Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Abby Wambach wants to be forgotten

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

As the U.S. women's national soccer team's all time top goal scorer, Abby Wambach knows what it feels like to win. She's brought home a World Cup and multiple Olympic gold medals, but she says true success comes after the podium. She and Rachel talk about forgiving yourself, how a little narcissism isn't a bad thing, and why she wants to be forgotten.To listen sponsor-free, access bonus episodes and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Has your idea of success changed over time? Yes. When we watch the gold medal and the Olympics, I know for certain the athletes that are standing on that top podium are going to feel really good about themselves. But that moment is fleeting. You have to wake up tomorrow and also feel good about yourself. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard, the game where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest chooses questions at random from a deck of cards. Pick a card one through three.

Questions about the memories, insights, and beliefs that have shaped them. I was tired at the end of my career. My guest this week is soccer legend Abby Wambach. I couldn't keep running. I couldn't keep maintaining that level of output. I think that I gave everything that I could give. We've all got unexpected turns in our lives, right? But let's be honest.

Some people have more than most. And I am going to put Abby Wambach in that camp. Here's the short version of what went down. She's this global U.S. soccer star, right, with two Olympic gold medals and a World Cup championship. She also holds the U.S. goal scoring record for women and men. She's on top of the world. When she retires from soccer in 2015, you know, life becomes disorienting. And turns out she's been hiding a drinking problem.

And roughly five months later, she gets a DUI, then comes rehab and a personal reckoning. She writes a book about all of it, goes to an event to promote. remote said book and ends up meeting the woman who would become her second wife, the author Glennon Doyle. Now she's the stepmom of three kids, a leadership coach, and the co-host of the hit podcast she does with Glennon called We Can Do Hard Things. I mean, she's only 44, and Abby Wombach has lived at least three lives. And in her show, you hear all the stuff. Abby has learned through all of those things. And it is funny and it is inspiring. But I'm telling you, if for any reason you are feeling a little bit down. Yes, listen to the podcast. But you need an emotional

pickup. Go watch Abby's winning goal against Brazil in the 2004 Gold Medal Olympics match. Just do it. You will feel happier. Trust me. So with that, I am so very happy to welcome Abby Wambach to our show. Welcome to Wildcard. Thank you so much, Rachel. I love that intro because that's the truest version of me and I like the truth as I have lived it. Yeah, I've had some amazing ups. I've had also some amazing downs that, you know, I've been sober ever since then, almost 10 years now. And that is one of the things that more than soccer, more than more than most things. That's maybe the thing that I'm most proud of. So here we are. Here we are. So we happen to be talking as the Olympics are kicking off. Are you the kind of person who wants to have like people over and make nachos when you watch these games? Or is it? best if you do it alone. No, I need to, I need to be in the privacy of my own home with my family. Because I do get loud. I do stand up. I do, I do become righteously superstitious. And if they're not playing well, I'll move seats. I'll then stand.

Movement helps. Movement is good luck. I think so. Sometimes if we're going towards the goal and the goal happens to be on the right side of the TV. I'll go stand on the right side of the TV, like, go this way, go towards, go towards the light, you know. And I know that that's ridiculous and probably has nothing to do with anything, but it makes me feel better and it makes me feel like I'm still contributing somehow. Yeah. Yeah. Do your kids play soccer? Yeah. Our youngest play soccer. She's now getting recruited to do the college, she's doing the college recruitment thing right now, which is a whole new world. I mean, every weekend, And Glennon and I are like, are you sure you want to keep doing this?

Like, we give her every opportunity to get out because I do not, I do not want her to be doing this out of like the vibe that like I want that for her. Because I do not, I want her to do what she wants, you know? Yeah, yeah. I read somewhere that you were coaching her team. A long time ago, yeah, I coached one of their teams. We won the championship. It was, it was like, it was rec league soccer. It wasn't even like club soccer.

It was like rec league. But I love it. You dropped that in it. We won. We won the championship. I coach one year, I won the championship, I'm going out on a high note. So here's the deal. I have a deck of cards in front of me.

On each card is a question I would love for you to answer. I'm going to hold up three at a time, and you're going to choose one at random. There are two rules. You get one skip. So if a question, you're just not vibing with it, you can just skip it. And I will swap in another question from the deck right now. You also get one flip. Okay, you can put me on the spot and ask me to answer one of the questions before you do.

It basically just buys your time. We are breaking it up into three rounds, memories, insights, and beliefs with a few questions in each round. And it's a game. So there's a prize at the end, which I feel like speaks to your competitive. I'm going to win the prize. Is there like different levels of prizes? If I do better, do I get a higher level of said prize? That's so, that's so you.

I barely know you. And I know that's so you to ask. Just kind of know what's at stake, you know? Can I get the gold medal? I want the gold, baby. There's only one prize, Abby. Okay. All right.

So round one memories. We're looking back at things that shaped you. Okay. First three cards. One, two, or three. Pick a card. Two. Two.

When you were bored as a kid, where would your imagination take you? No joke. Okay. So you know how when I was growing up, there wasn't women athletes to watch on television. It was just basically, you know, Michael Jordan. And so I saw him win a lot of championships and win after scoring those, you know, last second points. And so when I would be bored and imagining things, I would, imagine myself. And even when I was like 15 years old, I was a header. That's what I, I scored a lot with my head. It was really good in the air. And so I would imagine a ball kind of coming in from the flank from the sideline into the box. And I would imagine myself scoring the goal in the last second. And so when those moments started to actually come to me in real life. Right. Happen. in real life, those things that happened. Yeah, in high school, like, no matter what was happening in a game, if we were winning or losing,

I would find myself at the end of the game, especially if we were losing and we needed a goal. Like, I had played through this moment so often in my head. I had imagined it so clearly. And because of the imagining, I never stopped believing that we could have that one moment come to fruition. And people ask me all the time, how did you score? are so many big goals in such important moments. And I actually draw this line. There's a lot of reasons for it, but I think that I think one of the first steps is believing and imagining that you can do it before you do it. I mean, that's so powerful. Now everybody talks about manifesting,

right? Like you just think it and then it can happen. That's like a very clear example of doing that. I mean, you put in the work and you had the natural talent and the skill, but there is something so powerful about seeing it in your mind. Yeah. So to me, I mean, my wife, it drives her nuts because I'm such an optimist. And sometimes that can steer me awry. But like, if you want something in your life, it's not just that you are ready for it. It's that this moment has already happened. It has already happened in your life. So take it however you want, folks. Okay. Three more cards. Still in memories. Okay. One, two, or three. I'm going one this time. One, what's something you have learned to appreciate about your hometown over time?

So, Rochester, New York. Wow. It is a town that I think it's like the Midwest, kind of, where everybody is so nice. Like everybody is always conscious of their neighbor. Like when you walk into a restaurant, people like still hold doors and look at you in the eye and speak to you and talk to you. Like you're just, you know, you're a person. Sometimes, you know, New York City and we live in in Los Angeles. Like sometimes people are just very consumed in their own worlds. And Rochester, it's like, I don't know, it's like a fresh breath of. Did you feel that way when you were growing up or you're like, I got to blow this pop stand?

I mean, I think that I always knew that the people were amazing. I also knew on a deep level that I was, my life would take me outside of Rochester. Yeah, I mean, when I want, you knew that because you wanted. Yeah. Like you wanted your life. I did. Yeah. I knew that I wanted a different life.

I wanted to go experience the way. the world. I've lived in many places. I've lived in Florida. I've lived in D.C. I've lived in Portland, Oregon. I've lived in L.A. a couple times. I want to keep moving. Like, I'm always, like, kind of on the cusp of wanting to become something different in a way. And I think that, that Rochester is, it symbolizes people who are strong and stable and can maintain that humility and vibe. When we come back, Abby tells me about the emotion she understands best. Moving to round two. All right.

This is insights. Cool. So three new cards. One, two, or three. Three. When have you had to forgive yourself for something? Oof. The big thing that I'm working on forgiving myself for is I have been trying to figure out like where the self-love.

component, like, that people talk of, like, this idea, this feeling of self-love. Like, where does that live in a body? How do you find it? Through a lot of my life, I, by virtue of my job, playing soccer is a very difficult thing. A professional athlete has to choose a certain kind of intensity. with which they they approach their life. And unfortunately... Not a lot of balance.

Not a lot of life work balance. Exactly. And one of the things that I really struggled with, and I think a lot of professional athletes struggle with, is that, is the balance. You have to have this kind of maniacal focus on your craft. And part of that focus is thinking about yourself. So there's this innate narcissism that is almost required. required in order to be a high-level athlete. You have to be thinking about what your body is feeling,

what you're putting in your body, how you're moving your body, all of the data that your body can collect so that your body can become better day after day after day. So throughout my career, I did a lot of punishing of my body because that was required in order to make those small gains day in and day out. And I think because of that, I didn't explore this part of myself, this like this part that that I could just love myself for who it is right now at all times. For all your parts, the good enough. Yeah, I'm trying to get into relationship now with this part of myself. And I think that I have struggled to know that it lived inside of me, that it was here all along.

And so I am trying to forgive myself for not knowing that. Yeah. How did you stop being a narcissist? Oh. Because you just said, like, in order to be really, really good at your thing, and especially as an athlete, you have to think of yourself all day long every day because you are the machine that does the sport that makes you into the star that you are. Yeah, I don't think that the word narcissism gets kind of a bad rap because I'm. I don't think that it's all bad, right? And I also don't think it's all good.

I think that there has to be times in a person's life that we are self-centered, that we do have selfish inclinations because we want what we want, right? I think being in balance is the most important thing. And I think that that's what I was probably, I was out of balance. I was very, very much into myself, right? Rightfully so in many ways, necessary. So yeah. And then you have children, right? And I met Glennon and she had three children. And so I became this insta mom. And that was super humbling, right? Like I came from the, I had just won the women's World Cup in 2015. And now I'm meeting these children in 2016. And they're soccer fans, but they could care less. They're like, what are you going to do for me lately? Like that's that's the mind of a child. And, right? Rightfully so, right? Like they need adults to take care of them. And so it was super humbling. And I think that that was a lesson in humility. And also I think that I, the ego that I operated with as an athlete, I was tired at the end of my career. And it was pretty obvious that that World Cup would be my last. I just, I couldn't keep running. I couldn't keep maintaining that level of output. And also, I could. I couldn't keep maintaining that level of ego. I was I was exhausted. I think that I gave everything

that I could give. And I think that that helped with the walking towards more of a balanced sense of myself. Three new cards. Still in Insights. One, two, three. One. What emotion do you understand better than all the others? Mm, joy. Wow. Yeah. Joy is my go-to, right? So joy drives, play, joy, fun, in everything that I'm doing, like even if I'm doing the most mundane, silly thing. And Glennon, she thinks that I'm ridiculous. Like, we'll be walking into the grocery store and I'll be like, hey, do you want to race? And she's, every single time, she's like, no, never. I'll never want to race you. And I don't like playing with people who don't want to play games.

That's so not fun. And so as we walk into the grocery store and I'm like one step ahead of her and I'll go beat you. And she's like still not playing. Yeah, joy. I love it. I love joy. I love making people happy. I love like I'm standing in line waiting to like order something at a store or at a food place or whatever buy something.

And I'm just like I'm just like sitting there dancing and like, Strangers are looking to me weird, and I'm kind of like, you know, I'm ridiculous. You're that lady. Yeah, totally. You're weird dancing lady. And I am absolutely shameless when it comes to joy. I do find that I like random, you know, just when you're in a really good mood and you're in your car and you got good music going. And you're dancing.

And then someone pulls up alongside you and you're never going to see that person again. And so you just lean into it. And you're like, uh, yeah. And then they start smiling and you're like, I feel better. I felt good before. But now I made you smile. And now we're both doing the weird chair, the weird chair, driver's seat dance. Yes.

And everything's good. And it's this joyful moment of joyful connection that increases the vibration, I think, of our planet. Right. And so. Yeah. With strangers. I know. And in those random moments when another random stranger in, they're like, oh, exhausted,

I'm driving to work. And if you can, like, crack a smile out of that. that person. I mean, it's a 10 out of 10. Oh my God. How weird would it be if I was in a traffic jam? And then all of a sudden I saw this weird lady out of the corner of my eye dancing. I'm like, oh my God. It's me. It's me. And I don't care. I'm like, yes, it's me. And they're like, oh my God. I mean, the amount of times that this has happened to me is countless. Abby, Wambach. And I'm like, yes. And so there we are. We have this moment of joy. And we go on to live our separate lives. And it's beautiful. I love it. I love it. Okay. We have one more.

in insights. One, two, or three. Well, this is sort of part and parcel of what we've been talking about, but has your idea of success changed over time? Yes. When I was a kid, I don't know if this is something that I was born with or if this is something I came to understand as I grew up. but I was certain that I needed to not rely on other people.

And I just, I feel proud of kind of the journey that I've gone on. But I think one of the things I feel most proud of is like this desire to have ownership of my life, to like really be responsible for myself. But we're talking about success here. That feels like a pretty good definition for what a successful, life looks like, to be independent. So did that change at all? Or has that remained a constant for you? Yeah. I think that the way that I think about it now as a parent, because I think it's easy to think about yourself, but the way that I would love my children to go into their life, like the job of the

parent is to make them believe that they can handle life on their own without us. It is our job to grow them into the kind of people that can live without us. And so my definition is, of success, I don't think it necessarily has changed. I think the context of my life has changed. For me, it's a feeling of self-esteem that I think that I determine my success by. For me and my definition of success is like, how do I feel about myself today? Because I've had money. I've not had money. I've had high levels of success. And I know for certain when we watch the gold medal and the Olympics in the coming weeks, I know for certain the athletes that are standing on that top podium are going to feel really good about themselves. But that moment is fleeting. You have to

wake up tomorrow and also feel good about yourself. Right. Without all the fans. Yeah. And yeah, I think that having a gold medal is really cool. I think it's really cool. But let me tell you, a couple weeks away from the Olympics, after getting a gold medal, I still have to look at myself in the mirror and say, how do I feel about myself today? What did I do today to feel good? I can't rely on being an Olympic gold medal winner and having that be the thing that sustains me throughout my life because it doesn't work. things that we do in the past will not justify how we feel in the present.

And so I think that my idea of success has kind of, it hasn't changed because I've always kind of held this belief. But I think my definition of what makes me feel good every day contextually and literally has changed throughout my life. When we come back, Abby reflects on what it means to step aside. Round three, final round. Okay, so this, we're getting into beliefs. How you make sense of the world. Big picture stuff. Okay.

Three new cards. Three. Three. Three. Do you think there's more to reality than we can see or touch? For sure. Especially since my brother has recently passed away. And I've been, I know.

It's been super a rough six, seven months. He passed away at the end of December in 2023. and I've been in a deep grief journey. Riding the train of grief is intense, realizing that I'm experiencing so much of the grief that I never allowed myself to feel while I was an alcoholic. And so the grief train is just carrying loads and cars and cars and cars of all the grief that has been unfelt.

And through this experience of really facing my grief and facing my mortality and having an existential awakening because I don't like existential crisis, I think that that makes it negative. Oh, yeah, no, no, no, no. Existential is meandering is good. It's good for the soul. I cannot. And I have to give a little context. I was born and raised in the Catholic Church. My actual official name is Mary Abigail. I'm named after Mary mother, the mother of Jesus Christ. And I think people out there could have probably imagined, you know, this gay kid growing up inside the Catholic Church and having swallowed a bunch of lies about myself and swalleled a lot of hatred about myself. And so I don't know if religion is for me specifically, but I for sure am very spiritual. I for sure have no idea what the heck is going on, how we all got here.

I mean, I believe in science. But I think spiritually speaking that I like to believe that this can't be just it. I like to believe that my brother is in some other form, some other vibration, some other dimension, whatever you want to call it, heaven. I also like to think about myself before I got here, right? Like, have you ever really gone down that rabbit hole? Like the experience of not being alive? Oh, yeah, Abby.

I sit with that all the time. Like what was happening? People think that's, like, depressing, but I try to imagine. the nothing of not existing. I don't know why that makes me feel more comfortable. And it was okay. It was okay then. Like the before now, this is what has helped me with my fear of death and now thinking about some of the people I've lost in my life.

They're just in the place that we were before. They're in the same place, I think. And I don't know what to classify it as. and I think I probably will keep exploring until I'm gone, until I'm in that place with them again or not. But I love the word again because I do, I think thinking of it as a return is really helpful. My wife, she talks about it as like we are of the ocean before we get here.

And to become and put into this body, like you're scooped into this glass of water. and then at the end you just get poured right back in. And also, I reserve the right to be completely wrong about this in the end when my time comes. I have no idea. This is just my... Income the rosaries. This just is my best guess right now and my best belief systems right now,

and I reserve the right to change them at the last second. Like we all do, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry about your brother Thank you Yeah Yeah

Okay Three new cards Two One two Okay So are you comfortable With being forgotten Oh interesting

This sort of tags onto Yeah What we're thinking about Not existing I am I am And this is not a plug By any means

I'm just trying to give A better context To the story Plug But when I retired, Gatorade had a, they wanted to pitch me on a possible commercial shoot that they wanted to do for my retirement game. And as I was reading through the storyboards, I just started to like weep because there was something about my body and my heart that all of it just kind of

came together in this moment. And the idea of this commercial was forget me. Because If I am forgotten, then I know that the game has grown and the game is better. If I am forgotten, then somebody else has taken my place. And that is the natural order of the world. I believe that records are meant to be broken. I believe that growth, especially 10 years ago where we were with women's soccer, was required, was necessary, was not just possible but inevitable. And so I think that we all should live a life like that. I think we should all lay our cards out, leave it on the field, whatever you want to say.

And then in the end, if you are forgotten, to me, it means that you have done the right kind of work here to make the world a little bit better by having existed. And boy, you know, the funniest thing about this is that that rec league team that I was coaching five years ago, six years ago with my kid, we were warming up for the championship game. And one of her teammates, I was telling them about, you know, well, when I retired, when I retired from playing soccer. And she said, wait, you played soccer? And I said, yes, she said, oh, who did you play for? And I said, the United States of America. And she said, oh, do you know Alex Morgan? And I was like, oh, sheesh, we need to be careful what we wish for here, peeps.

So, yeah, forget me. Abby Wambach, you have won our game. Congratulations. You do get a prize. Yes, both hands in the air. Mm-hmm. Your prize is a trip in our memory time machine. Isn't it fun?

I'm having fun of having fun. A trip in our memory time machine to revisit one moment from your past. You get to go there. You get to take us there. It's a moment you wouldn't change anything about. You would just like to linger there a little longer. What moment do you choose? I think the day that Glennon and I got married.

Yeah, I remember that day being so, when you meet the person you're meant to spend the rest of your life with, it's like you can't, it's almost like I couldn't breathe until it was official. And like my life wouldn't have made sense. And I understand that the sanctity of marriage and the religiosity inside of it and the structure and the intuition and institution of it, There's some dark side to it. But for whatever reason, I just, like, I needed to be married to her. My life completely changed for the better because of it. I believe that I'm very much still sober because my wife is also sober, and I didn't really know another sober person until I met Glennon, truly.

So, yeah, that day. Do you remember a detail, a glance? she gave you a moment that the two of you shared? Yeah, well, we didn't, you know, this was both of our second marriages, so we weren't like, we can't see each other the night before. Like, I left in the morning and I saw her like a few minutes before we walked down the aisle together. Right.

But when I first saw her in her dress, all done up, it was just, it was just exactly correct. It was like, I don't know. I think that we had met many lifetimes ago. here we go down the reincarnation rabbit hole. And it took me until I was 36 to find her again. So I'm so, I do feel like absolutely the luckiest person to be able to spend my life with Glennon. And that day was the most profound day of my life, 100%. Howie Wambach.

What an incredible pleasure it was. to be able to do this with you. Same, same, same. Thanks for having me. If you like this episode, you might be interested in my conversation with Issa Ray. She's the creator of Insecure. And of course, she played President Barbie. I've thought a lot about that episode.

And in particular, Issa's response to how she stays connected to those she has lost, you should definitely check it out. It's worth your time. Next week on the show, we talk to author Taffy Brodesser Ackner. She tells me she is spiritually open to suggestion. I'm willing for new information to come in. I'm willing to be told by a burning bush. Every day I hope that a burning bush will tell me what's going on.

This episode was produced by Lee Hale and edited by Dave Blanchard. It was fact-checked by Barclay Walsh and mastered by Robert Rodriguez. Wildcard's executive producer is Beth Donovan. Our theme music is by Romteen Arablewee. You can reach out to us at Wildcard at npr.org. We'll shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. See you then.