‘You're the first person to ask me about that': Glennon Doyle on body image, resilience and Ivanka Trump
Stellar: Your new book We Can Do Hard Things was created with the backdrop of a very difficult time for yourself, your wife Abby Wambach and your sister Amanda Doyle, who co-wrote this book and host the popular podcast of the same name with you. You were dealing with an anorexia diagnosis. Abby had lost her beloved brother. Amanda had a breast cancer diagnosis. What was navigating that time like for you?
Glennon Doyle: My sister and my wife are my people. Maybe because I depend on the two of them [so much], I don't actually have many friends in a wider circle. I'm used to one of them being steady.
When I got my new anorexia diagnosis – I've been dealing with eating disorders since I was 10 – I felt humiliated. Embarrassed.
I couldn't believe I'm still dealing with this. I felt like everyone in my life was gonna be like, get over it. But it felt like I was drowning and I looked over at the shore and both the lifeguards were passed out.
My lifeguards were also having their own moment.
Glennon Doyle (continued): It feels like a very bad design of life that when trauma comes, that's the time that we can't remember anything we know. That's the time we can't call up all the wisdom we've learnt about how to make it through. That sucks. Trauma causes this little mini dissociation.
Unfortunately Abby felt the same way and so did Amanda. So we were just kind of staring at each other blinking. And this cool thing happened.
I started writing down little sentences or quotes or paragraphs that we had said to each other on the podcast and sending them to my sister to help her through the cancer thing.
Listen to the full interview with Glennon Doyle on Something To Talk About below:
Then she started writing down things about grief for Abby. And we had this little file going around. And Abby started writing things down for me about bodies. We kept this file that we were just using as an anchor outside of ourselves, which is funny because I've spent my entire life telling people that they have all the answers inside of them. I'm no longer positive that's true.
Three months later, my friend was going through this horrible break-up and I sent her the file we had about grief. And she wrote back and said, 'Glennon, can you make me this for all the categories of life? This is what I need.' And
I thought, yeah. I actually can do that. And that's how it started. That's how the book was born.
Stellar: The book is an exploration of 20 questions that we all wrestle with throughout our lives, and features conversations you've had with 118 'of the world's most brilliant wayfinders'. How did you pull that off?
Glennon Doyle: Some of the passages are from texts between friends, but most of them are from conversations that we had on our podcast. Over time the conversations we had on that podcast really rewired our minds and hearts and the way we saw the world. As we pored through those conversations, we realised people are really talking about the same 20 questions over and over again from their particular slice of life.
So all I had to do was to wrangle all these people and say 'How about this incredible, brilliant thing that you said be put in print?' And most of them were like, 'Great. I sound very smart in that.' The people in this book are some of the most open-minded, justice-minded, love-minded and community-minded people on earth.
We've got a lot going on in this country [the US] right now. It really feels like the whole idea of self-help and individual optimisation has failed us.
And so what I'm very proud of is that this book is about collective wisdom. It's about: we can't figure this out by ourselves, we have to look at the world from as many different perspectives as there are people. And I just think that's why it's resonating so much here. It's about the collective.
Stellar: You're often referred to as a self-help guru. Would you agree with that assessment?
Glennon Doyle: Don't get me started on the self-help. I have so many male counterparts who write about the same things that I write about, who write about power and power dynamics and life and relationships even, and politics and community. Do you think that any of them are ever labelled 'self-help'?
My books will be in the self-help aisle. My counterparts, men, will be in leadership.
Do you ever hear a man's work described as self-help?
No, no, no. Because men, they're good to go. They just need some leadership skills. Women are just a mess, and they just need help with their little selves.
That distinction is in every area, right? That's the literary version, but even, [with] our bodies, men are taught to bulk up [and get] bigger, bigger, bigger and women are taught to get smaller. Money. Men are taught to invest. Women are taught to save. Every single category is about men. Just get bigger, get bolder, go for it. And women … Self-help. You're not even ready to leave the room. Just get smaller and smaller and fix yourself before you can even approach the world.
So yes, I have many issues with the self-help title and I think it has a lot to do with gender.
The whole navel-gazing thing is so interesting. Like, God forbid a man do a little bit
of self-reflection. I would like some men to look harder at their navels. Honestly, I think that would do us all a little bit of good.
Stellar: In your home country of the United States, does it feel like a time when people are searching for answers and feeling more isolated than ever?
Glennon Doyle: It's a nightmare here. It's awful. We're seeing our neighbours be rounded up in front of us. I see
it with my own eyes all the time. I was just in children's immigration court watching two-year-olds represent themselves, separated from their families.
My family and every LGBTQ family I know is terrified. Parents with trans kids are leaving if they can. It's a really scary time here.
With this book, we did a tour. I didn't want to do that. That's so much 'leaving of my house'. Not just answering my door, but standing on the actual stages. The incredible thing was, I think we have this feeling in the States right now, a lot of media is being suppressed and so it can feel like you're the only one who cares or the only one who's afraid or angry or wishes for something better. And this tour was so important to me because it was auditoriums and theatres full of people who were so hopeful and so angry and so united and so beautiful.
They say hopelessness is just the feeling that nobody else cares, that you're alone. And so that tour that we did with the We Can Do Hard Things book, I think reinvigorated a lot of us and just reminded us there are still a lot of people here who care, and who will not stand for what's going down right now here.
Listen to the full interview with Glennon Doyle on Something To Talk About below:
Stellar: You have used your platform to advocate for many causes, including speaking out against the Trump administration, particularly during the election campaign in 2024. Recently Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka posted on Instagram a picture of herself holding your memoir Untamed. How did that moment sit with you?
Glennon Doyle: You're the first person to ask me about that. My team sent it to me. I was stunned. I just didn't process it completely.
I can tell you honestly that my best guess is she didn't read it all the way through.
There's an entire essay about her dad in it that is about how unbelievable it is that this man is being seen as a leader of what is supposed to be Christian nationalism.
So I think she probably didn't get all the way through. But all I can say is, I hope that she does read it. I hope she reads it really, really carefully. That's what I'll say about that.
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