Glennon Doyle and the ‘We can do hard things’ about the inspiration behind their new book

Susan Hagen, 48, vibrated practically excitement. She would soon be in the same room with three women who had helped her by some of the most, most vulnerable moments in her life, although they didn’t know.

Hagen, a resident of New Jersey, had braved the pouring rain and crowds of Times Square to attend a sold -out lecture by the best -selling memoir Glennon Doyle; Her football hall of Famer -Vrouw, Abby Wambach; and Amanda Doyle, Glennon’s sister and co-founder of the media company for women’s guests of the podcast ‘We Can Do Hard Things’.

“The podcast has endured me So Many things, “said Hagen, and noticed that she had read Glennon’s Memoir’s 2020 memoirs,” Untended “, no less than four times. Just like the author, Hagen became separate and he came as gay in her forty. The books, the podcast, it helps her all feel like she’s not alone, she said.

It is a sentiment that I heard over and over again when I spoke with fans (mostly women) that Monday filled the Stadhuistheater in Manhattan – the woman in the 1970s who, like Glennon, has been in the recovery of eating disorder for years; The strange woman in the forty who, just like Wambach, navigates through the ups and downs of stepparents; The lawyers who ‘unbet’ give clients who falter the messiness of divorce.

“We Can Do Hard Things” has long been Gospel for Glennon Stans – it is the title of the new book of the trio, this week. The project was born, the women say, out of simultaneous personal crises that they had so hard as everything had so far in their lives. They started writing it as much as a survival guide as someone else.

In the course of a year, the eldest brother of Wambach, Peter, died unexpectedly; Glennon, who had struggled with disorderly food throughout her life, was diagnosed with anorexia; And Amanda was treated for breast cancer.

“For the first time,” wrote Glennon, “we were all drowned at the same time.”

On about 500 pages, the new book is a compilation of excerpts from conversations that the women have had with 118 podcast guests they call ‘Wayfinders’ (in a metaphorical sense) – including justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, such as Elizabeth Gilbert and Brandi Carlile. The quotes have a theme that the authors believe to be the 20 Life questions People tend to take a tendency. Among them: why am I so much fun? How do I find out what I want? Why can’t I be happy?

Although the crew of the “We can do hard things” are superstars in the self -help world, they collectively confront a kind of medium existential pain and give up their hands as if they have to say: we have no answers!

“I have this glimping where life makes sense for a millisecond at the same time,” said Amanda, 47, a lawyer known as “sister” in the show, me during an hour -long zoom call with the trio shortly before they were going on tour. But she soon admitted: “I am back in a place where I am angry with everyone in my life, and I don’t know why I feel like nonsense, and suddenly that elusive peace has disappeared.”

Strive for ’51 percent ‘

When I spoke with the women, the mood was friendly but modest. They listened carefully to each other, occasionally inchimmen with a “yes” or “that’s good!” Glennon, who encouraged women to tap into their inner, wild cheetahs in ‘unfinished’, seemed especially reflective.

“It’s very funny because all my work before this was like:” Look in yourself, there are the answers, “said Glennon, 49.” Now at the age of 50 I am so, hmm. Sometimes I look in myself, and I am very confused. “

Although the women regularly ask a listener on the podcast – and quote themselves in the entire book – they brushed when I asked if they were surprised that people would come to them for advice. Even the word feels ‘icky’, Amanda said. The women just tell the truth about their life experiences, she kept full, without shame. And they are not afraid to ask hard, ugly questions.

“We have withdrawn into these questions, because more than 400 conversations with the wisest people we know, it was clear that they had to do with the same questions,” said Amanda. “If Brandi Carlile and Michelle Obama and Ina Garten and Roxane Gay are all struggling with the same things, it gives me the feeling:” Oh, it’s just the human condition. It is not that I cannot find life. It is that this is the way life is. “

Nowadays Glennon lives with the Axioma that life is 49 percent “brutal”, she said, “Just nonsensical mess.” But it is also 51 percent beautiful, and that 51 percent is what keeps her going. (The authors devoted the book to their children with the inscription: 51 percent.)

Her wife has also embraced the Glennon-ISM. “I won gold medals,” said Wambach, 44,. “I won world championships. Many people would say: ‘Okay, you lived there at 100 percent! ‘But my internal life did not experience that 100 percent. “Wambach struggled with depression and abused alcohol and prescribed painkillers. She became sober after a very public DUARY ARASTATION In 2016.

Now, on a certain day, if she experiences 51 percent “enough” and “satisfaction”, Wambach said, “That was a banger of a day.”

The POD team

Glennon admitted that sometimes when she shares ideas that she finds inspiring – like the 51 percent concept – with people in her life, they tell her: “That is the most depressing I have ever heard,” she laughed. But the audience “We can do hard things”, the very involved Podchoeg, does not seem to mind. Every week several million listeners coordinate with episodes on topics such as friendship, sex, loss, parenthood and politics.

The crowd on Monday was delicious – muttering appreciation when Amanda confessed that he was emotionally stuck after her diagnosis of cancer and bursting in laughing when Glennon told a story about a recent trip to microdosis chairs. When they were the women, who are pronounced critics of President Trump, jokes about the political power of women in the menopause, and seriously struggled as Tish Melton, the 19-year-old daughter of Glennon, the show closed with her original song “We Can Do Hard Things”. (It is the theme song of the podcast.)

But the women also inspire avid aversion, with some observers who accuse them of navel staring and narcissism. Glennon recently stopped with social media – a change she said was just as good for her heart and nervous system as stopping drinking – and started a payment newsletter on substitian to prevent trolls, she said. She left the platform abruptly in the midst of allegations Heevelde readers From less established writers. “I thought it might feel different from social media,” she wrote in an e -mail after the New York Show. “It didn’t.”

A side effect of very public people – who talk about very personal things – is that the women rarely get through the supermarket without anyone trusting them or asking a difficult question.

Glennon, a recognized introverte, tries to see those interactions as a two -way street: if she has built a supporter on the basis of raw and vulnerable, she expects fans to roll it when she is frank with them about catching her on a bad day.

“I don’t really have to set up fake gloss, to entertain, at that time to be a fake version of myself,” Glennon said, apparently as much as for me. “That is what I tried to do for 10 years, to make the other person constantly comfortable, because I felt that I owed the moment. And that made me very tired and confused and stressed.”

But the POD team seems to find comfort in the dedication of women in honesty and in their aversion to the idea that everyone – the least all – has the answers.

“There is a difference between saying to people,” Here is a card, “” Glennon told me, “and says to people,” Here are some snapshots of the journey I took when I walked that way. “