We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - Why "We Never Fight" is a Red Flag: How to Fight Well with Priya Parker

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

What if the secret to stronger relationships isn’t avoiding conflict—but learning how to do it well? Conflict resolution expert and bestselling author Priya Parker joins us to teach us how to fight with more courage, clarity, and love—and how to know which relationships are actually worth the fight. - Why “we never fight” can be a warning sign, not a relationship goal - The difference between unhealthy peace and healthy heat - How to know when to confront, when to let go, and when to walk away - The simple rule that can make a hard conversation easier to hear: name the behavior, not the person - Why the relationships with the most depth often require some heat—and why fighting well can bring us closer For more, listen to:  256. How to Host a Magical Gathering with Priya Parker 163. How to Make Wrongs Right with Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg About Priya:  PRIYA PARKER is a facilitator, strategic advisor, and acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. Trained in the field of conflict resolution, Parker has worked on race relations on American college campuses and on peace processes in the Arab world, southern Africa, and India. She studied organizational design at MIT, public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and political and social thought at the University of Virginia.  Her new book THE ART OF FIGHTING: The Transformative Power of Conflict is available now.  Follow We Can Do Hard Things on:  Instagram — ⁠https://www.instagram.com/wecandohardthings⁠

Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Today we have with us a teacher who is going to help us do one of the hardest things, which is learn how to fight effectively, well, and with love. Priya Parker is a facilitator, strategic advisor, and acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering, how we meet and why it matters. trained in the field of conflict resolution Parker has worked on race relations in American college campuses and on peace processes in the Arab world, Southern Africa, and India. She studied organizational design at MIT, public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and political and social thought at the University of Virginia. Also my major, PST buddies for life at the University of Virginia. Pira was three years after me, but PST forever. I thought you were gender studies. I was a double major political, social thought and studies of women and gender.

But anyway, this isn't about me. This is about Pierre, but I'm just saying the PST and me sees the PSD in her. Is it any surprise that you're a double major of, just say it again? Political and social thought, and then the other one was studies of women and gender with a minor in Español. You're the only person I know who like really literally uses their major every day. Okay, her new book, The Art of Fighting, The Transformative Power of Conflict, is available now. And holy shit, do we need this book right now. Welcome, Priya Parker.

Priya Parker! So excited. Oh my gosh. Let's get into a big fight. Let's get into a big fight right now. Let's get it on. Actually, Glennon, when I first met you in the flesh and we were part of that together, live tour, the warm-up, the on-stage walk-on song was pink's like, let's get into a fight.

Isn't that wild? I really love fighting, Priya. But the frequency of that song, like, is exactly the right frequency, because it's not fear and it's not avoidance, but it's fun and joyful and kind of, you know, spicy. Let's get in it. Anyway, seeing you reminded me of it. Well, I don't know how you always figure out exactly what to be writing so that it lands at the exact right time in the world. But teaching people how to fight effectively and with love and with intention seems to be exactly what we need right now.

And you're the person that we need to teach us. So let's start with this. you open your book with a story about being at your grandfather's funeral and the minister said was explaining the marriage that your grandfather had and the minister said something like oh and those two they never fought they just never fought and the minister meant it as a compliment but your stepmother turned to you and said oh dear tell us why what was in that, oh dear, why did she say it? My stepmother, a wise woman, was worried that I would take the wrong message and that health is not fighting. And what she wanted to make sure I knew, by the way,

she was very cognizant that she was in a second marriage to my father, that fighting is actually healthy. The right type of fighting is healthy. And that if, in fact, 50 years of marriage, as the minister said, Ruth and Lyle Parker never fought, that is not necessarily a sign of health. And that relationships, my parents, and she knew this, my parents divorced when my parents separated, everyone was shocked because they, too, never fought. And part of what she was just in her, you know, she said one word, two words, right? Oh, dear.

and I was 16 years old, and I was so surprised. And, you know, many years later, I'm so grateful. She just sort of whispered a little bit of a flick in the ear. Be careful of this narrative. If two people never fight with each other, what might that be a sign of? Unhealthy peace. Unhealthy peace. Avoidance, not having enough safety or trust to say the thing. an inability to do the hard thing. And so much of what I, and I think so many of us see in popular culture is what I would call unhealthy heat, right? Or abuse, dominance, insulting, trying to destroy the other person. That is not good.

but the opposite of unhealthy heat is not quiet or unhealthy peace. It's actually inviting something that is not taught or often even seen in our culture, which is what I call healthy heat. I love your healthy heat. It is such a beautiful way to understand and like really see what we're going through right now in the world and in our relationships and in our communities. And you say something that I just want to say out loud for the Pod Squad. Everyone wants a village, but no one knows how to be a villager.

And your book to me explains that we don't know how to be villagers because we don't know how to handle that healthy heat of conflict. That it's this conflict is not like a bump in the road that, ooh, is regrettable. in every relationship, but it's actually at the center of every meaningful relationship in which you can either move away and not say what you're thinking and write people off in your head and become alienated from them, or you can clear what is blocking that connection and move toward them. And I think the heat is so helpful to me because it's like you're getting something out of the oven. It's like we feel the heat and we just reflexively let go and we exit before we can

engage and what your work is doing right now, which feels like so vital that it feels like one of the most important things we can be thinking about and diving into is that you teach us the ovenment. The way to, you know, hold the heat without letting go, without burning ourselves, without shattering the dish, which is what we do to our communities and our relationships and our organizations is either we get burned or we shatter the dish and we walk away. And that is why we're lonely. We want to belong so badly, but we're so lonely because we don't know how to be villagers. And the oven is hot.

It's hot. It's so hot in there. You need the oven to cook the dish. But you don't grab it with your bare hands, you put a mitt on. Yes. And you don't say, oh, well, I'm only going to. make cold food for the rest of my life. We're eating cold food. That's what we're doing.

We're eating cold food. Or we're not eating at all. Yes. We long for community. We long for a bar or a barbershop or a bodega where everyone knows our name. And yet we're not taught. I mean, you see memes of friend groups, right, being texted around going viral for all buying, you know, houses on the same cul-de-sac together. And yet so much in our popular culture is, only focused on assuming that everything's fun and easy. Yeah. And we're not actually taught that friction is actually formative.

And groups and communities and friends of all types actually can't form. They can't figure out who they are without a fight. Who are we? How do we want to do this? If we are sharing cul-de-sac, are we sending our kids into each other's homes? Are there moments where we actually don't? don't want that. Are we borrowing onions without being announcing? Is that the essence of community? Or is that actually kind of annoying? And I don't want you to do that. It's not as complex as we often

think about as reckonings. It's actually a difference and conflict exists in every human relationship. Yeah. And when we're not taught the tools, so much of our apps, so much of even therapy, are teaching us boundary drawing, which is helpful. But we also need the other side, which is connection forging. Yes. Priya, did we overdo it with the boundaries? This is, I feel like what I love about your work in this book and why I hope everyone reads it and gets into this is that it is so nuanced. We did this binary of like either, no offense, but like, I'm in Alonon, so I'm all for this sort of vibe, but like either you let them, you go dead inside, just let everybody do whatever they want to do, or you cut all ties, you go no contact. You're these two binaries, which is like,

Two elements of actually distance. Distancing. And then we wonder why we're lonely because we have this binary and you're giving us the wrestling match in the middle, which is how we get close. But first we have to decide whether we even need a conflict. This is what I love. You said, how do you fight with those to whom you want to belong? Start with that. Not all conflicts are meant to be faced. Right. I'm not saying everyone should fight more. Some people, I'm saying we should. should fight better. And in some cases, we are having fights that we should actually just sort of let it be. They're not worth the fight. They're not worth facing it, not because of conflict aversion,

but because the fight is revealing. Can I give a simple example? Please. This was in a like a co-op building in New York City. So sort of all of the families, you know, live on multiple floors. And there's these two couples and they had kids at the same time as often happens, not planned, but at the same time. And then two or years later, they each had second kids basically at the same time. And so in a lot of ways, they were sort of parallel tracking. And while the kids were young, they'd exchange texts and help, you know, are you using the cried out method? Are you using that snot thing and sucking it out of their nose? Yes. The answer is yes. Use that thing. And as the kids started getting older, they were able to basically move in and out of each other's homes, right? Five, six,

seven years old. And they started having play dates is probably too structured. They just went in and out of each of those homes. And the mother, one mother of the one of the couples, as they were picking them up, was surprised to see in the other home that a number of the kids were running around naked. And she was just sort of startled. And she thought, okay, is like, is this what we're doing here? Is this okay? Is this healthy? Is this not?

She actually didn't totally know. But she noticed a little, you know, you feel that sort of like the charge. And I don't know exactly if it was on that play date or another one. She kind of took aside and it was the father in that case, the other family happened to be home and said, hey, I just wanted to check in here. Are we allowing naked playdates? And he leans out and says, what do you mean? And she says, well, if we are, I noticed the last time I was here, a bunch of the kids

were just stripping down and running around. And he was getting sort of, he recoiling as she was speaking. And she said, I just thought, you know, we should sort of talk about it. Like what if we are, they're now old enough where, and you know, you can hear her like grappling, you know, finding the language. If we are letting our kids into each other's homes, like, what does that mean? Is there someone always home? Is the door open or closed?

And he just sort of like kept on recoiling, not engaging. And she finally was like, I just think we should talk about it. if we're raising our kids together. And he said, we are not raising our kids together. Mm-hmm. Okay. Revealing. Right. Revealing.

And for that parent, the mother, she's like, okay, this is interesting. This for me, right again, nothing to do with him. Do I want to continue, maybe the type of relationship we had for the first five years, worked because of the needs of the children and the parents? and maybe we're not necessarily on the same page for the next five years. Now she has some choices. In that case, to me, it's like, it's revealing. Yeah.

And so maybe less playdates. Yeah. Or at least I know what we're doing here. And I know what we are to each other. And I feel like we're very acclimated to the like DTR, the define the relationship in coupledom, but truly in any meaningful relationship, you should be doing the DTR with your friends, with your community, with the people that, to find out, what is it you're doing here? Are we raising our kids together?

Yeah. Are we? Are we not? Right. And sometimes it can be an explicit DTR. But what I learned as I was researching for the art of fighting is that there's actually so many studies on groups, on group life. And one of the most formative studies, it came out in the 50s, it was a very important.

by a researcher named Bruce Tuckman. And one of the things he found was that a group cannot become a group without what he called a storm. What are we to each other? Are we a community? Are we raising our kids together? Are we not? That's actually a sign of progression.

And it's to become a group, you form, you kind of come together. Maybe you have a trivia night one time. And then you have a trivia night six times and nine times. People keep coming back together. They're like, oh, you maybe have a nickname for the group. Huh, right? The slackers. and making this up, right? And then one day, two of the folks in the trivia group realize they have it at the

same bar, right? It's starting to form. It's starting to form. This is so fun. This is so great. Wow. Wow, I'm really part of something here. And then one day, two of the members decide to get sober. Hmm. Hmm. And they start going on a journey and they start realizing, oh, for now, I don't want to be in a bar as my regular Tuesday night effect. There's only five members. right? It invites the storm. What are we? Yeah. Are we a trivia group? Is it this bar? Are we just six strangers that keep coming together, but we're actually not much to each other? It's inherent in the ecosystem and the ecology of a group to form you have to storm. And then those who come through the storm to use Chuckman's language, norm, what are we to each other? Let's agree. And then perform. And then

eventually adjourn. Groups also end. And they might. And one of the things I loved so much is like the idea that, okay, when do we need to fight? When do we want to fight? When do we know it's worth a fight? And fight just meaning confronting something, asking questions about behavior or why, who are we to each other? It's called relational longing. Okay, so. I love so much that you're picking up on this. This is so beautiful. This is why, you know, when Abby and I came together and I was more like always bringing things up and she was never bringing things up. And she was never bringing things. things up because she was taught that love is just no conflict. And I always felt like, no, love is like constantly wrestling to get to a shared understanding. I, inside of me had a relational longing that you call, which is, okay, Pod Squad, listen to this. We don't fight because we hate each other and want nothing to do with each other anymore. We fight because we are yearning to be in relationship with each other still, perhaps just not in the form of the relationship we're currently in. When that's no longer true, we don't fight, we leave.

Where there is strong feelings, there is energy. Energy is easier to work with an apathy because there's a there there. This is from Priya's book. So what I think is so simple and beautiful about this is we know we should fight if we feel a longing to be in relationship with that person, but differently. If somebody's doing some shit we don't like and we don't long to be in relationship with them, bye, right? Yes. But the yearning for closer relationship or more aligned relationship is the signal to us, correct? Yes. That we should engage in conflict. Pay attention to the tension. I learned this term relational longing. I actually think she kind of,

like, first said it on our interview. So for the art of fighting, I spent time with three types of groups. Individuals who's profession is fighting. So Confor-Gresolution facilitators, restorative justice practitioners, lawyers. And then a group of people who are in conflict, and those are my characters. So a Tyco drumming circle, a Boy Scout troop, a church deciding in the 90s, whether or not to allow for gay marriage. And then the third category is people who study conflict. And Saitou Nair is a facilitator.

And she on a call with me while she was describing this amazing work she did with a local government agency that had erupted into a flag war between Black Lives Matter flags and Blue Lives Matter flags, she was telling me the work she did with them. And she said, at the center of what I do, I know that there is hope if I can help a group tap into their relational longing. And she said, the relational longing is the residual, even underneath the mad, the hurt. the upset underneath, if you can still almost tap into this river below of still of a residual desire for connection. Makes so much sense just on a practical level. It's like the quality of the conflict you're talking about because there are some conflicts that are so worthy that it's just clear that they're the ultimate compliment.

It's like an investment in a possibility that doesn't. yet exist, but something you treasure so much that you're willing to put in the effort to see if it can exist. And then there is a quality of conflict that can be just like someone bringing you garbage. So like how do you tell if you're, I mean, most of us are what we would call conflict diverse. I just can't handle it. I just can't handle it. And you're saying, no, it's a skill. The reason you can't handle it is you haven't learned the skills, the tactical things you need to learn to equip yourself to handle it. So I'm wondering both from the perspective of if I'm someone who feels that kind of churning

in me and I'm trying to figure out, oh God, do I stay quote unquote safe by not bringing this up or am I brave enough to risk saying something? And if someone brings something to me, how do I tell whether it's like disregarded, it's garbage or there is some kind of compliment of investment being offered to me. Whether you're conflict avoidant or conflict seeking, just because someone likes to fight, doesn't mean they're good at it. That's for sure correct. Right?

So just like, you know, just because it's the conflict aversion is just sort of is unhealthy peace. But conflict seeking can also be unhealthy heat. Yeah. We all need to learn these skills. Priya, you should use abbe and I as an example of. that at some point in the world because we've decided as a couple that I always know when there should be a conflict. I know when we should go and I do not know how. I should never do it. I should never,

ever do it. Like I should bring it to Abby, not go with my instincts, and then she will believe me that we should engage in some sort of conflict, but she as a brilliant leader will lead us through the how. That's awesome. I often joke. Like there's often a conflict seeking and a conflict avoidant person. and they're often married to each other. You know, one's like chasing the other one around the room proverbially, you know? Like, fight with me, fight with me, fight. So you know, literally, Priya, sometimes. When I talk about unhealthy heat, I am also, like, I am not talking about abuse.

I am not talking about domination. Like, there is no space for that in any of what we're talking about. This is what I, like, healthy heat. And I loved your question, Amanda. So, first of all, one of the books that really informed this book is called Unrepentation. And Repair by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. Beautiful book. We have an episode on that.

Go back and check it. We'll link it in the notes to this. So you can refer to it. I'm so happy. So one of the things she says, just to kind of like get it out there is we all cause harm. We all experience harm and we all witness harm. There are not harmers and non-harmers. There's not harmed and non-harmed.

And that is actually, it's sort of a relief. So as you're listening to us, like Amanda, I loved your question, both how do you know if you're the one wanting to say something, but also what if you're on the receiving end, right, of the facing? So if you, I have actually, I opened the book to this because I actually have questions of how do you decide whether or not to face? Can I just read some of those? A lot of the art of fighting is actually about inviting discernment, curiosity. What's happening here? What's happening with me? what is it that I want this to be? Do I believe I can alter it by doing something? So here are questions

to decide whether to face or not. Can I continue to engage meaningfully without facing? Do I care enough about this relationship or group to take this on? Do I still have longing for this relationship or group? Is this conflict touching on a core value of mine? And does the group or the community or the relationship need to reflect those values for me to be a part of it. This came up. I wrote about a group of girlfriends in The Art of Fighting who were friends for 30 years. They grew up in a rural town in North Carolina. They've been friends since kindergarten. They're now in their 30s and 40s. The late entry joined in sixth grade. And over the pandemic, as this happened in many groups, there was an unspoken internal reckoning in which they got onto a Zoom happy hour like so many did during the

pandemic. And within a few minutes, they basically multiple people said things that kind of shocked and horrified the other side about the pandemic, like it's fake or it's overblown about those quote unquote dangerous protests in those dangerous cities, half of whom had been on the streets. By the way, these are all white women, majority, except for one woman. One of them DM'd me on Instagram. When you research for a book, a lot, I said, anybody have a group fight and DM me. And she slid into my DMs and she said, I do. And I ended up talking to half of the group to sort of understand what was happening. And the core question that at least four of them have to answer, they had gone on a journey.

They had gone on a progressive journey. They had gone on a racial, they had developed racial awareness. They lived in cities where white wasn't necessarily the normal or ubiquitous thing. Like they had changed and been altered. And yet they loved their childhood friends. But they were also kind of horrified by some of their beliefs. And they had to really reckon with a question that so many of us do, which is, is this conflict touching on a core value of mine? And then the second thing that they really had to think about,

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What I loved about that example in the book, Priya, is that it opened up this third way where it wasn't like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. One of the women reached out to one of the women who had been basically insulted, you know, on the call and said, I saw that. It's not okay. I'm sorry. Do you want to connect? And it ended up being that like, you know, half of the group really, really, really. reconnected in a very meaningful way together and they took it forward. So instead of having, you know, a wide but shallow set of relationships, they had a narrower but deeper set. And so

that sometimes feels like the choice you have to make. And that you don't have to have the same relationship with everybody. Right. And even in a group, you don't, everyone doesn't have to be equally close. I sometimes work with intergenerational families. And real example, a second generation aunt, elder came to me and said, it's so terrible, like we are all in cliques in our family. I wish we would all just get along. And what I said to her was, it is totally normal and in fact healthy to have different textures of relationships within the families. It's if there's so much distance and there's antagonism between the clicks. But having proximity and distance across different people is not a bad thing. It's totally normal. It actually, those cross ties strengthen the

group. And so part of what happened in this group and this friend circle was four of them got on Zoom with me. And they were really grappling. It was the heartache, right? It was the relational longing. And at some level, they realized one of the women that she said to me is, I keep thinking about should I face that woman or not, my friend for 30 years, who will literally fly across the country for me. when I have surgery, but I'm also like, can't understand how she's reacting to this pandemic. The first conflict is within me. Loyalty, right, versus alignment. I'm loyal to her.

She would literally, like, stand up in front of traffic for me. But some of her beliefs are actually affecting a different part of me. And so she went through these questions and to continue the list, knowing conflict arises in every group, are these the people I want to be in a mess with? So another thing is we tend to run away and it's like, ah, this is a dysfunctional group or when people call me, they're like, I'm sorry, we're so dysfunctional. I'm like, it's not dysfunction, right? So the relevance is coming up, heat is coming up.

And so you go to another group. If you say long enough, they'll be a mess. So is it with these people or is someone else? Is the conflict making the group worse? How might not facing hurt the group? Can I imagine vibrancy in this group in a different form? Do I think that by saying something I could alter the situation? That's important.

This is also actually core conflict theory. Lewis Kreisberg, one of the fathers of contract resolution, he doesn't say it like this, but this is basically one of the four indicators of whether or not conflict can create change. Will I regret not trying? And counterintuitively, you're all going to love this. Do I want to be closer to this person? Yeah, that's good. Yeah.

Yeah. And when you say, can I continue to engage meaningfully, like when I'm imagining that group, the pandemic group that you're describing, and some of them are like, there's no pandemic and are completely unrace aware, you know, all of that. I'm thinking, do you mean can I show up to this group and still be embodied and say what I need to say? Because if I were in that group, yeah. The only way for me to stay would be to completely disembodied. To not say, are you freaking kidding me? So is that part of it that in order to stay in a group meaningfully, we have to be able to say what comes up in real time and stay embodied and not dissociate? I'm not a therapist. And I use the word meaningfully purposefully.

Okay. Because meaning is relative. meaning what's meaningful to you might mean I need to say the thing in the moment because this is what I know is going to keep me healthy. And therefore, for me, authentic meaningful connection means that that needs to be true. Otherwise, I'm destroying part of myself. For someone else, it might be, this becomes my dancing group. I go out dancing with these friends.

I go play soccer with them. I don't need to have meaningful. That's not what they're there for. One of the things that the friend who called, who texted and said, oh, my gosh, that was not okay, I saw that. And I'm so sorry. It was actually a racialized comment. And it was a white woman texting the only Mexican-American in the group. It was her birthday.

It was the Mexican-American girl's woman's birthday. And someone jokingly had said, she said, I can't be here very long on the Zoom. I need to go. And one of the other women said, oh, is it a tacos and tequila party? Jesus. And in her head, and she told me this in the interview, like, She was like, this shit again? Like this shit again?

And she left. And that's when her friend texted her and said, I'm so sorry. Like my heart fell into my stomach. That was not okay. And what that woman was doing, her friend was doing, is she was providing for the first time her friend, what I call a meter check. She was being an anti-gaslighter.

So if everyone in a group basically pretends something else isn't happening, or frankly just doesn't see it, right? And racially diverse groups and religious diverse groups, sometimes we actually are truly missing each other. We don't realize it. She was actually saying, hey, the term gaslight came, it got popularized actually in the first Trump election. I went back and looked at sort of the genealogy of it. But it came from a play in 1924. There's a play called Gaslight.

And it was about, I mean, it was terrible. It was about a man who was literally slowly driving his wife crazy by pretending to flicker the lamp on and off, on and off, on and off. And every time she'd say, do you see that? He'd say, no. And so I asked, and I asked, like, if we continue this metaphor, what is this friend doing? And if we update our gaslight to the modern electrical age, she's providing a meter check.

She's going in and she's actually seeing, is there gas in this lamp? Look, there's gas in this lamp. I mean, this is the meter check. The meter says there's whatever, 50% full. And so by saying, hey, that was not okay. For the first time, the Mexican-American friend was like, oh, my gosh.

By the way, she's gone on a journey, as all of us do. She moved to a new city. She had therapy. She started realizing that the comments that they used to all tease each other. She was the different one. This is what she said to me. Some of the jokes, the way they'd tease her were about being Mexican, but everyone else was teased also in other ways.

And part of it was like, what am I going to say? I've never said anything. Now for the first time in 30 years, I'm going to say something. It's like, wow, you've changed. All of a sudden, you've gotten sensitive. And so when her friend texted proactively, it was actually, One of the most healing moments for her. Oh, someone else is seeing this.

I have a question about one of the ways that you talk about unhealthy peace is, you know, not saying the thing we're thinking, toxic politeness, that kind of vibe of, you know, I am holding this in the back of my head, but I'm not bringing it forward. It feels like often. So, for example, in that example you just said, someone says something that's, not acceptable. And if you said something in that moment, because if I'm the woman who received that text after, part of me is like, why the hell didn't you say that in the moment? Why are you texting me after? Fair. Exactly. So one of the problems that we have is that like so-and-so says

something, then if I were to say, what are you talking about? I am the one bringing the conflict, right? Totally. But if I am being toxicly polite, that I'm not saying something. So in some ways, it's like we have to re-understand conflict as reinterpreting who is the origin of it. Because responding to a conflict, the person who brought the conflict was the person who made that unacceptable comment. I'm just responding to it.

I'm not bringing the conflict because I am addressing the conflict you've brought. Correct. Talk to us about like kind of a license to, and I feel like that over. our entire political world right now, where some people might say something that is deeply offensive to us. If we respond to that, we always have to make things full of conflict. But the person who says whatever the hell they want whenever they want to is never the one being accused of bringing conflict. Amen. The taco and tequila comment in a way is what in the book I call a triggering event. So something happens in a group. And yes, to your point, like,

somebody says something, somebody does something that is not okay, but there's an observable witnessed moment. And then there's a tear is what I call it. There's a tear. Right. And then there's a moment where you have to decide, do I face or not face? Right. Do I say something or not say something? Do I want to? Is this the group? One of the questions that those women said is, do I want to be in a mess with this group? Part of it was like, not really. So part of what they kind of went through was like, actually, this is making me realize that I'm actually not as close to them anymore. They really are my childhood friends. And if I want to use my limited labor, I'm also a mom, I'm also a working person.

Actually, and I have a limited amount of juice, maybe I want to take that to my current colleague, right, who said something. And that's actually where I want to really focus and have a generative, right? Do I want to continue having this relationship with somebody? So that's the first thing I'd say. And then I also think you're part of what I hear under your question is about is a question about power dynamics, right? So it's like the uncle who in a family Thanksgiving that's always saying this is like right poking the bear or saying stuff and everyone's just like not sure what to do and freezes.

And I have an example in the book. It's actually a family. It's a woman who came to me years ago who had been part of a Passover Seder in her family. for decades. And as a child, as she told me, it was one of the most meaningful. It was the way the family sort of clung together,

multiple generations. Her grandmother was a Holocaust survivor. It was the way they came together. They come together three days. They would eat and cook. When, she said, and it was also, it was like so many of our families, whatever culture you're from,

whether it's Thanksgiving or whether it's Passover, whether it's Easter, these family moments actually hold so much more. They become the moments were sort of metabolizing and witnessing. Like, what are we? Who are the parkers now? We have all these new in-laws.

Like, what does it mean to be us? And one of the moments at the Passover, she said, you know, when a niece came and brought her new fiancé and her chair fell and he didn't instinctively go to catch it, everyone there knew that the relationship was over. Like, all of these things are witnessed, right? And we all have this. Like, forget the exact cultural specificity. And this one woman, she came to me, we were on a Zoom and she started crying.

And she said over the last decade, it's what was so much joy and binding has become like very painful. I don't like going anymore. We have within our family such deep political disagreement. I get sick every time. My kids get sick every time. There's like animosity between family members. And then the pandemic hit, which gave them actually all a break. They couldn't gather.

And in that case, she came to me and I was taking the call and I was on Zoom. And I was on Zoom and she just went silent. And I like toggled back to look at her because I was taking notes and she was crying. And she said, I'm so sorry. I'm crying. And I said, no, no, no, don't apologize. Crying is actually is the relational longing. And she said, I wish I didn't care so much.

Right? You can just feel it right here. But I do. Like, what do I do? I'm stuck. And what she? ended up doing to go back to the it's not I'm not the conflict creator someone else is behaving this way is in a family and in all groups there are power dynamics there is hierarchy and so the first

things you did there's also often punishment maybe not on the zoom call within friends but in a workplace or in a family when someone says the thing at the table there may be even more blowback right sometimes conflict aversion is wisdom yes this is this is nuanced this is complex but part of what i had her first do was go i said are Are there any, is there anyone else? Let's just focus on this structure of the family gathering. Do you think there's anyone else who also is kind of over it, over this form of it? It does not want to come. And then she's like, oh, yeah, well, this cousin hasn't come for years.

And these three cousins are definitely on the fence. And I was like, well, there are your allies. There you go. Yes, I love that. There are your allies. And part of the art of fighting is like, it's not what you would do in that room or what don't you do in the room. Fortunately, relationships are a dynamic.

and you often get more chances to practice. It's actually an invitation to zoom out and ask what facilitators ask is, what is the need here? Yes. What is the need for this family in this moment? And part of what she ended up doing is working with her other cousins to stage a coup,

no, to ask, is this still the form we actually want to meet in? And years later, when I checked in with her, she said, you know, part of the grief I was feeling was an internal conflict with my own Jewishness. And this was the forcing mechanism. Passover Seder, it was just what we do, was kind of the moment for three days a year.

That was the form I was wrestling with my Jewishness. And so she went on a journey, and it doesn't mean throw them away. No, no, no, no. We should not be cutting off our families forever. Families also lineages deeply matter. But every group and family that overtime changes and to become cognizant that these transition moments are moments of danger, but also deep opportunity.

The need is so huge. And that I feel like underlies so much of your work, both in gathering and conflict, is discerning the need. Like what is the real need here? that is kind of one of the main mistakes that you identify is that people jump super quickly or like latch on to what they think it is. So maybe it's the do we or do we not do Passover as a family. But that is kind of just not even the most important need.

It's the wrong question. Right. So how talk us through discerning the need and like when you have that thing that pops up, how to figure out the thing that's six levels under that, that is the thing you actually need to be talking about. There's actually a term for it, and it's called ritual asking. And part of the invitation of this book, I don't think everyone should become a facilitator, like a specialized facilitator. I actually think facilitation skills are human skills. This shouldn't be a specialized field. Yes, for super complex stuff, great. In the same way,

we teach people to write and read, we should teach people how to actually fight, how to hold a fight, how to repair, how to apologize, how to discern what is the need here. And so during 2020, there was a lot of reckonings, you may have heard in organizations and families in all sorts of religious institutions. And I was a facilitator that was called in, like many of my peers, to do some of that repair work. And it was on Zoom, right? So 50 squares, 80 squares, people can just hit a red button and leave. Like, we had to learn new skills. How do we actually host this? And I got on to the phone. So the first thing is, just like with the art of gathering, 90% of the success of the facing happens before the facing. Yes. This is a big theme that like we think there's a problem

and our first instinct is get everyone together and talk about it. And that is can come from a brave place, the people who are willing to do that. But you're like, stop the training cases of emergency. Sometimes you can make it 10 times worse. So do the work. So what are you supposed to do? slow down. Slow down. Don't just dive in. Chapter three is called Not So Fast. No running near the pool. Not so fast. So chapter two, I'm like, people were avoiding, we're avoiding, we're avoiding. And then on these calls, I finally get someone to face it. Then chapter three is like, great, let's host a Zoom on Monday. And it's like, no, no, no, no, slow down, slow down, slow down. First, you know to figure out what is happening here. What is this about? What is the need? And so the ritual asking is, what is the is asking over and over again to yourself and if possible to others who are, you know, had care and a part of this? What is the need of this group right now? What is the need? Not of the individual person. What is happening? If you kind of zoom out, there is an English law firm that was like 30 years old and they were trying to diversify like many firms. And one of the things they were.

realize was people don't always say the thing. So they created a Slack channel. This is super interesting. They created a Slack channel called Elephant in the Zoom. Those English. They're so clever. So clever. So witty. And the idea was if you have a question that you feel like you either don't know the answer to, but also like you kind of want to say it, put it in here. And again, does this work? Does this not work? Do people actually use it? All great questions. New intern came and happened to be joining the week of the World Cup in 2022. This person was queer and young and a totally different generation than many of the other people and knew the World Cup was happening, you know, doing his work and was like shocked and like really stunned that half of the people

in the firm were wearing English football shirts that during the game they rolled out TVs and everyone stopped working and watched the World Cup. And he's like, what the heck is going on? Like in, in his mind in a country, it was in Qatar that bans homosexuality and with all of these human rights, like, okay, fine, it's happening. We're going to pause work to watch this. Puts it into the slack. Maybe we could think about whether or not we watch the World Cup, given all of the human rights abuses in Qatar, right? Thinks, oh, let me just say the thing. Dear reader, it did not go well. What they didn't understand what's happening is they triggered a deep cultural trip wire in the firm that no one would have said if you had said what matters here.

And it grows into this confrontation first with somebody who's pulling in the TV. And then it grows and grows and grows. And then three days later, and I'll slow it down a second because this is like all of the dynamics come up. The partners here, but they don't know about it because they're not on slack, right? The older generation is often not on these communication channels. Sees the comment on their assistant's phone because the assistant puts it in front of their face. And then knee jerk, like comes from a good place.

Well, let's get everyone together about and talk about it. Sends out a company-wide email with a calendar hold saying, world cup, colon, what do we think? And by the way, you may be like, this is extreme. It's not. It's just a work version of like, let's get everyone together and talk about it. What can't? And the mental model of that partner was, I'm a founder here. We've always gotten together around the table and just sort of this out.

And actually, he didn't realize his power. Right. Or how much weight that was putting on the intern. And it was the wrong question. What do we think about it? What do we think is a really big question? It's too big. With a million different answers.

It's asking the wrong people. Who cares what everybody thinks? This actually isn't a democracy. And it was the wrong question. And I want to fast forward to, you know, if I was advising them, what the right question is. And it's, this is a complicated thing. So we can say, ha, ha, ha, those, you know, those people who knee-jerked house of the Zoom. And on the Zoom, like the loudest person spoke first.

It was half hybrid, half Zoom. The first person who spoke was not a person trying to create context. Not everyone had the same story. Some people are like, why am I calling into the Zoom? Right. It actually created more of a mess. And the question they should have asked. is what's happening here? What is the need here for us as a firm? And by the way, leaders should be

asking this. What is the need here? What is actually the need here? Why is this happening? And the question underneath is, if we say we want to bring people who are different from us, what do we do with our most beloved rituals when they exclude the people we're trying to attract? That's an interesting question. That's a question that every group, every company, every institution, every church who's trying to bring in new members faces. That's a universal question. That's what I call a worthy grapple. And not everyone should answer that question. Let's bring it to family. Because I think when we go smaller, we can see it. Yeah. And, you know, let's say one of the things I love about the book is that If I am in a family and I am feeling a major conflict, let's say every time we get together,

my mother mistreats my father in a way that hurts me and makes me feel like it's setting a bad example for my children. There's a behavior in the family that I feel is hurtful and harmful. and I also feel a deep relational longing for my family to be gathered. It's a beautiful example and deeply relatable, I think, to many people. Right. So let's say that this behavior has been going on since I was a child, right? But suddenly I have the consciousness and I'm a parent, so I have a responsibility to the next generation. And it's so fascinating because it became clear when I was reading that when this imagining, person is considering confronting the mother about this behavior. The question is underneath is,

who are we as a family? Are we a group who decides it's important that we all treat each other kindly? The daughter is thinking that. It is important to me. What do we allow here? What do we allow? But the mother is thinking a family is something maybe where the old guard rules and the young guard, part of this is allowance for to wrestle forward, to allow conflict to the future. To wrestle forward. Beautiful. To allow like the old guards of things, part of cultures being we allow confrontation from the latest generation. We want that so we can grow forward. Let's take that micro example. We are in a family. The grown daughter has,

identified behavior in the mother that she does not think she can allow anymore in the family. How does she put on her oven mitt? What preparation does she do before and how does she confront? This is beautiful. So I would start with a set of questions. And so much of the art of fighting is I want to make you a better question askers. So here are some of the questions. The first is because at some level, again, that reckoning is starting within her, right? Esther Poretti. our shared friend recently said, the biggest moments in any family's life is the entrance of a new member and the exit of a member. And part of what that woman, the mother is happening to her, meaning the daughter, right, the daughter who now is a mother is with the entrance of the daughter,

of her own daughter, she now has a witness. And part of what's happening is she is now part of a lineage and what's happening within her are these questions that, by the way, we all have. What is it from my lineage that I want to pass through? And what stops here? That's true. There's a woman I know, Jennifer E. Nello, she's an amazing coach. And she says, our work here is to expand our range of options. So what I would want to say to her is I want to expand her range of options of the choices she can make in that moment. All of the work of the art of fighting is expand our range of options, expand our geography of possibility of what she could do both within her and then within her own her lineage. And I'll just give a couple of different

examples. I'm not judging them right or wrong, but expanding our range of options. One is the Inoculation theory, which is I'm going to talk to my children about what is happening here and discuss it with them and talk to them about that's not what we do. That is the pattern that I've seen for 50 years. It causes me deep pain. It's not okay. And I may talk to grandma on the side, but I want you to know that this is not how we family. Right?

meaning you inoculate. By the way, this is, it may not be that, but we all should be doing that. I'm not trying to be tongue and cheek about this, but when you were talking, an example came up that went recently viral about the Oreos in the school. Did you see this?

Oh, yes. Did you see this? Can I go there for a second? Yes, please, Oreo Gate. Okay, please. So I'm gonna pause and I'm gonna say with a very large asterisk, I'm not comparing these two situations

in terms of their severity or sincerity. severity or sincerity. But in terms of inoculation, so there was this group chat, a parent and a mother, was on a group chat with other mothers in her school. And someone came on the group chat

and said, can you please stop sending Oreos and you're with your kids' school lunch because I don't give my daughter Oreos and she's coming home crying every day. And one of the other mothers, to her credit, said, wait,

something like, I should probably read it. Wait, what? Like, what's, I don't understand what? You're asking me to change what I send my daughter to school? And she's like, I don't understand. And then the other person, the woman who first asked for it, is like, I don't understand why, why don't, why don't, why don't, you know, it's so important.

I don't want to get it wrong. Why can't you respect? She was like, why can't you respect the way I want to parent my daughter? And they're like, come now? And they're like, we each get to bring what we want to lunch. And she's like, well, I don't understand why you wouldn't do this. They're excluding my daughter. And they're like, no, no, no, no.

We're not excluding your daughter. So then the woman goes to the school. And the school then sends out an email and says, could we please think about possibly packing healthy lunches? But it doesn't say no Oreos. So then they go back and say, I can't believe you went to the school. And she said, well, I actually think we should have some agreements here. It's gone totally viral.

And I think a lot of people are hating on the mom saying, don't bring Oreos. There's two elements here. One is inoculation theory. We all are raising our children in a culture in some way that we disagree with. Double stuff's abound. And so part of the parenting is to teach your child resilience and that we have these values and you're going to go enter into a world where people have all sorts of other values. And we are people who don't eat Oreos because of this, but here's an apple, right? It's building the resilience of the child. That's the inoculation theory. That is, by the way, all of community. I mean, it's interesting because I was judging, like, while you were talking, I was judging

this Oreo mom so hard. But then also what was coming up is I have felt versions of that. Like, I have been, I have secretly been like, if we just all don't give our kids' phones in the utero, we maybe could, so could we all come together and just, or, for example, the parent who insists on sending peanuts, even though there's an allergy in the classroom. And that is something we could. So there is like, you know, your parents in the classroom are sending their kid with cigarettes and they're smoking at lunch. Like, we might all come together. There are levels and nuance. There are levels. There are. And part of what, I'm going to bring it home to the family, but part of what the school had to do there was decide, where is their freedom of choice in their

membership? And where are they actually agreeing and enforcing a common norm? And, part of what that woman was doing. And the Oreo is a perfect example because it feels so silly. And there's like, you're going to ask my, like, you're going to control what I put in my lunch. Honestly, all of America at different levels is fighting about who gets to bring what. And what are the rules we all enforce for us to have a collective and shared experience and not hurt one another. What we're disagreeing about is what is hurt. Yes. Yes.

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things at checkout. Just head to lollablankeets.com and use code we can do hard things to get 40% off your order. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. Wrap yourself in luxury with Lola Blankets. So bringing back to your friend, one is the inoculation theory. Another is thinking about that, again, 90% of the facing happens before the facing. What is her need? Is it to once just say to her mother for herself, I love you so much. It hurts me and breaks my heart the way you, again, and what are you going to say? When you and then not treat dad, observable behaviors, yell at dad in front of everybody. Observable behaviors. Okay. Right? Don't label. Don't,

don't, just observable behaviors. When you do X, it makes me feel Y. So you wouldn't say, it hurts me the way you mistreat dad because that's a judgment. So you have to say, it hurts me when you yell. It hurts me when you. If I was in a session, this is what we do in convict resolution facilitation sessions. And so also sometimes just saying the thing as messy as it is as it is progress. So there, you know, all, as I see in the art of fighting, welcome to the mess. And part of what is helpful when we're thinking about pro social connection across that boundary. right, one boundary drawing of like, I'm out of here, right? I'm cutting free of my family. But to practice sort of getting in there, right, relational boundary drawing is to make it hearable in a way that they can't deny the behavior. So part of it is actually in effect to alter her, not because she's not mistreating him. She is mistreating him. But if the purpose is to try to say something that alters the person, naming a specific observable behavior that they can't wriggle out of or storm off of because you've called them something, makes it as clean as possible.

These moments are actually very fragile. There's so many threats to them. And so finding a way to sort of make the arrow as clear as possible and to help it land so that has a potential to alter. And by the way, if she doesn't alter, your friend has made her piece that she said something to her mother. And then it's a different choice if A, she goes back into that home or B, it's actually that home that gets them stuck in their roles. And hey, you know what? This year, we're all going to go to Disney World for Thanksgiving, right? This year, we're actually going to all meet at the beach and do a picnic. This year, we're going to do a kickball game.

I have a substack called group life. And every month, I teach a webinar. Just one simple skill of group skills. I called group help instead of self-help. And on a Thanksgiving, during Thanksgiving last year, I had a webinar called How to Hold. healthy heat with your family over Thanksgiving and when to turn it down. And one of the elements, one of the most surprising things in the art of fighting for me as I researched it was often not to engage, not to face the thing, but to engage in strategic conflict avoidance in certain cases.

If you choose, you still want to be in relationship with these. But to water the garden around it, to have fun, to grow connection. Like, conflicts shouldn't be. be sterile. It should actually be part of a dynamic, thriving, hilarious thing. And often after a fighter facing, I know a friend group this happened to, they had a reckoning that are facing and everyone just had that bad taste in their mouth. Like they said the thing, but then they're all kind of like grieving afterwards and just trying to figure it out, just like didn't really want to see each other. And then they happened to like all be invited to the same dance party for like another friend. And so, and like part of this is like, oh, okay, I guess we're going to sit, you know,

God, okay, we'll go. Also, great. No one was hosting it in the friend group. There's no power dynamics. There's no, are you going or you're not? They show up. The song comes on. It's like their anthem.

And like despite themselves, right? They find themselves in the middle of the dance floor, like dancing, slapping their, like, looking at each other, laughing, remembering that they love each other. Right? And so it's like, also make sure you're watering the garden. You can't always change your parents. You don't have that much time left with them. Like, have a effing blast with them.

Take them on adventures that they would never otherwise do. Like, shift it up and then make sure you are parenting and modeling what you can. And honestly, like for me, at least from my perspective, if my daughter sees me trying, sees me scared but trying, sees me do the hard thing. I told my kids that I was going on a podcast today called We Can Do Hard Things and my son gasped. And he's like, because I often, I mean, I got it from, I often say we can do hard things. Yeah. Right? We can face.

We can talk to our mom in a private moment. Right? It's not necessarily. I mean, even on that Zoom call, yes, one option is saying the thing in the moment. There's so many reasons we often don't. I mean, I kick myself half the time. Why don't I say anything? Why don't I say anything?

Why don't I say, oh, I wish I said this. But the good news is it's a dynamic relationship and we want to expand our range of options. But first, what's the need? How are the many ways I could do this? And then how do I want to move forward if that person is up for it in these other ways? And often having fun together, chuckling, asking specific magical questions that have nothing to do with politics, getting people to hear questions, answers from grandma that they've never heard because no one thought to ask, right? Water the garden, water the garden. Conflicts shouldn't just be in a vacuum.

There's a wonderful essay by Joyce Ann Mercer called Fighting Like Christian. and she's talking about her Christian family. She's a theologian. And she says, one of the things after church conflict that is really important to do is make sure you continue daily business. You're meeting in other ways, right? You're having the bake sale. You're meeting for worship.

You're going to do the community drive the clothing swap in part because we get really stuck in binary in conflict. And so just having a moment to like experience each other again in these other ways. it just takes a little bit of the charge out of it and remembers, oh, we're a blanket here. We're weaving something. And this isn't the only patch. Yeah, and I guess that models that conflict is part of it. It's not just something that stops everything. It's like just part of the ongoing work of being in relationship. And what you said, I keep thinking about the COVID group that you're talking about. And it's helped me figure something out, which is that, you know, Abby and I are always struggling with the idea

of like, am I, like, too rigid? Am I too, like, I can only be friends with people who think this way? And that has honestly been the case. That is true for me. But based on what you're saying, I don't think that's true. I don't think that I have to only be friends with people who think like me. But I do think I can only be friends with people who have the shared understanding that we in our friendship and our microgroups are going to acknowledge and wrestle with macro things.

Beautiful. I think I could be friends with that COVID group with those stupid people in it if the stupid people were open to constant wrestling with my righteous self. Like if I, they would think I was overly righteous. I would think they were stupid. but if we had a shared understanding that we weren't going to pretend we weren't those things and that when things came up we were going to do some wrestling with it and we weren't all going to just smile and be polite about it. I don't think I need everyone to think like me, but I do

think I need people who agree in group that we're going to acknowledge hard things and not ignore them. Which is Priya's definition of a group in terms of all groups are defined by the questions they pursue together. Yes. Which is, it's not the answers that they have. It's the questions they pursue. And then the second thing being that all groups offer something to the individual and the individual offers something to the group.

So I think that that framework was so helpful to me to be like, do I really want to invest myself in it? Do I really want to show up to this thing? You can reframe it not about do I like those people, but am I still interested in the pursuit of the questions that this group is grappling with. And sometimes the questions just aren't that interesting, aren't interesting enough to keep your attention and commitment. Yes. Are there questions still my questions? Yeah. One of my favorite examples in the group and one of the in the book that I spent the most time with was this Tycho drumming circle. Oh, loved them. Right?

Tyco drumming circle. And I was like, wait, what? What is this? So, Tyco is this Japanese art where these, and historically, it's all men and it's a very hierarchical sport. And it's called playing drums. And you sort of hit these massive drums. It's a sort of physical art dance.

And there was a group of women, Asian women, who kind of defiantly created a Tyco group that was going to be a cooperative, meaning it was. not going to be a hierarchy. There was not going to be a sensei. And they became more and more popular. And long story short, their, over time, one of the women was like, I think actually I should be the leader.

And they're like, what? Like, no, no, no. Like, where? What? This is the antithesis of who we are. Like, you want to be the leader? And they got mediators. They like talk to each other. And then one day they went and opened the locker.

and the drums were gone. And they were like, oh my gosh, and they had no more resources. And while they were figuring out what to do, and like the woman I said, we were conflict diverse, while we were figuring out what to do, they to stay in shape would like work out together. They beat pillows together. They go running together. They were so conflict diverse at some level.

But also maybe why is like we don't, do we really want her if this is what she needs? Maybe the next right formation is for her to form a group with the hierarchy. Maybe this is the best thing that ever happened to us. And they literally like ordered leather and watched YouTube videos to learn how to make. They made their own drums. Wow. And then the next generation, they were then very successful for 10 years. And Emmy, the character in this book, joined, heard the drum story.

Because they were so clear as a cooperative, they were then much more clear that this is who we are now. And as they became better and better, they started getting invited to perform at the Olympics. They started having these sold out crowds because this new member was making them really good. Long story short, over 10 years, the issue came up again. A new member came in and wanted to be the sensei and had made them much better and was starting to change how they rehearsed. And Emmy in one of the performances, it basically feels like they're no longer who they're supposed to be. Like not everyone gets shared time. The oldest member of the group that was part of the drummaking who was like wild and free but couldn't keep a beat was like no longer.

under roster. And long story short, we go through the sort of arc with this carrot with Emmy. And she ends up like in a performance jumping so high that she ends up falling to the ground. She tears her ACL. She ends up in the emergency room. And as she tells me, she, she sits there and she weeps. And she realizes it's over and not just because of her injury. And as she started realizing, she basically realized that for 10 years, the questions that the group was, can, do we need to dress feminine just because we're women. What does it actually mean? Can I smile on stage? Am I supposed to smile on stage? Do I not smile on stage? The context that the group held the questions of her life. And as the group became more and more about performance and execution

and excellence and attracted professional dancers, the questions they were asking were good questions, but they were no longer the questions she was interested in. And so it was time to part. That's beautiful. What is your best advice for when someone comes to you, someone that you have relational longing for, and says, you're hurting me or brings conflict to you? And let's just say they're not doing it in like a super enlightened, pria-backed way. Because usually people aren't there yet, right?

So when I was reading you, it made me think so much about how when people bring something to us, even though it's usually packaged unwisely, it's a act of great love. It's like a person saying, I care so much about my relationship with you or I respect and love you so much that I am doing this incredibly hard and brave thing, which is tell you that. but usually it sounds something like, you suck. So it's hard to hear. I love you in it. Yeah. Totally. It's like here I'm placing all of this risk that I conjured from my soul and placing

in your laugh, but it usually sounds like, why are you so unthoughtful? Right. How do we translate it real quick? How do we do it next? I mean, the first thing is you, I mean, this is what I try to do. And by the way, this happens to me when people deliver it beautiful. Right. Yeah. Right. Like, you can deliver it beautifully and it's like, I want to, you know. So first of all, like, if it's me, like the, if it happens to me, like the blood goes out of my face and it may just be a text. Yes. Have a moment to chat. Oh, God. You know, throw the phone away. Do not. Don't. Right. So I'll tell you what I try to do is, by the way, if they are coming at me in a way that doesn't feel fair, I get really defensive. And I'm, it's very, very, very. It's very. very hard for me to hear it if I feel like they're insulting me. And so I honestly, sometimes I'll

even just be like, I need a moment. And I like, there's so much Prentice Hemphill, the amazing facilitator says, you know, conflict is physical, but just not in the way we think. Right? It's physical within us. Yes. And so one of my favorite chapters of the book is I ask Prentice, what are their rituals before they go in to hold a fight? So the first is, just, just notice this is super uncomfortable, right? My symptoms, my heart source palpitating, my tongue gets dry. I sometimes feel kind of dizzy. I feel angry.

I feel shame. They may not even said the thing yet. Right. I really feel tight. You know it's coming. I know it's coming. And I know I probably did something wrong, you know? Yeah, you're flashing through the 12 things you did do wondering which one they're going to bring up.

And like a little like cat with like a mouse in my like a little like a little like. And so the first is like notice and this has helped me like, oh, there it happens again. Just notice the physicality and breathe, breathe, breathe. And I mean, some of this, and I have a semantic coach I work with for my own facilitation, tapping my chest, breathing very deeply, calming my body and then trying to hear, right? Also some of this is it's helpful to have conversations like this, like, oh, maybe this is healthy heat. So if you've never seen it modeled before, it's hard to know that this is what's actually happening. And so trying to remember this conversation, this podcast episode you heard,

Pod Squad, and say, maybe this is coming at me in a different way. And what I've tried to do, when it's someone that I want a relationship with, even if I'm like shaking or seething or feels unfair, I try to say the sentence, which is, thank you for trusting me enough to tell me. Yeah. I may totally disagree with you. Thank you so much for trust. me with this utter horseshit. But you guys, it's like, we have to have these things because it's cognitive dissonance to think this shouldn't happen. If we all agree, which everyone in the earth now understands, that we will hurt each other.

Yes. It is not an if, there's not a bunch of good people who don't hurt, like you said in the beginning. If it is true that if we are in relationship, we will. will hurt each other, then it follows that we must be open to talking about having hurt people. These are tools. They're tools. It's like we're like cooking with just one burner. We're leaving the other burners. It's like these are tools. And so much of self-help is talking about tools of the individual, right? How do we eat better? How do we have take more steps? How do we even speak persuasively? Like there's some that are trying to like alter the other.

But part of what we're talking about here is relational skills, relational tools, group help is like where and how do we actually have the skills to do this in relationship with others. We're desperate for it. It's the depth of your life is really what it's a barometer for. Because if you don't have heat in any of your relationships, that might be like a more calm way of living. But if you don't have heat in your relationships, it's, It's true that you don't have depth because it's required to get deep.

Well, it's relevance. Heat is relevance. And you're just kind of like skating outside. I mean, I'm Midwestern, and I'm half Midwestern. My father's from Iowa. And like, part of what I, I'm a dialogue facilitator, right? So I literally, my professional life is listening to language, noticing my first job with, with sustained dialogue, this process that I worked with, was literally being in a room, eight hours a day in these, it's called Track 2 Diplomacy, 18 leaders from the Arab, American, and European

world. My boss, Hal Saunders, and Ronda Slim were moderating this whole thing. But my job, my little like, you know, green little facilitator was to take verbatim notes eight hours a day, tracking the exact language everyone is using. Because they weren't allowed to record it. And so my core, like, craft training is actually listening to language and dialogue and how in the moments that relationships or group change. And part of when you don't allow for heat to happen, you are not allowing relevant conversations. And I listen to my father and I love him.

And my practice is trying to get more meaningful conversation with him. Our core training is basically to like avoid heat. We talk about the weather. We talk about this. We talk about that, which is fine and actually really important in a diverse society. But with your intimates, saying just on the surface, there's so much left on the table. And the promise of the fighting is actually a promise for closeness. It's on the other side, richer community, richer connection.

And also, by the way, when you have a fight, it doesn't mean you come out agreeing. It doesn't mean that you necessarily change. You may just realize, oh, we see this differently. But as you said earlier, Glennon, but I trust them because they're willing to grapple with me. Yeah. He said, my parents were so afraid of the fire that could burn the house. down that they lost their spark. Yeah, this is a deeply personal to me. You know, I was so confused. I was shocked. That's not what divorce looks like. That's not what I see in the movies.

That's not my hair. I never heard any screaming. And my mother is somebody who deeply, deeply over the last 30 years has like learned these skills. And God help her made sure her daughter learned these skills, right? Again, it's like all of this, it's dynamic. We can always learn. It's never too late. and then it shifts the ancestral line. Yes, it does. When I read the part in the book about how now we have so many groups that we can choose, as opposed to being born into a certain situation, we can choose what groups we enter.

But then the downside of that is that there's no shared rules or traditions. Yes. When I read that, I kept seeing in my mind all of the seven million wooden signs that are in every home goods that all the parents put up, Like, in this family, we say goodbye. Like, in this family, we live, laugh, love. And I thought, oh my God, this is, we know in our, in our guts that we need some, like. Directions.

Yes, we need directions. Yes, we need directions. Instead of grappling with the hard questions that we want to have a shared rule, we go to home goods. And we're like, that looks good. And this family live love. That should cover it. That should cover it. I said live laugh, love.

None of this. I said live laugh. time? We live love, loving here. Tell me right now whether you are living, laughing, or loving on the floor right now. But Priya, isn't, doesn't that show our desperation for like a shared understanding of what we're doing here in this family? And like, even if, even if our shared thing was like, oh, we're in this house, we're human beings, we know we're going to hurt each other. So I, as a parent, will tell you that in this family, we consider it love, we consider it love, when you tell me when I've hurt you.

Yes. And I will not always respond perfectly, but I will listen. Yes. And I will consider that an act of love. Yes. Like even if that's the only rule you have in your family. Print it up. Get it on Etsy tomorrow.

Get it on there. Get it on there. Get it on Etsy. Sell it on Etsy. I mean, you know, I had a really beautiful experience. I actually haven't shared this at last. I haven't shared this publicly or really with anyone by my husband. But, you know, when I finish writing the art of fighting,

one of the things they tell you to do is read your book out loud. Like before you submit it, read your book out loud. And I knew I needed to do it. I knew I needed to do it. And I kept on putting it off because, like, you always have other stuff to do. And I went to visit my father and stepmother in Florida. I needed to do it while I was visiting them. And then there was a part of me that was like, maybe this.

Maybe over dinner. Hey, palps, two lords, one stone. You know, I actually need to read this out loud. Would you be interested in reading it? And his wife, my stepmother, very generously, was like, I would love to hear it. And my father was like, absolutely. And so we got some coffee, and I read them aloud, the prolog.

And the prolog is his father's funeral. That's right. The prologue is his divorce. And the prolog is my wise stepmother, right, who keeps on kind of saying, like, hey, this story is not the whole story. And I read it to them. And it was so moving for me, for them. And what we ended up doing for three weeks is I said, hey, this actually was really helpful to me. Would you want to keep doing this and help me read out loud my whole book?

And so for three weeks, two hours a day or every other day or an hour day or 45 minutes a day, we'd schedule time. It was sort of complicated. We were all, we'd schedule time sometimes at 7 a.m., like bless their hearts. They'd set their alarm and wake up early because it was. And they'd sit there and we'd get on the Zoom. And I'd read it out loud and I'd hear them laugh or I'd hear them go, hmm. And as I started talking about the stories, it's also good for a writer to like tell, you know, give someone a heads up. Tell the story of like the fight I had with my father about my baby shower.

Yeah. Right. I was like, okay, dad, this part's about you. You're ready? And then the final part is me telling the story of Zora and my father to him. And the whole process was so moving, right? It was like reline. I didn't plan this.

but it was actually like me sharing, if I literally could write a book that I wish I could like tell my family, I did. And then I got to read it to them. And at the end of this, my stepmother, who's a white woman from Florida and also Pennsylvania, she said to me, we are a ritualist country, aren't we? And I said, what do you mean? And she said, part of what I'm taking from your book is that we are a country that has become so celebrated the individual, which I believe in. And in trying to like be part of becoming an American, right, all melting pot, and she's a different generation, we have also let go of all of our rituals from our sub-communities, from the places that we left. And we are a ritual-less country. We are a country that is longing for.

for ritual again. That's right. And I think part of the invitation as the family, right, it's like, yes, put up the Target gather sign, right? Which, by the way, they've given me, right? I have a gather sign from Target. I'm sure they have. And specificity, ritual, right?

The art of gathering is about this. It could be macaroni Mondays. And we check in. And on Mondays, we all ask a magical question. And we all sit there. Our phones are off. but on Mondays we know everyone's home and we ask one question everyone wants to answer and everyone hears everyone is interested in hearing each other's answers and we just do that.

One specific meaningful ritual as a family gives so much safety, identity, belonging and it actually starts to affect the rest of the week. It's so beautiful. Priya, your work is so good. It just really gets to the heart of everything. I'm just so grateful for you. And your husband. I mean, your whole family really has a very important part of our podcast.

I know. I so deeply, I mean, honestly, like, one of the mantras I now say to my kids is we can do hard things. I don't even think they knew it was a podcast. And I think so much of what I think your work is, the three of you in the world, is really, like, I actually think the art of fighting is just, it's like a symptom of what you're inviting people to do in all of these different ways. Like, it's just one ornament on the tree. But so much of what you're inviting and in your work, in your books, in your podcast. podcast and your conversations is actually like lean into the mess, right? We can do facing.

We can do asking. We can do expanding our options. We can do, right, Oreo debating. Yeah. And on Anand's work also, you know, my husband, he, his, so much of his work is like, can we face this? Right? His new book, it's called The Man in the Mirror.

It's so freaking. good. You've read it? She's having him on about it, right? Amazing. I didn't know that was happening yet. It's so good. It's so good. It was recently called the best New York City book since the power broker.

Since the power broker, which is like 50 years ago. It's a crazy thing. Sarah McNally, like, yes, yes. And so much of what the man in the mirror is about is about a tragic encounter on a subway and the opera that is

New York City and the opera that is cities and the opera that is America and inviting us to face, to look, to hold, to humanize, to grapple so that we can actually live together. Oh, Priya, thank you. All right, y'all. Today the book is out. It's called The Art of Fighting, the Transformative Power of Conflict. It is something that y'all need to read. If you're a part of group anywhere. Or want to be a community someday. Or considering it.

I might dip a toe in. Pria, we adore you. Thank you so much for being here with us. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for reading it so closely. And I just so appreciate it. Thank you so much. Beautiful.

All right, y'all. We will see you next time. Bye bye. We are proud to say that we can do hard things is an independent production brought to you by us Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay

human. And you can follow us at We Can Do Hard Things on Instagram.