We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - How to Break Cycles with Allison Russell (Best Of)

Episode Date: August 3, 2025

Singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Allison Russell, shares her incredible life story and teaches us how she healed from abuse through music, sisterhood, and returning to her body. This hour is a soul-stirring reminder of the life-saving, cycle-breaking power of truth telling, art, and love.  About Allison: Allison Russell has spent her career in multiple bands, including Po’ Girl, Our Native Daughters and Birds of Chicago. After a career spent as a gifted multi-instrumentalist, backing numerous other artists, she finally dared to release her solo project in 2021. She made her Opry debut and appeared at the Country Music Hall of Fame and performed at the 2022 GRAMMY’s Premiere Ceremony. In addition to her four GRAMMY nominations, she has earned three 2022 Americana Award nominations and a win for Album of the Year, two International Folk Music Award wins, a 2022 Juno nomination for ‘Songwriter of the Year,’ and her first-ever Juno Award win for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year. Russell received two 2021 Americana Awards nominations, won three Canadian Folk Music Awards, two UK Americana Music Awards, and more. She was recently nominated for Song of the Year and Artist of the Year for the 2023 Americana Awards.  TW: ⁠@outsidechild13⁠ IG: ⁠@allisonrussellmusic 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

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Inst. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Welcome Pod Squad. Today, we are delighted to tell you that we have the Alison Russell with us.

After a career spent as a gifted multi-instrumentalist backing numerous other artists, she finally released her solo project in 2021. She made her Opry debut, appeared at the Country Music Hall of Fame, and performed at the 2022 Grammys premiere ceremony. She has been nominated for four Grammys. She has earned three Americana awards. Her recent album, The Returner, is just... It's a real experience.

You've got to listen. Alison Russell, welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Yay! There she is! I'm so excited to talk to y'all. I was just listening to your incredible conversation with Andrea Gibson and me being my beautiful literary agent, Meg Thompson sent it to me and just intuitively didn't know

we were doing this, you know, and just sent it to me. No way. Yeah, she was like, you need to listen to this. It's going to change your life. I'm so glad. I will. Well, thank you for listening. And we've already started.

So hi. Welcome you, Alice and Russell. Wonderful to meet you all sort of officially. I remember seeing you all and saying hi kind of in a dark green room at Red Rocks. But that was a while ago. I was thinking about that in preparation for this moment. I think that you and I, the first time we met,

we were sitting on the floor in a huge green room, the back of Red Rocks, eating In-N-Out. I think there was like 400 boxes of In-N-Out burgers. It was backstage after a Brandy, Alison Russell, Sister Strings, everybody was there show. It was midnight and I was so proud of myself for being awake and I was like, oh, this is what it's like behind the scenes at a rock star show, except that I don't think this is how it is at a rock star show because it was 500 cheeseburgers, 500 children.

Yeah. There was like- The Wolf Pack. It was the- Yes. 500 cheeseburgers, 500 children. There was like- The wolf pack. It was the wolf pack. The feral wolf pack. My daughter was among them, Ida. I know, Ida was next to you.

Eva, Kath and Brandi's kids were running, everybody's kids were running. That's what it's like behind the scenes at one of these shows. I kept being amazed by the love and family atmosphere and also by the fact that everyone was still awake. Because it was like 12, 13. Wild, feral children, so excited.

They had all sung on stage and all the rest of it. But that is the magic that Brandi and Catherine create with their beautiful love in of it's not just a show, it's a family, and it's a foundation, and it's making music mean more, and it's uplifting everyone that comes into their magical orbit and circle. That's just who they are. They're extraordinary. I had to represent today. Yeah. With my Brandy shirt.

Oh, Alice is wearing a Brandy shirt. I mean, I think it would not be exaggerating to say that Brandi and Kath are two of the most important people in our entire lives. Yeah. They are. Same. And same for you. Same. Absolutely the same. I mean, it was that show, you know, that was actually our first concert, not only seeing you, but seeing Brandi live.

I didn't know that. And it was the first time that, you know, we everybody who's not in the music industry has a picture of what the behind the scenes looks like. And we at the time were like, kind of thinking like, what is Tish going to do? Is she going to go into this industry? It's very dangerous. There's a lot of drinking and drugging the whole thing. And we get backstage at Red Rocks and it was totally not what we expected. And so I don't know. I just think that yes, Brandi and Kath, but also you to be able to like feel confident in them to bring your child with you on the road and to watch you perform.

I mean, Alison, you are magic. You are fucking magic. So sweet. You guys are so sweet. Means a lot to me. You're just, you're in our house all the time. Alison, just in every room, your music is so beautiful. So speaking of Kath and Brandi, I read the story that made me giggle so much because

it reminded me of my daughter and me. But I read a story that Kath once overheard Ida. So your daughter and how old is Ida now? She's now nine. She'll be 10 at the end of December. Yeah. Okay. So, Ida was talking to Eva, who is Brandi and Kath's daughter, about how either your mommies do the same thing, right?

Because Allison and Brandi, both singers, artists. Yeah. And Ida said to Eva, no, my mom doesn't do what your mom does. My mom just sings sad songs about her sad past. That's exactly what she said. And Catherine was trying not to die laughing, you know, just trying to keep a straight face with her sweet, you know, decor. Oh, I'd, uh, your mom has got a lovely voice, you know, just be so sweet. And Ida cuts her off like, yeah,

my mom's got a good voice, but let's face it, she even, just be so sweet. And Ida cuts her off like, yeah, my mom's got a good voice, but let's face it, she even makes jingle bells sound sad. Oh, that's just my favorite. That kind of put a bee in my bonnet to write her some bangers for the return record. Because she was talking about Outside Child when she was saying that. And she has become my greatest victory, you will appreciate this as moms, was I was on the road and I got a call from my partner, JT. And the new record had just dropped,

the returner had just dropped, and she's all about Spotify and listening to Tish, listening to Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish and everybody. And Beyonce, And she, she walked by her room and she had the door closed as she often does when she's doing deep listening and she was listening to Demons from The Returner over and over again and learning the words and figuring out the chords on the piano and stuff. So yeah, it just, that was such a triumph. Like, out the chords on the piano and stuff. So yeah, it just, that was such a triumph. Like she likes one of the songs. God, I just know that Tish came to a couple of my speaking events a few years ago

and we left and I was like, what did you think? And she said to me, I just, I don't understand why do you always have to start on the bathroom floor when you're addicted and you're pregnant and you're on drugs and you're, So that's what I thought of when I heard your thing. But okay, Alison, here's what I think is so cool. And I don't know if you're gonna relate to this at all, but when I hear that Ida says that to you, it makes me feel like it's a

beautiful thing because the reason why they are like, oh, that's sad, is because sadness and pain is not the water that they swim in with us. So it feels like a difference to them. Which is a triumph for us. It's a total triumph. It's taking miserable cycles for them in real time, in real life. And it's joyful and you're absolutely right. And it's also, they trust us enough to tease us and to mock us and to know that there aren't going to be some sort of draconian repercussions for doing so. You know, they can be their full selves and have some backbone and have

some sass and own it in this joyful way. I love it. I kind of almost do a fault and sort of love it when Ida's a bit mouthy with everybody. I kind of love it. I was so cowed my whole childhood and crumbled in. So to see her having more backbone, you know, at three than I did at 30 is just joyful to me, you know. And for them to be able to tease, like for them to be able to tease us about the kind of reckoning that we are trying to have with our own pain, them being able to tease us

is to also allow them space to be playful with their own pain. Yes. You're so right. You know? And I think that like we were all, I'll speak for myself. I was shut off to not experience my own discomfort or pain out loud at all in my childhood. And what kind of human beings are they going to be that they're going to be able to not only experience it, but also be able to laugh about it in some ways. I do think that that's the defining,

I mean, the emotional intelligence of our young ones, you know, of the Gen Zs like Tish and the Alphas, like Ida and Eva and Eli have just learned that they're called Alphas, you know. I didn't even know that. Yes, if you're born after 2012, you're an alpha. That's cool. You're no longer a Generation Z. You're the next whole cycle of the generations of humanity if we don't drive ourselves to our mass extinction. But I have hope because these young ones are so

attuned and open to each other, listening to each other's emotions in a different way than I've ever, certainly not with my, you know, I'm an ancient millennial, not in my generation. My partner is an exer, you know, not in that generation. They are wide open in this really, really special way that I think is required for the kind of level of crisis that we're currently facing, you know, that our human family, our species is facing. So people often ask me, parents don't know what to share with their children. I'm Jenna X.

Okay, so I'm like, wow. And a lot of, I think our generation was taught not to reveal any of our past pain to our kids. Yeah. We're supposed to hide it. We're supposed to. But what I love what you two are saying is, but when we do, what they learn is that we can survive. And that it's not something to hide all the time.

Yeah. And we can't hide it. It's impossible. We can't. When we try to hide it, it comes out in toxic ways. I think. Yes. And they know because they're unbelievably brilliant and they're empaths. And when we try to, I think that the message kids get, because they're getting a message, if our words are saying one thing, everything's fine, and our bodies are saying another thing,

trauma, I think that they're thinking there's something wrong with me. My mom's reacting that way because there's something wrong with me, because we haven't said to them, no, no, no, babe, it's just there's something wrong with me. My mom's reacting that way because there's something wrong with me because we haven't said to them, no no no babe it's just there's something wrong with me. Can you talk to us, for people who don't know your story at all, tell us what you want to tell us about your childhood, the beginning. You have said that you don't think it's brave to talk about trauma. You just think it's part of survival Yeah, tell us what you want to tell us about your young life Well, I was born and raised in Montreal Quebec, Canada. My mom is a Scottish Canadian and she met my biological father when they were in high school and

They had a brief high school romance and by the time She realized she was pregnant. He was already back in Grenada. He had been studying in Canada from Grenada. And by the time her parents found out, they were getting a divorce and she didn't have family support. So as a teenager who'd been quite sheltered, she wound up having me sort of in a home for unwed mothers, it's kind of a version of the Magdalen laundries, I think. Because this is Catholic Quebec, I was born in 79. And she was a white mother having a black child out of wedlock. We were called illegitimate children back then. And it was a big, massive stigma to be an unwed mother. And she had a rough time of it. And by the time I was born, she had a social worker and a bit of a

relationship with her mom, but was living in government housing and just didn't have support. And back then, the trend in social work was to just remove a child at the first sign of trouble and put them in foster care. Now it's understood that social services try very hard to keep a child within a family if it's at all possible and to offer aid and try any number of things before they just remove the child. But in my mom's case, she didn't have anyone really advocating for her. And she had pretty severe postpartum depression after I was born. And I believe probably her first psychotic break, my mom has suffered with quite severe paranoid schizophrenia for most of her adult

life. And it went undiagnosed and then misdiagnosed as manic depression for many, many years, which did not help. And she struggled with substances and going on and off of medication, which has not helped. And she was very, very young when she had me. And one of the things I've been reading about is the effect that it has for very young people when they become parents, when they're not ready, that it can kind of cause an arrested development. So I've always thought of my mom more like my big sister really than my mom. And so I ended up being removed from her care in very early childhood when I wasn't quite two yet because she was doing harmful things because of the depth of psychosis and despair that she was in and lack of support. And so when I was removed from her care, it was under something

called Child Protective Services in Quebec, which means that the parent, if they want to get the child back, they have to go to court and prove their fitness to be parenting again. And so whilst I was there, she was groomed and courted by a much, much older predatory man, an American expat who was born in 1936 in a sundown town somewhere in Indiana. And he brought the abuses that he had suffered, both ideological and physical, with him. I believe it's ideological abuse to raise children with violent indoctrination into white supremacy, any kind of supremacy beliefs. And so he brought all that with him when he came to Montreal and he courted my mother and he went to court and got me back from Child Protective Services after he married my mom and eventually adopted me and was my primary caregiver and a primary abuser for

over a decade until I ran away from home at 15. So the beginnings were fairly miserable, but I was very lucky because I was in Montreal, which is a city that is defined by art and defined by Bohemian community and has 24-hour cafes and has one of the most beautiful cemeteries I've ever seen in the world where I felt safe on summer nights sleeping there sometimes after I left home. I felt safer sleeping in the cemetery than I did in the home of the people that called themselves my family at that time. So I was very lucky and I went to an alternative high school mind moving in new directions. And I met some of my best friends in this world to this day at that alternative high school. And that just, you know, I slowly found chosen family and met

my first love who I call Persephone to protect their privacy and identity. Oh, damn it. That's not her real name? It's not her real name. It's not her real name. But it was always how I thought of her because I would crawl in through her basement window and I was the nerdy kid that was into Greek mythology and every kind of mythology. And I thought I always felt like it was like a reverse thing where going underground, going to Hades was this like sheltering thing. You know, it was the most, it was the safest I ever felt was when we fell in love. And I would sneak in through a basement window because her parents would have had a heart

attack if they realized the nature of our relationship. And we were both babies, we were just 15 years old, each of us, just learning what it meant to be loved consensually and to be thought beautiful and equal and worthy and all of those things. It's an odd thing to be a black child raised in a white supremacist abusive family because there's physical abuse and your body eventually heals from that kind of abuse generally. But of course, it's always the psychological abuse that's more insidious. It's the colonizing of our minds. I think we're all decolonizing our minds all the time because we've been raised in these toxic systems of hierarchy. Get to Toronto's main venues like Budweiser Stage and the new Roger Stadium with Go Transit.

Thanks to Go Transit's special online e-ticket fairs, a $10 one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel on any weekend day or holiday, anywhere along the Go network. And the Weekday Group Passes offer the same weekday travel flexibility across the network, starting at $30 for two people and up to $60 for a group of five. Buy your online Go Pass ahead of the show at Gotransit.com slash tickets. Take us back to 15 because the Persephone song, it's so sad, but it's so also joyful and beautiful. Abby and I, as queer women, are just like, yes! I mean, it's just, there's something about it that's so universal to the queer experience also while being incredibly personal to you about just finding safety. I love that you hear the joy in it because I was quite startled when I realized that

a lot of people did hear it as traumatic in some way because I'm explicit in the beginning about what I'm running from. But to me, it's such a joyful song. It's first love, it's sexual reclamation and awakening. And I had never experienced anything consensual in my life up to then. I'd never experienced someone really truly loving me as an equal. And that was completely not just transformative, it was really truly life saving and joyful and realizing that sex could be joyful and not some sort of torture was completely shocking and incredible and you know, all the things that it is for people who hopefully haven't

been messed with, but is in some ways even more intense for people who have, you know? Mm-hmm. I felt that deep in my bones when we listened to that song. It's like every teenage queer kid who has been trying to fit into this one box their whole lives or stuffed into certain boxes. And then there's like the tap, tap, tap in on your window screen. To me, like, I'm a romantic at heart. I just remember that first, like, experience with

my first girlfriend. And I mean, that visual is like, yes, it made all of the confusion and pain and angst. I was like, oh, got it. I love that so much. This feels so right. The skinny arms get me. The skinny arms get me. I don't know why. The skinny arms.

You know, it's just kids. We're kids still. Oh, little ones. We're growing up together and learning about love together and listening to Ani DeFranco and Tracy Chapman and the Indigo Girls together, you know. Of course. Sinead O'Connor, you know, all of them. Like Bjork. Oh my gosh. Okay. I need to talk about Sinead O'Connor for a second.

That's amazing. I actually have this on my list of things to talk about, okay, because I personally had what might be considered to some people an outsized reaction to Sinead's death and the public reaction to Sinead's death. My therapist actually said to me, I don't know if there's anyone in the country who's talking to their therapist about Sinead O'Connor who doesn't know Sinead O'Connor as much as you are. Like we might have to wonder if what we're really talking about is you, Lenin. Okay? I felt connected to you

the day because I felt like you were saying on Twitter some of the things I was feeling. Like I was so pissed that people, first of all, were celebrating her after she died, who were not at all when she was alive. But also this repeated refrain of, well she really battled her own demons. Yeah. I love your demon song and I just feel like demons should be something that if you're talking about them they should only be yours. You should not be talking about somebody else's demons who didn't claim them as demons, because actually what Shenandoah is always doing was fighting

real demons outside of her. Correct. I remember your tweet that day and I remember reposting it and being like, that is exactly it. She was fighting real demons, real demonic behavior. I don't believe any human is truly a monster, but there are people who behave thoroughly monstrously and never stop. Yes, yes. And what the Catholic Church has done and continues to do,

there's still a residential school for indigenous kids open in the Dakotas. Like that hasn't stopped yet. And across Canada, we are digging up mass graves of indigenous children, thousands and thousands of unmarked graves. And this was done by the Catholic Church and the Canadian government and the settlers, all of us, you know, my ancestors too. Yeah. And people who are talking about it, people who like Sinead, Sinead was right. She was right.

The whole time. She was right about everything. She was right about everything. Glenn, it's so interesting you say this because, you know, my circle of close women and actually someone I hadn't known well until Joni Jam, who I met at Joni Jam, who was Annie Lennox. We ended up texting each other back and forth, just chaine deep cuts back and forth and different things she had said and talking about.

I mean, I was on the floor. I was supposed to fly to Prague and do a video for Demons, actually with my incredible childhood friend, Ethan Tobeman, who is the creative director for the ERAs Tour and is a total superstar and was the set designer for like Formation and The Lemonade, those amazing Lemonade movies. Brilliant visual artist, a big part of it.

There are moving through different worlds and it's basically like rebirthing oneself, reclaiming oneself over and over again, calling oneself to courage in this visual narrative to accompany the words and the music. And a lot of it was to do with hair, but I was on the floor and to the point where I just wanted to shave my head and not leave the hotel room where I was in New York ever again. You know, I just wanted to mourn in a physical, like I wanted to do something physical, like rend something on myself.

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Shave my head. I do know, Ian. Rituals, partifications. I had to be talked down, you know, by Ethan. He was like, well, we're doing this video that involves black women's hair. So if you could wait till after that to do this,

you know, he talked me down and my partner, JT, talked me down. And it's funny that your therapist said that to you because JT said to me, could this be something about you and not Sinead at all? Because you never met her, right? You actually, right? Like, but I, but I did, she's part of my survival. When she made her stand in 92, it wasn't about ripping up the post picture. It was about singing Bob Marley's war acapella essentially and, and making it about child abuse and saying that and naming that on the biggest TV show of the day. And I was, I think, 12 when she took that stand. I don't know that I would have gathered up the courage to run from my situation. I might have just simply died in my situation had it not been for these truth tellers,

who showed me that there is a life beyond abuse and that there are powerful women who stand up to abuse and that there are powerful women who stand up to abuse and that maybe I could be like them. Like Tracy Chapman, who sang behind the wall, like Sinead O'Connor, who sang war and made it about child abuse. Like Tori Amos, who sang Barbados, me in a gun and a man on my back, but I haven't seen Barbados, so I must get out of this. These were my path lighters that showed me it was possible to survive and thrive and get out of this. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And it just felt like all of those women are pointing out demons in our world,

like homophobia, racism, greed that kills, religion that says it's one thing and then abuses children. And then we are calling that person it's one thing and then abuses children. And then we are calling that person who's saying those things crazy. And then everything that they said, and these are often women, everything that they're said is proven right, but the world has already done its damage to that woman. And then the woman dies and we saint her. While having villainized her whole life. Instead of even just like pretending to honor that woman

after death, we should just try to honor the next inconvenient prophet in real time. Yes. But we won't do that. We won't do that. We'll villainize them again and then saint them again after death. So I think it is about Sinead, it is about Tori,

it is about all these people individually, it is about Tracy, but it's also about this rhythm, this pattern we see happening over and over again to women who speak out. Well, I mean, and it's been going on since the witch burnings. Exactly. And I'm sure before it's the martyring of women.

It's the demonizing, literally demonizing. They're witches, they sleep with the devil. Like it's literally demonizing powerful women, strong women, healers, you know. And it's also like calling, strong women, healers. And it's also like calling, you know, Sinead, her abuse as a child and then she had PTSD, right? But like to call PTSD a demon is so fucking insane. That is a bodily physical reaction to something that the world has done to a person.

Correct, correct. Right? It's something that the world has done to us person. Correct. Correct. Right? It's something that the world has done to us, an inner demon. And also when we label other people that, that's archaic religious language that has excused people for, yes, witch burning. Yeah, exactly. For so long. So we have to stop that shit. What's the first moment that you felt like, I am a child who survived being raised by a white supremacist, psychological, sexual, physical abuser to becoming what you are now. Which I guess you're both things at all the time. But how did you fucking do this?

Yeah. Because of my little brother and my niece and nephew. And music, of course, art, of course, the magic and the mystery of art. Even with my mom, even though we had a deeply troubled and have a deeply troubled relationship, I was able to feel love through listening to her music. Like one of my earliest childhood memories was, I think I was on a visit from the foster home because I would have weekend visits with her. I can't remember if it was every weekend, maybe it was every other weekend, but she

wasn't allowed to be alone with me. So we would go to my grandmother's apartment and she had this gorgeous upright piano with the kind of like very Victorian curvy legs of a piano sort of curlicued. And I remember sitting under there and watching my mom's feet on the piano and she was playing along actually, Joni Mitchell is her favorite artist, you know, in listening to Joni since I was in utero with my mom. No way. And she was playing along to Ladies of the Canyon and a deeper cut, a song called For

Free, which is Joni singing about a busker and how nobody's paying attention because they're not famous and she's off stroking the star maker machinery, but really she just wants to go jam with this beautiful musician who's playing clarinet on the street for free. You know, I slept last night in a good hotel, went shopping today for Jews, the wind rushed around in the dirty town, children let out from the school. It's a gorgeous melody. And at the end, there's this beautiful clarinet solo as she's, you know, I heard his refrain as the signal changed, he was playing really good for free. And she crosses the street and goes on with her life.

And then this beautiful clarinet solo comes out of it. And I remember my mom singing along and hearing the sound of the clarinet for the first time and being like, like electrified by that sound. Like, what is that sound? You know? And my mom, I remember asking later, what was that? And she said, it's clarinet, you know?

That was the clarinet. And that imprinted on me. And then the mystery and the magic of all those full circle later of being invited by Brandy into the magical circle of the Joni Jam, and playing clarinet on stage with Joni and having her say, Alison Russell. the most beautiful clarinet player ever. You know, just this sweet hyperbolic thing she said. So just in case you didn't hear it, Pod Squad, what happened is under the piano, she's holding Joni. OK, then she hears the clarinet.

Fast forward to she's on stage at the gorge, was it? It was the gorge. Jon it? It was the Gorge. With Joni Mitchell and playing the clarinet. And Joni Mitchell says, Allison Russell, the most beautiful clarinet player I've ever heard. It was something like the most beautiful clarinet player ever. It was just like a sweet, she demanded that I take a solo during Young at Heart. And you just, Joni asks you to do something, you do it.

And try not to mess do something, you do it. Yes. And try not to mess it up, you know. It was just such a sweet, surreal moment. And when you say, how do you get from there to there? Well, it's all of it all at once because we're always still, I'm still that little girl that loved just that sound and imprinted on me. And I was always, I feel like, in some ways I think we all have a birthright,

every human on the planet living now. We are the improbability of us being who we are in this time. The fact that we come from, no matter what our heritage, what our lineage, what our set of challenges or privileges, we all come from long lines of survivors. And that is our human birthright, is this resilience. I was very moved by a theme in The Returner,

which feels very much like part of my recovery, which is, it feels very much like part of my recovery, which is it feels like this big love story to embodiment. Nailed it. And I don't know if it's just because whatever I'm doing feels like everyone's talking about that, but can you talk a little bit about this song, All Without Within? Yes, I love it. Oh my God.

That's by far the sexiest song on the record. Oh my God, I fucking love that song. And that's Wendy and Lisa, y'all, singing with me. And they joined us, our Rainbow Coalition of Chosen Family, that we've been growing together over the last two years. We made The Returner in six days. No way! And it was over, it was 15 women and one non-binary identifying gender expanse of amazing divine

being and three chosen brothers, 10 songs, six days. And we recorded it in LA at the old A&M studio, which is now Hanson Studio presided over by Kermit the Frog, which gave me a lot of joy. It means a lot to you, yes. And so that is in fact where Joni recorded Blue, and for a start. It's where Carole King recorded Tapestry. It's where they did, we are the world, we are the children, with Tina Turner and Cyndi Lauper blowing the roof off the place.

It's shock's made records. The good ghosts in that place are just outrageous. So it was like a family affair all around. You can't make a record in six days without having complete trust with everyone that you're engaged in creative communion with. It's a trust fall exercise basically. And it only works if everybody lets go and jumps together, you know, and falls together.

It's amazing. You can feel that. You can feel that. In terms of healing, because the first album ends with, I think, Where Are All The Joyful Motherfuckers? Which is... Where in the world are the Joyful Motherfuckers? Joyful Motherfuckers, right.

And it feels like you could play your records back to back and it would be like, where are they? And then the returner's like, here they are! Here are the joyful motherfuckers! I love that you picked up on that because that's exactly right. Because this is the kind of nerd I am. I am obsessed with multi-volume journeys in literature and in music. For me, an album is a journey.

I feel about an album the way some people feel about a film. I understand and I accept that the vast majority of people will be streaming and they will never listen to the record in the very deeply nerdy exact order that we agonized over. Yeah, it's annoying. And plotted and planned over. But when people do, it's the greatest thing ever. I will say that to anyone listening, and some of you may have never taken a journey with a record,

and I understand that and I don't condemn at all, but I promise you, if you do take the journey with an album that was written in that way, because not everybody wants to make albums in that way anymore, actually. And some artists never did. Some artists were always more single driven. But for nerds like me and Brandi Carlile, for example, and Joni Mitchell, and Prince, and Tracy Chapman, and the Indigo Girls, if you take the entire, and Odetta, if you take, and Mavis Staples, if you take the entire journey with the record, it is so much more

rewarding when you have the time. Because I also know how precious time is. It's so difficult for someone to sit down for 45 minutes and do nothing, so to speak, right? Of course you're doing something very active when you're listening, but I know it's hard for us to justify those taking that time in our busy lives. But I, not only is The Returner its own narrative arc, although not linear, it is connected to Outside Child,

but anyone can take the journey with either album, but they are in fact, Outside Child is volume one, Broadly the Past, The Returner is volume two, it's the present, it's re-embodiment, it's stealing joy from the teeth of turmoil, it's loving on your people who love you back, it's loving on the people that don't love you back, but not allowing them to derail your joy,

and it is just being here now. Okay, two more things. You fall in love with JT. What a love bug. Everyone who meets JT is in love with JT. Don't get Katharine Carlisle started on JT. They have the most beautiful friendship. I love their friendship.

I can tell. I had this secret idea of when women are queer women and then they marry men, I wonder if they just want to wear flags all day every day to signal to the world, I'm still queer. And then I swear to God, Alison is wearing a rainbow wristband. And I'm like, maybe they do. Because he wants it. My power wristband. And I'm like, maybe they do. Because you want to see. My power wristband. It's my anti-vigatree wristband.

I went on stage and it makes me feel strong. I live in Tennessee now, y'all. We're battling some medieval stuff over here. But we're winning. And Gloria Johnson is our next senator. Just putting that out there. This is airing before election day. Incredible. Okay, we have Alison Russell here. Everybody get to the polls. Why should Tennessee show up for Gloria Johnson? Tell us that. She is who she says she is. She has been showing up for community

since she was a teacher as a representative. She's risking her seat as a representative. She is a shoe-in to win again for Knoxville as a representative in the House. But we are in a crisis situation in Tennessee. We have essentially a hijacked people's house here. Only 32% of registered voters voted this so-called GOP, so-called super majority. I say so-called because they're not behaving in any way like small government Republicans, which is what I used to think the GOP was. Here in Tennessee, we have bad actors in office trying to unlawfully expel lawmakers because they are young and black and standing up for their constituents like brother Justin Jones, representative Jones and representative Pierson. Representative Jones from right here in my

riding in 52nd district here in Nashville and representative Pierson from Memphis. They tried to expel Gloria too, but she pointed out since she was a white woman, one of the was a white woman, one of the openly racist Republicans, you know, allowed her to stay with one vote. And of course, both Representative Jones and Representative Pearson were reelected by a landslide. And they've become known now nationally as the Tennessee Three because they were standing up for our kids, for our community, for all Tennesseans demanding a sensible response, any response to the carnage of gun violence. I have thought of you so much in your activism for sensible gun reform. When I think about your story and about being a kid where school was your safe place, I was a teacher. and about being a kid where school was your safe place. I was a teacher.

And so I know that my classroom for a lot of little ones was the only safe place that they had. They came to school for safety. They did not go home for safety. They came to school for safety. It was the one sanctuary that they had. And so when I think now about how that is not even true anymore for children, school was a sanctuary for you.

It was a complete sanctuary. And you have touched upon something here that I've been trying to explain to people and to explain to people back home in Canada who keep asking, when are you coming home? You know, when the next wave of legislative terrorism rocks us here in Tennessee. I just tell them, I can't show my daughter that I'm running away from fascism. We don't run away from fascism. We stop it. We surround it with love and we overwhelm it and we vote it out. That's what we do because we still do have a democracy. And when I think about exactly what you said, Glennon, of that my child, I've been able

to break cycles of abuse in our home, in our personal lives. And yet my daughter wakes from nightmares, has a lot of the trauma responses that I experienced from my abusive home as a child. In her case, it is from fear of being shot to death at school. It is from the active shooter drill where they didn't tell the kids or the teachers that it was a drill because they've determined they'll save more children when, not if, an active shooter gets into the building. When, because for almost three years now, the number one cause of untimely death for our babies,

for our children and youth is gun violence. And to have blanket inaction here in Tennessee where we just lost six beautiful humans in our community at the Covenant School. We watched the absolute grotesque mockery of a special session where these lawmakers who claim to care about families and family values mocked Covenant moms. The school was called Covenant where this horrific gun violence took place, mocking those moms. These are women who are white, Christian, seemingly straight. Most of them have voted Republican their whole lives. These are who they're supposed to actually care about, right? And they were mocking them, saying the most horrific. I mean, it can't be unseen. And as awful as that is, what I have realized and why it is so important that people vote, because that

does not represent Tennessee. There are people who are having their religious beliefs manipulated to fear their neighbors that they don't have to fear. They don't need to fear drag queen story time. If they don't like drag queen story time, they don't have to go, but they don't need to fear it. It must be so interesting for you as a child who was raised and abused by a white supremacist steeped in all of this shit. Yep.

Saved by a queer girl. Yep. To now be fighting religion, claiming that the queer people are the ones who are abusing. It all goes back to Sinead O'Connor. It all goes back to this thing. And it's the same projection and demonizing were abusing. It all goes back to Sinead O'Connor. It all goes back to this thing. It is the same projection and demonizing of the actual freedom fighters, truth tellers,

prophets in our time. And Gloria is a truth teller. She is exactly who she says she is. I've been lucky enough to know her for about three years now. I met her actually through the music world because she just shows up in the community. She shows up to concerts. She shows up to volunteer drives. You see her at the supermarket. You see her in the park. And I think probably on some level, the last thing she wanted to do is have to run for Senator, but she's doing it for all Tennesseans. As we end here, as someone who is healing through re-embodiment, through landing in my body for the first time,

to feeling everything that is without, finally within, to understanding, like, feeling a touch, or feeling even hunger, or feeling rain as, like, a freaking resurrection. Yeah. Like, just experiencing life in my body for the first time. I have so many friends who don't get to, or don't feel yet like they can have that returner experience because of trauma, because of abuse,

because all of that is what's in their body. And disassociation has been their survival mechanism for their whole lives. Yeah. Because you have so much trauma in your background and you are experiencing, through your music, it feels very much like you're experiencing re-embodiment as healing. How? Well, for me, I think it took a long time and motherhood helped vastly in my case.

That was the first time I ever loved my body was when I got, and I was, I never thought I would be a mother. Never, never, never, certainly never thought I would bear a child. You know, maybe if I fell in love with a woman who had a child or, you child or I could do that. But I never thought I would physically do that. And Ida was a miracle. I was on birth control pills. She's a birth control pill baby.

Yeah, I heard that. I was on birth control pills for seven years and And they never failed me. And I never skipped one either. Anyone listening with a uterus, birth control pills are not 100%. They are 99.999 and Ida's that 0.00000111 what have you. And it was shocking at first, you know, JT and I had been together for seven years at that point. And I was just so terrified of paying for it, any of what I lived. And I felt that somehow I would be doomed to do that. But because JT is so stable and has such a strong, gorgeous inner goddess and a beautiful,

happy family that's not abusive, I just thought, well, if I'm completely undone by this, I know that he will be there for this child. And it was the most miraculous thing of all of the kind of self evisceration that I was in the habit of doing of just continually being cruel to myself because that's what I was used to. And I've talked about this with a lot of other survivors. And I feel like an eating disorder is just part two of after you've been sexually abused, like that it just inevitably follows. And so I had done, I had had various disordered eating patterns my whole life. It all just stopped when I was pregnant with Ida.

It was like this miracle of happy endorphins and I don't know, a flood of oxytocin and joyful feelings, you know, and love for this little alien that was growing and also fascination. But I felt connected. It was like my mitochondria woke up and said, hey, hey, you're part of this unbroken line of badass bitches who just make life on earth. Like you're fine. You're fine. You're okay. And that was the beginning that has helped me move through some of the trauma in my body, dancing, playing music, being in community with other women has been so important for me. There's women that I feel safe with. When I was 16, I moved in.

I ran away from home at 15 and was kind of itinerant and hiding in Persephone's basement and the cemetery and staying up all night at the Croissant Royal in Saint Laurent playing chess with the old guys or going and hiding out in the Marie Reine du Monde cathedral, little cathedral that was close to my alternative high school that was across the street from McGill and going there in the winter and sitting in a pew and falling asleep. But when I was 16, I got this terrible, terrible marketing job and I moved in with three other women that I went to high school with who are my dear beloved friends to this day. Allie and Siobhan and Kim and our friends and all of our other friends just learning how to live in the world would come by and we called the apartment The Womb, you know, and it was, that was such a healing time.

They were the first people other than Persephone that I disclosed to, you know, they, we just learned so much from each other. What love feels like. To feel loved. We did that for each other. We became, you know, and I think that, that is such a universally, I think for everyone I know who identifies in any way as queer has had a version of that, except for the very, very, very lucky few who were fully, fully accepted by their families.

But I don't know many people who identify as queer who were fully accepted by their families in those developmental years. We know a couple, but they're our children. Yeah, they're our children. We're exactly fifth-generation. I should say that caveat of people over 30 now. Right. And it isn't that beautiful because we're healing. Again, it goes back to breaking these cycles of trauma. Well, Pod Squad, if you are in need of a beginning of returning to your body,

I do recommend Alison's latest album, The Returner. I feel like it's an anthem to that, to that reclamation of being here now, of feeling, of knowing that you also have the right, the God-given birthright of experiencing joy and love and peace inside your body. In this brief corporal experience.

And I think about what Andrea Gibson was talking about, how brief it is, and that's the beauty. And we, I won't say waste so much time, but we are embroiled for so much of our lives, I think so many of us in not feeling okay in our bodies or needing to escape our bodies and the joy of returning to our bodies and accepting all of the pain and the scars

and the history written there is beautiful. Who fooled us into thinking that the unmarked page was more beautiful, you know? Like who did that? That's so beautiful. I just wanna say, I am stunned by your music. I'm stunned at just how profound you are. I just am so grateful to know you.

I'm so grateful that Artishi got to eat dinner with you. She is incredible. Y'all, if you don't have Tisha's new singles, you gotta get it. It's so beautiful. Produced by our beautiful Brandi Carlile as well. Yeah. Well, she came home and said,

after that weekend in Nashville, I said, "'So tell me your favorite part.'" And I thought she was gonna say the red carpet or whatever. And she said, "'I think my favorite part was talking to Alison at dinner. Oh, that's the best award I'll ever be given. Oh my gosh. We love you, Alison Russell.

We will see you backstage next time with some burgers and fries and Ida and Tish. And you just keep going. We're in your corner forever. I love y'all. I'm so grateful. Thank you for having me today. Same, same, same. Bye Pod Squad.

See you next time. Bye Pod Squad. If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us. If you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

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We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey. Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren Legrasso, Alison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz. Music