We Can Do Hard Things: Rosie O’Donnell – Why She Really Left & Her New Ireland Life

Podcast: We Can Do Hard Things
Hosts: Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, Amanda Doyle
Guest: Rosie O’Donnell
Release Date: December 9, 2025

Overview

This episode welcomes Rosie O’Donnell, celebrated comedian, actress, and outspoken advocate, for an unfiltered, deeply personal conversation about mental health, loss, parenting, political trauma, and her decision to move to Ireland. Rosie opens up about her childhood, the profound impact of losing her mother early in life, navigating motherhood as a motherless daughter, her journey with her autistic, non-binary child, and why leaving the U.S. after the 2024 election became an act of self-preservation. The Pod Squad and Rosie move seamlessly between vulnerable storytelling, witty banter, and critical reflections on activism, healing, and legacy.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mental Health in a Turbulent World

• Rosie’s Coping Strategies: Rosie shares her ongoing work to maintain mental health amid global crisis.
  • Rosie: “I'm trying to keep steady. I'm trying to keep my mental health in check... My shrink said, ‘make sure you call your psychopharmacologist.’” [02:20]
  • She describes seeking professional help and acknowledges that feeling overwhelmed is a justifiable reaction to current events, not a personal failing.
• Collective Anxiety: The group discusses how breaking down emotionally is a sane response to global events:
  • Abby: “It is probably more of a sign of a mental disorder if you are not breaking down right now.” [02:57]

2. Parenthood, Adoption, and Identity

• Adopting and Parenting an Autistic, Non-binary Child: Rosie reflects on adopting her fifth child at age 50 and the tender, validating lessons her child has taught her.
  • Rosie: “It's been the most wonderfully beautiful, expanding experience, emotionally, of my life. And so I'm very lucky to have that ground in me.” [04:57]
  • She shares the story of adjusting language/pronouns, wearing a “they” tattoo, and the respectful, regretful humor in the mistakes.
  • Rosie: “Every time that I say she, they say to me, 'Looks like your tattoo's not working.'” [06:04]
• Leaving America: Rosie details her move to Ireland for the sake of safety:
  • Rosie: “I knew I had to protect myself and this little non-binary autistic 12-year-old from all the horrors that were about to happen.” [07:08]
  • She describes feeling validated in her fears, recounting reading Project 2025 and feeling an urgency to get out before the inauguration.

3. Life in Ireland: Healing and Heritage

• Feeling at Home: Rosie expresses how living in Ireland has been healing and reconnects her to her roots:
  • Rosie: “There's something about seeing your genetic heritage, your DNA on the faces of the people you pass in the street... It feels much more innocent, much more community-based, empathetic, and caring.” [14:10]
  • The culture’s lack of celebrity obsession is a huge relief for her.
• Intergenerational Reflection: Rosie describes returning to Donegal as an 11-year-old after her mother’s death and now returning with her own child, feeling the cycle of life.
  • Rosie: "It felt like home in a way... Now, I brought an 11-year-old over with me and they turned 12 while we were here." [15:55]

4. Motherless Daughters, Loss, and Healing

• Grief’s Lifelong Shadow: Rosie describes the lifelong impact of losing her mother:
  • Rosie: “It's a hole inside you that I don't think ever goes away. And for me, I know it hasn't. And it's shaped every part of my life.” [17:41]
  • She discusses the unique struggles of mothering without having been mothered and the therapeutic journey to process her own loss.
• First Hug, First "I Love You":
  • Rosie movingly describes not receiving her first hug or being told "I love you" until age 12, by her teacher Pat Maravel.
  • Rosie: “First person to hug me, first person to say I love you to me was a school teacher, a public school teacher... I just stood there like this, you know.” [43:09]
• Defining Truth: Early loss and family denial led Rosie to become a relentless truth-teller.
  • Rosie: “It’s why I’m a very, very fierce truth teller in my life in every capacity. And it hasn’t always served me, but it’s the only way I know how to live.” [24:05]

5. Art, Activism, and Using One’s Voice

• On Celebrity Responsibility: Rosie argues that women, especially marginalized people given a platform, have an imperative to speak out.
  • Rosie: “If you have the luxury of being given a microphone... as a woman, as a gay woman—there’s a war with us, and we are next in their hierarchy of who they can take out...” [10:55]
• Abandonment and Safety: Rosie and the hosts connect the loss of personal and societal safety—mother, country, stability—and the challenge of finding or recreating it.
• Forgiving and Healing a Nation: Rosie expresses hope for reconciliation and urges Americans to welcome those who want to return from "the cultish reality" of Trumpism.
  • Rosie: “It’s time to welcome everyone back from the cultish reality that they’ve been living in the lies that they’ve been living and say, we are America. Remember who we are.” [09:45]
• Art as Healing: Rosie shares how music, painting, and crafting (especially listening to Hozier and building Legos) bring solace.
  • Rosie: “When I need my brain to stop thinking, that’s when I let my hands be busy.” [61:24]
  • Rosie: “Lately I’ve been doing Legos, like enormous... the gumball machine. Lego. It takes a lot, trust me.” [61:28]

6. Legacy, Success, and Manifestation

• Manifesting Destiny:
  • Rosie: “If you dream it, you can live it. That’s what I think... I just saw the movie of what my life was gonna be from the time I was very young, and I had a certainty about it.” [40:57]
  • Her high school yearbook is filled with comments like, “Say hi to Johnny Carson.”
• Mothering Without a Map:
  • Rosie admits overcompensating as a mother, smoothing every bump for her children, and wonders aloud about the impacts.
  • Rosie: “I made the road too smooth for my children. So that even the little speed bump throws them, because I made it all blacktop for them.” [57:11]
• Living in the Shadow of Fame: She discusses the strange experience her kids endure, being overshadowed by her celebrity.
  • Rosie: “There's a lot of life in the shadow when your mother's famous.” [59:14]

7. Key Moments in Rosie’s Career

• Favorite Show Moments: Rosie shares a moving story of facilitating a life-saving donation after a young guest tried to raise money for his friend's bone marrow transplant.
  • Rosie: “Those moments, the human interest moments, are the moments that I remember...” [36:53]
• Barbra Streisand as Mother Figure:
  • Rosie: “Barbra Streisand... it felt like my mother was walking through the curtain. It felt like... I can't even watch it, the whole thing, you know?” [38:28]

8. On "A League of Their Own" and Women’s Sports

• Amanda links Rosie’s role in A League of Their Own to the rise of women’s sports in the U.S.
  • Amanda: “I believe that potentially that your movie had a really big impact on that. Do you believe that?” [47:29]
  • Rosie: “I do. And I believe it was all Penny Marshall. She was a woman sports freak... She made a profound impact on women’s sports in the history of the United States because of that move.” [47:44]
• Rosie describes intentionally playing her character "as gay" to signal representation, despite resistance.
  • Rosie: “I was sure when I did that scene to make it as gay as I could.” [51:08]

9. Community, Connection & Closing the Circle

• Mentoring and Support: Rosie recalls reaching out to Abby Wambach after her DUI, sharing mutual struggles and the necessity of showing up for people during their hardest times.
  • Rosie: “I wrote you an email at that time... I said that, 'You’re a champion and you can get through this, too, like you have everything else.'” [69:59]
  • Abby: “So many people show up when things are good. When I’m down... I never forget the people who reach out then. You’re one of those.” [70:46]
• Desire to Tell Our Stories: Rosie voices her dream of creating a documentary of senior lesbian couples’ love stories.
  • Rosie: “I would love to do a documentary series show where I just go around the country and meet senior lesbian couples and have them tell me their love story... I’m so wanting to tell our stories, you know, especially nowadays in this political climate.” [52:02, 69:08]

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Grief:

  • “It’s a hole inside you that I don't think ever goes away.” — Rosie O’Donnell [17:41]

• On Mothering as a Motherless Daughter:

  • “To try to be a mother while you’re motherless is very difficult because you don’t have all those memories of what you went through.” — Rosie O’Donnell [17:41]

• On Speaking Up:

  • “If you have the luxury of being given a microphone of any capacity in today’s world as a woman, as a gay woman... you need to use your voice.” — Rosie O’Donnell [10:55]

• On Certainty and Manifestation:

  • “If you dream it, you can live it. That’s what I think.” — Rosie O’Donnell [40:57]

• On Supporting Others in Crisis:

  • “So many people show up when things are good. When I’m down... I never forget the people who reach out then. You’re one of those.” — Abby Wambach [70:46]

• On Art as Survival:

  • “When I need my brain to stop thinking, that's what I let my hands be busy.” — Rosie O’Donnell [61:24]

Important Timestamps

• Rosie on her mental health and why she left the U.S.: 02:20–08:30
• Parenting, adoption, and pronouns: 04:14–07:14
• Life in Ireland and cultural reflections: 14:10–17:41
• Mother loss—childhood and lifelong impact: 17:41–24:09
• First hug, first "I love you"—the impact of a teacher: 43:09–44:38
• Rosie’s favorite show moment—compassion in action: 36:37–38:28
• On women’s sports and "A League of Their Own": 47:09–52:02
• Legacy, certainty, and manifestation: 40:55–43:06
• Abby and Rosie on showing up during struggles: 69:57–70:46

Tone & Style

The tone is raw, intimate, funny, and earnest. Rosie’s signature wit weaves through the conversation, matched by the Pod Squad’s warmth and sharp truth-telling. Vulnerability, mutual admiration, and humor abound—making complex trauma palatable and activism actionable.

Conclusion

In a time of political and personal upheaval, Rosie O’Donnell’s hard-won wisdom—about loss, love, identity, and resilience—reminds us that healing is seldom tidy, but always more possible in community. Whether she’s recounting her first hug, sparring with the darkness of the world, or manifesting a brighter future, Rosie exemplifies what it means to do hard things—together.