Jia Tolentino: The 1% of Life that Makes It All Worth It (Best Of)

Summary

We Can Do Hard Things: Jia Tolentino – The 1% of Life that Makes It All Worth It (Best Of)
Released on April 27, 2025
Hosts: Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle

In this compelling episode of We Can Do Hard Things, host Glennon Doyle, alongside co-hosts Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle, welcomes acclaimed writer and New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino. The conversation delves deep into the complexities of modern life, exploring themes of paradox, shame, motherhood, the pervasive influence of the internet, and personal growth. Through candid dialogue and poignant reflections, Jia and the hosts navigate the intricate landscape of human experience, offering listeners profound insights and relatable anecdotes.

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Introduction and Background

Amanda Doyle opens the episode with enthusiasm, introducing Jia Tolentino and sharing personal anecdotes that underscore the genuine connection between the hosts, despite not having met in person. Jia's impressive credentials are highlighted, including her bestselling book Trick Mirror, numerous awards, and her significant contributions to The New Yorker.

Amanda Doyle [02:18]: “Gia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a screenwriter, and the author of the New York Times bestseller Trick Mirror...”

Jia Tolentino expresses her gratitude for being on the show, setting a warm and inviting tone for the conversation.

Jia Tolentino [06:32]: “I am so happy to be here. Truly. It's an honor to be here. Thank you for having me.”

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Navigating Paradoxes in Personal and Social Contexts

The dialogue swiftly transitions to the concept of paradoxes, particularly within the framework of personal identity and social structures. Glennon Doyle reflects on her own experiences balancing activism with participation in seemingly contradictory systems.

Glennon Doyle [07:07]: “...we have been living in our lives to experience...”

Jia shares her tumultuous college years at UVA, navigating sorority life while grappling with her evangelical upbringing. This duality exemplifies the broader theme of living amidst conflicting values and expectations.

Jia Tolentino [08:42]: “...I have spent all of sorority rush getting super high and just seeing how much I could lie to people.”

The conversation delves into the internal conflict of participating in systems that one might simultaneously critique, highlighting the inherent contradictions in striving for personal growth within societal frameworks.

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The Weight of Shame and Systemic Participation

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the concept of shame—both personal and societal. Jia articulates her feelings of shame in various aspects of her life, particularly regarding her inadvertent participation in exploitative labor chains and the childcare market.

Jia Tolentino [15:03]: “I feel ashamed when I order things online... there needs to be federally funded universal childcare.”

She emphasizes the need for systemic change, advocating for policies that address the root causes of these ethical dilemmas. The hosts explore how personal shame often intersects with broader social injustices, complicating individuals' relationships with their actions and choices.

Jia Tolentino [13:01]: “I think there's something about kind of baseline American emotional ideology...”

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Motherhood: Beyond the Idealized Narratives

Motherhood emerges as a profound and multifaceted topic. Jia candidly discusses her experiences, breaking away from the often sanitized narratives to reveal the raw and existential fears intertwined with raising children in a tumultuous world.

Jia Tolentino [50:03]: “The way motherhood is often spoken about is this sort of sweet filigreed net that's hovering unspoken over a giant lake of existential fear and instability.”

She reflects on the moral and environmental implications of bringing new life into a world fraught with challenges, expressing a conflicted sense of responsibility and pride.

Jia Tolentino [52:19]: “I have some sort of moral trouble about having knowingly birthed an upper-middle-class consumer that will be probably as bad for the planet as I have been.”

The conversation highlights the paradox of motherhood as both an incredibly rewarding and deeply challenging experience, encapsulating the essence of doing "hard things" every day.

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The Digital Dilemma: Internet and Connectivity

The hosts delve into the pervasive influence of the internet on personal well-being and societal structures. Jia shares her evolving relationship with the digital world, from leveraging it for her writing career to feeling increasingly alienated by its relentless pace and the rise of surveillance capitalism.

Jia Tolentino [29:20]: “I can feel my brain kind of leaking out my ears...”

She candidly discusses her proactive measures to regain control over her online presence, utilizing tools like Self Control and Freedom to limit internet usage and prioritize her real-life experiences.

Jia Tolentino [33:48]: “I tried to shrink my involvement with the Internet. I have to use programs like Self Control on my laptop and Freedom on my phone.”

The hosts and Jia explore the dichotomy between the benefits of digital connectivity and its potential to erode genuine human interactions, emphasizing the importance of balancing online and offline lives.

Amanda Doyle [40:26]: “How do we really connect when we're not body to body?”

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Embodiment and Presence: The Quest for Authentic Connection

Furthering the discussion on digital engagement, the conversation shifts to the importance of physical presence and embodied human connection. Jia contrasts the disembodied interactions online with the profound sense of presence she seeks through real-world experiences like live music and intimate gatherings.

Jia Tolentino [41:53]: “Something like a podcast is different... it is connection... but it's the false disembodied connection of the Internet.”

Glennon Doyle and Amanda Doyle echo this sentiment, underscoring the emotional and existential fulfillment derived from face-to-face interactions versus virtual engagements.

Glennon Doyle [36:42]: “That's how you know you're human. You're being human.”

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Personal Growth Through Transcendence and Responsibility

The hosts explore personal growth mechanisms, including Jia's use of psychedelics as a means of achieving transcendence and confronting existential fears. Jia reflects on her annual acid trips as a tool for emotional recalibration and reconnecting with a sense of smallness and transcendence.

Jia Tolentino [47:34]: “I really desire a sense of transcendence and of smallness...”

Amanda Doyle shares her own experiences with psychedelics, contemplating their potential therapeutic benefits and the complexities of integrating such experiences into a sober lifestyle.

Amanda Doyle [46:51]: “I am very seriously considering doing medicinal...”

The conversation highlights the delicate balance between seeking transcendence and maintaining personal responsibility, particularly in the context of motherhood and societal roles.

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Final Reflections: Embracing the Beauty and Terror of Humanity

As the episode draws to a close, Glennon Doyle poignantly encapsulates the duality of human experience—the profound beauty and accompanying terror of deep connection and awareness.

Glennon Doyle [54:43]: “It's only beautiful because it's terrifying. And it's only terrifying because it's beautiful.”

Jia Tolentino echoes this sentiment, reflecting on the interconnectedness of life's challenges and the fragile yet resilient nature of human existence.

Jia Tolentino [54:27]: “Being here is a gift and it's a malleable one and that malleability is the most important part of it.”

The hosts and Jia leave listeners with a thoughtful contemplation of the "1%"—the small, meaningful aspects of life that render the vast expanse of challenges and paradoxes worthwhile.

Amanda Doyle [55:30]: “It's like, I have to make sure that doesn't only apply to my daughter...”

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Amanda Doyle [02:18]: “Gia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a screenwriter, and the author of the New York Times bestseller Trick Mirror...”

• Jia Tolentino [08:42]: “I have spent all of sorority rush getting super high and just seeing how much I could lie to people.”

• Jia Tolentino [15:03]: “I feel ashamed when I order things online... there needs to be federally funded universal childcare.”

• Jia Tolentino [29:20]: “I can feel my brain kind of leaking out my ears...”

• Jia Tolentino [50:03]: “The way motherhood is often spoken about is this sort of sweet filigreed net that's hovering unspoken over a giant lake of existential fear and instability.”

• Glennon Doyle [54:43]: “It's only beautiful because it's terrifying. And it's only terrifying because it's beautiful.”

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Conclusion

This episode of We Can Do Hard Things offers a rich, introspective exploration of the multifaceted challenges that define contemporary life. Through Jia Tolentino's honest disclosures and the empathetic guidance of the hosts, listeners are invited to reflect on their own experiences with paradox, shame, and the quest for authentic connection. The conversation underscores the importance of embracing vulnerability, seeking genuine human connections, and navigating the complexities of personal growth amidst an ever-evolving societal landscape.

By shedding light on the "1%" moments that anchor us amidst life's turbulence, the episode serves as a testament to the resilience and courage inherent in confronting and transcending the hard things we all face.

Transcript

[Glennon Doyle]

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[Abby Wambach]

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[Amanda Doyle]

Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. We have a big day. Huge. And that is because we have the Gia Tolentino here today. Before I read her bio, I need to tell Gia one of my favorite Gia Tolentino stories, which Gia and I have many, many funny stories together. Which is interesting since we have never met and most of our experiences have been extremely one sided. But I have a group. I have a few groups. You know how we all have those groups of women that we have on text or on Zoom where when shit happens we just kind of check in with each other. So there's this one group of smart people who we check in with each other whenever shit hits the fan in the world. So a lot of times, which is.

[Glennon Doyle]

Happening with some regularity.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yes. And there is this one recurring thing that people often say, which is kind of like a what would Jesus do? Situation, which you'll know from your. We both have evangelical pasts.

[Gia Tolentino]

We certainly do.

[Amanda Doyle]

You certainly do. But ours is more like, what did Jia write?

[Gia Tolentino]

Oh, my God.

[Amanda Doyle]

And it's real. It's real. Somebody will say it. What would Ji ah write? And it kind of works because you can say like, jeezzus. So it like, goes jee ahsus. Yeah. Which I know you're gonna really love and probably. But if we have one complaint, it's that we often have to wait a long time for a jist take. And we're mad now. Okay. So, like, we'll have to wait for a New Yorker piece to come out. Or sometimes we get lucky and you're on a podcast, but it takes a while, and that's annoying. And so one time one of the women in the group said, well, what did Jesus write? And I was thinking for a while, and I thought, you guys, what if Jesus is trying to tell us something? Like, what if. What if we're supposed to think hard and do research?

[Gia Tolentino]

What if you're your own personal gia.

[Amanda Doyle]

What if I. What if I have. I too, have a Jesus inside of me who can step calm and cool and collected and, like, think hard and keep an open mind and open heart and interview people and then come to a nuanced conclusion a month later. And one of my favorite group, they thought for a while, and my friend said, fuck that. We don't have time. I'm mad now. What do we tweet?

[Gia Tolentino]

Oh, I'm so. That's so. I'm so moved by that. And I'm sure we'll talk about childcare and child raising. But, you know, something happened to my brain in 2020. And I mean, that something was the pandemic and having a baby and all of that. And I was like, I am not calm. My brain is not good. I have nothing to, you know, that thing that I had always relied on my job being. And this kind of writing being this process through the only way through which there's any ever. Any thought in my brain. It really. You know, my shit got rocked by 2020 and the years afterwards. But I think I'll be back on the. On the blogging train. But I got so sick of myself.

[Amanda Doyle]

You know, I know it's a good Example, Gia. It's an excellent example. The proof is in the writing. It might have been an accident, but you were showing us the way. So now I'm gonna read your bio, and then we're gonna jump in. Gia Tolentino is a staff writer at the New Yorker, a screenwriter, and the author of the New York Times bestseller Trick Mirror, which everyone just needs to get right now, if you haven't already read it. In 2020, she received a Whiting Award, as well as the Jeanette Hayen Ballard Prize, and has most recently won a National Magazine Award for three pieces about the repeal of Roe v. Wade, which I. I'm sure that everyone in this pod squad has already read, but if you haven't, please do. Trick Mirror was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize and the PEN Award and was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Public Library, the New York Times Book Review, the. The Washington Post, npr, the Chicago Tribune, gq, and the Paris Review. Okay. Gia lives in Brooklyn. Welcome, Gias.

[Gia Tolentino]

I am so happy to be here. Truly. It's an honor to be here. Thank you for having me.

[Glennon Doyle]

Gia, we actually. You and I also have a relationship you don't know about.

[Gia Tolentino]

Through Virginia.

[Glennon Doyle]

Yes. So you graduated from UVA undergrad the year that I graduated from Virginia Law, and I was there before you. Yeah. And we were both double majors, including Political Social Thought, and we were both PI Phis.

[Gia Tolentino]

No way.

[Glennon Doyle]

Oh, my God. And so I think that that leads very naturally to this question of paradox, which is that. So I was, for example, going to Hose and Bros parties on Saturday night, and was a women's study major, was doing absurdly politically upsetting now things, and then going on Sunday to the prison to meet with women who had killed their abusers. Can you talk to us about paradox?

[Gia Tolentino]

Well, I think we've all lived our. It's like I want to hear so much more about that than I am interested in my own, but I do remember. It's so funny. It's also, we were both there during the sort of last gasp of Bush era conservatism, you know, even aesthetically, like the popped collar era, it wasn't that long ago, but culturally, I mean, thank God, it feels like a long time ago, but I remember so many things in my life I started doing as kind of a bit or like a proto repertorial curiosity, you know, and Rush was one of them. And of course, combined with. I was 17, and I wanted to be cool. Right. So there was a little bit of that. But mostly I spent all of sorority rush getting super high and just seeing how much I could lie to people. You know, like you have these things where there's 35 women all kind of kneeling at your feet and you have 45 allotted seconds to talk to everyone. And they'd be like, oh, I'm from Boston. I'd be like, oh my God, I'm from Boston.

[Amanda Doyle]

My God.

[Gia Tolentino]

And the rotation, you know, the little like dollhouse rotation would happen faster than anyone could catch me in my thousands of lies. And, you know, and I thought it was really funny. And then of course I did think the five fives are very special and I ended up doing it. But I remember that feeling of being, I think the feeling of being in and out, like in something to inhabit it, but because it was the only way I could possibly learn about it. And you know, whatever other confusing ulterior motives of sort of ego and conventional socialization were at play as well. But I went to frat parties my first year, but after that I was, you know, I was the one sending like the rude emails. Like do you remember that thing? Oh my God, this is so uva. There was some sort of competition where one frat would have all the sororities compete.

[Glennon Doyle]

Oh God, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I would, I would just be like, you know, sending fake schedules, being like, okay, like below job competition. Is that typically 10am tomorrow? And I think I was still. I couldn't really tease out my motivations. But so much of, I mean, so much of growing up evangelical also felt like an education in paradox. Right? It's the horniest culture and the most sex oppressive one. It is like super homoerotic. And it's also so suppressive of any admission of any sort of non straight love. It's so violent and it's so outwardly focused on peace, you know, And I feel like that leading into the UVA kind of mid aughts experience, it felt like quite natural. Right. Well, can I tell you a funny story about PI Phi?

[Glennon Doyle]

Tell all the funny stories.

[Gia Tolentino]

Speaking of being stoned all the time, I, you know, I gained so much weight my first year because I like just turned into an all day stoner and I felt great about it, honestly. My best friend and I, we have this joke that, you know, we were smoking weed in the graveyard like every morning and he gained 0 pounds, but his GPA was a 2.7 and I gained 20, but mine remained at a 4.0. But we really learned about ourselves that year. But I remember the little sorority composites when everyone's in their weird little turtlenecks and everyone's like this. And the proofs of those photographs got sent to my house and my parents house in Texas. And my mom called me and she was like, gia, I just got all of these pictures from the dentist's office. You've just had major dental surgery. You didn't tell me. And I was like, what? And she was like, you're wearing a black turtleneck. Like your face is. Is. Is so like, are you okay? Did they break your jaw? You know, And I was like, oh, no, Mom. That's what I look like now.

[Glennon Doyle]

Good thing you saw it before I came home for Thanksgiving.

[Gia Tolentino]

I've been eating a lot of bacon, egg and cheeseburgers. Like.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yeah. I was in a sorority. James Madison.

[Gia Tolentino]

Which one?

[Amanda Doyle]

Sigma Kappa. That's what I am. Sigma Cat born and Sigma Cat bred. And when I die, I'll be Sigma Cap dead. Okay, So I kept getting arrested accidentally in college because I was an alcoholic.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yes.

[Amanda Doyle]

But only in retrospect. Understood. I was an alcoholic. I just thought it was a really good time. Okay.

[Glennon Doyle]

You just. You just had a lot of bad luck.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yeah. Just always in the wrong place at the wrong time in handcuffs. Okay. And I'm seriously. Five times. Okay. I got arrested five times. And one. At one sorority meeting, the sorority president stood up and she said, so, you guys, just one last order of business. If you get arrested and you have to go to court, could you not wear your letters?

[Abby Wambach]

Oh, shit.

[Amanda Doyle]

And it was like, given as a general.

[Glennon Doyle]

Yeah. Guidelines for everyone to no one in particular.

[Amanda Doyle]

But I was the only one that kept getting arrested. And it was only sweatshirt I could find.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah. Just quick Q. What do you mean by the letters?

[Amanda Doyle]

So they're like these sweatshirts that you wear to show what, the Greek letters.

[Abby Wambach]

Oh, it's like your uniform.

[Amanda Doyle]

It's like your costume. It's like your soccer uniform.

[Abby Wambach]

Oh, my gosh.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yes.

[Gia Tolentino]

Soccer costume.

[Abby Wambach]

Do you just wear it all the time?

[Glennon Doyle]

Only to jail.

[Amanda Doyle]

And you also wear it to show that you belong somewhere.

[Abby Wambach]

Got it.

[Amanda Doyle]

It's like, cool.

[Abby Wambach]

I never knew that.

[Gia Tolentino]

That's a good sort of movie poster, actually. Like a Sigma Kappa mug shot kind of thing. I'll file that away for later. Reference, please.

[Amanda Doyle]

It's yours.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah, yeah, it's yours.

[Amanda Doyle]

I have some issues with the whole.

[Glennon Doyle]

Thing about that paradox, though. I'm interested in this idea. You said that you looked down at people at the time who didn't have the sense to have shame about it.

[Amanda Doyle]

That was me. I didn't know I did.

[Gia Tolentino]

Actually. You're right. I 100% did.

[Amanda Doyle]

That was me, which I get.

[Glennon Doyle]

It's like, you know, you're the captain of the cheerleading squad in high school. You're the PI Phi at uva. But I have the sense to have shame and know that there's something inherently complicated and bad about this.

[Gia Tolentino]

Well, this is also possibly another evangelical holdover that I have never. When I was at Jezebel, I always wanted to write a piece called Shame is Good. It's a troll title. And I obviously think the way that shame is allocated in our world, all of the people that should be feeling it feel none. And all the people that don't need to feel it for a second in their lives are devastated by constant, unearned, unwarranted shame. However, I am a believer that I don't know. I think it's kind of right and appropriate to feel ashamed of your participation in mechanisms that you're continuing to participate in. But I sort of think that there's something about kind of baseline American emotional, like, ideology. It's kind of an unwanted side effect of the sort of emotional work that has been happening in the culture for the last however many years that I think so many people think that they should be living a life where they feel great about everything they do, and that's kind of some version of what happiness is or something. And I think it's. I'm always a little dissatisfied or more with most of what I do. And to me, that doesn't get in the way. That seems conducive to, like, honesty and change and. Yeah, it's like, we should be ashamed of all of this, guys. Yeah. What are we doing so great.

[Amanda Doyle]

What are some of the things that you're involved with now that you feel shame about? Shame about that you're still. Cause the coolest thing about you that we talk about all the time is that you're holding the paradox of everything.

[Gia Tolentino]

I feel ashamed when I order things online. Like, there's this huge union fight going on at UPS right now. I feel actively bad about my participation in labor chains that are exploitative. And I have plenty of points of participation in that. And that's the one that seems the most intractable. Like, I'm not gonna stop buying out of season fruit at the grocery stor. I'm just going to keep doing that. I feel shame about participation in the childcare market. Like we found out yesterday, you know, when I enrolled My kids started going to daycare when she was one. And the only question I asked at the, at the interview was, you know, do the teachers get full benefits? And the childcare director said, yes, you know, there's a great place to work, blah, blah, blah. And then I found out a year and a half later after we'd already transferred her, that she had been lying and the teachers don't get benefits. And I recently found out that at our current daycare, the teachers don't get benefits. And I feel so much shame about that. I feel so much. And to me, the solution to this is obvious, is that there needs to be federally funded universal childcare. And that's literally the only way out of it. There have been so many pieces this year on how impossible the numbers are. We need to view childcare as a public good. But that's currently on my mind. Those are the big ones. I would say they're mostly involving labor right now.

[Glennon Doyle]

Glennon's Yours is like watching Real Housewives.

[Amanda Doyle]

I wasn't gonna tell Gia Tolentino that sister shit.

[Gia Tolentino]

Do you guys watch Real Housewives?

[Amanda Doyle]

Occasionally?

[Gia Tolentino]

I can't, luckily, like, there's like my brain if I. It's like football, award shows and reality tv. If you put it in front of me and it looks like static noise and like the Charlie Brown sound, like it just nothing, no signals communicate. And so luckily my cognitive problems have blocked that from entering my life because otherwise I'm sure I would just watch it all the time.

[Amanda Doyle]

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[Abby Wambach]

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[Glennon Doyle]

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[Amanda Doyle]

Do you have a strategy to turn off your humanity, though? Because, like, for me, I've lived very close to, like, this. This lake of despair and, like, purple black swirliness of despair. Right. So which I think is also beauty. I think that's kind of the tension, is I'm supposed to stay close to that. And it's like the ache of being human. It's like how beautiful and brutal everything is. And reality TV takes me so far from that. It has nothing to do with any beauty, with any truth. It's like the way of turning off the realness of life.

[Abby Wambach]

Isn't that beauty and truth, though?

[Amanda Doyle]

It's like the opposite of poetry.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah, I know, but I think that, like, that's where beauty can also live, in the turning off, turning off of, like, the insanity of some of it.

[Gia Tolentino]

I also think that you couldn't live by that lake if you didn't have reality tv. Or the equivalent of it. Right. Like, I've thought about this a lot, writing about anytime I've written about abortion or activism where, you know, I'm trying to look for these emotional management tool, like, ways to manage my own, like, stupid little feelings of overwhelming and sadness that we're all trying to do all the time. And it sometimes feels like you can spend your entire life just figuring out how to, like, emotionally balance yourself. And then I talk to people who are, you know, really in the trenches. And I'm reminded there's a toolkit for this that activists have been practicing for decades that, you know, like, women that are manning the help lines at abortion funds in Texas, they've been rowing a little canoe across that lake of despair since 2011, and they can't be in it. They can't be face deep every second of the day in the literally life or death stakes. You know, the existential and emotional, the intensity of all that. I mean, because I get overwhelmed even writing about it sometimes, and I'm like, how do I manage? And then I remember that these people, these women, you know, I think they watch plenty of Real Housewives, right? I think they. You have to go to like a dry kind of neon lit kind of synthetic place for a little bit sometimes in order to get back on the shores of the lake and really feel it all. Yes.

[Amanda Doyle]

This too is humanity. The neon too, is humanity. It's not always an escape from it. It's a coping mechanism to get back to the lake.

[Glennon Doyle]

I think that that's right. And I also think that there's an exceptionalism piece to this that I'm really interested in, which is that I'm not a regular sorority girl. I'm not a regular Real Housewives Watcher. I have to distinguish myself from that by showing that I am a feminist and an activist and a whatever, as opposed to being like, actually, if we don't try to prove our own exceptionalism, then we could just all lean into this idea that everything is a paradox. And when you do, when you say that there are feminist sorority girls, you know, like, you have to acknowledge your place in this, like, shameful structure and you have to critique it. But can you not do that better when you're leaning into the paradox and saying, maybe I'm just a person who likes Real Housewives and maybe there isn't something that you can automatically say about me because I am. Maybe I am a sorority girl and I am changing that from within instead of making myself exceptional from it.

[Gia Tolentino]

Right, right. I do think there's this need to be like, oh, I'm only doing this because, you know, that we need to justify. But one of the ways that I find myself chafing around this issue now and wondering if to what extent that sense of almost like juvenile exceptionalism may still be at play is the fact that, you know, I live a pretty conventional, heteronormative life. Right. I got married so I could get WGA health insurance because they don't let unmarried partners do it. And I never thought I would get married. I really didn't want to. But I am married, and I have a kid, and I'm seven months pregnant with my second. And I'm so conventional in so many ways, and I always have been. But, you know, like many, maybe most, maybe all, as, you know, as Glennon, as your whole work has surfaced within this community of women, I'm certainly not alone in my resistance to the strictures and the expectations of conventional socialization. Right. But I still think that the act of feeling emotionally resistant to certain aspects of it, to certain expectations of it, like, the ways in which that feels differently important around, let's say, like, domestic labor and child rearing and stuff like that, like, that's my own version of it right now.

[Glennon Doyle]

Yes.

[Gia Tolentino]

Where I'm like, yeah, I'm a mom, but, like, you know, my partner's the primary parent. Okay. You know, like, yes, exactly. Exactly. That's what I mean. I said, mothers at a fucking hotel by myself, bitch. Like, you know, and I wonder. It's. I haven't fully untangled to what extent. I'm trying to say something about myself. I'm still untangling my thoughts about all of that.

[Glennon Doyle]

I just love it because I think we compartmentalize so much, and compartmentalizing is the defense against paradox. But if we take all those compartmentalizations away and just say, like, this is what it all is. It's a big stew of us participating in these horrible structures that are violence against people. And we're just as much a part of it, even though we think we're special. Like, you know, I'm a baseball mom. Asterisk. I'm also a radical feminist. We try to, like, make ourselves different than that, but we actually are all the things.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yeah, but.

[Glennon Doyle]

And I think.

[Amanda Doyle]

But, like, for example, what scares me about myself is I did not know when I was in a sorority, I was like, yep, this is what I'm doing 100%. I mean, I would sing songs about women that I could not repeat on this podcast with fraternity, like, awful Things on their shoulders.

[Abby Wambach]

I know, but.

[Amanda Doyle]

And I was like, I am the shit.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah, but I think that this is.

[Amanda Doyle]

What I've been working towards.

[Abby Wambach]

Here's the thing. I think that we all have this vision of what a good feminist is supposed to be thinking and doing and saying.

[Amanda Doyle]

Well, it's not that. I know that.

[Abby Wambach]

I know, but here's my point. You had to have that experience. We all have to actually be living in our lives to experience shit. And to be like, oh, that actually didn't feel that good. Or like, when you look back and you're. You're thinking about what you did, you're like, actually, that's not the kind of person I want to be now. And we're always fucking ever changing. I think that sometimes we get so stuck on thinking, and the person we want to become prevents us from acknowledging, like, the story and the life that we have needed to live to eventually become the people that we want to be like. And we're never going to fucking figure it out. The world is ever changing, so it.

[Amanda Doyle]

Takes different kinds of people. Because Gia was in the sorority meetings in rush, going, this is hilarious. She thinks I'm from Boston. And I was like, oh, my God, am I doing good? Am I gonna make it into the sorority? It's a different consciousness.

[Gia Tolentino]

I will say that I have, like, a lot of. There have been a lot of kind of random, almost like fairy godmothers, people who have planted ideas in my head at various times where, you know, when I got to college and I was 16 and thought I was a political moderate and was like, maybe I'm a libertarian, and some girl was like, read a little bit more. I don't think those exist. You know, just instantly disabused me of some deep, false narrative I had about something or other. Like, I have needed people who have been rud or abrasive about, like, certain conventions at random points in my life to shake me out of them totally. And I am, you know, glad. If my bad attitude could have brought that to someone else's life in any helpful way at any point in this, I would be happy to serve that role. But what Abby was saying, like, I also think, you know, there's no. There's no greater way to navigate any of the paradoxes of contemporary living other than to be in them. There's no point even thinking about them. It's. It's like you have to just do your way through it to see, like, what you're actually fucking talking about. Yes.

[Abby Wambach]

And, I mean, I totally relate Because I played for our national team for 15 years, and when I was in it, I needed that paycheck. I needed my health insurance. I was fucking all in, like, red, white, and blue bled through my. Through my pores. And now, having stepped away from it, I'm so proud of the time that I spent playing on the national team. But I'm also very aware, educated, and conscious of how complicated our country is and how confusing and how evil we can be at times. Right. And so I think that we have to be able to at least, at the very least, look back and kind of analyze and go over what we've done and figure out maybe our next steps from some of our successes and our failures.

[Gia Tolentino]

Mm.

[Amanda Doyle]

What is your thinking about the Internet these days? Speaking of?

[Gia Tolentino]

I don't understand it anymore a little bit.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah.

[Gia Tolentino]

So I had written about the Internet always, because this was a thing that one could be authoritative about when I was 22 and not getting paid, like, not getting paid to write anything and had no experience or authority about anything. But, you know, young people are good at writing about the Internet. And it was research I could do for free from my home in grad school in Michigan, you know, not knowing anyone in New York. And so I started writing about it, and I found that the best bad things about my brain cleaved well to the pace of the Internet. I liked that it was frantic. I found that I could navigate, that I was interested in it. I found it really fun. Part of it was that I had been in the Peace Corps with no Internet for a while. So when I came back, it seemed like the magical. And this was 2012. And so it was kind of pre algorithmic consolidation. It could still be like, you know, all four of us could get on the Internet right now, and we'd probably see pretty much the same stuff, whereas in 2012, not at all. Right. There was this, like, consolidation. And I always wrote about it, and I always participated in it really heavily. And it was one of the reasons I was able to have a career kind of with no connections and not living in New York until I did. And yet there was some period. I mean, it was right around when I started writing my book, which was 2017, and it was like, how did the Internet seem so good to me 10 years ago? And now suddenly, like, I can feel my brain kind of leaking out my ears. I can feel this sort of existential dullness and dissatisfaction and, you know, a promised connection. And it feels like people are mostly getting more and more alienated. I started thinking about these things. And then I started writing about them for my book and for maybe for other things. And. And I was like, well, I'll just stay on it as long as I'm getting more from it than I'm giving and as long as it's still funny, you know, for a while it was just on the Internet. Cause it was funny.

[Amanda Doyle]

Funny.

[Gia Tolentino]

It was funny, you know, as long as I started, like, pissing my pants, laughing at some meme on Twitter, like, at least once a day, then I was like, fine, I can deal with everything else.

[Glennon Doyle]

You know, it's a small price to pay.

[Gia Tolentino]

It's honestly a small price to pay if I'm sold at me. If, like, a meme about a frog on a unicycle can make me laugh that hard, you know, and I truly believe that. But then, you know, something. Something happened. It was around my book came out, 2019. By then I had started thinking about the Internet as. And the entire model of surveillance capitalism is like, deeply, deeply destructive. Like an entire economic model that treats our souls and our interests and our desires and our connections, our most essential human desires to be seen and to be loved and to connect one another and treated it the way that, you know, colonial mining companies treated land in East Africa. Like this was the last territory left to be mined, to all hell. And so that, you know, a little profit could. Could come to us in the form of whatever it comes, but all of the profit is really getting sucked upwards. And we are, we are the raw material for this economic model of the Internet. And I'd written a lot about, you know, the commodification of identity, right, and the commodification of our souls, really. And then my book came out and all of the things I'd written about in critique, I got swallowed in. Yes, I instantly, I was like, oh, by publishing this book, which is in part about this, I've made myself so useful to the commodification of the self. And I got very alarmed, you know, and I was like, what am I doing on the Internet? And pretty soon after that, 2020 happened. And another thing I'd always told myself about the Internet too, was that as long as my real life was bigger, was just self evidently bigger than the Internet, then the Internet could occupy probably an outsized place in my life. I could spend five hours a day on my phone, whatever. And then in the pandemic, my real life was so small. It was just a room and my partner and my dog and whatever dinner we were cooking that night. And the Internet Ballooned in this outsized way. And so I was like, okay, I need to shrink the Internet so it's smaller than my life. Ooh. You know, because. And I was just like, I need to keep, keep that. And I also, like, the memes got bad. Like, I don't know if I'm getting over.

[Glennon Doyle]

I haven't seen a frog on a tricycle in years.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah. Like, the only meme that was funny to me in 2020 was the gossip Girl, go piss girl meme. Like, nothing else really did it for me. So I tried to shrink my involvement with the Internet. I have to use, I always say, like, I use a program called self control on my laptop and a program called called Freedom on my phone. Like super Orwellian.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yes.

[Gia Tolentino]

And then I had a kid in August of that year and I was like, I just, I don't want to be up at 3am looking at fucking Twitter, you know. And so I got off of Twitter. My relationship to the Internet, I'm still on it a lot for work, for reporting and stuff. I'm back on Twitter to, like, look at what anti abortion groups are saying all the time and whatever. But it's changed a lot. Like, there came a point where I was like, I can't keep writing about how something is bad and then like throwing myself fully at it and benefiting from it so much. So I've been experimenting with being less online.

[Glennon Doyle]

I feel like we get the message, don't be on as much. But there's not really a concrete way that you can measure what as much is. But when you just say, I needed my real life to be bigger than my online life, that's actually something concrete. How do you measure that? And how do you measure the bigness of your offline life to ensure that it is outsizing the Internet?

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah, well, it's tough, right? Because if our work is disseminated primarily on the Internet and you can't get around work, that's, that's, you know, that complicates it significantly. But I think I could just feel it, you know, I think it's just something that I think most people can feel. I don't ever want to find myself in the real physical world thinking about something that doesn't exist there. And it was the pandemic, was it really enshrined for me something that I think I had understood maybe more subconsciously that the, the moments in life where I feel like, actually human and actually like myself. They're all unmediated, they're all unsurveilled. You know, it's like going out dancing, being with my friends, like doing acid at a show, sex or whatever. Like, physical presence and nothing in between and no one, no one recording. And many of those things were so hard to come by during the pandemic. And, you know, even, like, there was something about even just texting my friends for four hours a day, which I did, that I was just like, I just want to be in front of your fleshy face, you know, and have a conversation that there will be no record of, ever. And then I guess having a kid reinforced that, right? I think I just wanted as much of my experience to be of no monetary use to anyone but me.

[Amanda Doyle]

That's how you know you're human. You're being human.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm actually like, maybe it worked. Maybe it worked. I'm, like, thinking in real time, maybe it worked better than I thought. Yeah. Foreign.

[Glennon Doyle]

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[Amanda Doyle]

I just had this meeting with my therapist yesterday and, and I was talking to her about how I went to this festival this weekend and that I felt these feelings in my body that I think are joy. And I was like, around other bodies. So much of what you're talking about, human to human, it's the. There are bodies involved. And the Internet is like disembodied. Like, I am working on becoming more embodied and like being fully human, which seems to be easy for other people. And the. And then I'm realizing, oh, I have created an entire career and world out of a completely disembodied community. Like, I love humanity, but not other human beings. Like, a way on the Internet to like, connect. How do we really connect when we're not body to body? And when you say, I want to be with my friends fleshy faces, it feels so simple. But that's it. We have been sold this idea that we can connect on the Internet, but I don't know if any of that is real.

[Gia Tolentino]

Oh, I think it totally is. There's something different when, you know, if you're a writer, this is a profession that has always been mediated, right? Like, and the work that you do, there's no way that you can have one on, you know, I also think I've tried to not be kind of an unequivocal alarmist. Like, it's like, I do recognize the Internet is magic and that we get to meet like this from our living rooms. And that's a fucking gift, you know, and, you know, my entire, I owe my entire career my ability to write. The entire democratization of the media industry is due to kind of the sudden like horizontal smushing of hierarchy that the Internet allows For I think there are still so many kind of radically wonderful benefits of it. I just. I guess those have always seemed so obvious to me, or like, those have always been. So it's much easier for me, or it was for a while to get caught up in all the parts of it that were freeing and were good and did allow for things that couldn't be done otherwise that I. I was like, I have to keep my eye on the part that is corrosive. But, you know, I think the fact that people can hear your voice in their ear when they're going about a day, that they kind of, at the moment have no choice but to be alone within their day, and they're not alone listening to you. I think the disembodied nature of that. I think something like a podcast is different.

[Amanda Doyle]

It's different, yeah.

[Gia Tolentino]

And writing it is the best we can do with the tools that we're given. And it does matter. It is connection. I think it's the kind of false connection, the false disembodied connection of the Internet. I think of that as the connections that are involuntary. There's something about choosing to read a book or choosing to enter into the parasocial relationship that I have with various that it's not. Those vectors still feel pretty human to me and pretty unadulterated, at least in my experience. The stuff that is freaky is the stuff that's being pushed on us by algorithm for other people's benefit, not the stuff that we're actively choosing to change our life. Right. And I also think that's why I hunger for physical presence so often, is because for whatever reason, my life has led me to mostly be working alone behind a screen.

[Amanda Doyle]

Is there three realms? This is what I'm trying to figure out, because I've changed my relationship to the Internet and social media completely over the last two years.

[Gia Tolentino]

How has it changed for you?

[Amanda Doyle]

Well, I just. I heard you on a podcast say that you read Jenny Odell's book.

[Gia Tolentino]

Oh, isn't it so good?

[Amanda Doyle]

I just. It fucked me up completely. Like, I just.

[Gia Tolentino]

Absolutely same. I was like, I have to change my whole life.

[Amanda Doyle]

Me too. I changed my life.

[Gia Tolentino]

Everyone read that book. Yeah, yeah.

[Amanda Doyle]

And then. And then I changed it brilliantly by getting off social media and starting a podcast, which then took me. Takes me 12 hours a day of like, I just didn't do it right, I don't think. But it's different. I love this podcast like, I love this podcast, because podcasts can be the same as a book can Be the same as a painting can be the same as. But there's a difference, right? Between, like, I think of my real life, which are the people in my day, in my neighborhood, and then there's like, the art that I'm making that I'm pushing to people because they're choosing it. But then there's this other realm of, like, performing on social media that is different. Yeah, that's the one. I don't know how to explain it yet. I don't really have language for it. But when I am making something, I am purposely thinking about that thing, and then I am making something new for people, and then I'm trying to create something beautiful, and then I'm putting it out to them and they're opting in. That's like writing a book. But there's something about, like, if I stop my day and take a picture of myself or something, or my kid or my. And then I put that out, that feels totally different. And that second realm is what I'm trying to get rid of.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have also stopped doing that as much and started feeling weirder about it when I do, which I think is probably good. Like, I think shame, you know, whatever that. Shame, you know, whatever ambient shame I might feel about. And it's actually, shame isn't the demotivating factor there. It's more just like a. I don't feel like a spark with doing it anymore. Like, I feel much less attraction to showing myself online than I once did. I think the, like, simple miracle of in your early 20s being like, wow, I can be seen as the person I think I am. You know, that can carry you through a lot of life phases. Now I'm like, I don't care about being seen, you know?

[Amanda Doyle]

Right.

[Glennon Doyle]

It's an evolution of that.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah. And I feel like I try to follow a spirit of pleasure into as much of my life as I can. And it's like, maybe thinking about it so much has sucked some of the pleasure out of interacting with that last realm for me. And I just. I think one thing that brought my interactions with the Internet down, and this probably has to do with Jenny's book too, is, like, what is giving me, like, real kind of animal pleasure in the day. And it is more and more not anything having to do with my phone. Like, work accepted. Right.

[Glennon Doyle]

Talk more about animal pleasure. What is animal pleasure and what are examples for you?

[Gia Tolentino]

Well, I think I've. I run on instinct more than many writers do. Like, I think I. It was another thing that I Realized during the pandemic that I couldn't really write about anything if my life was contained within one room. Because I really rely on, you know, being able to, like, go to a march, go to a situation and feel what's happening in my body. You know, I have no intellect that exists outside of my body. I think so many writers have that cerebral capacity. I don't have it at all. It was an interesting thing to realize. And I think I do have kind of a little thing worrying. It's like, is this thing that I'm doing next gonna make me feel more like myself or less? And is it gonna make me feel more like, present within the world or less? And I think of the fact of feeling more present as the kind of purest animal pleasure, that they exist exactly where they are with the stuff of their moment and their environment and whoever's around them. And I'm feeling like a cumulative X. Many years of acid trips just kind of seep out through my mouth right now. But.

[Amanda Doyle]

Can you talk to us about that? Talk to us about acid trips?

[Gia Tolentino]

Just stuff about it.

[Amanda Doyle]

Well, I've only done shrooms. I've done shrooms many, many times, but it was just always in a fraternity basement. Like, it was never a great experience. I mean, it was better than not being on shrooms.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah. Yeah. Would you ever experiment? Would you?

[Amanda Doyle]

Yeah. So. And I actually am very seriously considering doing medicinal. Because it's really supposed to be helpful for eating disorders. And I just have some lingering concern that I'm working out with my therapist, et cetera, because of my sobriety and all of that. But, yes, I'm very curious.

[Gia Tolentino]

I wrote about this in one essay in my book. But I think one holdover from my evangelical upbringing is that I. I really desire a sense of transcendence and of smallness, you know, and of sort of like ego death in some sort of divine. Even though I no longer believe in God, certainly not in the way that I was taught to growing up. And I think I, like, I have relied ever since probably college, ish years to like, on an annual. I actually think acid is way better than Trums, because I get so emotional on Trum's acid. I was afraid of it for a long time because obviously it's scary. You're like, I'm gonna lose. Lose control of the steering wheel of my consciousness for nine hours straight. Like, yikes. You know? But I've kind of relied on an annual. Or now annual at best kind of moment like that, to. Which feels like spring cleaning. It feels Like a reminder of the actual stakes of life. And it has been my greatest reconnector to that sense of scale and transcendence. That was felt to me like one of the most valuable things about growing up in the church and of kind of worshipfulness, but not to anyone in particular, but to the fact of being alive. Right. And I love that feeling and I need the intensity of it in the acid format to carry a little bit of. I think I do. To carry a little bit of it around me, around with me for the rest of the year. Yeah.

[Amanda Doyle]

I last felt that at.

[Gia Tolentino]

You have to tell me. Yeah. Well, if you ever do.

[Amanda Doyle]

No, I will tell you how it goes.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah.

[Amanda Doyle]

But that feeling of smallness, of transcendence, of worshiping something bigger, that's not something particular. I think the closest I'm getting to that these days is live music.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah, exactly.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, this is what I was trying to get at church. That's what I said to my daughter this weekend. Like, this is what I was going for, 100%. I heard you say recently that you write about motherhood more in terms of, like, you've been talking about it today policy and like, how we can make things fairer and that you keep a journal about, like, your personal experiences with motherhood. And you said that you don't see motherhood written about in ways that you are actually experiencing it. Can you talk about that? Like, what do you mean? And do you have language around that yet?

[Gia Tolentino]

I don't know if I do, which is one of the reasons I haven't written about it except to myself. And I also feel like I'm still so new into it. I feel that it must be annoying to people who have raised children for much longer to hear someone with a two year old being like, well, what I know about motherhood, I'm like, what the fuck do I know? I've been doing this for literally two and a half years. What the fuck do I know? But talk about animal pleasure? Like, I think so much of the aspects of motherhood that have really stuck in my throat and that have stuck in my brain have been things that elude the kind of emotional vocabulary with which it's often written about. Like, even though the way the moment of birth, I didn't experience it in terms of love, I experienced it in terms of revelation and like, not love. There was so much love. But it's these shades of existential experience that I don't feel like I have a handle on. If I don't have A handle on it in my thought then I can't get a handle on it in writing yet. And maybe it's about that lake you were talking about. It's like the way that motherhood is often spoken about, certainly, and written about is this sort of sweet filigreed net that's hovering unspoken over a giant lake of existential fear and instability. And that's the thing that's making it so beautiful. But that, that lake is the thing that gives it its meaning. It's not the love, it's not the snuggles. It is the vast glimpse of life and death that you're getting constantly around all of it. Right. Like that's.

[Abby Wambach]

Oh my go.

[Gia Tolentino]

And that. I guess that's hard. I mean, it's hard to write about, it's hard to think about. It's hard to hold it in your head all at once. Yeah.

[Amanda Doyle]

And it's like the ultimate paradox.

[Gia Tolentino]

Right.

[Amanda Doyle]

Cause I like. I'm like looking at my kid and I don't know whether to be like, you're welcome or like, sorry, right. For doing this to you.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah.

[Amanda Doyle]

I'm not sure yet whether this is all worth it or not. Like, I'm not sure whether it was a great idea and how do you talk about that? I understand what you're saying.

[Gia Tolentino]

Well, and yeah. And even that I feel some sort of shame. I mean, I don't know if shame's exactly the right word for it, but I feel some sort of moral trouble about having knowingly birthed an upper middle class consumer that will be probably as bad for the planet as I have been. You know, even just like, despite all of my best efforts, like the cloth diapers and the compost, I'm still a fucking drag on the. You know, like I am. And I try not to hamster wheel about that too much because that, like in a way that's not useful. But. But yeah, even. Even stuff like that. And last night I had the. Oh my God. I had what felt like a kind of wonderful and terrible milestone where I'm entering the weepy phase of third trimester, which is unusual for me because I'm not a crier, but I'm. I'm truly entering the, like the weepy phase, which is kind of great. Cause I get to experience what it's like to have tears at the ready, but it's also terrifying to me. But anyway, my kid has started going to bed at 9, which is too late for a 3 year old, but she was resisting bed and it was 9 o'clock and I was so tired and I just started crying. And she comforted me in the most unbelievably mature. You know, she started singing Daniel Tiger songs to me and was like, take a deep breath and count to four. And counted. And I was like, oh, fuck. I was like, this is the first time that you have felt emotional, responsible for someone else's life. And I was like, I'm so proud of you for doing that so well. See, I'm like, getting teary right now thinking about it. I was like, I'm so proud of you for doing that so well. And I'm so sorry that this is your first taste of the responsibility that you will feel as a girl, as a woman, or whatever. Tbd. But I was just like, oh, I have just ushered you into an adult experience, you know. And I was like, thank you. And I'm so sorry.

[Glennon Doyle]

You know, which is also the paradox, right?

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah.

[Glennon Doyle]

It's like to be a human in this world and to be deeply connected and aware of that connection.

[Gia Tolentino]

Right.

[Glennon Doyle]

Is the most beautiful thing and most.

[Gia Tolentino]

Devastating and most devastating thing.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yes.

[Glennon Doyle]

And that's the bridge over the lake.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah.

[Glennon Doyle]

Right. It's only beautiful because it's terrifying. And it's only terrifying because it's beautiful.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Amanda Doyle]

They're this little proof, if I'm doing the math, which I'm doing the math of, like, is this shit worth it at all? What I like about the kids existence is it's like, I guess it's just a little percentage. It's proof that I really believe that it's like 51% worth it.

[Glennon Doyle]

Yeah.

[Amanda Doyle]

I must truly believe that or you wouldn't exist. I would not have done this. So it's reminder to me of the, like, extra 1% of all of this that you're welcome is just a little bit bigger than the. Sorry.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah. Yeah. It feels really disrespectful to think about this quote in the context of, like, my own life, which is so charmed in so many ways. But I always think about Simone Weill, the French philosopher. She wrote at some point During World War II, she wrote something like, how wonderful it is to be alive when we've lost everything, or something like that. I still do come down instinctively, physically, to the idea that being here is a gift and it's a malleable one and that malleability is the most important part of it. And I haven't doubted that, but. Yeah, you do. Like last night I was like, maybe it is 4,951.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yeah, exactly.

[Glennon Doyle]

You said that motherhood has also been steering you towards the unvaluable values.

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah, there's no kind of labor less economically valued and more universally important than caregiving in general. But, you know, of the elderly, of spaces, of land, whatever, but of children specifically. And it's this enormous, glaring truism of our world that the things that are most economically valued are often the things that are the most destructive. Just openly, spiritually, materially, in every way. And I've always been afraid of wasting time, of not doing as much as I can with my stupid little time in this world, you know, whatever. The things that.

[Glennon Doyle]

The things that a Jefferson scholar.

[Gia Tolentino]

Well, and the things that like, you know, and that's what those experiences we were talking about, like live music or an acid trip or being with your friends, where the things that remove me from the desire to be productive in some outwardly manifesting way are the things that have taught me, like, how I actually want to live. And I think my whole life will be a slow process of just trying to live by those values more. And having a kid, I mean, yeah, I'm just staring at you. I'm not doing anything other than staring at you and cleaning up poop, you know, and we're just gonna lay here. And this time is so actively devalued by everyone that I don't even have fucking paid maternity leave. And yet this is like, it is obviously immeasurably precious. And I think it made me more comfortable with doing things that, you know, as per how to do nothing life changing book that it is those times of doing what ostensibly seems to be nothing that feel the most valuable of all. And so, yeah, since then, it's been like, like, how can I do work that is lucrative enough in less time that will give me plenty enough time to do nothing with my kid.

[Glennon Doyle]

And has it extended beyond your kid, Gia? Because I feel like that is still somewhat valorized. And I feel like mothers are shamed often for like, why are you on your phone in the park and why aren't you getting one?

[Gia Tolentino]

Oh, I love to be on my phone in the park.

[Glennon Doyle]

Yeah.

[Amanda Doyle]

What the hell else?

[Glennon Doyle]

What has the unvaluable time. Have you taken it also for yourself? Like, is that opening it?

[Gia Tolentino]

Yeah, to the extent that, you know, it's like you have this realization just as like, non useful time has become much harder to come by. But I think, I mean, the way in which I thought of this very specifically as outside my child was. I think a lot of people feel, if they are lucky Enough to be able to, like, this forced expansion of capacity in early parenthood. We were like, oh, you know, suddenly you realize how you're just gonna fit it all in. You feel this great expansion of your. Of your caregiving capacity and your ability to stretch yourself past an emotional limit you thought you had and really give a lot more of yourself than you would have previously. And I think that's a pretty, you know, like, near universal experience. And I was like, I wanna make sure that doesn't only apply to my daughter. Like, it's one of the ways that I chafe against whatever the nuclear family ideal. Right. Is that like all of our ideas of safety and flourishing and love, I always feared that that would get directed too much inward with marriage or children. And that was like a fear that I've had for a long time. It was like, I don't want to grow up and tend my little walled garden. That seemed very scary and bad to me in many ways, that idea of that as the good life, you know, Because I had always thought about relationships. I was like, romantic relationships that should make your world bigger, not smaller. But it seemed like a lot of the visions of romantic relationships were like, now you have a cute little tight little unit, you know, And I was so scared of that. And I think with kids I, like, I definitely started to. I was like, I'm gonna volunteer with much more dedication and frequency than I did beforehand, and I'm gonna make it work somehow to remind myself that this expansion of capacity doesn't only need to be directed towards my biological child. You know, like, I sort of needed to physically do it to remind myself that that expansion of capacity and interest in doing kind of non valued work, non paid work, basically, that I just didn't want it all to go to her because it would be a waste of this, like, sudden compulsion and capacity that I felt.

[Abby Wambach]

Wow.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yeah. Gia, Jess has spoken.

[Abby Wambach]

Jia has spoken.

[Gia Tolentino]

What should I write about next, though? Ask the group chat and let me know. Yeah, I will do it.

[Amanda Doyle]

We will, we will, we will. You're wonderful. I just hope you get lots of time to do nothing. And so too, I just think that you're such a gift to the world. And thank you for this hour. It's been absolutely wonderful for us.

[Gia Tolentino]

Thank you guys. It's so, so good to meet you. Yeah, truly, we should be glad for the Internet because it allowed for this. So There we go.

[Amanda Doyle]

51%.

[Gia Tolentino]

We're on that one.

[Amanda Doyle]

I love it. Thanks, podcast squad. We'll see you next time. Bye.

[Gia Tolentino]

Bye.

[Amanda Doyle]

If this podcast means something to you. It would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the POD helps you because you'll never miss an episode, and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right hand corner or click on Follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey. Our Executive producer is Jenna Wise Berman and the show is produced by Lauren Legrasso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner and Bill Schultz.