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The Audacity of Vulnerability with Abby Wambach · Mind Over Mountain

0:06
Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, Welcome to mind Over Mountain with me Cheryl Strait.
0:11
Speaker 1: This week my guest is Abby Wambach. She is a
0:14
Speaker 1: soccer icon and legend, World Cup champion, two time Olympic
0:18
Speaker 1: gold medalist, and so many other things. In our conversation,
0:23
Speaker 1: she shares some stories about her most dazzling moments as
0:26
Speaker 1: an athlete and some of her most disappointing ones as well.
0:30
Speaker 1: In the ten years since avi's retirement, she has gone
0:33
Speaker 1: on to do all kinds of interesting things as an advocate,
0:36
Speaker 1: an author, and of course a podcast host. She has
0:40
Speaker 1: two Welcome to the Party about women's sports and we
0:43
Speaker 1: Can Do Hard Things, which she hosts with her wife,
0:46
Speaker 1: Lennon Doyle and Amanda Doyle. In our conversation, we talk
0:50
Speaker 1: about hard things and fun things and good things. We
0:54
Speaker 1: talk about grief and marriage and sobriety and how to
0:58
Speaker 1: load the dishwasher through a Dear Sugar letter.
1:01
Speaker 2: Let's listen to our conversation.
1:03
Speaker 1: Eryl straight, Abby, Well Buck, I am so excited to
1:09
Speaker 1: have you on Minor Roe Mountain.
1:10
Speaker 2: Welcome. Thank you for saying yes.
1:12
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? Anytime you call
1:15
Speaker 3: it's always an immediate yes.
1:17
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you so much. I feel the same way
1:19
Speaker 1: about you, dear heart. I feel like, you know, we
1:23
Speaker 1: we are connected somehow. I've been your fan for a
1:26
Speaker 1: zillion years and we don't even know each other in
1:29
Speaker 1: real life all that well, And yet do you do.
1:31
Speaker 2: You know what I mean about that that connection?
1:33
Speaker 1: Like you know, I've been on podcast a few times.
1:37
Speaker 1: You know, we've crosscads. We hung out a bit in
1:40
Speaker 1: Portland backstage when you were here with Amanda and Glennon. Yeah,
1:45
Speaker 1: and so there is that that that kindredness. And I
1:48
Speaker 1: think I want to start really with being your fan
1:53
Speaker 1: because you really are like no joke. I have known
1:57
Speaker 1: this always watching you play soccer over the watching you,
2:01
Speaker 1: you know, soar as a human in your retirement.
2:06
Speaker 2: But I did a little review before our conversation.
2:08
Speaker 1: I was like, let's look at all these like soccer,
2:11
Speaker 1: you know, achievements you've made, and okay, like it's a
2:15
Speaker 1: lot of stuff.
2:16
Speaker 2: It's a lot of stuff.
2:17
Speaker 1: It's you're a two time gold medalist, a World Cup champion,
2:22
Speaker 1: and you've like scored a bajillion you know, you were
2:25
Speaker 1: the lead scorer in many of those World Cups.
2:27
Speaker 2: You were the all.
2:29
Speaker 1: Time international soccer scoring for most goals in twenty thirteen
2:35
Speaker 1: you achieved that you held it until twenty twenty, and.
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Speaker 2: That is that's like a whole bunch of stuff.
2:40
Speaker 1: You were six times the winner of the US Soccer
2:44
Speaker 1: Athlete of the Year, and the list goes on and
2:47
Speaker 1: on and it all adds up to pretty fucking dazzling.
2:52
Speaker 2: And the question I.
2:53
Speaker 1: Had, you know me, I'm like, you know, my little
2:56
Speaker 1: emotional deer, sugar heart, is all of that stuff is
3:00
Speaker 1: and beautiful and out here, and you know so so
3:03
Speaker 1: clearly awesome. But I'm curious about you and what's inside
3:08
Speaker 1: of you, Like, what is your what dazzles you when
3:11
Speaker 1: you think about your career as a forward, when you
3:15
Speaker 1: think about your years in soccer, what is the moment
3:18
Speaker 1: where you were like this is this is the high
3:20
Speaker 1: mark for me.
3:21
Speaker 2: This is the top of the mountain for me.
3:25
Speaker 3: I love the way you're framing this question. What dazzles you?
3:30
Speaker 3: When I look back at my career It was a
3:36
Speaker 3: long It was a long run, and I was thirty
3:39
Speaker 3: five years old when I retired, and my body felt
3:43
Speaker 3: the wear and tear of thirty years doing this thing
3:46
Speaker 3: and pounding and pressure and intensity. You know, I consistently
3:54
Speaker 3: showed up every day committing to wanting to get a
3:58
Speaker 3: little bit better. And I was relentless in that pursuit.
4:03
Speaker 3: And I'm very dazzled at myself for maintaining that pursuit,
4:12
Speaker 3: and in my retirement, I call it I have needed
4:17
Speaker 3: to recover from professional sports in some ways because that
4:23
Speaker 3: kind of commitment I think changes the way that you
4:27
Speaker 3: look at the world in some ways and the way
4:29
Speaker 3: that you experience the world. And I don't mean to
4:34
Speaker 3: seem like or sound hyperbolic, but it's true. It was
4:38
Speaker 3: true for me that even though people always said that
4:42
Speaker 3: I was this humble person and I was very selfless,
4:45
Speaker 3: and I was a servant leader and a captain, and
4:49
Speaker 3: I love that. I love that for them, they weren't
4:52
Speaker 3: inside my body, or my brain or my spirit. And
4:58
Speaker 3: because of this requirement, you both show up as your
5:02
Speaker 3: best self every day. And I had and I think
5:06
Speaker 3: this is probably why we are a little bit kindred spirits, Cheryl,
5:09
Speaker 3: because I always had something in the back of my
5:14
Speaker 3: mind telling me that I didn't want to just be
5:18
Speaker 3: a soccer player or a soccer star. And so in
5:21
Speaker 3: this recovery from professional support, I notice there's a lot
5:26
Speaker 3: of parts of me that really were good at being
5:29
Speaker 3: a professional athlete. I'm a I'm a rule follower, i
5:33
Speaker 3: am competitive, I was always striving to get a little
5:39
Speaker 3: bit better. I was team oriented. But if you notice
5:46
Speaker 3: just did me explaining this to you, there was a
5:48
Speaker 3: lot of I involved. So an immense amount of self
5:53
Speaker 3: absorption or self consciousness is required in some ways to
5:58
Speaker 3: be a professional athlete, because because every single thing you
6:02
Speaker 3: do affects the outcomes of the way you feel, which
6:07
Speaker 3: affects the outcomes of the way you train, which affects
6:09
Speaker 3: the outcomes of the way you play in games, which
6:12
Speaker 3: affects the outcomes of the statistics that you can can
6:16
Speaker 3: can get during those games. And it felt, you know, truly,
6:23
Speaker 3: it felt very lonely. And I think that climbing the
6:27
Speaker 3: mountains that I climbed in order to win the things
6:32
Speaker 3: that I won and get the awards and the accolades,
6:36
Speaker 3: I really thought that when I became the world record
6:43
Speaker 3: holder for most goals international goals between men or women,
6:48
Speaker 3: I really thought like, oh, this is going to be
6:50
Speaker 3: the thing, right, this will be. Or when when I
6:53
Speaker 3: would win a gold medal and I would stand on
6:55
Speaker 3: the podium and you know, however long it would take
6:58
Speaker 3: for the national anthem to play, I would step off
7:01
Speaker 3: that podium with a gold medal wrapped around my neck,
7:04
Speaker 3: and my very first thought, Shayl, was I want to
7:06
Speaker 3: do that again.
7:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.
7:07
Speaker 3: I gave myself the time of the national anthem to
7:11
Speaker 3: really celebrate the years, months and endless days of hard work.
7:20
Speaker 3: And you can just keep doing that forever, right, Like
7:22
Speaker 3: you can just keep giving yourself another mountain.
7:26
Speaker 1: And that's also a way of maybe like not really
7:31
Speaker 1: staying in the moment, like or literally you would just
7:34
Speaker 1: give yourself one moment and then it's never enough, Like
7:37
Speaker 1: this mountain was really hard. I spent years getting here,
7:40
Speaker 1: and now I have to do the next one immediately. Yeah,
7:44
Speaker 1: which is could be kind of inspiring and cool and
7:47
Speaker 1: could be really self destructive.
7:48
Speaker 3: Too, Yeah, both and both. I think that I think
7:52
Speaker 3: the story of my life is and both, Like, there
7:54
Speaker 3: were so many amazing things about playing sport that I
7:57
Speaker 3: would never change, and there was also so many things
8:03
Speaker 3: that I definitely made decisions that would that made me
8:07
Speaker 3: self destruct or made me not You know, there's there's
8:12
Speaker 3: a lot of the big push of of why I
8:15
Speaker 3: played for so long and why I think one so
8:20
Speaker 3: much is because I'm the youngest of seven kids, and
8:22
Speaker 3: I wanted the attention of my mother, like if we
8:24
Speaker 3: could just break it down to something very simple that
8:27
Speaker 3: is like kind of the crux of it, like Mom
8:30
Speaker 3: noticed me.
8:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's like not even probably at the beginning,
8:35
Speaker 1: it wasn't even a conscious thing.
8:37
Speaker 2: It's like a primal thing.
8:38
Speaker 1: You're like the puppy trying to fight the way to
8:40
Speaker 1: the like the last nipple, you know, and you have
8:42
Speaker 1: to push another puppy out of the way to get it.
8:44
Speaker 3: Right, exactly right. And yeah, And I think just throughout
8:49
Speaker 3: the years of my career and throughout the years of
8:52
Speaker 3: now my retirement, I get to look back and wonder,
8:56
Speaker 3: and some days I wonder an incredible amount of awe
8:59
Speaker 3: for myself because I do know how extraordinary and how
9:05
Speaker 3: hard I did work to get the things that I did,
9:09
Speaker 3: and I'm like, good job, you worked really hard. And
9:12
Speaker 3: also I really want to set myself up for the
9:15
Speaker 3: rest of my life to not have to negotiate with
9:19
Speaker 3: myself on a daily basis for my self worth, so
9:24
Speaker 3: as to equate my self worth with accolades or accomplishment.
9:31
Speaker 3: Glenn and I are in a consistent negotiation around defining
9:35
Speaker 3: what enough is. And I think that that's a really
9:37
Speaker 3: healthy exercise for somebody like me, who, when given the option,
9:42
Speaker 3: can and will take the highest mountain climate be the
9:47
Speaker 3: best at it, but not feel very fulfilled.
9:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's I mean, it's an impossible conundrum because,
9:55
Speaker 1: as you say, so, well, you know, to be a competitor,
10:01
Speaker 1: for many of us, no matter what we're doing, whether
10:03
Speaker 1: it be writing or playing soccer or being the best accountant,
10:06
Speaker 1: I mean, you have to be humble.
10:10
Speaker 2: And show up and do the work and stick with it.
10:14
Speaker 2: And you know all you have to do all of
10:16
Speaker 2: those things.
10:17
Speaker 1: And very often the way that success is measured is
10:21
Speaker 1: not about set you know, it's not about that simple
10:23
Speaker 1: thing of just showing up. It's about and then we won,
10:27
Speaker 1: and then we were on the podium and we had
10:28
Speaker 1: the gold, and then the crowd went wild. Right. And
10:33
Speaker 1: so you know, especially in sports, which there is this
10:37
Speaker 1: like it's not just an internal experience, right, you know,
10:41
Speaker 1: there there is this whole world that is cheering with
10:44
Speaker 1: you when you win, and either angry or.
10:48
Speaker 2: Sad would you lose.
10:49
Speaker 1: And so I mean it sounds, it sounds to me
10:51
Speaker 1: you began from this place of wanting validation, yes, and
10:56
Speaker 1: then how do you extract yourself psychologically from that? You
10:59
Speaker 1: say you've been every in some ways.
11:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, therapy helping. Harpy is helping. And you know, I
11:06
Speaker 3: think it's really interesting because it is a communital It's
11:10
Speaker 3: like a communal experience to be an athlete or an
11:14
Speaker 3: entertainer in any way, right, or a writer right, Like
11:17
Speaker 3: you are essentially creating something out of nothing, and then
11:21
Speaker 3: you are giving this thing out into the world, hoping
11:24
Speaker 3: to shape the world in a in a way that
11:26
Speaker 3: feels warm to you, right, that feels like you're shaping
11:30
Speaker 3: the world, like you left your mark in some way.
11:34
Speaker 3: But I think if you separate from the ego a
11:37
Speaker 3: little bit, right, that is where I get my best
11:43
Speaker 3: work done. Because when I'm making decisions out of my
11:46
Speaker 3: spirit and out of my energy system, I often make
11:50
Speaker 3: the right long term decision. Sometimes I want the quick fix.
11:55
Speaker 3: It's the addict in me. I want I want the
11:57
Speaker 3: quick fix. I want I want to achieve the thing
12:01
Speaker 3: right away. But when I have the awareness to recognize
12:07
Speaker 3: when my ego jumps in and wants to take the wheel,
12:10
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've ever heard of internal family systems,
12:13
Speaker 3: But that's kind of therapy that I've been in. So
12:15
Speaker 3: I do a lot of parts work, and it's been
12:17
Speaker 3: really helpful, especially because my experience of being on teams.
12:20
Speaker 3: I literally feel like I have a team of people
12:23
Speaker 3: in my body and my parts are these little teammates
12:26
Speaker 3: of mine, right, And so when I can notice my
12:31
Speaker 3: ego coming online, I have to really work hard to
12:35
Speaker 3: slow down because I've had a lot of positive affirmation.
12:39
Speaker 3: I've gotten a lot of really interesting and cool things
12:42
Speaker 3: done and experience really cool things through the lens and
12:47
Speaker 3: with the ego of myself driving the bus in some ways,
12:52
Speaker 3: but that wasn't the thing that really fulfilled me, right,
12:55
Speaker 3: And so now the last couple of years, I've been
12:58
Speaker 3: doing quite a bit of work with the darker parts
13:01
Speaker 3: of myself, the parts that I don't usually let come
13:03
Speaker 3: to the surface. And that's been really good because as
13:08
Speaker 3: an athlete, you are trained over and over and over
13:11
Speaker 3: again to be presented with a problem and then solve it.
13:16
Speaker 3: But before you can solve a problem, there has to
13:20
Speaker 3: be a deep seated belief system inside of you, whether
13:25
Speaker 3: you want to call it agency or faith or whatnot.
13:28
Speaker 3: That's going to get you to the other side to
13:30
Speaker 3: be able to actually solve this specific problem. And I
13:35
Speaker 3: feel the thing that I can now do is I
13:40
Speaker 3: can ask myself the question, do I is this my
13:43
Speaker 3: problem to solve?
13:44
Speaker 1: Yeah?
13:45
Speaker 3: Right? And because as an athlete and as a high
13:48
Speaker 3: performing athlete, I did feel a little immortal at parts
13:53
Speaker 3: of my career where I thought I could do everything
13:56
Speaker 3: and I thought I was basically not a god. But
14:01
Speaker 3: I felt like I was immortal in a way.
14:12
Speaker 1: And what's interesting the way you describe your achievement when
14:15
Speaker 1: you were talking earlier, you were like, I showed up
14:18
Speaker 1: every day, I worked really hard for yours, which is
14:20
Speaker 1: about humility. Those two things seem opposite, humility and audacity.
14:24
Speaker 2: And I'm curious what you have to say about, like.
14:27
Speaker 1: What role do those things play in your life and
14:30
Speaker 1: your athletic career.
14:33
Speaker 3: I think if you can figure out the balance between
14:35
Speaker 3: those two, you're going to have a great experienced Ask Yeah,
14:40
Speaker 3: I was always humbled, number one, because sport is the
14:44
Speaker 3: most humbling thing in the world. Like you are basically
14:47
Speaker 3: getting it wrong way more than you ever get it right,
14:49
Speaker 3: especially on the soccer field.
14:51
Speaker 1: Okay, I might argue with you there about. I mean,
14:54
Speaker 1: I'm a writer where I'm in like the sub basement
14:58
Speaker 1: on a regular basis.
15:00
Speaker 3: You have to do a little bit different digging, like
15:02
Speaker 3: your digging is deep into your soul. Yeah, but I
15:07
Speaker 3: do think that this idea of audacity and humble and
15:12
Speaker 3: humility is fascinating to think about because in order to
15:17
Speaker 3: be I think, in order to be one of the
15:20
Speaker 3: best athletes in the world, which is which is what
15:25
Speaker 3: I think I was.
15:26
Speaker 1: Which is definitively what you were and are. Why do
15:30
Speaker 1: we have to put it in the past tense? You
15:31
Speaker 1: know you're You're a legend and an icon for sure.
15:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you, But my knees would beg to differ.
15:39
Speaker 3: I think that I think that the best players in
15:42
Speaker 3: the world are the ones that are able to really
15:46
Speaker 3: embrace both the audacity and the humility. And I'll give
15:51
Speaker 3: you an example. At the end of the game, right
15:55
Speaker 3: when the game is on the line, you can energetically
16:00
Speaker 3: feel the athlete who wants the ball, who is saying,
16:08
Speaker 3: I can do this, give me the ball, whatever it
16:11
Speaker 3: might be. And I think that there is a sort
16:17
Speaker 3: of thing that is almost like a lost art nowadays
16:21
Speaker 3: where people I think are too fearful of vulnerability to
16:27
Speaker 3: like plant the flag in the sand and say I
16:30
Speaker 3: care about this, right, I want the ball, I want this.
16:33
Speaker 3: I want this so much that I am willing to
16:35
Speaker 3: put myself in a position to be completely annihilated if
16:40
Speaker 3: I don't get it right publicly. There's something about you know,
16:45
Speaker 3: when I watch Steph Curry, or when we've watched you know,
16:49
Speaker 3: Sue Byrd and Diana Tarassi and Alex Morgan, like some
16:53
Speaker 3: of these players who were able to do things that
16:57
Speaker 3: felt quote unquote superhuman, right, And I think in some
17:00
Speaker 3: ways they it was. But I also think there was
17:05
Speaker 3: a there was part of our spirit that that had
17:09
Speaker 3: to throw caution to the wind and say, you know what,
17:11
Speaker 3: like for better or for worse, this is kind of
17:15
Speaker 3: what it takes. And to take it another woo woo level,
17:20
Speaker 3: if if you are an athlete or person in the
17:23
Speaker 3: world that actually can truly tap into the energy system
17:27
Speaker 3: and the energy field of a stadium like I played in,
17:33
Speaker 3: and you can actually embody it and allow that energy
17:37
Speaker 3: moving through you. I believe that like that, I believe
17:42
Speaker 3: I know for a fact that I wasn't as good
17:44
Speaker 3: as I played. It was a it was a connection
17:49
Speaker 3: and a communal experience that I was actually embracing. And
17:53
Speaker 3: I didn't figure that out when I was playing, by
17:55
Speaker 3: the way, I've only figured that out and in my
17:58
Speaker 3: retirement that because I asked a question, how the hell
18:01
Speaker 3: did I score some of these goals? Right?
18:03
Speaker 2: And how did you?
18:04
Speaker 1: It's almost like you were channeling exactly the excitement. But
18:09
Speaker 1: this is one of my big fears about team sports.
18:12
Speaker 1: I mean, not that there's any danger of me becoming
18:14
Speaker 1: a champion soccer player. I ever was, but honestly, like,
18:20
Speaker 1: you know, al for my life that I was in
18:21
Speaker 1: track and cross country and and I've I've always done
18:25
Speaker 1: sports that are really just like me, myself and I
18:27
Speaker 1: And part of it is because the idea of being
18:31
Speaker 1: on a team. Okay, so layer one the potential to
18:34
Speaker 1: disappoint my teammates by not doing well, and then layer
18:38
Speaker 1: two the fans. And so to me it was fascinating
18:41
Speaker 1: you're saying, like these people around you actually made you
18:44
Speaker 1: a stronger athlete. Did you ever feel the opposite that
18:47
Speaker 1: you were, that you were like I've disappointed them, you know,
18:50
Speaker 1: I haven't, like you know, you turned and say, look, mom,
18:54
Speaker 1: Mom's not looking.
18:54
Speaker 2: You feel invalidated.
18:56
Speaker 1: Did you ever have that experience for that the crowd
18:58
Speaker 1: is not cheering for you and you it's here's.
19:02
Speaker 3: A few examples. I mean, I didn't win every World
19:05
Speaker 3: Championship I played in, and I want a bunch but
19:07
Speaker 3: not everyone. And those experiences I think are almost as
19:13
Speaker 3: important as the ones that you win are. And the
19:18
Speaker 3: reason why is because those games. And in twenty eleven,
19:23
Speaker 3: we played in the final against against Japan end up
19:26
Speaker 3: losing in penalty kicks in the World Cup final in
19:28
Speaker 3: twenty eleven, and I had scored the game winner, so
19:34
Speaker 3: we were winning two to one, and the game went
19:36
Speaker 3: into overtime because Sawa Homari Sawa from Japan scored on
19:42
Speaker 3: a corner kick, and I was about to win the
19:46
Speaker 3: Golden Ball. I was about to win the Golden Boot.
19:49
Speaker 3: I was about to basically win Player of the Year.
19:52
Speaker 3: This is twenty eleven, all the gold things, all of
19:55
Speaker 3: the things I was just I was like minutes away,
19:58
Speaker 3: and then they equalized, so we go into we go
20:01
Speaker 3: into overtime, and they went in penalties. And this is
20:05
Speaker 3: the same tournament that I had scored that crazy, incredibly
20:08
Speaker 3: late goal against Brazil. Right that a lot of people
20:11
Speaker 3: kind of remember where they were, where they were at
20:13
Speaker 3: during that that that game, watching and I thought, oh,
20:18
Speaker 3: of course, this is my tournament. I look at what
20:21
Speaker 3: is happening here, of course. And then when we didn't
20:24
Speaker 3: win that game, I remember feeling so low and so
20:32
Speaker 3: depressed and so grief stricken because it was this thing
20:37
Speaker 3: that I had anticipated and I believed so deeply that
20:40
Speaker 3: it was it was going to be ours. We were
20:43
Speaker 3: so close, but I allowed myself to feel so much pain.
20:52
Speaker 3: I gave myself the space and I almost required it.
20:56
Speaker 3: So even when you do well or you don't do well,
21:02
Speaker 3: like all of those things are very important in order
21:05
Speaker 3: to continue to grow and become the next version of yourself. Right,
21:11
Speaker 3: And so we then go into the twenty twelve Olympics
21:13
Speaker 3: and we win Olympic Gold. I score a bunch of goals.
21:17
Speaker 3: It's an incredible thing that happens. And then I win
21:19
Speaker 3: Player of the Year, FIVA Player of the Year. So
21:23
Speaker 3: I think that like, yeah, there are times where I
21:26
Speaker 3: feel like I've let people down, but I make sure
21:30
Speaker 3: to be accountable and take responsibility for those moments where
21:34
Speaker 3: I felt like I let people down and unapologetically. So
21:38
Speaker 3: I was just like in the locker room, in the huddle,
21:42
Speaker 3: I'm like, guys, this is my fault and that everybody's like, no.
21:46
Speaker 1: No, but it wasn't and abby, But I think the
21:49
Speaker 1: powerful thing you're saying here is this the moral of
21:52
Speaker 1: this story is our failures absolutely contribute to our victories.
21:57
Speaker 1: The great things that happen in twenty twelve are built
22:00
Speaker 1: on the not so great things that happened in twenty eleven.
22:02
Speaker 1: And this is true in sport and in life.
22:06
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's actually probably the thing that pisses my wife
22:11
Speaker 3: off the most about me is that I have a
22:14
Speaker 3: tendency to reframe and positively spin negative circumstances that come
22:21
Speaker 3: across our door, and that drives her bonker. She's like,
22:25
Speaker 3: can I just be sad about this for a minute,
22:27
Speaker 3: And I'm like, oh, absolutely, be sad, but like we're
22:29
Speaker 3: going to be fine. We're going to figure this out.
22:31
Speaker 3: And so there is some maladaptive things that I have
22:38
Speaker 3: needed to not unlearned, but I have needed to reframe
22:43
Speaker 3: for a retirement person, a person that is not in sport.
22:47
Speaker 3: I do think that there are a lot of things
22:49
Speaker 3: that can apply from sport behavior, sport mentality, sports psychology
22:55
Speaker 3: into real life. But I also think that the ability
22:59
Speaker 3: to you try to live in a normal body in
23:06
Speaker 3: like non a non superhuman psychology. I can understand why
23:12
Speaker 3: Glennon would be annoyed because you know, sometimes you just
23:15
Speaker 3: don't need a solution, right, you just want to vent
23:18
Speaker 3: about something. And so I think it's it always makes
23:22
Speaker 3: me giggle because like my instinct is to be like,
23:25
Speaker 3: problems here, going to solve it, going to solve it,
23:27
Speaker 3: rather than just like let it, let it breathe and
23:30
Speaker 3: live a life. Because the truth is I'm I'm uncomfortable
23:36
Speaker 3: with her uncomfort.
23:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, honest, I think that's part of being a partner too,
23:42
Speaker 1: is it's actually worse to see your partner struggling or
23:46
Speaker 1: in pain because you're like, I love you so much,
23:50
Speaker 1: I can't bear this, I want to fix it. I'm
23:52
Speaker 1: the same, I mean, I'm the same way. Maybe though
23:55
Speaker 1: part of this is from another aspect that we are
23:58
Speaker 1: the same. You know, I know we're talking about deep
24:08
Speaker 1: emotional things, but I do have to pause for a
24:10
Speaker 1: moment to remember a real that I think Glennon put
24:15
Speaker 1: up on Instagram, gosh, probably five or six years ago,
24:18
Speaker 1: that is imprinted in my mind, that that I am
24:20
Speaker 1: forever team Abby in this regard the dishwasher and the
24:25
Speaker 1: way that Glennon loads that dishwasher.
24:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's tough.
24:30
Speaker 1: So I mean, which is I mean if there were like,
24:32
Speaker 1: if loading the dishwasher incorrectly was a crime, she would
24:35
Speaker 1: be she'd have a life sentence, right, Yes, And I
24:39
Speaker 1: was beside myself. I think you've described it as a
24:42
Speaker 1: kerfluffle or something. I was okay, I added an elder,
24:47
Speaker 1: But but she does it wrong?
24:49
Speaker 2: Has that? Has that remained the same relationship? Have you
24:52
Speaker 2: guys fixed that? Did you guys dose therapy or.
24:55
Speaker 3: It's a good question. I think some of the things
24:57
Speaker 3: that have you know, in near two we were having
25:00
Speaker 3: a bit of a power struggle of our marriage, like
25:03
Speaker 3: who was going to win out the power struggle of it?
25:08
Speaker 3: And we got through that time and in year now
25:11
Speaker 3: we're coming up on year ten, and I think the
25:15
Speaker 3: thing that we learn the most every single day, and
25:18
Speaker 3: we relearn the most every single day, is that for
25:22
Speaker 3: the most part, we are who we are. We're going
25:24
Speaker 3: to have our tendencies in the way that we respond
25:27
Speaker 3: to the world to life because of our own personal
25:31
Speaker 3: families that we were raised in and the way our
25:34
Speaker 3: brains formed right, and so I have learned that there
25:39
Speaker 3: are some things that are just not worth it. Right.
25:43
Speaker 3: So what I do, and this may be wrong, I
25:47
Speaker 3: don't know. You tell me, Cheryl, But what I do
25:50
Speaker 3: now is after dinner.
25:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know where you're going. I know where you're going.
25:56
Speaker 3: When the dishes are essentially done, there's another thing I'm
26:01
Speaker 3: going to add to the dishwasher list. And it's rinsing
26:04
Speaker 3: the sink down, you know, rinsing all on the bottom
26:06
Speaker 3: of the sink.
26:07
Speaker 2: We are connected, we are sisters.
26:09
Speaker 3: It's a it's a tough life I'm living over here.
26:12
Speaker 3: And so I'll just go back into the dishwasher. When
26:14
Speaker 3: everybody's left the kitchen, I will rearrange it the way
26:17
Speaker 3: that I think it should be rearranged. Oh my gosh.
26:20
Speaker 3: And then lo and behold, we don't even have to
26:22
Speaker 3: do load.
26:24
Speaker 2: Because there's so much more room. Me too.
26:25
Speaker 1: My husband cleans up the kitchen, does all the dishes.
26:28
Speaker 1: Then I go, that's the sank, redo the dishwasher. I mean,
26:31
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding you. It's the same situation here.
26:34
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, but I can't hover because hovering is upsetting
26:37
Speaker 3: to her. So I have to just I have to like.
26:40
Speaker 3: So we've we've learned a lot about each other. And
26:44
Speaker 3: we actually did this really cool interview many many years
26:47
Speaker 3: ago with doctor Orna Golmerek. She has that this.
26:51
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I'm obsessed with her couple therapies.
26:54
Speaker 3: She's the best.
26:55
Speaker 2: She's amazing.
26:56
Speaker 3: She said, one of the most difficult things in marriage
27:00
Speaker 3: or relationships is negotiating otherness. And I think that that's
27:06
Speaker 3: so true for me that when somebody doesn't do something
27:11
Speaker 3: that I want or the way in which I want
27:13
Speaker 3: them to do it, what I'm really upset about is
27:16
Speaker 3: that we are not one thing. What I'm really upset
27:19
Speaker 3: about is that we are different. Yeah, and that's what
27:23
Speaker 3: I'm mad about. It's not the thing. It's like how
27:27
Speaker 3: I want us to be the same in some dimension,
27:31
Speaker 3: in some way. I don't know. It's funny, though, but
27:33
Speaker 3: you are.
27:34
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's true, and I bet that
27:37
Speaker 1: you are the same in a lot of dimensions. I'm
27:41
Speaker 1: going to guess that there is that sense, like you know,
27:44
Speaker 1: I've heard you guys tell your love story, and there
27:47
Speaker 1: was this from the beginning, like this almost magical connection,
27:52
Speaker 1: like you look at each other.
27:53
Speaker 2: And you think you.
27:55
Speaker 1: Hello you, Yes, And there is something really powerful about
28:00
Speaker 1: that is I think about sameness and like, how boring
28:03
Speaker 1: would it be?
28:04
Speaker 2: Honestly, so you know, we.
28:05
Speaker 3: Get so boring. I'm so glad that there are things. Yeah,
28:08
Speaker 3: you will probably continue to bicker about until the day
28:10
Speaker 3: we're both dead.
28:11
Speaker 1: We need the dishwasher renegades among us, even if they
28:16
Speaker 1: drive us crazy. Abby, Listen, I have a million more
28:19
Speaker 1: questions for you. I also am mindful that this is
28:22
Speaker 1: kind of a cool juncture to read this dear Sugar
28:25
Speaker 1: letter to you, because good, it's about relationships.
28:28
Speaker 2: Okay, can I read it to you?
28:30
Speaker 3: Of course?
28:31
Speaker 1: Here it is, deer Sugar. I'm in a relationship with
28:34
Speaker 1: a woman who I've been with for about five years.
28:36
Speaker 1: I'm also a woman, and both of us aren't in
28:39
Speaker 1: our early thirties. My partner is cool as hell, super kind, wicked, funny,
28:43
Speaker 1: and a fantastic cook.
28:45
Speaker 2: No comment on how.
28:46
Speaker 1: She loves the dishwasher, though, I'll just I've loved making
28:50
Speaker 1: a home with her in our tiny house and our
28:52
Speaker 1: blended family of three cats.
28:54
Speaker 2: Yes we are proud lesbian cat ladies.
28:56
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, me too, But dogs and cats, I've
29:00
Speaker 1: got everything here okay, But here I am writing to
29:02
Speaker 1: you as tears come into my eyes because lately we've
29:05
Speaker 1: been talking about getting married, and even though I love
29:07
Speaker 1: my partner, there's a part of me that cannot stop
29:10
Speaker 1: asking myself if she's the one I'm meant to be
29:12
Speaker 1: with for the rest of my life. We've gone to
29:15
Speaker 1: therapy off and on, and it's been helpful. The issues
29:18
Speaker 1: are the usual stuff, how to communicate and listen better,
29:21
Speaker 1: how to make the other one feel more loved and supported,
29:24
Speaker 1: and so on. I feel like we're both good partners
29:26
Speaker 1: to each other, so my concerns aren't about anything specific
29:30
Speaker 1: that's wrong with her or our relationship.
29:32
Speaker 2: They're about the.
29:33
Speaker 1: General feeling I have that I'm not sure if I
29:35
Speaker 1: feel the same level of commitment to her that she
29:38
Speaker 1: does to me. We're a team, but I feel like
29:40
Speaker 1: maybe I hold part of myself back in a way
29:42
Speaker 1: that she does not. What's most confusing to me is
29:46
Speaker 1: I cannot tell if my doubts are coming from the
29:48
Speaker 1: fact that this isn't the right relationship for me, even
29:51
Speaker 1: though I do honestly love her, or if my doubts
29:54
Speaker 1: are coming from some aspect of my psyche that fears
29:57
Speaker 1: commitment or intimacy self babotages when things get marriage discussion serious.
30:04
Speaker 2: One of my fears is.
30:05
Speaker 1: That if I trust this hesitation I have deep inside
30:08
Speaker 1: myself and break up with my partner, then I'll later
30:11
Speaker 1: realize I was just being a coward of love and
30:14
Speaker 1: the result is I've lost this incredible woman I was
30:17
Speaker 1: meant to be with. On the other hand, what if
30:20
Speaker 1: my feelings are telling me something real? What if I
30:23
Speaker 1: marry her and later regret not listening to myself when
30:26
Speaker 1: I questioned if this was what I truly wanted. I
30:29
Speaker 1: know I'm asking you an impossible question, sugar, but will
30:33
Speaker 1: you please give me some advice? How do we know
30:35
Speaker 1: what we really want in a romantic relationship when what
30:38
Speaker 1: we want is two opposite things? Are these kinds of
30:41
Speaker 1: doubts always present in love? What's the right or brave
30:45
Speaker 1: thing to do when your mind is divided signed torn
30:50
Speaker 1: into well?
30:50
Speaker 3: I have a couple of initial feelings because I was
30:55
Speaker 3: really trying to embody the words and something my wife
31:00
Speaker 3: what would say? And it says a lot is even
31:05
Speaker 3: though the decision is hard, most of the time we
31:10
Speaker 3: already know what we're supposed to do. We're just scared
31:15
Speaker 3: to do it for whatever reason. And I think that
31:23
Speaker 3: I think that the option, you know, do I stay
31:29
Speaker 3: or do I go? I don't think that. I don't
31:34
Speaker 3: think that the psychological approach to making a decision out
31:39
Speaker 3: of fear is the way to go. I think trying
31:42
Speaker 3: to think about it making this decision out of love.
31:45
Speaker 3: So if you, if you want to have love be
31:49
Speaker 3: at the center, try not to me. I wouldn't get
31:54
Speaker 3: involved with the part of yourself necessary that is self sabotaging,
32:03
Speaker 3: Because if there is a part that's self sabotaging, you
32:06
Speaker 3: know that part, that part's been there all along. That
32:09
Speaker 3: part is a protector part. It's protecting you form some
32:13
Speaker 3: wound that you've had in your life. And I respect
32:16
Speaker 3: those parts, but sometimes those parts are not necessarily always
32:20
Speaker 3: meant to be trusted. Right, So the way we work
32:24
Speaker 3: in IFS language is the capital S self, the one
32:28
Speaker 3: that is open and sees and can look out into
32:32
Speaker 3: the conference room of all of your parts and say, oh, yeah,
32:35
Speaker 3: you guys are all doing so well for me inside,
32:38
Speaker 3: like good job. And being a person who did get
32:43
Speaker 3: divorced from my first marriage too, who did get married
32:48
Speaker 3: when I knew that I shouldn't I had a deep
32:51
Speaker 3: tug happening. Me too, I had a deep tug happening.
32:56
Speaker 3: And for this writer, you just have to figure out
33:03
Speaker 3: if that deep tug is what Cheryl and I also experienced,
33:07
Speaker 3: or if it is just fear based.
33:10
Speaker 1: What do you think, Cheryl, Yeah, I mean, I love
33:12
Speaker 1: this idea of answering this question torn into from a
33:19
Speaker 1: place of love rather than fear. And for me, one
33:23
Speaker 1: of the first steps to take in the direction of
33:25
Speaker 1: love and away from fear is to tell the truth.
33:28
Speaker 2: Is to tell the truth.
33:30
Speaker 1: So to say to your partner, and this is terrifying,
33:33
Speaker 1: and it might end your relationship to say to your
33:35
Speaker 1: partner what you said to us. You are amazing and
33:39
Speaker 1: there's absolutely nothing wrong with you. And I treasure and
33:41
Speaker 1: cherish our relationship. And I don't know that I feel
33:46
Speaker 1: the same level of commitment to you as you do
33:49
Speaker 1: to me. And I am not ready to get married
33:51
Speaker 1: right now because I have doubts. So beginning with the truth,
33:54
Speaker 1: loving kindness and truth, and I do think that the
33:58
Speaker 1: truth is the most loving thing we can ever truth,
34:01
Speaker 1: you know, give our partners even even if the truth hurts.
34:04
Speaker 1: And I mean that you know, of all the regrets
34:07
Speaker 1: I have about that first marriage, it goes back to
34:11
Speaker 1: that very beginning, because I did marry a really wonderful,
34:14
Speaker 1: beautiful man who I sincerely loved, and I wish that
34:17
Speaker 1: I had just been brave enough to say, I actually
34:20
Speaker 1: don't think we should get married. We should just love
34:21
Speaker 1: each other right now, you know, and that relationship would
34:25
Speaker 1: have happened as it did and played out and ended
34:27
Speaker 1: as it did, but without the deeper trauma and drama
34:32
Speaker 1: of divorce. And so I think beginning with the truth
34:35
Speaker 1: is a loving act. And also I will say I
34:39
Speaker 1: say this all the time, so I very much agree
34:41
Speaker 1: with Glennon that you know that we often know what
34:45
Speaker 1: we want and we're afraid to know it. And I
34:47
Speaker 1: see this everywhere in this letter that deep down inside
34:53
Speaker 1: you do actually have reservations. You know that you have
34:57
Speaker 1: been with this woman for five years that were big growthy,
35:00
Speaker 1: you know, from like your late twenties into your if
35:02
Speaker 1: you're just you know, in your early thirties now, and
35:04
Speaker 1: maybe maybe this relationship was meant to teach you something
35:08
Speaker 1: that you're ready to move on from now.
35:10
Speaker 2: And that is so painful.
35:12
Speaker 1: I know, I as I wrote a shugar you have
35:14
Speaker 1: to be brave enough to break your own heart and
35:16
Speaker 1: sometimes that means ended relationships that you that you love.
35:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'll just add to that because I think
35:23
Speaker 3: it's important to say, especially about marriage, that it's not
35:30
Speaker 3: it's not a decision you take lightly like to me,
35:33
Speaker 3: it's got to be a hell yes, or it's a
35:35
Speaker 3: it's a no, right and if it And also we
35:40
Speaker 3: sometimes I think, get very bogged down in our tomorrows
35:45
Speaker 3: that we forget to be in the today's. Yes, we
35:50
Speaker 3: are adults. We have to see the the trajectory of
35:55
Speaker 3: our lives and see the pasts of our decisions and
35:59
Speaker 3: feel the consequences of those prior decisions so that we
36:03
Speaker 3: can make more informed, better decisions going forward. But we
36:06
Speaker 3: also can't predict the future necessarily always know what decisions
36:13
Speaker 3: are going to be the best or the worst until
36:16
Speaker 3: we make them. And I just don't think that there
36:19
Speaker 3: are wrong decisions. Like even though my first marriage didn't
36:22
Speaker 3: end well, I wouldn't change it because it landed me
36:28
Speaker 3: in the exact place that I needed to be. You
36:30
Speaker 3: know a lot of times, and you know this, Cheryl,
36:33
Speaker 3: like we keep we keep needing to learn the same
36:37
Speaker 3: lesson over and over again until we finally like surrender
36:40
Speaker 3: to it and say, okay, tell me what you need
36:43
Speaker 3: to know lesson and I finally am going to listen
36:46
Speaker 3: this time. So I don't know if there are any
36:48
Speaker 3: wrong moves, Like, I just don't. I don't believe in
36:51
Speaker 3: right and wrong or good and bad. I just think
36:53
Speaker 3: that it's like we just are trying our best and
36:56
Speaker 3: with the most amount of information, the most informed information
36:59
Speaker 3: we can make. But I think that what you're saying, too, Cheryl,
37:02
Speaker 3: is so right on that there's a lot of doubt
37:05
Speaker 3: in this in this letter, and that's okay. There's nothing
37:10
Speaker 3: wrong with not being sure.
37:20
Speaker 1: I just used that phrase regret about my first marriage,
37:23
Speaker 1: and and as soon as I said it, I was like,
37:25
Speaker 1: that's not what I mean, because I agree with you,
37:27
Speaker 1: like I really genuinely feel like I learned so much
37:31
Speaker 1: from that experience. And you know, we can't go back
37:34
Speaker 1: in time. You know, I can't be the wise self
37:38
Speaker 1: I am now, or the wiser self I am now. Yeah,
37:40
Speaker 1: you know, at that younger I still have a lot
37:42
Speaker 1: of work, you know, trust me. But then you know,
37:46
Speaker 1: so now I've been with my husband, Brian, I mean,
37:49
Speaker 1: we've been together for like six thousand years now, you know,
37:52
Speaker 1: or actually thirty. And I'm shocked. I mean, I'm shocked
37:56
Speaker 1: that it's worked out this long and this well. And
37:58
Speaker 1: I love him like crazy, and we sometimes struggle and
38:02
Speaker 1: we fight over the dishwasher, and you know, all of
38:04
Speaker 1: these things happen, but never once have I felt like
38:07
Speaker 1: I shouldn't be with him.
38:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, there.
38:10
Speaker 1: Is this grounding wire I have inside myself that like,
38:14
Speaker 1: whatever the trouble, it's worth it because because he does
38:17
Speaker 1: feel like the one to me, you know, and I
38:20
Speaker 1: think that that's worth listening to. And I think part
38:24
Speaker 1: of the way I was able to get that and
38:26
Speaker 1: find that and feel that in myself is that first
38:30
Speaker 1: marriage that experience.
38:31
Speaker 2: What about you and Glennon.
38:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's zero seconds that I have known this
38:39
Speaker 3: woman that I have thought we shouldn't be together, Like
38:45
Speaker 3: she has completely changed my life. Is the best decision
38:49
Speaker 3: I ever made. And I say to her on a
38:52
Speaker 3: weekly basis because I do believe it's kind of true.
38:55
Speaker 3: I'm like, I cannot believe that you married me. I
38:59
Speaker 3: feel so lucky. And you know, we have gone through
39:05
Speaker 3: so many We've built a life together. There's something so
39:09
Speaker 3: sweet you know, when you get through some of the
39:14
Speaker 3: power struggles that every marriage is bound to be to
39:19
Speaker 3: be having, when you get through some deaths that happen,
39:26
Speaker 3: and when you get through some crisis and you and
39:30
Speaker 3: you really start to build a thing that shapes into
39:32
Speaker 3: this like life that you're collectively you doing it together
39:38
Speaker 3: as a as a as a group, you me are kids,
39:42
Speaker 3: Like we're all partaking in this building of this thing.
39:47
Speaker 3: And I take extraordinary pride in that. And you know,
39:53
Speaker 3: there is a reason why when we first met it
39:55
Speaker 3: was like lightning struck. And when I I tell you
40:01
Speaker 3: this is not an exaggeration, like I felt like I
40:05
Speaker 3: would have died if I didn't marry her, Like there's
40:09
Speaker 3: something about that time that it was like I was
40:13
Speaker 3: so desperate to be attached to her, I will wanted
40:17
Speaker 3: to crawl. And what I also have learned in my
40:22
Speaker 3: therapy is, you know, codependency and enmeshment in all the
40:25
Speaker 3: things that one of the greatest gifts of my life
40:29
Speaker 3: with Glennon has been that the reason really why I
40:32
Speaker 3: married her is because she is the very first person
40:37
Speaker 3: that I know that won't leave and allows me the
40:43
Speaker 3: space to become an access and express parts of myself
40:51
Speaker 3: that I've never been able to express before. Fear, anxiety, anger,
41:00
Speaker 3: the shadow parts of me that I've never let anybody
41:04
Speaker 3: else see. And so there's this book I'm reading called
41:09
Speaker 3: Middle Passage, and the idea is, as we go through
41:13
Speaker 3: middle life, we have to basically kill off our younger
41:20
Speaker 3: selves because those younger selves were just basically through the
41:23
Speaker 3: lens of our parents. The person that we built ourselves
41:26
Speaker 3: into was through the perception of what we felt like
41:29
Speaker 3: our parents wanted us to be, right. And the second
41:32
Speaker 3: half of our life is getting to kind of rewrite
41:37
Speaker 3: that story and to rewrite that narrative and to kind
41:42
Speaker 3: of re embody ourselves in the person that we were
41:45
Speaker 3: always meant to be from the beginning, not the person
41:48
Speaker 3: we thought we should be, but the person that we
41:51
Speaker 3: actually are. And I'm able to do that with Glennon,
41:55
Speaker 3: and I think she's able to do that with me.
41:58
Speaker 3: And it's so funny because we're so different, Like we
42:01
Speaker 3: are very different, like even just like things that we
42:03
Speaker 3: enjoy doing, we enjoy doing enough of the same things,
42:07
Speaker 3: but we really enjoy doing a lot of different things.
42:10
Speaker 3: She really loves to read and really loves to write,
42:13
Speaker 3: and I really love to she creates and I recreate.
42:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, you really love to watch sports together, or you
42:20
Speaker 1: love to watch sports and then and then you know,
42:24
Speaker 1: send big videos of Glennon.
42:26
Speaker 2: Yes, I really at it and learning about sports.
42:29
Speaker 3: I've learned that the way I can get Glennin to
42:31
Speaker 3: sit down and watch a sporting match is I've got
42:34
Speaker 3: to dive deep into the humanitarian story that is the
42:38
Speaker 3: the like the golden nugget of humanity inside of the sport. So,
42:43
Speaker 3: you know, a woman basketball player, she is now just
42:47
Speaker 3: coming back from her injury, and I've got to, like,
42:50
Speaker 3: I gotta rope her into the humanity of the of
42:53
Speaker 3: the athletes. Yeah.
42:54
Speaker 1: No, that's what this whole podcast is about, you know,
42:58
Speaker 1: because like I'm not I'm like.
43:00
Speaker 2: Not a sports expert at all.
43:02
Speaker 1: And in fact, I want to say thank you Abby
43:04
Speaker 1: because you explaining to Glennon and then Glennon making a
43:08
Speaker 1: video explaining to us about how soccer is played has
43:12
Speaker 1: basically been my main education in the sport. There's one
43:16
Speaker 1: where she's like using forks and they're the offside rule.
43:20
Speaker 1: Yeah nothing, I never knew. I never knew, and so
43:25
Speaker 1: so thank you.
43:25
Speaker 2: I'm I'm team Glennon. Here on this one totally.
43:28
Speaker 1: And that's what you know this podcast. What's the reason
43:31
Speaker 1: I wanted to make it is I'm I. I love athletes,
43:34
Speaker 1: and I in my own athletic endeavors. I've learned so
43:37
Speaker 1: much wisdom from those experiences. I've been inspired by people
43:41
Speaker 1: who are champions like you. But what's really interesting to
43:45
Speaker 1: me is the story inside you know. That's why I
43:47
Speaker 1: let off with like, you know, okay, you have all
43:49
Speaker 1: these accolades, but but.
43:51
Speaker 2: What do you care about? You know, what was your achievement?
43:53
Speaker 1: And you you mentioned earlier in our conversation, the last
43:59
Speaker 1: few years you've really been, you know, confronting your dark
44:04
Speaker 1: side or aspects of your darkest self. And I feel like,
44:08
Speaker 1: you know, part of that is, of course you're getting older,
44:11
Speaker 1: we do become more able.
44:12
Speaker 2: To do that.
44:13
Speaker 1: But also, as you said, you know, for the first
44:16
Speaker 1: time you feel really seen by someone, and in this
44:20
Speaker 1: relationship with Glenna is like you're safe to do that.
44:24
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering, what, what's what have you been exploring?
44:27
Speaker 1: What have you learned about yourself in these middle in
44:30
Speaker 1: these middle passage years.
44:31
Speaker 3: Good question, Well, my brother died two years ago. I know,
44:35
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry, yeah, thank you. That was really a
44:40
Speaker 3: rough time. And yet I felt like it was an
44:46
Speaker 3: important moment for me because I've always had this outsize
44:49
Speaker 3: fear of death, even though I lived a very risky
44:53
Speaker 3: younger life. Yeah, but now that I'm getting a little
44:59
Speaker 3: bit older, a little bit more wiser, I have to
45:02
Speaker 3: actually confront this fear because I'm getting closer, you know,
45:07
Speaker 3: every single day, I'm getting closer to the end. And
45:09
Speaker 3: who knows when that comes, but I really want to
45:12
Speaker 3: be prepared for that time. And and I think that
45:18
Speaker 3: these dark parts of ourselves, our culture, especially in America,
45:25
Speaker 3: we don't we don't give enough space to honor the
45:28
Speaker 3: dark parts of ourselves. It's all the glitz and the
45:32
Speaker 3: glam and the shiny and the you know, the awards
45:35
Speaker 3: and this and that, and I don't know, like some
45:40
Speaker 3: of the some of the best conversations I've ever had
45:43
Speaker 3: in my life have been about mortality and dying and
45:48
Speaker 3: what does this all mean here? Because I have committed
45:53
Speaker 3: my whole life to living what I think is a
45:56
Speaker 3: meaningful life, and I know everybody has their own definition
46:00
Speaker 3: of that, and so me to be able to have
46:05
Speaker 3: been given space to explore my darkness and I'm not
46:09
Speaker 3: saying like evil darkness. I'm saying like hard things. Yeah,
46:13
Speaker 3: Like I've been obsessed with joy and excitement and enthusiasm
46:18
Speaker 3: my whole life. But what that means is that I
46:22
Speaker 3: underdevelop some of these skills to be able to actually
46:24
Speaker 3: manage some of the anger, is some of the sadness
46:27
Speaker 3: and some of the depression that can come in. And
46:30
Speaker 3: so when it does, because we are human after all,
46:34
Speaker 3: I'm not able to process that stuff through my body, right,
46:38
Speaker 3: I avoid it, I deny it, or back in the day,
46:41
Speaker 3: I would just drink it down right. And so learning
46:44
Speaker 3: to sit with some of this uncomfortable stuff and then
46:48
Speaker 3: also watching your partner over the years sometimes also sit
46:52
Speaker 3: with with some uncomfortable stuff. There is nothing, like you
46:55
Speaker 3: said earlier, there is nothing like watching a loved one
46:58
Speaker 3: suffer and the sincere knowing that there is actually nothing
47:04
Speaker 3: you can do.
47:05
Speaker 2: So hard and also your own suffering.
47:10
Speaker 1: Having I'm curious your brother Peter, was his death the
47:15
Speaker 1: first time in your life that you lost somebody really
47:18
Speaker 1: close to you.
47:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've lost a few people, you know, grandparents and whatnot.
47:24
Speaker 2: But this was a tragic death. This was tragic, yeah.
47:28
Speaker 3: And tragic in more ways than I can even like
47:32
Speaker 3: explain in the moment. But you know, he has three kids,
47:37
Speaker 3: all of which are incredible athletes. They play lacrosse. One
47:41
Speaker 3: plays lacrosse right now at you and see, the youngest
47:44
Speaker 3: is going to play lacrosse in next year at Duke.
47:48
Speaker 3: And my brother, the oldest is like an accountant and
47:53
Speaker 3: played soccer at Saint Bonaventure. And so these three kids
47:56
Speaker 3: were like sports guys, and my dad and my brother
47:59
Speaker 3: Peter was like the sports dad, right. He was the
48:03
Speaker 3: guy who took them everywhere, took them the every hockey tournament,
48:06
Speaker 3: it took them the every lacrosse game, to all their
48:08
Speaker 3: soccer games, and he suffered a lot because of it
48:12
Speaker 3: because he had to get off of work. He was
48:15
Speaker 3: always on the road, and so he dedicated so much
48:20
Speaker 3: of himself to this thing that these kids are now
48:24
Speaker 3: thriving in that the biggest heartbreak that I have around
48:28
Speaker 3: it is that he doesn't get to be in this
48:33
Speaker 3: dimension experiencing it with them.
48:35
Speaker 1: When somebody dies too young, I always say, you know,
48:41
Speaker 1: it's like my mom who died at forty five. I
48:43
Speaker 1: always say, it's like the loss that keeps on losing. Yes,
48:46
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean that I haven't also learned a
48:51
Speaker 1: lot from that experience.
48:53
Speaker 2: But it is.
48:54
Speaker 1: It is like, you know, you know, when I had kids,
48:57
Speaker 1: I didn't have my mother. When I published my first book,
48:59
Speaker 1: I didn't have my mother when I moved into middle age.
49:01
Speaker 1: To myself, I don't have my mother to talk to
49:04
Speaker 1: about these things. And that is true with your brother
49:07
Speaker 1: and his kids too, where those losses pile on to
49:13
Speaker 1: each other. And one thing, I know you spend a
49:15
Speaker 1: lot of time on your beautiful podcast. We can do
49:18
Speaker 1: hard things talking about hard things, but there is such
49:22
Speaker 1: a difference between talking about grief and intellectually understanding grief
49:28
Speaker 1: and even emotionally having a lot of compassion for somebody
49:30
Speaker 1: who has experienced loss, and then grieving actually.
49:34
Speaker 2: Being in grief yourself.
49:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I wonder what your experience of that journey
49:40
Speaker 1: has been over these past couple of years traveling through it.
49:43
Speaker 3: I think there's been a lot of interesting things that
49:46
Speaker 3: have kind of peaked its little head up. A couple things. One,
49:53
Speaker 3: grief is not something that shows up and then goes away.
49:57
Speaker 3: It's just something that you have to learn to live with.
50:01
Speaker 3: It can show up at the most inopportune times. Or
50:04
Speaker 3: random times like there's no there's no knowing when thought
50:10
Speaker 3: or an experience is going to make you feel the
50:13
Speaker 3: train hit again. When this grief showed up at the time,
50:18
Speaker 3: I think I was probably seven or eight or sober,
50:21
Speaker 3: so did all of the unprocessed grief throughout my entire
50:25
Speaker 3: life came absolutely And that was a fuck that was
50:28
Speaker 3: a that was a fuck ton of sadness and kind
50:33
Speaker 3: of there was this weird thing that was happening in
50:35
Speaker 3: my body at the time too that I was like,
50:37
Speaker 3: I kind of felt protective over the Peter grief versus
50:41
Speaker 3: all the other stuff, Like I wanted to compartmentalize it
50:44
Speaker 3: in a way because I didn't want it to get
50:46
Speaker 3: all mixed in together. But once I started embrace it
50:55
Speaker 3: as something that is going to be part of my
50:57
Speaker 3: life forever, then the peer seeing acute pain started to
51:01
Speaker 3: subside and I started to be able to believe that
51:04
Speaker 3: I could live with it. And yeah, and you know,
51:09
Speaker 3: every single first thing that happens, you're right like that,
51:15
Speaker 3: every like you know, my my nephew, my brother's son, Brady,
51:19
Speaker 3: he went over and played for the U twenty men's
51:22
Speaker 3: national team and represented them in South Korea. This last summer,
51:27
Speaker 3: and I just couldn't stop crying for the entire first game,
51:31
Speaker 3: not only because it meant so much to me because
51:33
Speaker 3: of my history with Team USA, but how much I
51:37
Speaker 3: know it meant to my brother that, Like I always
51:42
Speaker 3: knew that he really respected me so much and he
51:46
Speaker 3: loved cheering for me in USA, and so to know
51:50
Speaker 3: that he wasn't allegedly so here to watch his son
51:55
Speaker 3: play for Team USA, you know, it just it just
51:58
Speaker 3: it just floored me. And then I'll say this last thing.
52:02
Speaker 3: One thing that surprises me about losing a loved one
52:06
Speaker 3: in a tragic way like I did, is there was
52:10
Speaker 3: the year mark that I was just like really focused on.
52:13
Speaker 3: I was like, I just got to get to the
52:15
Speaker 3: first year, and then I felt like I was going
52:17
Speaker 3: to be okay, right, But this weird thing happened in
52:20
Speaker 3: the first year is that I felt totally the same
52:24
Speaker 3: the day after, right the day after the year clicked over,
52:28
Speaker 3: and I noticed that people stopped asking me of him,
52:34
Speaker 3: and that felt like a second grieving of feels like
52:39
Speaker 3: a second injury in a way. So I actually had
52:42
Speaker 3: to tell Glennon and I just said, you know, I
52:45
Speaker 3: want you to I want you to talk about him
52:47
Speaker 3: and bring his name up every once in a while,
52:51
Speaker 3: because I feel awkward, like I don't want to just
52:54
Speaker 3: bring his name up out of the blue and make
52:56
Speaker 3: you feel like, oh, oh, we're talking about your brother,
52:59
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So I had to ask
53:02
Speaker 3: permission for her to like bring him up every once
53:05
Speaker 3: in a while. Or did that make you think of Peter?
53:07
Speaker 3: Like that made me thought think of Peter.
53:09
Speaker 1: Yeah.
53:10
Speaker 3: I embrace that kind of experience because I don't want
53:16
Speaker 3: to forget absolutely.
53:18
Speaker 1: I mean, it's I think everyone listening to this who
53:22
Speaker 1: has experienced grief relates to that, because I do think
53:26
Speaker 1: that there is this weird thing that happens in our culture.
53:28
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, you know, let's not mention this person
53:32
Speaker 1: because we'll upset the griever. And instead, what upsets the
53:36
Speaker 1: griever is if we erase that person then.
53:39
Speaker 2: I mean.
53:39
Speaker 1: I named my daughter Bobby after my mom, Bobby in
53:42
Speaker 1: part because I wanted that word back in my life.
53:44
Speaker 2: I wanted that name. I wanted people to say her name.
53:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I wanted to I wanted to tell the
53:52
Speaker 1: story of my mother and our love and her life,
53:55
Speaker 1: you know, not just in my I obviously have done
53:58
Speaker 1: that in my work, but just in I want to
53:59
Speaker 1: bring her into the conversation. I think that's a really
54:02
Speaker 1: true and powerful, you know balm. The way you know,
54:06
Speaker 1: people are always like what can I do to help?
54:07
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, just ask me about Peter. I've loved
54:12
Speaker 1: hearing you talk about him, because you know, I do
54:15
Speaker 1: think that one of the things I want to say
54:18
Speaker 1: when you describe being at that game and how much
54:21
Speaker 1: it would have meant for him to be there, I
54:24
Speaker 1: hope I can console you a little bit by saying,
54:27
Speaker 1: you know, thirty five Yesterday was the thirty fifth anniversary
54:29
Speaker 1: of my mom's death, which means that she has been longer.
54:33
Speaker 1: She's been dead, way longer in my life than she
54:35
Speaker 1: was alive. She died when I was twenty two, and
54:39
Speaker 1: I feel her with me, you know. Yesterday on the anniversary,
54:42
Speaker 1: I just thought, you know, I just tried.
54:47
Speaker 2: To, you know, get my mom inside of me.
54:50
Speaker 1: I took that breath and I thought, come to me,
54:53
Speaker 1: and she was there. And I do think that Peter
54:57
Speaker 1: is there with his kids, He's there with you, He's
54:59
Speaker 1: there with everyone who loved him truly and who was
55:03
Speaker 1: truly loved by him. And I think that that is
55:07
Speaker 1: the only place we can go to survive when it
55:09
Speaker 1: comes to losing people who are essential to us. True
55:12
Speaker 1: is that we know that they are always with us
55:14
Speaker 1: even when they're gone.
55:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's both and right.
55:18
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't erase the tears, very sorrow, and
55:23
Speaker 1: yet it's a deeper truth that helps us go on.
55:27
Speaker 3: So true and I love that, Like, you know, one
55:32
Speaker 3: of the best things that ever happened around this is
55:35
Speaker 3: it taught me a lot about how I wanted to
55:38
Speaker 3: show up for anybody who I know that could potentially
55:41
Speaker 3: go through this kind of experience. And one of my friends,
55:45
Speaker 3: who had recently lost her mother to kind of a
55:48
Speaker 3: tragic accident, she sent me a text and in the text,
55:52
Speaker 3: she said, when my mother passed away, some of the
55:57
Speaker 3: most important things that people did to me was tell
56:01
Speaker 3: me stories that I didn't know about her. And so
56:06
Speaker 3: she told me this story about my brother that I
56:09
Speaker 3: had never heard, and it just like it brought him
56:14
Speaker 3: into life again into my life, and it made a
56:18
Speaker 3: new memory, a memory that I had to actually envision
56:20
Speaker 3: and make up in a way. And so when you
56:24
Speaker 3: don't know what to say, because everybody knows that feeling
56:28
Speaker 3: like I don't know what to say. I'm just going
56:32
Speaker 3: to say nothing. My advice is the opposite. If you
56:36
Speaker 3: don't know what to say, just say that I don't
56:39
Speaker 3: know what to say.
56:39
Speaker 1: Yeah.
56:40
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I'm here.
56:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I always think better the friend who said
56:46
Speaker 1: the kind of wrong thing than the friend who said
56:48
Speaker 1: nothing at all.
56:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent.
57:00
Speaker 1: I know I'm not alone when I say I look
57:03
Speaker 1: to you as such a leader when it comes to
57:07
Speaker 1: speaking truth to power and leading with love and kindness
57:12
Speaker 1: on a you know, on a world stage, speaking to
57:14
Speaker 1: the issues of the day. And you've been an inspiration
57:17
Speaker 1: to me, which you know, I'm not alone. A lot
57:21
Speaker 1: of us are dazzled by you, not just because you're
57:24
Speaker 1: damn good at soccer, So thank you for that.
57:27
Speaker 2: I want to end with one last question.
57:30
Speaker 1: I feel like you know we are we are talking
57:33
Speaker 1: you know, metaphorical mountains here. Yeah, what's the next mountain
57:37
Speaker 1: that you either have to climb or want to climb?
57:42
Speaker 3: Well, I'm at a point in my career where I
57:45
Speaker 3: only want to do work with people that I like
57:49
Speaker 3: and love. When Glennon and I were deciding who we
57:53
Speaker 3: wanted to bring to our wedding, that was a determining factor.
57:57
Speaker 3: We wanted to be able to say that we liked
58:00
Speaker 3: and loved every person there. And I don't want, you know,
58:06
Speaker 3: I want to leave this earth definitely better than I
58:09
Speaker 3: found it, and every avenue in every industry I find
58:13
Speaker 3: myself in, there is still so much more work to
58:18
Speaker 3: be done right, and so women's sports is clearly having
58:22
Speaker 3: a moment, But I think what people are forgetting is
58:24
Speaker 3: that there are a lot of other sports out there
58:26
Speaker 3: other than women's basketball and women's soccer. Yeah, and a
58:30
Speaker 3: lot of these other sports are in the exact same
58:33
Speaker 3: place that women's soccer was twenty years ago when I
58:35
Speaker 3: was playing. And so part of this next mountain that
58:41
Speaker 3: I'm hoping to die on in some way is to
58:48
Speaker 3: make sure that more women's sports have more resources to
58:53
Speaker 3: be able to thrive, and not just survive, but thrive.
58:58
Speaker 3: We're finding that it's becoming more true with women's hockey, PWHL,
59:03
Speaker 3: with love, volleyball, lots of women's sports leagues, I mean,
59:08
Speaker 3: flag football is coming into the picture. And I think
59:13
Speaker 3: it's important that as we continue to talk about women's sports,
59:19
Speaker 3: how have the women's basketball teams and the women's soccer
59:24
Speaker 3: teams become so popular, right, and it's because they've had
59:31
Speaker 3: these really intense moments where they were able to make
59:35
Speaker 3: this big virtual sprat splash in the world that they
59:38
Speaker 3: could make a name for itself. Well, you have to
59:41
Speaker 3: ask the question, why did that happen? Okay, the media,
59:46
Speaker 3: television put them on air, and this was being kind
59:52
Speaker 3: of guided and led by all the generations of women's
59:56
Speaker 3: soccer teams, of national team captains and players who have
1:00:00
Speaker 3: been fighting for more media marketing views, for more money,
1:00:06
Speaker 3: for more resources, equality, all of that, right, And in
1:00:10
Speaker 3: order to get all of these other sports the kind
1:00:13
Speaker 3: of awareness that they deserve, we got to get more
1:00:18
Speaker 3: women in media talking about women's sports. So that is
1:00:22
Speaker 3: the thing that I am relentless about right now.
1:00:25
Speaker 1: And you're doing that through your other podcasts, which I
1:00:28
Speaker 1: also love. Welcome to the Party. I mean, talk about this.
1:00:31
Speaker 1: I mean you have really they're very opposite vibes. But
1:00:35
Speaker 1: I mean there is of course a thread of like
1:00:38
Speaker 1: it's about conversation, it's about celebration, but you know, one
1:00:42
Speaker 1: is about hard things and one is about really celebrating
1:00:45
Speaker 1: just exactly what you're talking about. Welcome to the Party.
1:00:48
Speaker 1: You co host with Well, first of all, let's just
1:00:51
Speaker 1: say this always just Billy Jean and King, you know,
1:00:56
Speaker 1: she's awesome. And Julie Foudi, who you played soft with, right,
1:01:00
Speaker 1: you guys were teammates. Yeah, and you guys were just delightful.
1:01:03
Speaker 1: And you've taught me here again a lot about sports
1:01:06
Speaker 1: just by expanding that conversation.
1:01:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think this next part of my life. You know,
1:01:12
Speaker 3: I've done a lot of hard things with the WEEKN
1:01:15
Speaker 3: do hard things podcasts, and I love the pod squad
1:01:19
Speaker 3: and I love what we've been able to build. I
1:01:22
Speaker 3: also really missed women's sports and I did need to
1:01:27
Speaker 3: take a break. I did need to figure out what
1:01:29
Speaker 3: it was about women's sports that I loved. And that
1:01:35
Speaker 3: is what I'm trying to build. That is what I
1:01:37
Speaker 3: want to get back into. Women's sports is not just
1:01:42
Speaker 3: having a moment because women's sports just got good. Women's
1:01:45
Speaker 3: sports has always been good. It's just that now the
1:01:49
Speaker 3: business world, Corporate America, they are not only seeing a
1:01:52
Speaker 3: return on investment, but they're seeing it as a major
1:01:56
Speaker 3: asset class to need to hold a share of or
1:02:00
Speaker 3: get equity in, which is totally game changing worlds for
1:02:06
Speaker 3: these leagues. Right, and so I think about the next step,
1:02:11
Speaker 3: the next level of these women's sports leagues, that the
1:02:14
Speaker 3: valuations and the popularity like they're going to get more
1:02:18
Speaker 3: media attention, right, But when you look at it from
1:02:22
Speaker 3: the lens of who is telling the stories about these women,
1:02:27
Speaker 3: it has to be women who know what it's like.
1:02:31
Speaker 3: And I just I think it's just been so fun
1:02:35
Speaker 3: to work with Billy and Julie on our show because
1:02:39
Speaker 3: you know, I see this thing becoming more of like
1:02:42
Speaker 3: a news source also right on social media. I see
1:02:48
Speaker 3: this thing becoming a place where other retired athletes can
1:02:52
Speaker 3: come and have their own shows, right that they own
1:02:55
Speaker 3: the ip of their own shows. And yeah, and I
1:03:00
Speaker 3: think that the good news is that we can do
1:03:02
Speaker 3: hard things. Has given us the opportunity to be able
1:03:04
Speaker 3: to do that. Glenn and I own our own production
1:03:06
Speaker 3: company and we produce these two shows together as as
1:03:11
Speaker 3: like one production company that Amanda Doyle, Glenn's sister, my
1:03:14
Speaker 3: sister in law, we all own together. Love, Yeah, and
1:03:18
Speaker 3: look like we just want to do good work with
1:03:21
Speaker 3: good people forevermore and forever more good things will happen.
1:03:25
Speaker 2: And that's what you're doing.
1:03:26
Speaker 1: And I thank you so much for this conversation. Abby,
1:03:30
Speaker 1: I just you are. You always feel my heart. You
1:03:36
Speaker 1: always feel my heart with your wisdom, and you make
1:03:39
Speaker 1: me laugh, and you give me hope that someday people
1:03:43
Speaker 1: will know how to load the dishwasher correctly if we
1:03:46
Speaker 1: keep doing our work. Just one day at a time,
1:03:48
Speaker 1: one step at a time.
1:03:49
Speaker 3: Yes, one day, and.
1:03:52
Speaker 2: I'll be walking.
1:03:53
Speaker 1: I'm walking right alongside you, dear heart, as we ascend
1:03:55
Speaker 1: this mountain, telling better stories about the things that women
1:03:59
Speaker 1: do in sport and in life.
1:04:01
Speaker 3: Awesome. Well, I really appreciate that you are the absolute best.
1:04:06
Speaker 3: I'm going to have to have you on our podcast
1:04:08
Speaker 3: at some point in the near future, so be ready
1:04:10
Speaker 3: for the email.
1:04:11
Speaker 2: I'd love that. Happy Trails.
1:04:13
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Thanks Cheryl.
1:04:15
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
1:04:16
Speaker 1: If you would like to submit a letter seeking advice,
1:04:19
Speaker 1: please send it to me at Deardearsugar at gmail dot com,
1:04:22
Speaker 1: and don't forget to rate, review and subscribe wherever you.
1:04:26
Speaker 2: Get your podcasts.
1:04:27
Speaker 1: Happy Trails and I will see you next week. Mine
1:04:31
Speaker 1: Over Mountain with Cheryl Strade is an iHeart women's sports
1:04:34
Speaker 1: production produced by Britney Brown and Rodney Brown of Barbara
1:04:37
Speaker 1: Jean Productions. Supervising producer is Kaylin West at REALM associate
1:04:43
Speaker 1: producer Amaya Brathwaite. Our executive producers are Molly Barton, Jerry
1:04:48
Speaker 1: Carita Grace Views and Jesse Katz. Our theme song is
1:04:52
Speaker 1: composed by Gramoscope Music. Don't forget to rate, review and
1:04:56
Speaker 1: subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, Happy Trails, and I'll
1:05:00
Speaker 1: see you next week.