← We Can Do Hard Things
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- [00:00]
Glennon Doyle
When you hear a good idea, it's natural to do a double take. That's what you might do when you hear Discover will automatically double the cash back you've earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with cash back match. Wait, what? Yep, double the cash back is something so good you might do a triple take. It pays to Discover see terms@discover.com credit.
- [00:28]
Abby Wambach
Card I think that I know more than anyone on this entire planet that having the right therapist to talk to can make a life changing difference. That's why I think ALMA is so cool. Alma connects you with real therapists who understand your unique experience. You can use their directory to search for someone who specializes in the areas that matter most to you, whether that's anxiety, relationships or anything else. And what stands out to me about ALMA is that 97% of people seeing a therapist through ALMA say their therapist made them feel seen and heard. You know, I love that that level of connection isn't something you can get from scrolling through online advice or following social media. It's about finding someone who truly understands your journey and is dedicated to helping you make progress better with people, better with Alma. Visit helloalma.com hardthings to get started and schedule a free consultation today. That's hello a l m a.com hardthings Since November, Abby, Amanda and I have been planning, dreaming up ways for this community to show up for each other, take care of each other and continue building community. But you know that several months ago I quit social media. And the effects of that quitting on my nervous system, mind and heart have been as dramatic as when I quit drinking. It's been wild and it's been extremely important for me to experience. Since that quitting, I have felt calmer, braver and clearer actually. And in the midst of that, we have come up with some honestly, terrifyingly realer and more embodied ways to connect with you. And as a community than on social media. I want to keep showing up for each other and I want to keep building community now more than ever. But I don't want to do it on social media anymore. So here's what I'm telling you today. Soon I'm going to be inviting you into something special and the invitation is first going to go to you through my new newsletter. Okay, I have a new newsletter and all of my invitations and Abby and Amanda's invitations to new projects, new events, all the beautiful offerings we're planning are going to come to you first on this newsletter. All right? Now listen, if history proves to be an indicator. What will happen is the newsletter will go out. Everyone who receives the newsletter will sign up for these offerings and then they will be sold out. That's what happens. And then everyone gets sad and mad who didn't get the invitation in time. And since I am in my programs, I know that will not be my responsibility. But still I don't want it to happen. So please sign up for the newsletter now so you won't be sad or mad later. And if you have friends that you think want to be part of these offerings in this moment, email them, tag them, whatever you you need to do to get the newsletter to them. Because I won't be promoting it heavily on social media. Now I can promise you two things about this newsletter. I will be writing to you directly. It will be me. I miss writing to you directly. I'm going to do it on the newsletter. It might be the only place that I'm doing that. And two, I will never sell or give or whatever people do with emails. Okay? I will keep them safe and sacred. So here's what you do. Go to glennondoyle.com you will see a signup box in the top middle of the page where you can submit your email address. If you're on Instagram, go to my page, click the link in bio. You will see sign up for newsletter as the second button. Click the button and submit your email address. That's it. We are going to keep showing up for each other. The invitations will start coming soon on the newsletter. So go register now and I'll see you there.
- [04:39]
Amanda Doyle
Hello Pod Squad. Today we have a good news, bad news, good news day. Because today we are talking about heartbreak. And if you haven't had heartbreak, well, lucky, lucky you. And the only people that may be luckier than you are the people who have. Because although it's something we would not wish on anyone, it really does, once you get to a point, maybe give you an access to a depth and a range of emotion that is impossible to find any other way. So facts welcome. Welcome. Here's the bad news is that you can't game heartbreak. This is what we're going to learn from our guest today. The good news is it's not in your head. Even if you think it is and even if everyone tells you it is, it's actually in your body. And so you have to get out of your head to get into the light. And there's a way to get there and many paths we will find out through this conversation to get there. And we're going to talk about how and if you are in any kind of heartbreak, which I believe that most of us are, whether it's romantic or. Or whether we're like, it's this country, or whether it's some transition we're being forced through, all of this is for you. Today we are talking to science journalist Florence Williams, who is the author of the Nature Fix and most recently, Heartbreak A Personal and Scientific Journey. Florence explores the connections between humans and the natural world and reveals the profound psychological and physiological benefits of rewilding ourselves. Florence, it is. I regret to take you back to this moment. After 32 years together, your husband departs the marriage and your life and your heart is broken. Your. We're going to talk about all the ways your body broke down in very real ways. And the point is, at that point, you say, I am a scientist journalist, I would like for someone to tell me about the science of recovery. Where in God's name is the protocol for recovering from heartbreak? Where the hell is this? Because we should have it. Can you start us on this journey that we're going to be on by taking us back to the first day of your college life? What happens that first week?
- [07:19]
Florence Williams
I actually met the man who would become my husband the very first day of college. So I am 18 years old. I am a puppy. And he was so cute and handsome and nice and fun and all the things. We didn't start dating right away. It took a few weeks before we actually started dating. He was a senior and I was a freshman, and I had a huge crush on him, you know, that huge crush. And everything was great. And really we had a wonderful time. I mean, we dated for seven years until we got married. Then I think we were married about seven years before kids arrived. Two beautiful children. We lived out west, mostly in Colorado, and we had go go careers, and we had a lot of fun skiing and kayaking. And I felt very safe with him because he was very experienced in these sports and pursuits. I felt like he could rescue me, and he did actually occasionally rescue me, and it was really great. And then I think, you know, when kids arrive, things get harder as they do, real life sort of sets in, you know, deadlines and parenting small children. And I think we just slowly started drifting apart. You know, it's hard to tease out, really, what went wrong. All I can say is that it felt more like parallel play and less like play together. And I think I was very kind of a realist, like, yes, this happens in a marriage. You have periods where you don't feel so connected. You have periods where you do. They come and go. And even though sometimes, even often, I felt not so connected to him from a heart, space, perspective. I loved our life. I loved our family. I was very attached to the way things were. I still kind of had that general sense of safety until.
- [09:32]
Amanda Doyle
Until we have to set the stage for this. Okay, so you are hosting a dinner party.
- [09:39]
Florence Williams
Yes.
- [09:39]
Amanda Doyle
The people are at your door. You've now been married 25 years. People are at your door, about to come in. Your husband hands you his phone to look at something, and you see what.
- [09:51]
Florence Williams
Yeah, he hands me his phone because there's a message about his father who's not feeling well. He's in the hospital. But instead of seeing a message from his brother, which is what I expected, I see a message from my husband to another woman. And it has the word love in has. I don't know. I can't even remember all the words, but it was like the floor sort of dropped from my body. You know that feeling where your stomach just goes through the floor and you are very confused.
- [10:23]
Abby Wambach
And I do know that feeling, sister.
- [10:25]
Florence Williams
I do.
- [10:26]
Abby Wambach
Yeah.
- [10:27]
Florence Williams
I'm sorry. You know the feeling. I think many of us do.
- [10:31]
Abby Wambach
Yep.
- [10:32]
Florence Williams
And then the doorbell rings, you know, and I'm like, oh, okay, I'm going to have to compartmentalize and deal with this later. And I tried to sort of, you know, muscle my way through this dinner. I finished making the salad, you know, put it on the table. At some point later, I managed to kind of grab his phone, which didn't have a passcode on it, and really read the rest of the message, read some other messages. And. Yeah, that was the beginning.
- [11:01]
Amanda Doyle
Yeah, that was the beginning. So eventually, you're. You're trying to figure out what to do. You send him to figure it out. Right. Like, go. You've got to figure out what you want. Can you tell us what this. What he said was so interesting and heartbreaking in a little way to me, too. When he came back from his trip where he was trying to sort out what he wanted, what he said to you.
- [11:26]
Florence Williams
I think there were a couple of things that are really salient in my mind, but one of them is, well, I don't want to upset the apple cart. Let's just try to keep going. And that wasn't what I wanted to hear. What I wanted to hear was, I still love you. I care about making this work. And it was more like, I don't want to upset the apple cart. So that was the first blow. And then eventually there was another one where he said, I feel like I really need to go find my soulmate. Yeah.
- [12:00]
Abby Wambach
Brutal.
- [12:00]
Glennon Doyle
Again, not coming back from that one.
- [12:04]
Amanda Doyle
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so now it's settled. And then it begins settling. You're like, okay, I'm a scientist. I can figure this out. I'm gonna go figure it out. What are you. Just for the people who are going through heartbreak or have been and thought it was just, like, a weakness in their mind, like, they couldn't just figure it out and get over it. Tell us what you learned is, like, actually happening in our bodies when we are crushed like this.
- [12:34]
Florence Williams
Yeah. And I think, you know, you're. You're right to sort of point to our friends or when we see other people going through heartbreak. I know I had never experienced it before, and I always thought when my friends were going through this that they were being sort of dramatic. You know, it's like, oh, obviously he wasn't the right guy or wasn't the right girl. Just get over it, you know? Why are you being so dramatic? And then when it happened to me, I really sort of understood the drama because I felt it so, you know, so intensely in my body. I couldn't sleep. I lost £20, like, very quickly. I felt like I had been. Like my body had been plugged into an amplifier. There's this kind of buzzing alarm state. And it really did feel like a threat state. And as I researched this, I came to understand more about why I was feeling those things. But I was so surprised by the physiological reaction. And that's where I was like, I want to find out what's happening, because I haven't really heard about this. Like, why am I feeling this in my body so intensely? Why is it so hard to not feel it? And what is going on? How do I get out of this? Because I also. I started getting sick, too. That's the other thing that happened. Yeah.
- [13:49]
Amanda Doyle
You had, like, a skyrocketing inflammation and white cells and type 1 diabetes, right?
- [13:55]
Florence Williams
Yeah.
- [13:56]
Amanda Doyle
Wasn't it all the autoimmune stuff just, like, flooded in at the same time?
- [13:59]
Florence Williams
Yes. I mean, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, you know, at age 50, which is very unusual. Usually it's that, you know, used to be called juvenile diabetes. It's an autoimmune disease. I ended up with several autoimmune diseases. And so there became this urgency, not just to sort of feel better emotionally, but to feel better physically.
- [14:19]
Amanda Doyle
What did you learn about that sense of. When you were talking about A threat state. What did you learn about that?
- [14:26]
Florence Williams
Well, one of the first people I ran into after my marriage exploded, I went to a conference where I was a speaker, actually, the Aspen Ideas Festival. And Helen Fisher was there, who's this biological anthropologist, this completely delightful woman in her 70s who writes a lot about the neurochemistry of falling in love, but she also writes a little bit about what happens on the other side. And I met her and I said, oh my God, Helen, my 25 year marriage just ended and I. And I'd love to talk to you about it. And she said, well, are you losing weight? And I said yes. And she said, are you not sleeping? And I said yes. And she said, okay, I can tell you exactly what's happening. And the first thing she told me is that our brains feel emotional pain in almost the exact same pathways, the exact same neurons that register physical pain. So what that tells you is that our sort of animal bodies take emotional pain incredibly seriously. To be abandoned or to be cast out of your kin group deep in our Pleistocene past meant that we were physically threatened because all of a sudden we were on our own trying to survive. And so our bodies register that threat as something deeply, deeply problematic. And then I met another scientist who's a neuroimmunologist at ucla and he said, yeah, I study the white blood cells of people who feel lonely. And we know that people who feel lonely die earlier, they suffer from more chronic disease. And he said, I am actually looking at our blood cells, which are part of our immune system, to find out how they know, how they sort of listen to our social states and then what they do in response to that. And one of the things they do, and I think this is so interesting, is our immune system sort of upregulates for a threat from bacteriological agents and it down regulates for things like viruses because if we're alone, we're more likely to say, be attacked by a predator or to fall out of a tree and have to take care of it by ourselves and be bleeding. We're less likely to catch viruses from other people because we're sort of alone in psychology.
- [17:01]
Abby Wambach
So that's why all the autoimmune diseases, because the.
- [17:06]
Florence Williams
So our bodies are pumping out all this inflammation because it's preparing our bodies for attacking, which is very adaptive and helpful and wonderful if you are in fact walking through a jungle by yourself for a short period of time.
- [17:21]
Abby Wambach
I just wanna say, I'm just thinking about the fact that I came down with a serious autoimmune disease. I'm just right now thinking of this right after my ex husband told me about his infidelity.
- [17:35]
Florence Williams
Wow. Wow.
- [17:38]
Abby Wambach
Very interesting.
- [17:39]
Glennon Doyle
It's like your body sends inflammation to protect it from being alone. That is something.
- [17:46]
Florence Williams
So it really blew my mind to think that our cells are listening for loneliness. Yes.
- [17:52]
Abby Wambach
That's so sweet and so sad.
- [17:55]
Florence Williams
Right. Our cells are trying to take care of us, but of course, if we're in a chronic state of heartbreak or rejection or loneliness, um, it's not as adaptive over the long period to have all this inflammation messing us up.
- [18:10]
Abby Wambach
So just. Can I just understand this for a second? Okay. So I am suddenly getting. I'm getting some news in my life or you are. That I'm about to be banished from my protective herd. Okay. And so my cells hear that information and then they. They do what? They rush to protect me because I am going to be alone, away from the herd. And then that rush to protect me is the extra energy that causes autoimmune stuff.
- [18:42]
Florence Williams
Yeah, I think that's right. And you know, our white blood cells, I guess they get remade every three days or something. So they are really designed to be adaptive to what's happening in our environment right now. And they'll change their gene expression in ways that will sort of upregulate these inflammatory markers or down regulate the need to fight viruses and other things, which.
- [19:05]
Amanda Doyle
Is very inconvenient because this was like during COVID for you. So your audio move, you're like, dear cells, I really need you to do the other thing.
- [19:13]
Florence Williams
I need the virus protection. Hold on. Yeah, exactly.
- [19:16]
Abby Wambach
So that's what your immune system does. And then what about your nervous system?
- [19:21]
Florence Williams
Yeah, so that's all related. So same thing. We feel like, oh, my God, I'm alone. I'm scared about so many things. I'm scared about my future. I'm scared about how am I going to pay for health insurance. I don't even know how to fix the lawnmower. And that's freaking me out. Yeah, I remember all these little fears sort of compound. And so we respond by pumping out more stress hormones, more cortisol, more adrenaline, more neuroadrenaline. These things in turn are gonna talk to our white blood cells and our bone marrow. So it's all connected. It all does come down to our nervous system.
- [19:59]
Amanda Doyle
So 7% of the people who go to the ER because they're having, like, heart issues, they think they're having a heart attack, actually end up being diagnosed with this thing. That is heartbreak. Can you Tell us what the hell that is doing in them and where it shows up.
- [20:16]
Florence Williams
Yes. I think this is so fascinating because it shows that heartbreak is not just a metaphor, that we actually can feel a literal and suffer a literal heartbreak. So sometimes what happens is after a big emotional blow, someone dies, a pet dies, your favorite soccer team loses the World Cup. This has been documented. People feel like they're having a heart attack, and so they get rushed to the emergency room. They're presenting with all the symptoms of a heart attack. And in the last 10 or so years, now they get scanned, and they know that what is happening is not a classic heart attack where there's, like a clogged artery, but instead it's this emotional state that we're in, flooding one chamber, our left ventricle, with all of these stress hormones that's causing it to balloon out and not pump properly. So it's this heartbreak made real in this chamber of our heart. And in most cases, people recover from it, But I think 20% of people go on to still be at risk for heart attack later on. So it's, again, it's this emotional stress changing the way our heart is working.
- [21:27]
Abby Wambach
Is this why we got the idea of hearts having feelings? Like, why is it called heartbreak? Why did we all decide your feelings are your heart? Why isn't like, lung break when you break up? Or like body break, spleen break, or kidney soul break? Why is it. Why did we all decide that feelings were of the heart?
- [21:45]
Florence Williams
Well, we didn't all decide that initially. I mean, and if you look cross culturally, in deep time, there are some cultures who believed our emotional state resided in our stomach, for example, or somewhere else. But at some point, I think it was around the Middle Ages, there was a lot more investigation into cadavers and how bodies worked and so on. And the sense that the heart beats our blood and does, we know that our heart rate changes in different emotional states. You know, when we're anxious, it goes a lot faster. When we're really calm and happy, it goes slower. So I think at some point, it just got associated with emotion. And then from there, you know. Yeah. Heart was the seat of where things happen. Interesting.
- [22:39]
Amanda Doyle
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- [23:09]
Abby Wambach
So you all know I've been using Bokeh for a while now and I'm into it. Okay. This is like the new toothpaste with lots of different flavors and it's kind of making my mornings and evenings a little bit more delightful. Bokeh is on a mission to inspire more mindful oral care. Their toothpaste is free from fluoride, parabens, SLS and artificial additives. It's powered by nature. It's a clean, safe way to keep your mouth and body happy. And they have delightful and delicious flavors like Element and they also offer cool ones like cocoa, ginger and lemon lavender. And they've got kid friendly flavors like orange cream, watermelon mint and new strawberry mango. For a limited time, Bokeh is offering listeners 15% off its best selling toothpastes on Amazon and bokeh.com with code Glennon15. That's Glennon15. Make the switch to Boca for the whole family.
- [24:07]
Amanda Doyle
Valentine's Day is this week y'all. Can you believe it? If you're like me and you still have some last minute gifts to pick up, don't worry. Macy's Valentine's Day sale has you covered. With 20 to 50% off store and site wide, it's the perfect time to grab gifts for everyone on your list all in one place. So there's no need to rush around to a million different stores. The sale runs from February 11th to February 17th, so I'm taking advantage of these great deals. I'm picking up some new dry fit golf pants that I know my husband's gonna love. And for my mother in law I'm grabbing a scarf and glove set. The best part is that these gifts are already wrapped and ready to go. Macy's makes it so easy and no one ever has to know that I got them the day before. And with red trending for 2025, I'm also going to pick up a luscious red lipstick for myself and a cozy set of loungewear to obviously wear on my couch with my lipstick. Don't wait. Shop now@macy's.com and get your Valentine's Day gifts all wrapped and ready to go. Okay, so how do you get from the this is terrible. My body is falling apart and I feel crushed to I want to move forward and fix it well.
- [25:28]
Florence Williams
So the science journalist in me started asking a lot of questions and talking to a lot of people. And I told you about the scientists who told me, this is why you're feeling terrible, and this is why you're getting sick. And that was all a big bummer. And I was very depressed about all this. We know, actually that people who go through divorce do have worse health outcomes. So that was really hard to hear. But then I had a conversation with a scientist. Her name's Paula Williams at the University of Utah. And she said, you know, we believe that some people are more resilient than others when we suffer from life's blows. And we know that you can become more resilient. And so I sort of like, lean forward in my chair and I'm like, yes, please tell me, how do I become more resilient? How can I better handle this? And she said, our lab has really shown that it's the people who know how to appreciate beauty, people who can cultivate awe. These are the ones who come out ahead. And I was like, what? I've never heard that beauty can be a cure to heartbreak. Why have I never heard that? And is this for real? I knew that I was someone who already loved being in nature. I mean, I had already written this book called the Nature Fix, about having nature really does cure a lot of things and make us feel better. But still, I was like, I don't know if I'm someone who really is prone to feeling awe. I don't know. Like, do I get goosebumps? You know, she explained to me that some people, not everyone, some people experience goosebumps, like when they're hearing a beautiful song or reading a beautiful poem. I'm sure you all are those people because you're so moved by other people's stories.
- [27:13]
Abby Wambach
I am.
- [27:14]
Florence Williams
Abbi, you're not. You're shaking me.
- [27:15]
Glennon Doyle
No, I'm not. I wish I was. I'm actually trying to increase my awe by actually verbally saying out loud, like, if I see a sunset, and then it's very strange what's happening in my body, because I am actually feeling different sensations when I verbally go, cool.
- [27:35]
Florence Williams
Ah.
- [27:36]
Glennon Doyle
Wow.
- [27:36]
Florence Williams
Interesting.
- [27:37]
Glennon Doyle
Yeah. Actually just happened to me now. I just said wow, and it made my body tingle.
- [27:42]
Abby Wambach
It's like smiling and then you feel happy. You can make the. I mean, I feel. When you say that, I just want to stop there for a second, say that it is the awe or the goosebumps or the feeling of taking in beauty that makes you more resilient through heartbreak. Because just personally, that makes me feel sad and scared for my old self. Because when things got hard, I would always up all my medication. And I'm a big fan of medication. Like, I'm not. The pod squad knows that I have an ongoing on and off relationship with it. But that is interesting because one thing that medication does for me is that it also. It dulls the pain of heartbreak, but it 100% dulls the awe. I, off medication, cry 10 times a day. I am in a much deeper place of awe. So that's interesting, right, that something we're using to treat heartbreak could also treat the anecdote to heartbreak.
- [28:46]
Amanda Doyle
Yeah, well, it goes back to the range of emotions, Right? Like, if you're talking about medication can be so helpful to people who really need to rein in the range of what they can feel, because it's scary and dangerous and whatever. But what awe does. The range goes out, but you can't make it just go out on one side.
- [29:04]
Florence Williams
That's right.
- [29:04]
Amanda Doyle
It's widening the whole breath. Right.
- [29:08]
Florence Williams
I think that's really intuitive, because I think you're right. I mean, one thing I learned was exactly that, because for so much of my marriage, which was, you know, not always a joyful place, I was putting my heart in a little box. You know, I didn't really want to feel too much of what I was missing. And my emotional range, I think, was quite narrow in that marriage. And it was only once I started really feeling the pain, because you sort of can't help but feel it. I think in a big heartbreak, it broke open my heart in a way that also made it possible for me to see this beauty. And I think that so many people, when we do go through a rejection or breakup, we turn to alcohol, we turn to weed a lot. You know, we need to be able to sleep. You know, it helps with that, but it does dull the perception of beauty. And I think that that's a really interesting point. But, you know, Glennon, I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit, because I remember reading in your book how in the middle of your heartbreak, you went to the beach and you sat and you looked. I think it was the sunrise.
- [30:22]
Abby Wambach
Yes.
- [30:22]
Florence Williams
And everything changed for you, the water.
- [30:26]
Abby Wambach
During this time, which would be equivalent for me of what you're going through. I went to a hotel that was near an ocean, and it was long before I lived near an ocean, and I heard the waves crashing. And that sounds such a silly thing, but that was really, I guess, heart opening or awe inspiring for me. And it did help. And, Abby, we were talking about your work and where did you. After your heartbreak? We were talking about how you went to.
- [30:56]
Florence Williams
Which one?
- [30:57]
Abby Wambach
Which one?
- [30:59]
Amanda Doyle
Abby. She says she's not a goosebump girl, but I don't believe it. She just doesn't get the actual goosebumps. She's in love.
- [31:05]
Florence Williams
She's feeling it somewhere.
- [31:06]
Glennon Doyle
Yeah, I love love. Don't get me wrong, but my threshold is very high. I need it to be something that is very, very intense and beautiful for me.
- [31:15]
Abby Wambach
You went to Sedona.
- [31:16]
Glennon Doyle
Yeah. Yeah, but I went to Sedona after one of my heartbreaks, and there was just something about Sedona. I was supposed to be there for two days. I ended up being there for seven because I couldn't leave. It was like the first time my body felt like it was not hurting. There was something about the soil and the vortexes. There's just like something super cool about Sedona.
- [31:38]
Abby Wambach
And what did you say to me about why you like to be in nature? You're going to love this. I think you said.
- [31:43]
Glennon Doyle
What did I say? I don't remember.
- [31:44]
Abby Wambach
When I said, well, why. Why did you feel so passionately in Sedona and stay there? Because you were by herself. She was by herself. And she said, I think it was because nature can't reject me.
- [31:55]
Glennon Doyle
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [31:57]
Florence Williams
Beautiful.
- [31:58]
Abby Wambach
Isn't that interesting?
- [31:59]
Glennon Doyle
And it's also just there. It's an opportunity to see something that is living, that is surviving just by being. And when you're overcome with so much heartbreak, it just feels, like, impossible to breathe and survive and to believe that you can go on. And so when you look at a tree or you look at a huge mountain, you're like, they can do it.
- [32:25]
Abby Wambach
It's going on.
- [32:26]
Glennon Doyle
It's happening.
- [32:27]
Florence Williams
There's so many metaphors, right? Cycles change. There's so much science now of what happens to our bodies when we're in a beautiful nature space. And it does put our nervous systems in a much happier place. You know, we know that it calms our respiration. We know that it reduces our stress hormones. We know that it can even regulate our blood sugar. You know, food tastes better outside. That's kind of, you know, the famous cliche, but it's probably true because our digestive system is getting into a more relaxed state. You know, how many of us just mindlessly eat, you know, in the car or whatever, but when we're outside, we're breathing, we're slowing down. It's in those places that the healing can start to happen, right? We can't be healing in A threat state. We have to learn how to get out of that. So that was one of the lessons.
- [33:19]
Amanda Doyle
So you're with this person who tells you that awe is the thing you can change, which is so interesting because there's so much about our personality that we can't. When, like, scientists look at it, it's like your neuroticism is your neuroticism. Your conscientiousness is your conscientiousness. But the one word that they use when they're trying to figure out is openness.
- [33:40]
Florence Williams
Yes.
- [33:41]
Amanda Doyle
Openness is the criteria, which is fascinating. Openness is what lets you access awe. So the openness is what you're trying to. The fact that you're trying to get change so you can access these things. But that's fascinating, too, because we always talk about my heart was broken open. Like, that is the pinnacle you're trying to get to is openness, right?
- [34:03]
Florence Williams
It is, yeah.
- [34:04]
Amanda Doyle
Okay, so we're getting to openness, which also. I'd love for you to talk before you actually start accessing nature. You start, you know, doing the really, the functions to try to get there. There's one part of your book where you're talking to people who are saying, you need to write the story. Even if you don't need to write the story, you need to write the story of what happened so that you can let go of trying to figure out the story. I think that is such an important part that people don't talk about enough. Can you tell us about, like, what our own need to, like, figure out our narratives. What the hell just happened to me? Just speak to that piece. Because I think a lot of people remain stuck in that WTF phase.
- [34:51]
Florence Williams
Yes, you're right. I mean, for so long, I was like, what happened? What's going on? What happened? What happened? What happened? Was it this? Was it that? Was it this? Was it that? And it was while I was researching awe. You know, what is awe? What is the science of awe? I want to talk to all the researchers who know all about awe now that I need to become someone who finds it more easily. Right. And this was, like, a critical piece of my recovery. And one of the scientists I talked to said, well, we think that openness in your ability to find awe is actually related to. To your curiosity. It's related to your sort of being alive, to the idea of mystery. And that is the opposite of someone who's like, well, what happened? What happened? What happened? I need to know what happened. If you're someone who can accept Mystery. You can accept the gray areas of life. You know, not everything is black and white. Some of us are more prone to look at the world as black and white. Those are not the ones who find awe. Yes. It's the ones who are able to be open to mystery, be more curious. It's those of us who don't have to have a need for closure. And of course, when you're heartbroken, all you want is closure. So I had to learn not to need closure. Yes. And so I was very motivated to be like, okay, maybe I can accept that I'm not going to know all the answers. And for a science journalist, I think that's a hard thing to accept.
- [36:21]
Glennon Doyle
This is really fascinating to me because my brother died last December. And that was one of the biggest things that I was really obsessed with for a long time with my therapist is I needed to know what happened. I needed to know how this could happen to a 52 year old person. Not only because he's related to me, and that also applies to me, genetically speaking, but there's like this justice component to the needing to know. Like I needed to figure out like, good things. If you're a good person, good things happen to you. Right. And it was just like it completely erased all of these like, constructs that I had been handed throughout my life. And this is exactly the thing that my therapist was trying to walk me through is like, you're never gonna know. And there has to be some sort of acceptance at some point because we will never know why somebody really died. And this is exactly right. This is wonderful.
- [37:25]
Abby Wambach
Is it like when you're thinking about or obsessing about what happened, that is like directional. It's looking backwards, it's looking down, it's looking inwards. Obsessing. And when you keep saying what happened, you cannot be saying what's happening. You're looking backwards and you miss it. I was thinking about the most recent heartbreak I had, which was the day of the election. And when I woke up the next morning, I thought, I don't know how to. I don't know. And when I was listening to you speak about awe, I was thinking, oh my God. So I go upstairs the morning after the election and I'm making coffee because we know that goes on. And I look outside and I see the sun rising. And Florence, when I tell you that, I was like, wait, what? The sun is rising as if it has not been informed.
- [38:33]
Florence Williams
Right.
- [38:33]
Abby Wambach
That is the only thing that I texted friends that day is you guys. I woke up and the sun was rising and it was beautiful.
- [38:44]
Florence Williams
And that's beautiful that you were able to see it, which shows that you are someone, Glennon, who sees beauty. You're trained to do it. And I think what was so wildly hopeful about talking to the psychologist was that she said, you can train yourself to do it. And there are lots of little tips and ways to do it that we can talk about, but your brain automatically goes to that beautiful spot and embraces.
- [39:12]
Amanda Doyle
That it's directional, too. It's not looking back and trying to figure it out. But even the acceptance that I will never. I went through not the length of the marriage, but a very similarly baffling, what the hell? Marriage. And the hardest part for me became the template for the rest of my life, which is that I will never know what happened here. Not in 7 million years. I will never understand why I will never try to make a good guy and a bad guy. It's just a mystery, right? But when you're prone, when you accept that mystery is a thing that you can integrate, then it's not a coincidence that you're like, look out at nature. It's a mystery. I'm not. When you try to. A sure way to not appreciate nature is to try to figure it out. So there's something about all the experiences you had that was really an embrace of like, I want to step toward mystery. I want to step toward this thing that I can't possibly put into words, which is awe.
- [40:17]
Abby Wambach
So are awe and heartbreak like the same thing? Just opposites?
- [40:20]
Florence Williams
Oh, interesting.
- [40:22]
Abby Wambach
Are they both just, holy shit, what just happened? Like, are they both. This is life, the actual manifestations of mystery, and one just is the negative and one is the positive. Are they sisters?
- [40:37]
Florence Williams
I think that's really perceptive. I think certainly there's a Venn diagram of heartbreak and awe where there's a big spot in the middle. Unfortunately, one of the things I learned is that not everyone gets through heartbreak and really does open their heart and sort of comes out the other side with this, what we call post traumatic growth. We know that sort of 15% of people who go through heartbreak really don't get over it. And those are the ones who will get sick and who will die younger. And that's part of what also really motivated me to write this book. If I can encourage people to take this seriously enough to prioritize healing, then that will be really doing something, because a lot of us still put it in a box and keep drinking, don't work through it. Don't work on themselves, don't reflect, don't do the necessary work. And they're not going to have the sort of like beauty and awe on the other side that is possible and so beautiful about the heartbreak experience.
- [41:45]
Amanda Doyle
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- [42:50]
Glennon Doyle
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- [42:57]
Abby Wambach
It's true. Abby is obsessed with Vuori. I am a little bit too. Do you think you have a favorite item?
- [43:03]
Glennon Doyle
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- [43:13]
Abby Wambach
You. You wear them to work out and you wear them out to dinner. That is true.
- [43:16]
Glennon Doyle
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Abby Wambach
You wear them under suits and you wear them to bed.
- [43:21]
Glennon Doyle
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- [43:56]
Amanda Doyle
I know that the MDMR and Psilocybin piece was. It's complicated and you're not advising it for everyone, nor advising it for anyone, but in your experience, it was very liberatory towards this awe and this release. Can you just tell us what happened there, what you saw, and how it helped you release?
- [44:20]
Florence Williams
Yes. I mean, I had never done mushrooms, you know, or any kind of psychedelic drug like that. But one of the scientists I talked to is this really famous AWE psychologist, AWE researcher Dacher Keltner at UC Berkeley. I told him about my heartbreak, and we were talking about awe, and I just asked him, I was like, do you think I should do psilocybin for this? Because I really need some Technicolor awe. I need big. I need some big shit awe. Yeah, yeah, you need Aww. On steroids. And he said, well, yes, I think you should.
- [44:52]
Amanda Doyle
So glad you asked.
- [44:53]
Florence Williams
He had also, you know, he'd experienced heartbreak. He had lost a brother. You know, his parents had gotten divorced when he was young, and that was a heartbreak for him. He was like, yeah, I think you can really find some good awe on mushrooms. You know, give it a try. So I was nervous. I found a psychologist, therapist who, you know, could work with me to do this in a safe space. You know, there are some people who really shouldn't do these drugs, and there are some people who should. And so it made me feel just safer to go with someone who kind of knew what they were doing. And actually, so what I did was something called a hippie flip, which is where you take the MDMA like, 30 minutes first. That's ecstasy, and that's supposed to open you up to the psychedelics of the psilocybin. And at first I was really scared, you know, to even drink the tea with the psilocybin in it. But then I think the MDMA kicked in, and I'm like, oh, hell, yeah, bring it, bring it on. And I ended up having this just really sort of profound experience. There were two intentions I had going in. One was I wanted to be less afraid of the future. And we know from lots of studies now that, for example, people with terminal illness who take psilocybin become much less afraid of their illness. They become less afraid of dying. They become less afraid of the future. And the other thing was I just felt like I really still needed to separate from my ex because I still felt very, very caught up in my identity. And, you know, having grown up together, I just felt like he was such a big part of me. I was sort of having trouble letting go. So that was the other thing. And under the influence of the psychedelics, I saw myself as a tree, as A big beautiful tree. But I had this like strangler fig vine kind of wrapped around my trunk. And I was like, oh, that's my ex. Right? He is part of my trunk. So I was like, I need to get him the hell off of my trunk.
- [46:53]
Glennon Doyle
That's right.
- [46:53]
Florence Williams
And so I'm like literally pulling this vine away from my body and I'm like, you know what? Yes, you're a part of my roots and you can go down there by my toes, but I don't want you on my trunk. And I envisioned him, you know, this vine sort of falling off. And then this amazing thing happened where then the tree could grow into the light and I could be this beautiful, glorious canopy tree. And it was so beautiful. I was like, wow, there is beauty in my future. I can grow into something beautiful without him. In fact, I need him to leave me alone in order to grow into something beautiful. Yes. And then I think all because of that too, I was like, you know what? I'm not afraid anymore. I'm not afraid of the future. Whatever happens, I'll figure it out and it's going to be okay.
- [47:48]
Abby Wambach
Love drugs.
- [47:49]
Amanda Doyle
Speaking of beautiful, glorious canopies, there is a part of your work that I was listening to your audiobook and I went back like seven times and I was like, oh, I want her to write that book next where you had this little line, I forget. I think it was like a take on Joyce's Mr. Duffy line where it was like he lived a little distance from his body. There was a thread throughout this where your body wasn't you in pre. Pre all of this. And then you discovered that you wanted to live with less distance from your body, like actually inside of it, as crazy as that sounds. Me too. Where are you with that? What are you learning about yourself in that area? And did any of this mystery work, awe work, help you live in your body?
- [48:48]
Florence Williams
I would say that it's still something I work on.
- [48:53]
Amanda Doyle
Yeah.
- [48:53]
Florence Williams
But yes, you know, I think for so long I was someone who didn't really want to feel everything. I didn't think I was supposed to. I thought, you know, to be mentally healthy, we weren't supposed to be super volatile. Right. We were supposed to kind of be even keel and put our heads down and get our work done and be kind of level headed. You know, I had grown up valuing all of those qualities. And so to have to learn how to feel again and again, you know, when you go through heartbreak, you have no choice, but all of a sudden you're feeling It. But then you're seeing these cracks of beauty, and you're seeing these cracks of love, and you're seeing these cracks of joy. You know, that is part of that range. And I was like, oh, holy shit. I have been fed the wrong information all of these decades. That feeling is not helpful. But actually, feeling is how we are alive. Feeling is how we feel alive. Feeling is how we are supposed to move through the world. We are supposed to feel alive, even if that means the full range. That is sometimes very messy and sometimes difficult for other people. And so I am still working on that. And I don't know, Amanda, how you do it, but I feel like. And I don't.
- [50:03]
Amanda Doyle
That's why I'm asking you.
- [50:05]
Florence Williams
I try to savor things. I try to sort of stop, and I try to open my senses. I think that's the main thing I have learned through studying the science of nature and why we feel good in nature, that it's about opening our senses. You know, we are animals. We're supposed to move through the world through our senses. We're supposed to feel things and smell things and taste things. So many of us, I think, live in a modern world where we don't want to smell everything. You know, in the city, we don't want to hear the leaf blower. You know, that's outside my window. And so we spend a lot of time and energy actually shutting down our senses. But this really beautiful thing happens when we go into a pleasant nature space where suddenly we can open all those senses up again. And I think that's actually the pathway to happiness and relaxation. It comes through our senses.
- [51:03]
Abby Wambach
Wow.
- [51:03]
Amanda Doyle
What has that work done for your sensuality and sexuality?
- [51:08]
Florence Williams
Yes. That is another interesting piece of it. You know, a funny thing happens when your relationship ends. Suddenly, the world opens up in ways it hadn't in terms of so many ways. But one of them, for me, was sexually. So I had been with the same partner for decades, and when I was with some other partners, I was like, what? Wait, why am I so turned on? Like, I have not been this turned on in decades. I can't even believe I'm capable of feeling this. It was like I felt like I got cochlear implants in different parts of my life.
- [51:45]
Amanda Doyle
Cool.
- [51:45]
Florence Williams
I was like, what? What is this?
- [51:48]
Amanda Doyle
That's awesome.
- [51:48]
Florence Williams
And so, yeah, that's another way to start feeling. And for me, it was very healing and super interesting and powerful.
- [51:57]
Amanda Doyle
I love that.
- [51:58]
Abby Wambach
So I was just last night, for hours, on the phone with a dear friend who is in the dark night of the soul of heartbreak. It's all I can think about when you're talking because I feel like intense heartbreak is a little bit like childbirth. You remember it, but you like, you can't access. It's so painful that you, when you listen to a friend going to through it, you're like, oh my God. I, I, I can't even remember really. Like viscerally, it feels familiar. But there was something when I was listening to her and she was saying, this is unbearable. I can't, I cannot like my entire body, I can't feel this bad, I can't do it. It's unbearable. But there was like a lot of truth in it. I kept thinking, this is clearing something out. It was like, you know how you avoid hard things because you're avoiding the heartbreak, but then when you finally surrender to it, it's so painful. But it kind of feels like the beginning of something. Like you can hear the truth in it. Like when you're talking, I keep thinking, oh, it's like the ow and then it's the ah, right? It's like the ow and the ah, but like you're in the ow but they're connected, right? It's like the more you dig out a space for this ow, you're going to have an equal space for the ah. Except that when you're talking to a friend in that moment, if I say to her, I think you should just go for a walk in nature, she's gonna fucking kill me. That is not so. Like, let's say someone's listening and they're in the dark night of the soul. Or they're in the owl of it. Like, what, what, how do you make it through that? Because even though this is coming, it feels excruciatingly hopeful in that moment. What's the next step?
- [53:47]
Florence Williams
Well, I think one of the things I found is that, and you all know this, when you're feeling intense pain, it's possible to also feel something else at the same time. And it is a little bit of aliveness and it's a little bit of I can still find something beautiful. I actually just got back from a trip with Ukrainian war widows. So these are women who are not only living in the middle of an ongoing war, they've lost their husbands, they're raising their kids by themselves. And this was a trip that took them hiking and climbing. And there was a psychologist who was part of this group and she said, of course you're angry, you're full of rage, you're full of grief. But I want you to know that you have permission to also feel joy. And when you're on this hike, these women, they were picking flowers in a meadow. You know, they were looking at the sunset, they were walking on the ocean. They were smiling. It was a reminder to them that it is possible to do both of these things at once. And in fact, they must. They must find some joy, they must find some beauty if they're going to be able to wake up the next day and take care of themselves and take care of their children. You know, it's. I think it was Audre Lorde who said something like, you know, self care. It's not an act of selfishness, right? It's an act of rebellion. It's an act of revolution. So I know that I have seen people full of grief, people going through traumatic experiences, people with ptsd, you know, in the wilderness, in nature. And for the first time, they sort of feel like they can breathe again. They feel like they can sleep again. And they feel like they deserve that, and they sort of understand that they can deserve that.
- [55:49]
Abby Wambach
God, we know that instinctively. It's like you're talking and I'm thinking of every single movie scene where the person is laying in a bed, all the lights out, grieving, in the state of grief. And it's always the person that loves them that walks into the room and throws the window open, right? And it's like, what is that moment about? It's about they need some light in, right? And it's this battle of the person in grief saying, shut the damn window. And the person that loves them opening up the shades again and again. Because it's like the hope of the light is what we instinctively know that our people need when they're in the dark night of the soul.
- [56:25]
Florence Williams
And here's the crazy thing. Sometimes when we're in the dark night of the soul, we're actually more able to feel the awe because of that split heart.
- [56:35]
Amanda Doyle
It's like, Abby, you're talking about the portal, like the unique time where when her brother died, there's a portal open. And unfortunately, horrendous things are hurtling down to me. But I have access in a very unique way. During this time, your everyday suggestion for just if you're walking around trying to incrementally increase your openness is can you tell us about the awareness weight, exhale, the AWE acronym you use? Because that's a nice little everyday thing.
- [57:06]
Florence Williams
I love this. It's the idea of microdosing awe, right? So we don't have to be on a mountaintop. We don't have to be in a national park. We can find small, small moments of beauty in our day, whether it's a house plant or whether it's our bowl of soup or whether it's a blossom on the tree down the street. And we know from science that if we find, like, two or three little moments of beauty a day, and we do this acronym. Ah, where the A is, you pay attention to it. The W is just wait, and the E is exhale. So that's just a reminder to take two or three breaths while really focusing on this beautiful thing. And if we do that for six weeks, and I was part of a study that did this, we know that people feel a 30% reduction in symptoms of anxiety and depression. They feel less physical pain, and they feel more optimistic. But the real magic of this practice is that if you do it for six weeks, you become better at it. When the six weeks ends, you're just automatically, like, looking at the blossom or looking at your bowl of soup. And that's the trick, I think, to cultivating the awe and cultivating the beauty that will make us more resilient.
- [58:21]
Amanda Doyle
Okay, people, awareness. Wait.
- [58:25]
Abby Wambach
Exhale. Aww.
- [58:27]
Florence Williams
Microdose beauty.
- [58:28]
Amanda Doyle
Microdose beauty. Oh, thank you, Florence, for all of this. And, no, it was a hard road to travel. Something beautiful sure did come out of it for the world. So thank you very much.
- [58:41]
Florence Williams
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.
- [58:44]
Abby Wambach
Me too. God, I feel like I. That just.
- [58:46]
Florence Williams
That was just, like a little hug.
- [58:48]
Amanda Doyle
Yeah.
- [58:49]
Glennon Doyle
Like, I just got hugged, like. And, you know, before we end, I just think heartbreak, when you. When you are devastated by heartbreak, for whatever reason, it feels so lonely because you think that nobody can understand what you're experiencing and feeling.
- [59:07]
Florence Williams
Yeah.
- [59:08]
Glennon Doyle
Literally, I've thought my heartbreak is just bigger than everybody else's.
- [59:12]
Amanda Doyle
Yeah.
- [59:13]
Glennon Doyle
It just is.
- [59:13]
Florence Williams
It's.
- [59:14]
Glennon Doyle
It's just different, you know? But it's not. It just isn't. And to be away from it, we can understand. I don't know. I just love your work so much. I'm sorry that this happened to you. And also, I'm not. Because look at what you've been able.
- [59:28]
Abby Wambach
It was a damn strangling vine. Now she's free and has great sex.
- [59:32]
Florence Williams
It felt so good to get the vine on.
- [59:34]
Amanda Doyle
I know how. I love that you can be in my roots all day.
- [59:38]
Florence Williams
You can't be on my truck down there.
- [59:40]
Glennon Doyle
Yeah.
- [59:40]
Abby Wambach
So good. Bless you, Florence. Thank you so much. Love you. Thank you, Florence.
- [59:46]
Glennon Doyle
Love you, Pods spread. See you next time.
- [59:53]
Abby Wambach
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 How 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.
- [60:56]
Florence Williams
SA.