourself. And I know that all of you over and over have set on the podcast and imprinted everywhere. You are worthy just because you are a being. You are a being that feels and loves and that makes you enough. I've heard you say that.

And this is another, Hattie is another example of someone taking a really analytical approach to trying to fix someone, in this case Amanda, by intellectually analyzing, okay, I'm an Enneagram 3 and it's great, it's a great way to find out more about yourself but if I understand it correctly, the whole point of the enneagram is ultimately to bring all the types together. And so in

this it's similar to IFS, the self is all the types together. It can go in any direction because it's incorporated the wings and then the opposites and everything. So what I see had he doing is what I saw on the Amanda should relax episode. Somebody working very, very hard from an intellectual and systematic way to set someone else free from thinking intellectually and systematically, to a state of pure love, pure being, pure joy. So I love the way she reached out trying to heal you,

and I love the way you reach out trying to heal others. And all three of you are constantly reaching out to heal other people. And to the extent that you let yourself be free, it works. And to the extent that you do not let yourself be free, it won't work. Can we pull up the notes that Martha wrote to us? Yeah, the letter.

Because I just would like to end with this because as you say that, I'm thinking about all of the pod squatters who are desperately trying to manifest the truest, most beautiful lives they can imagine for their people, right? Yeah, for their people. Right? Yeah, for people. And so what Martha heard when she listened to our podcast was us, Abby and I, just helping

sister to death, right? So I just, Padsquad, want to read you these directions that we got because I think it might help you going into any conversation you have with your people. I know it helped me. So Martha says, hello, lovely people. I so enjoyed listening to Amanda's relaxation episode. It sounded to me as if Amanda may be quite significantly tired and burned out. She is a genius. Just a little bit smart. Yeah. Avian Glennan are obviously committed to her well-being. By the end of the conversation, it felt as if everyone was a bit exhausted from trying to help Amanda stop feeling so exhausted. Tell me where I'm wrong. I mean that.

Okay. She says this to Amanda, my practice is to connect wherever you are in the moment. No preparation is necessary or even possible. The only thing I want Amanda to know is that I have zero interest in changing her. She is the only person who can know what she's supposed to do in any given moment or in her life as a whole. My only intention is to help her connect deeply and comfortably with her own wisdom. And my God, what if we thought of that every time we went to talk to our children? My only intention is to help her connect deeply and comfortably with her own wisdom. And my God, what have we thought of that every time we went to talk to our children? Okay.

This is what she had to say to me and Abby. I'd love Glenn and Abby to put their focus on themselves. All three of you are helpers and fixers. You want so much for everyone to be happy. The problem is, listen, hot squatters. The problem is that any advice given from a desire to help and fix ends up feeling like a control strategy because it is. because it is. Wanting to fix something is wanting to control it. Now listen to this. Blue my fucking mind.

A healthy person's natural reaction to, I will fix you energy is to shut down and resist. Even if they genuinely want to shut down and resist. Even if they genuinely want to stay open and receptive. Pods, Quatters, if you, when your people try to fix you, if you feel like you want to shut it down, that is not because you're stubborn and broken, that is because you are healthy.

Yes. What? You are in touch with your actual wisdom, which says, don't let anyone else put their sticky mittens into the answer of my life. Yes, don't touch my bits. I touched them myself.

Not to listen to the last episode to get that. Yeah, that's a healthy response to somebody trying to fix you. You're just like, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so listen to this last paragraph, hot squatters, and then take it into your day. Okay. So Glenn and Annabee, while we talk to Amanda, I'd love you to notice if you feel compelled

to jump in and fix things, to make them go faster, to make her life perfect, or to achieve serenity now. If you notice this happening, see if you can relax until the compulsion goes away. Untroubled presence helps people thrive. Anxious advice, even when it's accurate and loving, tends to create stalemates. Can't wait to talk. And then I'll let you know that her last sentence is, Love You All To Pieces, which I feel like you did. Oh, ho, ho! Bits and Pieces. Yes. From this, you feel...

That was a sermon right there, that little feedback email. I remember that. It's giving me a little chill. Up in my bits. I mean, my turn. It's so good. I want to keep that so true every time I go into wanting to help. It's a dynamic.

We have a dynamic. We have a dynamic. And that is it. If you feel the compulsion to set someone else free, go find the compulsion and free yourself from it and it will work. It will do what you thought working on them would do. Oh my God, okay. Is there anything else you wanna leave

Martha Beck with our pod squad? They're sitting right now in their houses or in their cars or in their whatever. What is the one thing you'd want them to do today or know today? You know, there's a part of us that sometimes we hope will awaken. There's a part that is infinite love, that is infinite presence, that is infinite knowledge of the worthiness of self and everything. And what I want you to know is it's not something to be attained. It is already in you. It was born in you. It cannot be

extinguished. It can be covered over by your training, by your traumas, by your beliefs, but it always burns right inside my son, Adam, who has Down syndrome. I had a near death experience where I saw that light that comes and when it touched me, this feeling of absolute freedom from everything except love was overwhelming. And then later years later, I was driving Adam home from the funeral of his best friend's mother. And he said, I didn't cry. And I said, well, Adam, it's okay if grown men cry at sad times. And this is very sad. And he said, well, it's not so bad after the light comes and opens your heart. And I said, what, a light came and opened your heart. And he was like, mm- heart. And I said, what a light came and opened your heart. He was like,

mm-hmm. And I said, plan. And he said, May 10th. And I was like, this year, he was like, no. It was when he was 13. He said, he was feeling sad. And a light came to his room and touched his heart. And nothing has been as hard since. And I said, wow, you know, I've seen it too. And he was like, really? And I was like, yeah. And it told me that even though we can't always see it, it's always with us. And he said, oh, I can see it. And I said, now?

Right now you can. He was like, yeah. And I was like, where is it? Is it in the ceiling? Is it in your heart in your head? And he just shook his head. At me and he said, Mom, it's everywhere. It is everywhere, folks.

So sitting in your car, nursing your sick baby through the night, grieving the loss of your marriage. It is everywhere. It is inside you. It is around you. It is through you. And you will see it and know it. Now or later, okay. It's just the truth. So watch. Watch. Thank you Martha Beck. We love you. Thank the three of you so much for the beauty you are in the world. You too. I catch ya. We'll see you next time, Pod Squad. If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us. If you'd be willing to take

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you very much. We can do hard things, is produced in partnership with Keynes 13 Studios. you