Glennon Doyle hopes 'We Can Do Hard Things' book shows adversity is 'the human experience'

USA Today

06-05-2025

Glennon Doyle hopes 'We Can Do Hard Things' book shows adversity is 'the human experience'
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An interview with the hosts of the award-winning podcast 'We Can Do Hard Things' feels like one of the show's hundreds of episodes. Bestselling author Glennon Doyle, her gold-medal soccer icon wife Abby Wambach and her advocate sister Amanda Doyle have assembled to talk about the launch of their book, 'We Can Do Hard Things: Answers to Life's 20 Questions' (available now), which accumulates knowledge dispersed through their podcast, which launched in 2021.
They talk about hard topics, grappling with mortality and existential fear. Yet the discussion, had so freely and openly, feels like a gift. It's like by hearing about their lives and earned wisdom, we've been given tools to better tackle the ongoing home-improvement project that is our own lives.
"The biggest and most fearful thing that I can think of, where all of my fear and worry and anxiety stems from ... is the idea of what happens when we die,' says Wambach, whose older brother, Peter, died in December 2023. 'What I have learned is I have to accept that this is the thing that I will not understand, and it will also happen to me. My fear is being scared for my last moment.'
'That's so interesting, Abby,' Amanda Doyle, a founder of Treat Media, replies. 'Because if you extrapolate from that, if you're like, 'My biggest fear is living my last moment scared,' then it's also like shouldn't our biggest fear be living all of the moments scared?"
'That's exactly right,' Wambach says.
The 'We Can Do Hard Things' book assembles the knowledge and experience of not only the famous podcasts hosts, but their esteemed guests such as Martha Beck, Brené Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross, Kamala Harris, Michelle Obama, Esther Perel, Gloria Steinem and Kerry Washington. The catalyst was a string of misfortune.
'Within a year, Amanda was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was diagnosed with anorexia, and Abby lost her brother Peter," says Glennon. "We were really just spinning out all together at the same time, which hadn't happened before.' Usually one of the three could be 'the anchor for the others,' she adds. 'It's really like we had to create an anchor outside of ourselves.'
The book is sectioned into 20 existential questions, seeking to provide wisdom for queries like 'Who am I really?' 'How do I return to myself?' and 'How do I let go?' as well as share insight on topics like love, sex, anger, forgiveness and parenting.
'We're all traveling as if we're the first ones, but that is just so silly,' Amanda says. When we see issues as 'brand new challenges, we think they are personal challenges. We think the fact that I am struggling in my marriage, in this particular issue, means there's something either wrong with me or wrong with my marriage, as opposed to having Michelle Obama saying — as she does in this book — the reason you're struggling with that is because it's the hardest thing on the planet to do.'
Keeping sight of those revelations once the adversity is over is another battle, says Amanda.
"The things that I went through with my cancer where I was like, 'Surely I'll always remember that this is the point. Surely I will carry this deep reservoir of calm within my soul,' and 30 seconds later it's gone,' she says. Adding this book 'was a place to put all of those things that were like, 'Please, please let me not unlearn this thing. I know I will unlearn it, and so it'll be here when I need to relearn it.''
Wambach wants to spotlight the chapter on parenting, 'because it's so prevalent in my consistent, day-to-day life,' she says. 'A lot of us parents and our parents were taught that parenting is about the kids, and I actually think that parenting is about the relationship I have with myself first, before I go to my kids with anything parenting-wise. And that is what the wayfinders of this book, in this chapter, constantly remind me.'
Glennon's intentions for the book align with those of her previous writing and appearances, she says. She wants readers to understand 'what you think is your deep, personal shame is in fact the human experience. Most of the problems you think you have, you don't have problems, you just have a life.'