We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 43. Esther Perel Answers Your Relationship Questions

Episode Date: November 11, 2021

1. Why Esther often recommends letter writing if you don’t know quite how to start—or have—hard conversations.   2. What to say—and when to say it—to show up for a friend who is in a bad relationship. 3. The importance of rituals in transitioning through breakups—what we should do when it’s time to say goodbye; and what we can do if we’ve never gotten the closure we need. About Esther Perel:  Psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author Esther Perel is recognized as one of today’s most insightful and original voices on modern relationships. Fluent in nine languages, she helms a therapy practice in New York City and serves as an organizational consultant for Fortune 500 companies around the world. Her celebrated TED Talks have garnered more than 30 million views and her bestselling books, Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, are global phenomena translated into nearly 30 languages. Esther is also an executive producer and host of the popular podcasts Where Should We Begin? and How’s Work? Her latest project is Where Should We Begin - A Game of Stories with Esther Perel. Learn more at EstherPerel.com or by following @EstherPerelOfficial on Instagram.

Hello, loves. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. I get so amazed and excited every time you come to this little party that we're having. So thank you for coming. Thank you for showing up at our Weekend Do Hard Things party. Super excited today because we have the magical wise, incredible Esther Perel back with us. And she is answering your questions today. And I don't want to take it. up any extra time here. So let's just jump right in. Hi, Glennon and sister. My name's Melissa, and I'm a mom of two. My hard thing is my husband and I's relationship does not have anything inherently wrong. We don't have any major issues and we fight very infrequently. But I find myself feeling very stagnant in a relationship. I recognize that he is an amazing provider. He gave me my two beautiful, amazing girls, and he is steady. He's constant.

He's not going anywhere. He tells me that. But there's no spark. There's no pursuit. There's no adventure. There's no passion. and I used to try to make that for us, but it's been kind of rejected and not received for so long that now I'm finding that I'm not even trying anymore, and I feel so sad about that.

my question is what do you do when you feel like you wouldn't have much of a relationship without your kids being there? The last question kind of takes it in a different direction. So it's which one do I want to answer? You know, I would want to know what did you try before? Did you say, let's go to a club, let's go dance, let's go take a walk together? Did you hold his hand and he took the hand out? Did you sit next to him on the couch and he basically doesn't notice if you're there or not? Did you try to put your hand in his hair and his hand never comes on you?

What did you try for which you say the response was such that I stopped trying and I basically closed in and basically shut myself down. So there's two ways to change it. You either restart certain things like that and you see if there is a response. And then you basically, depending on the response, you go to the partner. And that is a very scary conversation

because it's basically a conversation that says we have an infrastructure of a relationship. and that relationship gives us both a deep sense of stability and consistency and predictability. But there is very little intimacy between us. There is very little closeness between us. I am lonely. Are you? And that is a scary conversation to have, you know.

It's not you don't respond and there is no spark. It's, I'm lonely. We are good, productive providers together and we get things done. But that doesn't feed my soul. That doesn't make me feel that I am important to you, that I matter, that you are special to me. Does that matter to you?

Do you ever have that need, you know? Or do you think that because we go on Saturday night to dinner together, that we have that? You know, how do you see us? And can we ever talk about that? And I often find it very difficult. I'm afraid that you are going to shut down the conversation or that you're not going to know what I'm talking about, which is going to make me feel even more lonely, or that things are actually fine for you. And that at the end of the conversation, I'm really going to feel that once there is no kids, there is nothing between us.

So I often think letter writing is very useful in situations like this because it gets people's attention rather than sitting at a table and trying to get them to live. lift their heads from the phone, you actually write a note and you said, this is a letter that I've been writing in my head many, many times to you. I've written versions to yourself, you know, that you've written versions that you won't send. So the letter that is send is not the first one you write in which you say, you know, I was looking at us today and I saw this beautiful unit of people, you know, but there is an empty space between them. And I suffer from that. space and I don't know if you do too. When we met, we used to be able to talk

for hours. There was a real sense of we were curious about each other. I sometimes feel like I don't really know what's inside of you and what makes you tick and I don't feel that you have any idea of what happens inside of me. And maybe that's the marriage that you know. Maybe that's what you grew up with. Maybe that's how you saw your parents.

I saw my parents that way too, but I promised myself that I would have better. I would have more. And here I am with you and I don't have that. And I don't know. I want you to feel my longing. I hope you don't just hear this as my criticism. I miss you.

I miss us. I long. I'm lonely and I can't imagine that if I feel this way, you can just think we're having the best of times. Shall we meet somewhere? I love it. Focus on the longing and not the criticism. That's so beautiful.

That changed everything for me when I read that that you said, Esther, behind every criticism is a longing behind every anger is a hurt. Because that, like, if you could interpret all of my criticisms as a longing for more closeness to you, as opposed to low-grade. warfare on you. Imagine what we would have. And imagine that you can say that. I know I can sometimes sound critical. I know that I lose all elegance in the way that I say things. And I really want to own that because what I really would love for you to feel is how much

I miss you. It's not that I don't like what you do. It's that I used to love what we had. And I, you know, now it depends. Sometimes you have a person who really can hear it and then responds from that place. And sometimes you have a person who no matter which way you say it is still going to react defensively. You have to be prepared for that. And basically, just like, you're never happy.

What else does it take for you? I do this and I do this and I do this. And no matter how much you've acknowledged everything they do, you know, because then they are in their own scripts. This is not anymore marriage material. This is family of origin material. And sister, speaking of family of origin material, when she says that, I think, you know, we would say, why can't they just interpret our criticism? I know.

That's what I said. But it's our responsibility to express it as longing. It's not always their responsibility to listen to our criticism, translated into their brain as longing. And we say, why the hell aren't you interpreting? We have to actually express it as. longing. I know. And that's so vulnerable, sister. You don't like to be vulnerable. We're going to go to Ashley right now. My name is Ashley. I have had a very strange relationship with my mother since I can remember. We've never gotten along. It's been super

rough. As an adult, I am a mother to five kids and I'm finding it very hard to connect with them because of the not the connection that I had with my mom. And I'm also finding it very hard to cope and deal with it. It's been a skeleton in my closet for years, and I'm now trying to face it, and I'm just so overwhelmed. Do you guys have any tips for me or any thing that can help me with this? Thank you so much, and I've just started listening to your podcast, and it has a been amazing. It brought some tears to me though, but good tears. Thank you so much and have a

great day. So Ashley, I'm going to just have a few minutes to talk to you, but this is a situation where I would say it could be really helpful to try some therapy with somebody who helps you parse out what happened in your relationship with your mother. You know, much of our early conflicts with our parents are often either because we got too much of some. something or too little of something. We either got intrusion or abandonment. You know, we got the neglect or we got the suffocation. So I don't really know what led you to be so cut off from your mom that it almost

led you to cut off from the mom that is inside of you. And in order not to be like her, you can't develop your own. And what you notice in a very beautiful way is how this is playing itself out with your children. And you've made, you've connected the dog. You know that something is not allowing you maybe to hug them, to kiss them, to console them, or to put limits to them, or whatever the challenges that you are feeling vis-à-vis them, because there is something in you that, as the child, that is being replayed,

that makes it hard for you to then become your own mother, differentiated from the one that you had. And this is not a quick fix. You have five kids Go get the help It's a lot of people That would be affected by this And you And there is not irreversible

If you do want to start something on your own I actually have the same thought You know because I don't know that you're talking to your mother So talk to your mother by writing to your mother But to yourself Handwritten please not computer You want the emotion that comes through the hand And just write

you know, mom, it's been so long since we had an exchange. And I realize that in fact, on the one hand, I don't talk to you. And on the other hand, I seem to be in conversations with you all day long. But it is a subverted conversation. And I need to figure that out. So I'm going to just try to tell you what kinds of conversations I have with you every day, even though we rarely see each other or rarely talk to each other. And put it down. know, if you want, you can even put something, an object that represents her right in front of you so that when you lift your head, you can look at her, a picture of her, and you can really enact this kind of a conversation. And what was missing in your experience with her? And was she the only one? Did you have siblings? Was there another parent? You know, what was the context of how this kind of dissociative estrangement took place? What happened to you in your body, what happened to you in your heart, in your hands, etc. Then you'll decide if you ever want to go and meet with her and say, you know, I wrote you

something and then read it out loud to her. That will be much better than trying to have a conversation. You may have a mother who doesn't know what you're talking about and is completely cut off too and then we can go and deal with her mother and see how many generations of this takes place. But in the meantime, do yourself and your five little ones, the favor. and get help on this. You don't have to do this all alone.

And I will just say, because I remember feeling early on when I stepped into the family with these three children that I was exhibiting some behaviors that my mom showed me, that hurt me, that traumatized me, and just talking about it with you, Glennon, and almost not like an accountability coach, but somebody that I could just say, I don't want to be that mom. I want to be a different mom. But some of this stuff is instinctually integrated into our DNA that we can work through with not only therapy, but bringing your partner along on this journey with you. Beautiful. I think can be super helpful.

I know for me, it has allowed me, the closeness that I crave to have not only for my mom. So it's been a reparenting in some ways. Like my little childhood self has healed some of those childhood traumas through the reparenting of my own. children. Yep. Did you allow yourself? Because I think the piece in between here, and that's a very important piece for all your listeners too, is the actual acceptance that we are bound to do and to repeat the very

things that we promised ourselves we would never do. Let's start with that. Yeah. That was a tough. That was a tough way to swallow. Because it's that which allows you to then find an accountability part. is that you don't, because so often we hide it. We feel so ashamed about it.

It's like, oof, how could that be? You know, I hear the thing come out of my mouth, or I hear the way I've responded to the coldness that suddenly takes over me or the sternness or whatever the piece is, you know. And I think the first thing is really to know, in the name of what Glennon said at the beginning, you're not alone with this. This is common.

We do repeat what was done. done to us. And we learned it even when we know, oh, I cringe. And so I want to hide. I don't want to say it. And then we don't want to talk about it to others. But if you accept it, you'll have an easier time. And talk about it. I mean, we, I haven't been able to change completely. I like the idea of just even acknowledging it because we acknowledge it as a whole family. I decided I did not want to bring my hyper awareness of every social situation and controlling everything and being worried about everyone's energy in the room into my family. So that's what I do every damn day, Esther. But, and I haven't been able to change it completely. But what we do do as a family is I say,

I'm doing that thing where I'm making everybody nervous and ruining everyone's social experience because I'm worried that the social experience will be ruined. So I'm ruining it. And the kids no, they know that's the energy I got from my family of origin. They know when I'm doing it. They can see it. So it's not that I've been able to change it, but just talking about it as a family, I think makes them a little bit freer from it. Yeah. Because we're not repeating the pattern. We're pointing it out and saying, oh, mom's doing that thing. Bless her heart. Yep. And when they get older, they can say to you too, you're doing that thing, which is what happens in my family is that they started to say to me, you know, you're doing this thing.

And I would just say, oh, God, I said, thank you. At first I'd be defensive. No, it's not the same thing. I'm not doing that thing. But then over time, I just basically thought, you know what? They're doing you a favor. You know, so then take it and just say, you're right. I'm stopping.

And so that's, I don't know how old the children are of Ashley, but it's astounding how much we live in an echo chamber and how much we bring this thing, you know, it's very disturbing. It feels like we will never leave, you know, whichever the parent is that we're trying to transcend. Like you just like you hold me prison. You live inside of me.

But in fact, we slowly put them out there. And that's why the picture is very helpful. put the person outside of you, you externalize her, you're talking to the part of you that identifies with your mom that has learned that piece, but you also are trying to take that part and look at it separately because you have other parts inside of you. And it is those other parts inside of you that will help you make sure that this one doesn't become the dominant one. That's the piece, is that you do have that, but you have other things that you do so differently from your mom. This I say to Ashley too. You focused in on the part of you.

that is repeating, but you didn't focus on the parts of you with those five children, those unique moments, even if they're small, where you notice that you had done something that you liked and that went well. And you need that list too, because otherwise you can't address the other list. Ah, perfect. If you're a business owner who knows nothing about AI and feels really out of the loop, you're not alone. In today's data-driven world, you really need to understand your customers. NetSuite can deliver those insights with zero fuss.

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AI at netsuite.com slash hard things. The guide is free to you at net suite.com slash hard things. NetSuite.com slash hard things. Okay. Hi, Glennon, Amanda, and Abby. My name is Lauren. I'm 23 years old. and I have a hard thing. One of my best friends is going through what I would consider to be a toxic and really hard relationship. And I find it really hard to be a supportive friend through this kind of thing. and I would really like to figure out how to be a better friend because I feel like I'm constantly battling between being supportive

and burning someone's house down. So I would like to know what advice do you have on loving someone through a bad relationship? Have you ever been in such a situation? I mean, I think this defines Glennon and I's the difference of personality that we are. Glennon wants to burn everybody's house down and I'm usually pretty supportive of, not that you're not supportive, but I think that, yeah, all of us have probably. So how I would frame it, you know, so how Abby framed it is I burn, she supports. How I would say it is I tend to astaire air on the side of saying the thing, saying what I think is the

truth and Abby would err more on the side of supporting the person through their truth no matter what she thinks. And I see beauty on both with both approaches. Although recently we have been in a situation where I actually went beyond myself and into, because we choose partners that we wish to teach us things. And I said some really hard things to a wonderful friend recently. About her relationship. About her relationship. And that was so out of my character because I'd like to let people live their own lives and figure stuff out themselves. But I think that at the risk of our relationship, I said a hard thing because I thought it was the right thing that she needed to hear in support of her.

And it went okay. It didn't go great. But yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting that, that, I mean, it was really awkward for me to do it. I was sweating. I actually am sweating right now thinking about it. So what are the guidelines of that, Esther? Like, how do we know what to say and when to say? How do we know how to support and also?

tell the truth? So the reason I picked this question is also because Lauren is 23 and I had just been asked a very similar question by a young boy who was young men who was in college and was asking it about his friend. And I just thought these are such interesting questions and they differ at different developmental stages. I think that I would respond differently if it's me today vis-a-vis some friends versus me when I'm not yet so sure about things, but I sense things, right? And I don't want to upset you and I don't want to lose you, but I also want you to not get hurt.

It's very easy when you see your friend in a situation to want to blame the third person. They found somebody and that person is not nice to them. It's offensive to them. It's not respecting them. It's living off their money. He's exploiting them. Has lied to them. It's cheating on them.

I mean, there's a long list. And so the first thing we want to do is pull our friend away from that person. And the more sometimes we try to pull them away from that person and the more they actually are going to get glue to that person. or they're going to stop telling us the truth because they are embarrassed about what's happening. They don't want you to know that they get scratched on occasion or not just on occasion. They're afraid, they're ashamed, they're embarrassed, et cetera. So this is really where the thing is, at this stage, she's your friend.

And you first and foremost are going to be with her, no matter what she's going through. You're not going to be the judge of it. and on occasion you're going to just say, you know, you seem to really be having a hard time or you're going to look for the places where she has doubts, where she wishes it was different. Because if you become the police of the problems, then she doesn't have to see the problems and she can just focus on. But afterwards he apologizes. But he was really nice this morning.

But he was so nice when we went to visit my mother. Of course, after the visit, you know, spreads her apart. So don't polarize. Make sure to first get a sense. Does your friend here and there think something here is off? Then when you get that, then you say, tell me more. Don't say, yes, now that you brought it up, let me tell you what I really think about how off it is. If you can, this is very hard to do.

That's why the experience of life here matters. Then you say, tell me, tell me more about off. Get the full sense and then start to feel where the dissonance lies. And then go in and say, you know, this is a very good intuition on your part. What you think is off, I agree. It's off. And I feel that maybe you don't know how to get out of that. I'm here for you.

And if you don't have a place to stay, if you don't have money, if you think about, if you're afraid of retaliation, if you think there's a vindictive person there, if whatever the thing of the toxic, if you are just going to get broke because you're feeding his habit or whatever the thing or his big ideas that never amount too much of anything, whatever the ways in which you think there's a fundamental imbalance in this relationship, then you say, come spend a few days with me. Just get out of this for a tiny bit. Don't force anybody to go,

but help them come and then bring a few other girlfriends together or friends, no matter who. They, he, people, warm, loving people, come together because when you're in a toxic relationship, parts of you are falling off. And you become a narrow version of yourself. other people need to bring back a mirror of the multifaceted you, of the you who once could say no,

of the you who used to have such strong opinions about things, of the you who could put limits, of the fuller, bigger you. That's what you want to bring back to this person because that's where she will find the strength and the resilience to then make a decision towards this relationship. That's the strategy. Beautiful.

So it's like not this is what I think. It's this is who you are in a million different creative ways. And in this relationship, you are not the full version of you. I know you and this is just chopping, eroding, major chunks of you because you are being, whatever the thing is. You know, she didn't explain the toxic is such a complex word at this moment. What is it that you're sensing? You know, what is the imbalance? What is the inequity and the indignity that you perceive is happening to your girlfriend?

And then bring her back into a circle of people who see the whole of her. Beautiful. And then she gets to be her own hero. She gets to be the one that says, no, that's not worthy of me. Instead of being accepting or being pushed upon. the other heroes who are saying, we're going to save you from this. She can say, I'm saving me from this.

In any case, she will only go when she's ready to go. It's just a matter of time or if the other person leaves. But it is only a matter. So the point is you're absolutely right. She owns the story and you bring back pieces to the story that have just kind of disappeared because sometimes really people barely can remember their name. Yeah.

It's a new year and instead of trying to reinvent myself, I've been asking a simpler question. What would actually support me right now? And honestly, a big part of that answer is my home. I want my space to feel calmer, more functional and a little more like a place that can reflect my goals and energy for this year. Which is why I've been turning to Wayfair. It's truly a one-stop shop for everything your home needs this season. What surprised me most was how easy it was to find exactly what I wanted in my style and within my budget, whether you're organizing kids' rooms, upgrading your work from home setup, tackling clutter, or just trying to make weeknight dinners easy. Wayfair really does have everything.

Your home doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to support the life you're living right now. Get organized, refreshed, and back on track this new year for way less. head to wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R-com. Wayfair. Every style, every home. Okay, one last question for you, Esther. Hi, Glennon and sister. I have a question on love. I don't know that you get many mails to call into this podcast, but I

recently ended things with my girlfriend or she ended things with me and it's caused a lot of self-reflection self-discovery and self-love and we have both expressed that we will always love each other no matter what. And I guess my question is, when and how do you know that it's time to move on from that love, even knowing that that love will still always be there? Thank you so much for your podcast and thank you for all that you do. You may decide that this relationship was a beautiful love story, but it will not remain a life story. You don't have to squash the love in order to move on.

You may just say, this love is precious. I will hold it dearly, but it is not going to be my life. That's the first thing. And then I actually think that in situations like you, that there are beautiful rituals of conscious uncoupling. I love the term. I think it really is so rich, you know, to say goodbye in a nice way. You will be in tears.

I've sat with people who do this in my office. I'm in tears with them, you know, and it starts with this is what I wish for you. I'm here to say goodbye. Sometimes I make people write it and then they bring it to the session and they read it out loud. When I think of us, these are some of the main images, memories, associations that I will have. And people just basically recount their story. You know, I think of this bar, I think of this restaurant, I think of this beach,

I think of this club, this band, you name it. It's all the things that we shared that I take with me and that I hope you will take with you. And so what I wish for you, what I hope that you take with you from me, is. And maybe sometimes people can also say the advice that I would like to give you as your friend. You know, I hope that you will do the things that you really have always said that you wanted to do, that you will find a confidence that you won't just do what you think is what people expect. Whatever the thing is, but people have beautiful advice that they can give to each other in situations like that. what I take from you, what I will carry with me from the years that we were together, from the time, from the relationship that we had, where I wish I had been different, the things that I take responsibility for that I did or did not do. And you will share the sadness of the loss together and you take it with you.

And then after that, you don't stay in touch for a while so that you don't feed on this all the time. You hold it. When you think it, you can go and read it. You can read it again. You can weep. You can cry. You'll mourn. You'll grieve.

And you'll slowly, over time, makes new space for love to enter again. And at that point, you can, if you want to stay in touch and develop a friendship together, you can do so. I believe that many beautiful relationships can transform into friendships. But not in the moment of separation. Because people are not always exactly at the same place either. You know, you say she broke up, you broke up, it's not sure. Maybe you made it so that she would break up so that you wouldn't have to do it or vice versa.

I mean, you know, but the main thing is it's very important to say goodbye, to have rituals for the end. Relationships are filled with rituals for the beginning and they often end up just in some freaking cold loss courtroom, you know, or with a text or with a ghosting of a person. And the way you end and the way you take with you what that was will do everything for what will follow. Can I say one thing about that, Esther? Because when you were saying that about the rituals, I was married and basically had a 10-minute conversation that was supposed to encapsulate the entirety of our marriage and literally haven't spoken or heard or seen him in the. those years since then. So it was that. And what I want to say is that I think that it, I think what you said that that can be done by yourself too. Like I really think those rituals, the writing, the talking. It's that because so many of us have grieved so heavily not,

not being able to do that, not being able to hear from our person. But I think saying what it was to us is important because the world will try to tell you that was a sham or that was, that wasn't really love because how could it have ended that way if it was really love. And so I love the idea of doing that for yourself, even by yourself, if you need to. Well, and I'm not mature enough to be able to do it myself with, I know that about myself that I don't want to have contact with people from my past in my present. Like that's something I have to know about myself. I don't know if that's right or wrong, but that's like what works for me. Like that's how I get closure is, okay, that's done and and I'm moving in a different direction.

I really don't think there's a right. And, you know, in the past, we had none of these issues. We couldn't decide. You had one relationship. It was the first person you had sex with. It was the person you married and it was for life and there was no exit. And that was that. So having the opportunity to have more than one love relationship in your life, you know,

and to then say goodbye, to end it, to end it well or let well or to just say, you know, I don't need you as a friend. You were my partner, you were a lover, but I have friends. I want other people as friends. You're not the person. I would choose other friends. Totally fine. But in this instance, because I think that, you know, no matter my, when and how do you

know when it's time to move on from that love, even knowing that the love will stay. It's like, how do you end? How do you leave? And sometimes you need to stage the actual goodbye. And sometimes the goodbye is done with the person present. and sometimes the goodbye is done with the person that you carry inside of you. But you need the ritual. Rituals help us transition.

They frame the intention. They elevate the meaning. They say, this is over. We spend months coming together. We spent years coming together. We blended our stuff, ta-t-t-t-t-da. And now we disentangle and we part. This show is brought.

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helloalma.com slash we can to schedule a free consultation today. That's helloa-l-m-a-com.com.com. slash W-E-C-A-N. Speaking of parting, tragically, it is time to wind down. Esther, I just have such deep admiration and respect and love for you as a person, but for the work that you do, the number of my friends whose relationships and lives you have changed and touched. I just, I don't know if you go to bed thinking about the effect that your work has had on the world, but it's profound and I'm deeply grateful.

Thank you. And I love even this theme of these two episodes, which maybe I'm just hearing as a raging introvert, but there's so much of what we've talked about that is work that has to be done on our own. That is relational, but like even the bringing the erotic back, even though awakening that part of ourselves, that's personal. The relationship you're talking about with the mother and she has to do that personally first. The saying goodbye sometimes has to be done alone. So much of this has to do with reckoning with ourselves. Y'all, we're going to put everything that Esther's ever done in the show notes so that you can order her books.

And if you're not a big reader, get the game. My gosh. It's just a... Listen to the podcast. Yeah. And the game is like... Do you have episodes that you love? Are there episodes that kind of have stayed with you from...

Well, I mean, I've listened to every single episode. Oh my God. Where should we begin? So where shall we begin? I used to lay in my, I had this little infrared sauna. I mean, Abby knows. Like I, there's several episodes I've listened to two or three times, which I know I wouldn't be able to, you know, tell you specifically to right now.

You would walk in from your sauna. You'd walk in from your sauna and you'd say, so what do you think about? And I'm like, you were listening to where should we begin again? Yes. Okay. what episode, let me listen to it. And then we can talk a little bit later. Yeah.

So it was so helpful for us because we would go, you know, we would listen to your episodes and then we would talk about them as a couple. Or we'd be at dinner. And there was an entire six months where all we said to each other was, I would say at dinner. So what Estere said today? And she would go, and she would go what Dax said today. So it was like she was listening to Dax.

I was listening to A Stair. And I don't know. I couldn't tell you a favorite because I've listened to every single one. So it's interesting because we took where should we begin the podcast and we turned it into where should we begin the card game because that way you don't have to necessarily listen to everything. I give you the prompts right away. Exactly. You can go directly to. I mean, and listen, Esther, the game like Glennon was saying, her mom was here and we had this gorgeous, intense and vulnerable conversation. I shared some personal stuff with my kids. like family trauma stuff with my own children they're not going to want to play because it's I know but like I I knew it was enough like they're old enough that they can handle it but it's just for my kids to know me and know an embarrassment or know a vulnerability like they are witnessing

us do that so they themselves get permission to be that and and to feel that they can express themselves and their vulnerabilities or their embarrassment. So I just think that this game is so awesome. And Esther, we stopped at first. We took out the sex questions. But now we are strategically leaving in some sex questions, not like scary ones, but ones where we're like, no, we're going to talk about this stuff with our kids. And they act all uncomfortable, but then they do talk about it. So it's great. It's just like it's this little set of keys that you can sit on your coffee table and you just unlock each other with the cards. It's just a beautiful thing. Can we play our pod squatter of the week so that we can let poor Aster go? We've kept her along and she has the

world to save out there. So, hello, my name is Cindy. I love your podcast. We can do hard things. I just was listening to the one about quitting this morning as I was on my walk. And one thing that I thought of was I am so grateful for all the hard things that have come my way and that I've lived through and that I've quit and everything because it's gotten me to who I am now and I really, really like myself now. So I've been through two marriages, both of them I left. and it really, it really has, they've been my greatest teachers. Those relationships have been great, great teachers, and I'm still learning. So I just wanted to share that.

So thank you for listening. Take care and have a wonderful, wonderful day. Gotta love, Cindy. Yeah. May we all at one day be able to say. I really like myself right now. Y'all, when we win, life gets hard this week. Don't forget, we can do hard things.

And we'll see you back here soon. Thank you so much. 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.