We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - The One Question to Finally Let Go of Control with ALOK

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

293. The One Question to Finally Let Go of Control with ALOK Alok Vaid-Menon is back exploring belonging, beauty, community, and the freedom in letting go of the need to control. Buckle up, podquad, this episode will change your life!  Discover:  How we can embrace the absurd chaos of life instead of struggling against it; The way to find energy to keep going through stress of life and politics; Why ALOK responds to hate with love, not because they want to be the bigger person, but because they want to win; How to create your own personal beauty playlist; and The power of being a living contraction, and how to find people who keep letting you change forever.      After you listen to this episode, be sure to check out our two prior episodes with ALOK: Episode 74 – ALOK: What makes us beautiful? What makes us free? & Episode 75 – ALOK: How do we interrupt trauma? How do we heal? Alok Vaid-Menon is an internationally acclaimed author, poet, comedian, and public speaker. As a mixed-media artist their work explores themes of trauma, belonging, and the human condition. They are the author of Femme in Public, Beyond the Gender Binary, and Your Wound/My Garden; and the creator of #DeGenderFashion: an initiative to degender fashion and beauty industries.  Alok is the subject of the documentary short film ALOK, which kicked off this year’s Sundance Film Festival Short Film Program and was directed by filmmaker Alex Hedison and executive produced by Jodie Foster.   IG: @alokvmenon 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

Hello Pod Squad, welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Today you are really in for a treat because we are joined today by our dear friend, Alok. Alok is an internationally acclaimed author, poet, comedian, and public speaker. As a mixed media artist, their work explores themes of trauma, belonging, and the human condition. They are the author of Femin Public, Beyond the Gender Binary, and Your Wound, My Garden,

and the creator of Hashtag Degender Fashion, an initiative to de-gender fashion and beauty industries. Alok is the subject of hashtag Degender Fashion, an initiative to Degender Fashion and beauty industries. Alok is the subject of the documentary short film Alok, which kicked off this year's Sundance Film Festival short film program and was directed by filmmaker Alex Hedison, and executive produced by Jodie Foster. Welcome, Alok. Hi.

Our friend. Hi. Our friend, hello. Yay! Hello. Gah. I am so glad to see your face. Tell us as we start. First of all, have you met sister?

Sister? Yes. Oh, you have, okay. At our prior, the legendary episode 7475. Right. Which all God's children have listened to. That is where we met. Okay. Hello, Alok. So Pod Squad, this is the podcast.

Alex Hedison, the Alex Hedison, one of Abby and I's BFFs, she called me and she said, Glennon, I have Alok in the car. And that for us was the beginning of this creative adventure that you two have set out on together, which culminated in this film, A Loak, which effing opened Sundance this year. And I've been trying to keep up A Loak on Instagram with you three, you and Alex and Jodie.

Are you okay? It feels like there's so much going on. It took Sundance by storm. Are you feeling overwhelmed? How are you feeling about all of it? And why did you even decide to do it? I did three outfit changes a day. I know.

Oh my God. I managed to not fall on my ass once, even when I was like in five inch heels in the snow. And if that's not a metaphor for community support, I was just holding on to people, strangers, like, hey, can you be my perch? I scheduled this accordingly because I was like, there's no one else in the world I'd rather speak to

about what ensued than you all. It was just truly so meaningful for me to be loved out loud. Like, I did all of this press with Alex and Jodie, and it was so strange for me because they would just like pivot, look over there, talk to this person, I'm like, I don't really know. And it just felt really magnificent to have so many people say thank you,

running into people on the street. I guess I had some reservations about video because what I like about performance is that you had to have been there. It's ephemeral. It only exists once, but video is there forever. And I've always had commitment issues with permanence. And actually what I was able to do through this project is kind of heal that part of me to be like it's important to leave evidence and what feels so spectacular about this film is it's evidence of so many things but among them my relationship with Alex and so when we were doing press they started to say this thing of this is a profile of a look which is a profile of me which is a profile of us. Oh shit oh that's so beautiful okay, Jesus only wrote in the sand. So there

you go with ephemeral, but we have plenty of things recorded, but it was by other people who loved him. So you're just doing the same thing. Alex is recording it and she loves you and the love is so apparent in the film and watching you two go through this, it's just been such a beautiful thing for us to be able to be in the background throughout the whole thing and to watch it explode in joy and beauty that's been so wonderful. I want to ask you, I just read this article and you said, when people look at a life like mine, they think that it's a life marked fundamentally by violence and aggression.

I want to remind people that the everyday lives that people like me are carving on this earth are not abject. They're actually pretty awesome. What do you mean when you say people like me? Thank you for clarifying that question because on a superficial read, it would mean trans people, but that's not actually what I mean. What I mean is people who are choreographing

the rhythm of their life to the cadence of love, whose metronome is beauty, not normativity. People who color outside the lines because they don't exist. People who often get asked questions to try to root them back into the status quo. Like, well, are you really gonna be able to make a job out of that? Or why are you so dressed up?

Those are all modes of policing people back into what we think it means to be stable. And I feel like, especially the more that I mature, the more I realize that what's being policed is not gender, what's being policed is not gender. What's being policed is creativity. So what I mean is people who live creative lives. Yeah.

That's good. And if you're living a creative life, you're going to keep changing because that's what creativity is. So whenever you talk about, or people talk about you really, and they're talking about everything in terms of being transgender, to me, it's trans everything, right? Are people just afraid of the capacity of change?

Because if we confront the capacity to change, and that might mean we have the responsibility to constantly be transforming ourselves. And is that what freaks people out? Because I feel like I have, I never experienced more anger from people than when I change, than when I'm like, I was a fundamentalist Christian and now I don't think I am anymore. Or like I was living as a straight woman and I actually am not anymore. It's the change that freaks people out. Or like, I was living as a straight woman, and I actually am not anymore. It's the change that freaks people out.

So are we all afraid of change? From the perspective of death, all living is stand-up comedy. The truth is that we waste so much of our time on profoundly absurd fictions when the only true absolute we know is that we're going to die. So rather than accepting that, that everything we're experiencing is impermanent, we create entire architectures and landscapes

that pretend in the myth of immortality. We say, well, there's this thing called a man and a woman. We say there's this thing called nature. There's this thing called biology, and we hold all of these things still because actually to truly embrace that fundamental currency of change would instigate us to have to speak frankly about death.

That's what I've come to, is that the fear is actually the fear of death and the fear that what we have right now is impermanent. And so in order to heal a culture of transphobia, but a culture of policing more generally, what we need is to actually remind people everything is constantly changing and closing our lives, and that's a beautiful thing. It's a fundamentally different relationship with dying.

Dying not as descending into despair, into debility, but actually ascending, descending into despair, into debility, but actually ascending, aging as an actual beautiful practice of becoming, getting closer and closer to something that is transcendent. So I've really, I think, shift the way that I've started to speak about these things because I have so much mercy when I remember that everyone is afraid

of every friendship becoming a funeral. Everyone is afraid of everyone that they love no longer being there. And staying in that fear is too scary. So they construct all these absolutes, all these fictions of control to make them feel rooted. control to make them feel rooted. Is our fiction of control overlapping with our fiction of safety? So in other words, is this why all of the bigoted legislation, all of it is about this

threatens your safety, the safety of your children. We can keep our children safe by maintaining these lines of control that prevent the chaos when in actuality, chaos is the only reality that we're living in. But is that, is control safety into safety control? Yeah. But the truth is the only way that we can actually

have meaningful control and true safety is through community. So all of these efforts to establish safety and control are the antithesis of community. Control is the antithesis of community. And I think, Glennon, what we've had this conversation over the past few years is like, often the versions of love that we were sold, and our families and our societies was that love was compatible with control, people were controlling us because they

loved us. And actually, what we've had to learn is no, love means that I get to change. And I don't have to be your preconceived idea of who I should be. And that's where my basis of community comes from. What I'm fighting for is not just affirmation of my gender. Once again, that's just the surface. But it's the creation of a sense of belonging and community that holds perpetual change. And that's a version of love that I feel like

I didn't learn from our culture and from our family, where I had to be my parents' child, I had to be other people's idea of what it meant to be like a triumphant leader. And I get to change constantly. And now what I look for love in people is people who allow me to change, who don't use that awful and crude word contradictory. Because I actually believe that contradiction is a synonym for being alive.

We are always navigating polarity and finding harmony in it. It's just that when we speak, we pretend as if there's consistency when there never was. So what does safety mean to you? I love when you talk about how afraid the people that love you can be for you, knowing that when you're out in the world

and you basically what I think you're saying is you are a reminder to people that one day they will die. And that is unacceptable to most people. So they will yell at you, threaten you. That worries your family because they worry that you're not safe. But what does safety mean to you? Safety and this relates to version one. So everyone go back and listen to it. Safety is beauty. Safety is being able to be the freest version of myself. I genuinely believe that if I was to experience violence

while I am being beautiful, ultimately, I'm not willing to compromise that beauty anymore. I think for a long time I was, I was willing to say, okay, I have to contour my beauty, shape it to fit in, to be disciplined, in order to be safe. But I was like, this isn't safety because I hate myself. And the truth is, that street harassment

becomes my anxious thoughts before I'm falling asleep and then I can't fall asleep. That street harassment becomes diffused into me editing and policing myself in the most quiet and leisureful moments. Leisure doesn't exist. So actually when I'm able to be beautiful, I have an internal resiliency, resourcefulness, sense of potency, imagination, rambunctiousness that makes that crucial distinction between living and surviving. And so oftentimes when people speak about safety,

they're just meaning physical safety and they're not actually meaning the emotional, mental, spiritual safety that actually sticks with us even when we're not with other people. This might be my favorite thing I've heard you say recently, but you're talking about when people respond to you angrily, whether it's on the internet or wherever. And you said, I respond to hate with love,

not because I wanna be the bigger person, not because I want to be the bigger person, but because I want to win. I just sat and giggled about that one for a little while. Tell me when someone says something to you online about why you shouldn't be wearing the dress or whatever they say, what might you write back and what is the goal? What are you winning? What are you trying to win? We exist in a culture that elevates clapbacks as if they are going to make change. But people have been clapping back at each other for like centuries and nothing's changed. What I'm interested in doing is clapping back by which I mean embracing someone and patting them on the back, saying, -"Hey, I love you." There's a way in which fury, indignation, and retribution have been elevated

as the most sophisticated and resistant forms of action. But I question that, because if those things worked, we would not have what's happening right now. People call me naive and idealistic for believing in compassion, but I think what's naive and idealistic is believing that violence can ever stop violence. I think what's naive and idealistic

is believing that if we respond with the same frequency as those aggressing us, then we'll somehow transform or interrupt a circuitry of violence. I don't think that's how it works. I notice that when I make the choice, which is a daily choice, to respond from compassion, to operate from a higher frequency,

to see and insist on the humanity and the complexity of the people who are in pain and weaponizing that pain against me. I noticed that something shifts materially. So I had a conversation the other day where someone's saying, well you know there are certain people that just deserve to be shamed because they're so awful. They brought up Anita Bryant who was a notorious anti-gay activist who got pied in the face. You might have heard of them. And they said, well, you know, someone like her is just so deplorable.

And what would you say to her? And I said, I would say, hi, Anita, I love you very much. And I'm so sorry that you don't love you very much. And that's evident because you're wasting your precious and finite time on earth, hating me, when you could be living this precious and finite thing, life. And so your hatred of me is a tell that you don't think that your life is that special,

but I think your life is that special. What happens then, there's nothing for them to sink their teeth in. And I think where we get it wrong is we mistake the resistance as what we say, but I believe the resistance is how we are. Compassion is not what I'm saying, it's how I am. To be and to embody compassion is to notice and recognize I'm just caught in the crossfires of your internal war. This is nothing to do with me. So the reason that it's effective is because it puts

the onus back on the aggressor, not on me. It says, this is your pain. I need you to deal with it. But what we've done is we've misdiagnosed the solution to be us shape-shifting, us responding, rather than those people who are transmitting their pain, working on it. It's like deep co-dependence. I will keep changing so that you're not mad at me. Instead of I will not change, I hope eventually you will not be mad at you.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Join me, Esther Perel, every Monday in my office on Where Should We Begin? I'm talking to couples and individuals about love and work, about turning conflict into connection. More than ever, our relationships define the quality of our lives. So let's explore the myriad of relational challenges together. See you Monday. What are all of us when we see something that we're afraid of or that we are resisting? Explain to us what you believe is happening inside of the person or what's happened in their past that is making them react that way.

Explain it to us like you're explaining it to a kid. How, when someone's saying, you can't do that calling you names, what may have happened in their past that led them to that place? I have so much sadness that there's a moment when we're no longer allowed to imagine. We're told, okay, time to grow up.

And we're taught that maturity means entering in this realm of misery. And things are what they are. They can't be changed. This is just reality. Grow up. And that is such a profoundly grief-inducing process to sever people from their capacity to wonder. I believe a more mature definition of maturity is maintaining an intimate relationship with

wonder and creativity as you age. The most mature people are the people who maintain curiosity as a necessity. And so what happens when people encounter someone like me that is coloring outside of the lines, that makes them recall a past version of themselves that got punished for doing precisely that. And this is the way that abuse culture works is that the control becomes so ritualized,

the coercion becomes so rigid, that we end up reenacting that on other people. We transmit it to other people. So they just do and repeat and parrot the very things that were said to them to me. Because if they didn't, then they would have to confront how the people who said were said to them to me. Because if they didn't, then they would have to confront how the people who said that they loved them

were actually trying their best to destroy them and call that love. And that is a way too painful place to go. So it's easier to default into aggression against me. And I wanna thank being trans for helping me open up to this matrix. These are things that I had read and foundational scholars like bell hooks and so much feminism helped me come to these conclusions intellectually. But it was only when I went outside and I

had other people throw their shame on me like a snowball fight. And I had to sit in it, sit in other people's shame. And I had to actually go home and look at myself in the mirror and being like, am I what other people see me as? And I had to say, no, I am beautiful. And so transness gave me the opportunity, the luxury, the privilege, the power of having to do that sacred human practice of self-birth. Because just like maturity, birth is a definition that we need to reclarify. Birth is something that we can always do.

We can decide to give birth to a different version of ourselves. And what transness demanded I did is if you are going to live this life, you're gonna have to give birth to a version of yourself that's able to realize that all of this other stuff is projection. What is so true and is so real is your beauty. And your beauty is who you are on the inside. All of this makes so much sense to me

because having come from a fundamentalist religion, you and I have talked about this so much. A lot of people are fundamentalist about gender, right? That is a religion. That is something that's been given to us that has said, I know what the world is chaos and life is scary and this is something that I can promise you that it's a rule. Okay? And you live inside of it and if you live inside of it you'll be safe, which is what fundamentalist Christianity is as well. When people who have said,

okay, I believe you, and given up who they are on the inside to stay inside that safe religion, see somebody who then leaves the religion and looks to be full of joy, that is rage inducing to the people that are still in it. Not only because they're thinking back to somebody who hurt them, but because if they admit that that could be true,

then they're going to live with the regret they've lived their whole life following these rules when they could have had that joy and they're not seeing that person be struck down. Right? They'd have to admit that they've given up their life. That they were wrong. Yeah. That they could have lived differently. And it's easier to say, nope, I'm going to stick with my belief that you're going to go straight to hell, that you'll get yours later, than to say, oh my God, I could have had mine now. But let me expand that to say, what if we created a culture where being wrong wasn't the worst thing?

What if we created a culture where you could say, yikes, I thought this, but now I've gotten new information and now I'm changing my mind. But the issue is that our culture is one that structures belonging on purity. And so we require people to have this performance of consistency. I've always known, I've always been.

And this is also something we as trans people have to do is the only way that our genders get seen as real is if I narrate the prenatally I played with dolls. I mean, that's absurd that I have to perform this like unshakable foundational conviction. I actually believe that the most human response is, I don't know, therefore I am. Or perhaps even more honestly, I feel, therefore I am.

That feeling and sensation are perhaps the most foundational practices of presence that we can ever have. So what I want to do is to create a world where people actually destigmatize coming together and saying, I don't know. I genuinely don't know who I am because I was told that I was this thing and I don't really know if that's what I want to be. I want to create a space where people can live ambiguity and still be loved.

I think the reason that people hold on to the certainty is they believe that they'll only be loved and only have access to community if they can navigate saying before and after one or the other. Those kinds of binary grids. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Because half the reason people don't leave is not so that they don't have to admit that they have wasted their life, but also when they leave that religion, they are leaving the love and belonging and therefore the safety of the community that is contingent upon them staying pure here and not leaving there. So as soon as you tie those things together and you have to choose the binary of me in

my uncertainty versus staying here and receiving love and pretending to be certain, people are always going to choose love and pretending. And it's not love either, right? It's not real love. It's a pretend belonging. It's the faux safety and the faux love, which is there and can touch as opposed to the imaginary love and safety that I've never actually touched. Yeah. That I don't know if it's even true.

Yeah. It shows that this is all in the consciousness. It's just that the culprit is wrong. So notice what they say about trans people like me. You are pretending to be something that you're not. You're an imposter. Wow. What you're saying in there is that you realize that pretend is happening. It's just, it's not that trans people are pretending. It's that all of us have to pretend to be

these gender binaries. It's actually a confession. It's an awareness when they say, okay, well, these trans people, they're just, they have this mythological power. I mean, I was just in Utah, and it felt very strange to be there in Sundance when one of the worst anti-trans bills is about to be approved in Utah. That would make it a criminal offense for people like me to use the facilities of our choice, right?

So there's an acknowledgement there that violence is real, but the culprit is not trans people. The culprit is patriarchy. So often the very things that people accuse trans people of being, it's just misdirected rage that should be directed to the gender binary, the system. So that's why I've shifted, because I began to realize that most of the anti-trans animus actually is a confession of people's own pain from the gender binary. They're just attributing it to me, when in fact, I just

need to move like a laser beam, the focus, into the gender binary system. And what I continually remind myself every day is I could have been every one of those people What are the moments in my life where I saw people living freer versions of myself? That I wasn't willing to confront and so I respond to the judgment as an armor to protect me from having to do that Self-exploratory work. I have continually used judgment in my life. I have continually looked at people and been like, oh, that's disgusting That's gross. Why would you look like that?

I am just as bad. When I'm saying against purity, I'm not even saying that I also am outside of these things. I have been contaminated in them too. But this work of grace, which is for me, the work of God, grace, is to be able to look at my even judgmental sides, to look at the ways in which I have replicated

the things I'm trying to interrupt and to contextualize, of course I did that, of course I did that, when the only grammar I had to speak my name was hate, not love. What is God to you? I think since we last were on this podcast, I have really been saying God so much more. I know, I have really been saying God so much more. I know.

I have really been saying faith so much more and spirituality so much more. And some of my most profound leaders now are people who are religious, and that is so confusing. Because in my comment section, all these people are like, find God. And I'm like, I kind of did. Like plot twists. I kind of did. And now all of my radical queer friends are some of the most pious and religious people I know. It's just that you don't see their godliness because you think God is what you look like, not how you treat other people.

God is here now, and you and me in this conversation. If we take the time and if we have the love to notice it, God is not around outside of humanity. God is here in its fleshiness and its self-hatred and its idiosyncrasies and its deepest insecurities. God is in the places we hate ourselves most. God is in the places we have the most trepidation, anxiety, nervousness and skittishness.

I grew up understanding heaven as a destination on the other side. What my life has had to help me realize is that it's actually here, and I have to act accordingly. I have to build it here in every interaction. And so from one point of view, you could look at it as a compassion practice,

as irrational. I often hear from people, people won't change. Why do you try? And I'm like, okay, that's one paradigm, but in another paradigm of grace, it actually makes so much logical sense. And so, what a God practice is, is to treat every person as if they were God. To treat everything as if it was God. to relate to every single thing in the world as a teacher and an invitation. And when I began to see pain as a teacher, shame as a teacher, not as something that I need to

eliminate, detonate, destroy, but rather something I have to integrate, a deep, profound cosmological awareness that every single thing plays a part. That's when I began to find happiness, this thing I didn't think was possible for someone like me. So God got me to happiness. Makes me so sad when you are talking about how God is now and God is not out there and God is not just after death and all of that, because it makes me sad for people who are raised

to believe that you can only live later. Like what I think a lot of people are taught is that you can be as beautiful as you are now, Loke. You can be as free. You can have this eventually, but not now. Now you follow the rules. Now you suck it up. Now you hide your beauty, but later. It's a good way for religions to keep people quote unquote in line. Right? The thing that makes me the most sad that I actually only learned when I met you is I didn't think God was for me because I was a believer that heaven was after and also hell was after. And you have made me understand that God is in all of us.

Like we are all God. And to live a life not ever knowing that is the real loss. The reason why people can't see some people as fully human is because they don't believe that they themselves have God in themselves. And that is, I think, maybe the saddest thing. That's beautiful. I mean, it's also amazing that it's all Jesus said

over and over again. It's all Jesus said was like, it's now, it's now. The kingdom of heaven is not out there. It's in us, it's in you, it's in me, it's in all of us. I think Jesus was like, I'm God, also so are you. Yeah. Right? More and more of my friends are coming to me saying,

oh my God, my kid just came out as non-binary. This is a thing now that is just constantly happening. But amazing thing, what happens when people start having language to explain their experience. Suddenly everybody's, oh my God, it's out of control. Everyone's non-binary. Like, I wonder why that's happening. It's just that people see more freedom around them

and freedom is contagious and they can attach language to it. But if the gender binary isn't real, which I think everyone who's on this conversation believes it is not, it is a structure that we do not have faith in, right? Isn't everyone non-binary? Like, when someone says to me, my kid came out as non-binary, I just hear, oh, that person's

kid is like wise enough to have seen that the emperor has no clothes. It's like figuring out that there's no Santa. I don't think like, oh, that kid has discovered something inside of themselves that's different than other people. I just think, oh, that kid has discovered that this thing isn't real. Like, aren't we all non-binary? I worry that we run the risk of replicating the coercion that we're protesting when we say that being non-binary is somehow more aware, more ethical, more resistant. What I'm interested in is actually saying that being a woman and being man

don't have to mean believing in the gender binary. What I'm asking people to do is to author their own version of womanhood, their own version of manhood, their own version of gender. And so it's less to me about the destination as much as it is about the practice of questioning. And I think it's less to me about the destination as much as it is about the practice of questioning. And I think it's still possible to do that practice of questioning

and maybe not end up as non-binary. I have many trans women and many trans men in my life who have done that difficult journey of embracing manhood and womanhood, and it's their choice. And that's what's beautiful to me. They're not defaulting into it because they've been told this is what you have to be. But they made a series of deep introspective gestures

to actually say this is what's most resonant to me. The violence of the gender binary is not about how we identify, it's about how we police. So what people get wrong is they think that when I'm saying I want it in the gender binary, I want people to stop being men or women. I could care less how you describe yourself. What I want you to stop doing is to stop standardizing one singular definition of manhood and womanhood

for everyone. I want you to recognize that there are as many ways to be a man as there are men. There are many ways to women as there are women. That's good. Just in the same way that every Sarah is not the same. We give each Sarah their own particularity, but we don't say abolish Sarah. That's how I want us to relate to gender.

It's okay, you're a woman. Interesting. What does that mean to you? Okay, you're non-binary. Interesting. What does that mean to you? Because what I've seen happen right now is non-binary has become a catchall for putting genders chaos. And in that way, it stabilizes the gender binary

because it's like man, woman, other. But the goal I'm trying to make is it's not about this container non-binary. It's about a different relationship with gender that's more playful, that's more introspective. That's more self-definitional So you're okay with even if people want to have faith in a gender binary You just aren't you're not you're against gender binary evangelism Well, I don't think that I want people to have faith in the gender binary what I'm saying is being a man or being a woman

Does not mean replicating the binary structure. I'm saying that it is possible to actually come to your own definition of womanhood outside of a binary structure. And I think if cis folks are interested in that, look at the testimonies of trans people, trans people who are in many ways very literate about what's wrong with the gender binary, what's wrong with the signed course of gender, who some still identify as man and woman. I don't think that those people are replicating the gender binary for being that. I think that they've actually done this work to actually say, where I feel most beautiful is in this place. And so I'm not interested in telling those people you're replicating the gender. And the same way I'm not interested in telling people

who are assistive, they're replicating the gender binary you're replicating the gender ran out and the same way I'm not interested in telling people who are assisted the replicating the gender binary where replicating the gender binary comes in is how you Juristic the parameters of my gender. It's more about how you're relating to other people versus how you're relating to yourself So that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. Do you think it's important for every person to? figure out what their to figure out what their situation might be. What about people who just don't want to even think about it for themselves? Because the culture has just told us what to do. And of course I kind of live in a binary world anyway,

but also I'm just tired. And do you think it's important for every person to figure out where they might fall on that spectrum? Yes, but I don't frame it in terms of figuring out your gender. I frame it in terms of healing. When we heal, we will inevitably figure out our gender. So I've actually been quite agnostic to an approach

that's like here, read this gender literacy guide. What resonates with you? This is your, that's not my approach. My approach is, who do you want to become? And what is preventing you from doing that. Those portals that are larger, I think are where actually we can heal this gender crisis. I've been so inspired, Glennon, by you sharing your healing journey publicly because in many ways that is transition work. It's actually such a beautiful transition

to say who you believed I was and who I believed I was is no longer. I'm becoming something else. And that's why transition is a grief ritual. It's about saying goodbye to a previous version of ourself and introducing and maybe even reacquainting with a future version of ourself, and introducing and maybe even reacquainting with a future version of ourself. And transition is something all of us need to do,

as Thomas Merton and Richard Rohr would say, from a false self to a true self. That's the ultimate transition. Gender is just one part of that. So, Abby, in your question of, like, I feel tired, I think that's in some ways a confession of a deeper pain. I feel scared. Maybe might be more honest. I'm not sure. No, for sure. I feel nervous. Yeah. I think that one of the things that I'm delving

in right now in my therapy is ultimately my big fear of death. And I think that that's going to provide when I keep going deeper and deeper into that. I think what you've said has been transformative to me because if I work in reverse and to create the most beautiful life, having gotten comfortable enough with the death idea, the death truth, that I will start living more fully, freely, and maybe some other expression of myself will come forward. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Can we talk about Fear of Death? Yes. Yes. Yes. Please. Can we talk about fear of death? Yes. Please. I feel so called in this moment now to talk about death with unflinching clarity. I truly believe that if we lived our lives with the awareness that everything is precious because it could be gone. We could make hatred, prejudice, and violence obsolete. Because we could see each person as

capable of such profound despair and grief. Every single one of us is going to, slash is right now going to lose the very pillars of our lives. That is so fundamentally destabilizing, but that offers me so much grace because I'm like we all have that in common. Our humanity comes from our mortality. It actually comes from our very ability to die, gives us constitutive empathy for one another. I don't need to know anything else about you other than the fact that you two are going to die.

And once I remember that, then all of the bigots just seem like broken kids who are afraid of death. No matter how many wars they instigate, no matter how many laws they passed, no matter how many controlling projects that they catalyze, that's not going to stave off death. And so then their actions become actually so understandable to me because then I zoom in myself and I say, what have I done because I've been afraid of dying? I pretended to be really smart. I thought that intellect would cheat death out.

I pretended that I could joke my way out, sardonic or ironic distance from it. And then the people I love died and it undid me. And I had to confront that every single time I make connection, it's going to end. And then I had to make the choice to make connection anyways, again and again and again.

So what I've learned in foregrounding death is actually surrender. I think I began my campaign against the gender binary through the framework of resistance. And where I'm at now is through the framework of surrender. Just showing up fully and having faith that it's going to be okay in the end. That's the only advice you can give people when they're dealing with death is I genuinely don't know, I don't know what's gonna happen, I don't know if you're gonna see this person again, but what I do know is that I'm here.

And surrendering to unknowability is the common denominator. And what I'm asking for with gender and with grief is the unknowability of grief and the unknowability of gender is, yes, a version of me could come up and explain and demystify and say, this is what gender is. But I think a more honest version is to say, I don't know, I don't know, we don't know any of this. All this is made up. And that's where the gender is. But I think a more honest version is to say, I don't know, I don't know. We don't know any of this.

All this is made up. And that's where the beauty is. The beauty is actually in being able to develop a relationship with unknowability where we're just situated in it, not needing to define or control it. God, I'm having such a moment of understanding and compassion too when you're talking.

Cause I'm thinking the people who I get so mad at, who are making the laws, like that's all I've done my whole life. Anorexia is just surrounding myself with rules and laws to stay safe, right? Like going into every cult that offers me a space, like fundamental Christianity or whatever, it's just cult that offers me a space like fundamental Christianity or whatever. It's just finding fake stability, trying to hold up pillars. The only way I can understand any of this is I have to resist deciding anything. I'm not going to take a freaking Buzzfeed quiz or read a book and like land somewhere. It's just never landing. The only way I can understand gender is to be like,

how do I feel right now? How do I wanna feel right now? And then I like try to match my outsides with how my inside feels in that moment. But it's never a landing. That's why I change six times a day. I understand though, when you're talking to me, I feel great compassion for people

who are holding onto pillars. Even when those pillars look and feel so mean. Because it's safety. I too have been desperate for pillars my whole life. Yeah, it's safety. And the idea of I don't know, that gift of uncertainty that then begs the million other questions that granted it has given you a lot of trauma in your life as well. But the impoverishment of someone like me

who there were no questions that I asked myself, there was not an uncertainty, there was not an I don't know, and therefore the implicit corollary is you do know and you know everything you need to know. And then there were no further questions with my gender, with my sexuality. It was those questions are for other people for whom uncertainty is present.

And so I don't know those things about myself because I did not view that set of inquiries as relevant to me. And therefore my life has been less internally known and interesting and creative than it could have been. And so this is why I think these questions that you're offering into this world and this invitation of I don't know to all of us is so beautiful because we can all participate in the creativity

of building and understanding who we are and what we want and what we can bring. I just believe that expansiveness is so initially destabilizing, but once you get through that initial aversion to it, expansiveness is the most exciting place to be. Because now when my scale is the universe, my anxiety is just one drop in that universe. My grief is just one drop in that universe. My grief is just one drop in that universe. So when I lose people I love now, I surrender to that expansiveness

and it's not as massive. It reminds me of when I was younger and I used to watch Nova documentaries about the galaxy. There was something so profoundly thrilling and knowing how tiny I was and the scale of all of it. And part of the fiction of control is also a question of scale, because you can't control the entire cosmology. It's too big. So what they try to do is make us small because that's controllable. What the gender binary tries to do is make us man or woman, and this is what man means

and this is what woman means, because that's controllable. It's all about control. And when we move beyond control to actually realizing I am universe, then we can't be contained in that way. I feel so scared when you're saying, I just think my whole thing in life is trying to let go of control. It's just the whole. Yeah, but don't you hear what they're saying?

That's everybody's thing. Yeah, that's comforting. All of us. That's the affliction here. Sorry, I didn't mean to. No, I'm really grateful for that. Thank you. I feel it too.

That's the affliction and that's the standup comedy. It's just silly. It's so silly. What do you really think about it? When we are all gonna be dying, we're gonna hopefully be on a deathbed and we're gonna look back at so many of the things

that we thought that would give us stability. It'd be like, that was so silly. That was so naive. It was kind of ludicrous. That we thought that degrees or that we thought that degrees, or that we thought that distinctions, or that we thought that hierarchies made us better than other people,

when in fact those other people are just going to die, just like me. There's a democracy in death. And that's what I'm speaking about when I speak about compassion, unity, the pronoun we, all of us together. It's once I realized that democracy of death, and I found it when I began to speak about my own suicidality, when I began to say, I think about dying, and then I realized everyone

thinks about dying, and then we can speak about it. When I lost people in my own life and I didn't know where to go because there's no rehabilitation centers, for heartbreak, you're just supposed to figure out how to do it yourself. Like DIY heartbreak recovery is obscene. Where do you go? So I began to speak it, and then I met other people

who were dealing with that grief. And then I realized, I don't know anything about you, but someone you love died, and that gives us so much in common. And then I realized, I don't know anything about you, but someone you love died and that gives us so much in common. And then I began to extract that and expand that. And I had so much common because I was like, all of us are gonna die. And from that point of view,

that's where I feel this urgency to come together in this moment. Because in this moment, we keep on thinking we can cheat death, call that racism. That's what white supremacy is, is white people thinking they can cheat death, call that racism. That's what white supremacy is, is white people thinking they can cheat their own mortality. Call that patriarchy, men thinking they can cheat their own mortality.

There's been a lot of discourse around vulnerability, but what I'm trying to push us to is that ultimate vulnerability is the admission of our death. And once we live a life that is death forward, actually that's where freedom comes from. I am going to die, so therefore I am going to live my best life. And it is only when we come to that place of acceptance

that, OK, this is finite. So now working, like you said, Abby, working backwards, how do I build a life such that if I was to die right now, it would be dignified? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You found something, if we're thinking about being on our deathbed, and all of the things that

are going to feel ridiculous that we thought would shore us up, so many of them will seem insane at that point. up. So many of them will seem insane at that point. But when you lost your beloved aunt, who was a revolutionary, a teacher, a wayfinder for all of us, you did notice something that that surrounded her in her death that actually that she had invested in that actually did shore her up and actually did carry her from this side through the great transition. Something that we are not told to invest in which is friendship. Can you talk to us about that? Yeah. Hmm. You know, at Sundance, I did this interview where they asked me, who are three people I wish could see my standup show?

And me being me, I listed three dead people. And one of them was her because her breast cancer came back right when I started touring the show and she couldn't make the date that I had in New York. And I talked to her about it, but she never got to see it, and I feel so much despair that she didn't get to see it, because it's taken me a long time to come to comedy. I only could come to comedy when I had worked on healing myself. I realized this absurdity.

And I was so proud of it. And I wanted to share that with her because her laugh was always the loudest in the room. It was my favorite soundtrack. She laughed with so much vigor and rigor as if she had been practicing and rehearsing it her entire life. And she laughed until the very end.

Even she would make self-deprecating comments about the sores in her mouth and then laugh. And it taught me what I truly believe, the only way forward once we accept that we are going to die is comedy. Comedy is truly the way, the practice, to hold the fact that all of this is a sham, all of this is an attempt to save our death.

It's just so funny. And what I saw in her final moments were her and her friends laughing in the face of death, and that's what queerness is. Oh, shit. It's actually being able to have other people around you when you're having terminal cancer and finding the camp and circumstance

of like twirling around in a hospital gown. That's a metaphor for everything I'm trying to say about beauty is that despite everything around us, we have the ability to laugh, to crack a joke, to see how silly it is. And that's where the forgiveness and compassion comes in as well. It's so silly that you wasted all your time doing that. So what this version of myself is so invested in is realizing that comedy has been the medicine I was seeking for so long because seriousness didn't deliver the promise in the same way rules didn't deliver the promise

of stability. What comedy allows me to constantly do, what self-deprecation allows me to do, is to just be like, oh, I'm human. It's the micro abrasion of humanity. I'm human, I'm human, I'm human, I'm human. I'm human, I'm human. And Orvis has really been on my mind recently because I'm writing a poem right now to my niece. Orvis was about the same age I am now when I was born. So God works in really intense ways. And now my little niece calls me Masi,

which is Hindi for aunt. And every time she runs around screaming Masi, I just start crying. I run into another room and I'm freaking out because I'm like, I can't be her. You know, I can't do what she did for me. And it's so weird to have the baby look at you as an adult when you look at the baby and you're like, I'm baby too, but I have to be adult for you. And it's terrifying. And it makes me feel her terror and her love because then the question becomes,

how do I become that Masi so that I can be what she was for me? And what I really started to sort of realize is, you know, there's all those narratives about the people we lose. They're not gone. They're just here. But it's so obvious to me now.

It's so obvious to me now that she was preparing me to do this role. There were ways in which she didn't clue me into the work she was doing, she just did it. But I knew that she was doing that work so that I could be free, freer. And now I feel this deep conviction to create a world outside the gender binary

because there's a young person who I don't want to experience that. It's so immediate for me in a way that it wasn't before. And I feel the immediacy of what she was doing in a different way. And it makes me, I think, profoundly grateful that death is the ultimate teacher. It reconfirms for me over and over again,

what are the stakes? I don't think we ask ourselves that question enough. Why am I doing this? What are the stakes? And what I heard in what you were doing, Glennon, talking about your healing was another way of saying, what are the stakes? Because in so many ways, success,

a number of book sales, followers, doesn't fucking matter when you die. What matters when you die is not an audience of people giving you a standing ovation, but you giving yourself a lie down ovation, which is a dignified death. And once I started to recalibrate to there of like, okay, that's all nice and I'm grateful for it,

but my healing is to truly look at the face of death and integrate it into life. That's the ultimate binary that undergirds every other binary of man, woman is life, death. And once you actually de-stigmatize conversations, practices, rituals around death, then you give yourself permission to live. I don't think that more needs to be said.

Look, I have 30 more questions which I'll ask you next time. What else do you want to say right now before we go? If there's nothing you've already said, more beautiful things than I can imagine, but I just don't want to not ask that in case there's anything. What feels important to say now is that we have to become fluent in everything that makes us want to live. I'm seeing so many people, rightfully so,

detail everything that's wrong about the world right now, get apocalyptic about the future of our government, about the future of the world, and I am here with you. And that's not how you continue going. It's just not. The way that you continue going is you notice the beautiful things, the small gestures of kindness.

Those are the things that give you stamina. And what I've started to do now is to create a playlist, not just of music, but of everything I find beautiful, so that when I'm feeling despair and loneliness and alienation, I can go to my beauty playlist and remember someone on the earth once created this movie that moved me in such a profound way. There's no doubt that we're gonna win because something this spectacularly beautiful could not exist otherwise.

Art has been and will forever be my healthcare because it allows me to keep going. I feel so much despair all the time. I thought that the work I was doing in the world would change it quicker, and yet it's still very scary out here for me, and I'm having to deal with very real threats to my life and my safety,

but the beauty is what is keeping me going, not the courage. I hate it when people say, oh, it's your courage, it's your- no, it's my beauty playlist. It's all of us dissenting, by which I mean being beautiful. So I suppose that the thing I want to end on is find your beauty and become a publicist for it.

Represent it everywhere you go. Say, I saw this thing. I listened to this podcast. I had something that touched me, made me feel human and preserve that humanity. Preserve that empathy, preserve that ability to feel everyone's grief and pain. That's what's going to protect us long form. It's like feeding each other right now. Yeah.

Bringing heaven to earth. Cause it's like, Oh, there was this little bit of God I saw. Yeah. I saw God. You want to know about it? Yeah. Oh, look, I love you so much. I just love you and I'm so grateful for you.

And it was funny because Alex, I was like, I'm doing this podcast. I have to prepare it. And I was like, do you really need to prepare it? I was like, you're so right. It's Glenn and I don't need to prepare. I was like, I'm not coming in with my talking points. I'm just going to show up as I am and see what happens. And here we are talking about death.

So it sounds like we did a good job. We like to keep it light as you do a look. Well, we're just gonna keep watching every little thing. Everything you do feels like a bit of a God sighting to me. How and when can people see the short doc? Oh yeah. A look. Well, we're hoping that some distributor buys it and makes it more publicly available.

So hopefully news on that soon. I'm pretty sure that's going to happen in a minute now. Well, and if that changes before this airs, we'll include it. We'll update it. Okay. Come to my couch soon, please. The next time you're in LA. Absolutely. There's Molly's big comfy couch and then there's Glenn's big comfy couch. It's where you belong. And yeah, thanks for reminding us that we can do hard things just beautifully, softly, and with big love. All right, Pod Squad, we'll see you next time,

but it's not gonna be as good as this. Bye. See you soon. So, Pod Squad, at some point during this conversation with Alok, they got kicked off their internet. We are convinced that we just came too close to deciphering the secrets of the universe and the matrix glitched. So Alok got kicked off their internet while they were trying to get back on. The three of us just

kept riffing on what Alok was saying. So here it is. You have the behind the scenes. riffing on what Aloka was saying. So here it is. You have the behind the scenes. Oh, I think maybe Aloka's frozen. We'll get them back. Yeah, they're gonna come back, I'm sure. Great. Yeah, I'm not worried about it at all.

I've never thought of it. Like, if you can figure out the death part, you'll be able to live. That we're all just trying to avoid death. I mean, it's just got to be the biggest truth. I think that's right. It's the truth. And I think what's interesting about this is I

think that I tried to understand what happens after death isn't the question. No, it's just like, am I going to accept that I'm going to die? It's accepting that it's happening. Yeah. And then reverse engineering a more beautiful freer life for yourself after that acceptance.

Cause like, we don't even know what's going on now. That's right. We sure as hell, knowing what's gonna go on next is not gonna fix us. We literally don't have a fucking clue what's going on right now in our life

that we are living right now. It's like the great procrastination. Yes. Is this idea, like, I'm just gonna deal with it later. Yeah, if somebody just tells me what happens after death, I'll be fine. No, that's not it. It's not it, doesn't matter.

We're riffing, we're riffing on the fear of death, Alok. We're just going, we're going down. We're spinning. I'm glad. I think that it was such a real conversation that it actually broke my end. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And so now I'm going to try to hotspot myself on back to my laptop.

Oh, God love you. This is like, it's just really incredible. God works in mysterious ways because this has never happened ever. But of course it happens when we're talking about the realest shit in the world. Just take your time work completely. Yeah, exactly. We're just pondering our fear of death. Jesus.

I'm gonna go try to restart my internet. I'll be right back. Okay, great. Yeah. Maybe that's what I've been telling my therapist. I don't have an issue with the after because I think that that will be fine. That's good. Because I was fine before the now. been telling my therapist, I don't have an issue with the after because I think that that will be fine.

That's good. Because like I was fine before the now. I was fine before then. I think what I'm so afraid of is not fully living. That's good. That's good, baby. Well when you think about a term for death is the great transition, right? That's the ultimate transition.

So like, if you are deeply afraid of the ultimate transition, then you might be someone who's terrified of every small transition. Or if you think that's the great transition, you may not feel a need to transition at any point prior to that. Right. And by the way, P.S., they tell you that. Don't worry about it now. You'll get to transition later during the big transition when we all get to wear flowy

robes and sing and be beautiful together. So you don't have to imagine a world in which you never transition and this is it because any reservation or hesitation or feeling like you're not doing the fullness of life will be taken care of in the great transition of death. Right. Even though Jesus is like I have come so that you can live fully. I think that that's why it's so important to have, I'm thinking of the 40 year old lesbian. You always are.

Always, always am. But like, I know a lot of them are listening. And we had to go through this kind of inquiry when we were in our late teens, early twenties. You did yours later in life. I sure did. And the only option that we really could see that was semi Acceptable. I mean it wasn't accepted culturally but that there was a little faction was just being a lesbian

Mm-hmm and Now there's so many more options I find myself Thinking Now there's so many more options. I find myself Thinking Had there been the other option then I say this to you a lot. I'm sure that I would be non-binary I mean, of course, I'm non-binary, but I don't like I'm not like I'm non-binary I say I'm more lesbian, but I just think I wonder if there's just more inquiry to be done around that Well, that's why queer is just more inquiry to be done around that. Well, that's why queer is just such a great fucking word

and I'm so grateful for it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 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.

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