What to Do With Rage: Meggan Watterson

Summary

Podcast Summary: "What to Do With Rage" — We Can Do Hard Things with Megan Watterson

Date: March 10, 2026
Hosts: Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, Amanda Doyle
Guest: Meggan Watterson

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Overview

In this raw and unguarded episode, the Pod Squad—Glennon, Abby, and Amanda—invite feminist theologian and writer Megan Watterson to discuss the experience, power, and purpose of rage, especially as it relates to recent revelations about abuse, complicity, and the need for change. Anchored in stories from history, theology, and their own lives, the conversation moves from grief and outrage to creative, collective action. The episode challenges the notion of “acceptable” anger, explores the connection between rage and love, and calls for reclaiming spiritual authority from patriarchal systems.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Rage as a Response to Injustice and Abuse

[02:11] Megan Watterson:

• Megan describes feeling a unique, "feral" rage after reading disturbing details from the Epstein files, especially around Deepak Chopra's involvement and the dismissive treatment of survivors.
• She explains how the world "ended" for her after this discovery and how rage became both overwhelming and creatively generative:

  “I was channeling enough rage to literally reconfigure the world. But I also couldn't make my bed. It was that kind of situation.”

• She finds solace in making a list inspired by painful history: “How Women Pray When the World is on Fire,” cataloguing historical acts of women’s resistance.

2. Historical Models of Women’s Resistance

[07:23] Megan Watterson:

• Shares stories of women like Mary Maloney, who used creative protest (a ringing bell to drown out Churchill) and the Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina, and Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived in a redwood for nearly two years.
• Emphasizes creativity as powerful resistance:

  “We’re not going to do what we’re told to do anymore. That’s done, that’s ended. That world is over.”

3. Personal Action, Not Perfection

[11:58] Abby Wambach:

• Abby reflects on taking action—leaving Wasserman agency—even without knowing the next step:

  “What I loved about your statement...when you said, I don’t know what my next steps are, I just know where I can’t be. And I felt like that was so important.”

• Encourages listeners to act even before having a plan; waiting for clarity can be a form of paralysis.

4. Rage, Love, and the Divine Feminine

[15:42] Megan Watterson & Abby Wambach:

• The hosts discuss the hypocrisy of men—including self-proclaimed spiritual leaders—profiting from and acting as gatekeepers to women’s spirituality.
• Megan: “If we claim our worth, we will know our power...The men have positioned themselves as gatekeepers to the divine via the patriarchy.”
• The true divine connection is internal, not given or withheld by institutions.

5. Reclaiming Spiritual Authority: The Stories of Mary Magdalene and Thecla

[24:06] Megan Watterson:

• Megan draws a parallel between the Church’s refusal to believe Mary Magdalene (calling her a prostitute) and our culture’s disbelief of survivors today.
• Abby reframes the importance of self-belief:

  “We must believe us...We disconnected ourselves from our inner selves and gave the strings away. Now we have to wrest those strings back.”

• The story of Thecla (who baptizes herself) becomes a metaphor for claiming worth and spiritual authority without waiting for outside validation.

6. Rage as a Sacred and Collective Energy

[32:15] Abby Wambach, Megan Watterson:

• Rage is reframed as a natural, even sacred, outgrowth of love:

  “The people who are most filled with love are the people who are most filled with rage right now.” (Abby, [33:00])

• Megan notes that spiritual traditions emphasizing submissiveness were crafted to control marginalized people. Sacred rage, she says, is listening to the voice of love.

7. End of Faith in Institutions—and Self-Baptism

[34:55] Abby Wambach, Megan Watterson:

• The hosts reflect on the collapse of trust in politics, wellness, and religious institutions.
• Women can no longer wait for recognition from broken systems—they must “baptize themselves” (as Thecla did), claim their inherent worth, and support each other.
• Collective action is modeled through stories:

  “Once it was modeled...what we can allow ourselves to completely unplug from is the Christianity that was established in the 4th century under the patriarchy.” (Megan, [37:50])

8. Solidarity and Supporting Each Other

[50:49] Abby Wambach:

• Urges listeners to “throw cardamom”—support women who step up, rather than falling into internalized misogyny.
• Not all women in power are to be automatically supported if they are “water carriers for the patriarchy,” but those authentically acting with love and courage should be uplifted.

9. Practical Tools and Rituals for Surviving Turbulent Times

[52:35] Megan Watterson:

• Megan stresses validating your own feelings, practicing grounding rituals (like soul-voice meditation), and staying connected to love in the face of triggering news.
• Anticipates a new kind of collective awakening “where love reaches where it has never been before.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Internal Authority:

• “Everything comes from within.” — Megan Watterson [02:11]
• “The ultimate source of power is the love that we can source inside of us. No one can keep it from us.” — Megan Watterson [16:48]

On Action Amid Uncertainty:

• “You don’t have to know what happens next. You just have to know where you can’t be.” — Abby Wambach [11:58]

On Rage as Love:

• “I feel like the people who are most filled with love are the people who are most filled with rage right now.” — Abby Wambach [33:00]
• “Sacred rage is listening to the voice of love.” — Megan Watterson [34:34]

On Supporting Each Other:

• “You were like, okay, Paul, I’m just gonna go ahead and baptize myself and write what I know is true. Because there’s another path where you just argue with Paul for your whole life...” — Abby Wambach [50:50]
• “Now is the time...if there is a woman who is showing up, who is embodying this, who is doing her work, who has baptized herself, and who your nervous system knows is real, throw cardamom.” — Abby Wambach [51:13]

On Winning:

• “Does winning look like saying no, like they did? No, thank you to that...and creating something full of life and beauty. Is that winning?” — Abby Wambach [56:46]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |------------|----------------------------------------------------------| | 02:11 | Megan discusses the feral rage and Deepak Chopra | | 05:46 | Historical stories of women's protest and resistance | | 11:11 | Abby on agency and making difference | | 15:26 | Deepak Chopra’s hypocrisy; divine authority discussion | | 19:18 | Internal worthiness and intuition | | 24:06 | Megan on believing Mary Magdalene, survivors | | 27:27 | Abby on self-belief and reclaiming agency | | 28:39 | Abby’s ESPYs story and awakening to rage | | 32:15 | Re-framing rage as love | | 34:55 | Collapse of trust in institutions | | 37:49 | Self-baptism, reclaiming pre-patriarchal spirituality | | 41:28 | Organizing for faith and justice (Sacred shoutout) | | 45:52 | The importance of showing up for each other | | 52:35 | Grounding rituals and collective awakening | | 56:46 | Redefining winning and resisting false power | | 58:26-58:56| Closing expressions of love and mutual support |

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Key Takeaways

• Rage is a sacred energy and a sign of deep love, not a failing.
• Creative, collective action by women—past and present—is powerful and necessary.
• Spiritual authority and worthiness are internal, not institutionally granted.
• Self-validation and authenticity trump external approval and perfection.
• Supporting women who authentically show up with courage is vital. “Throw cardamom.”
• Now is the time to reclaim, reconnect with, and act on our deepest knowing and love, even in the wilderness.

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Memorable Closing:

“Let’s anoint each other...Let us forever. We love you, Megan.” — Abby Wambach & Megan Watterson [58:45-58:56]

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This episode is a call to harness anger as creative, collective fuel, root your actions in love, and refuse to surrender spiritual power to broken systems. Rage does not make you broken. It means you’re awake, alive, and ready to help make the world anew.

Transcript

[Abby Wambach]

Foreign. Yes.

[Megan Watterson]

Hello. Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello.

[Abby Wambach]

Well, Pod Squad, we have back the Megan Watterson who I just emailed last week on a particularly. Actually, they've all been particularly infuriating days, so who knows which one it was, and said, please, God, just come onto the pod, sit with us. I think I asked you to go feral with us because you had used that word. I was telling Abby that all I know to do right now, and what I want to do is just gather the people that I have long trusted who feel like they've been preparing us for a long time, for a moment like this, and just sit with them unprepared and unguarded, and just ask them, how are you? How are you doing? What are you doing? What are you thinking about? How are you getting through? And you're the first person that I knew we had to talk to. And before we get started, I do want to say that we were privately listening to the sound check you just did. And Pod Squad, I need you to know this. So our incredible producers, Allison and Marissa and Jen, they get on with the guest and they say, okay, tell us what you had for breakfast in the pod. Point is just to listen to the noise that comes out of their mouth. And most people just say bacon. 1, 2, 3, 4. So five minutes ago, Marissa said, so, Megan, just tell us what you had for breakfast. And she said, well, I was making my son an egg.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

Scrambled eggs.

[Abby Wambach]

Scrambled eggs. And I kept thinking of eggs and Mary Magdalene and how she pointed to an egg. And I think what she meant by that pointing was that it is all within us. And that is what I think is important, is that it is all within us. That was Megan's sound check. Okay.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

Yeah, I'm ready for this conversation for sure.

[Abby Wambach]

Megan, how are you? What are you thinking about right now?

[Megan Watterson]

I really am thinking about how everything comes from within. And I do think that that's why Mary Magdalene was pointing to the egg. And I feel a very particular kind of rage. The reason why I said my rage went feral is because I believe my rage now. I believe that it has always been so well informed. It was my body telling me exactly how much work we have to do. But also in particular, you know, that had to do with Deepak Chopra and the fact that he's in the Epstein files. And, you know, for those who have read a lot of the files as a survivor, I felt like I had to read some of them for the sake of the survivors. And when I read the ones that Deepak wrote, there was this validation for My anger for the rage that I had, I've long since had for him, for the hubris of thinking that he needed to teach us about the divine feminine. That alone, you know, I was already in fuego a long time ago. But then to read his comments to Epstein, and my voice is shaking now because I'm trying to get to the email and I'm not going to repeat exactly what the email was, but it was about the littlest one, you know, Epstein's littlest one. And you know, I can't comprehend how the world hasn't ended for everyone. I don't understand that my world has ended. And after I read that email, I described it, you know, my day was like I was a very tiny, unproductive hurricane. I was channeling the rage, the creative energy, right? This is the rage that love inspires. I was channeling enough rage to literally reconfigure the world. But I also couldn't make my bed. You know, it was that kind of situation. And I just felt like my entire nervous system couldn't handle the idea of not doing anything. You know, this, this idea of moving on from the person who is named more than Christ is named in the New Testament, right? Telling us to just move on. My nervous system was only calmed by making a list. So what I did that day is I started making a list because, you know, you have long since told us what breaks our heart are who we serve. And I went into seminary because of trafficked girls. You know, that population, pregnant teens, is why I went back. And so sort of went into the whole question as to where, where did women's voices go within Christianity. I went back to seminary for pregnant teens. They were referred to as prostitutes at that time. 14 year olds, right? There's no such thing as a 14 year old prostitute.

[Abby Wambach]

Same as the girls in the Epstein files. The actual prosecutors prosecuted this as that they were prostitutes, they're children.

[Megan Watterson]

And that was, you know, I am prostrate like I am on my knees in gratitude for Amanda to going into the files and really helping compile because I couldn't go near them. After reading that one email about the littlest one, I couldn't go near them again. And then Amanda went into it and her conversation with Brad Edwards, then the attorney, you know, when he brought up that word prostitute, it's just everything lit up for me again back to Mary Magdalene, because this is what the church called her, right? A prostitute then somehow devalued her. And the only thing that made my nervous system okay that day was Beginning this list that I titled How Women Pray when the World is on Fire. And I started researching what have women done throughout history in peaceful protest? When the people in power are saying, you do not have power and we are going to take your rights, what have women done? So that was the only thing that started calming my nervous system. And I found some really amazing, amazing moments in history. First of all, there was this woman, Abby. It may have been a reincarnation of yours or a previous incarnation of yours. Well, because your middle name's Mary, which I love, and I only.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

Well, my first name is Mary.

[Megan Watterson]

Your first middle name is Abby. Okay.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

All right, so I'm Mary Abigail.

[Megan Watterson]

Okay, so this was definitely you. Listen, see if it sounds familiar. In 1908, there was a woman named Mary Maloney. And when Churchill dared to disparage women, women who were fighting for the right to vote, Right. He disparaged the suffrage movement. Mary Maloney grabbed a bell and she followed Churchill wherever he went. And whenever he tried to say something, Mary started ringing her bell and drowned out everything he was going to say.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

Yes.

[Abby Wambach]

Oh, my God.

[Megan Watterson]

It's so creative and it's so powerful. And what ended up happening is that she annoyed the hell out of everyone. And he, of course, was only speaking to other men and people in positions of power. And so they were like, who is this Mary? What is she about? And so it ended up really raising awareness about the fight for women's right to vote. Then there was the mothers of the disappeared in Argentina, 1977, when their, you know, young adult children were being disappeared in the middle of the night by the reign of terror. They started gathering together, wearing white scarves and just demanding that this government be held accountable for the disappearance of their children. There was Julia Butterfly Hill, who was. When I was an. A budding eco feminist and, like, really considering joining her. This was like, in 1997, she stayed in a redwood tree named Luna for almost two years to protect it from being logged. Like, so she just stayed up in that tree. There's the women of Liberia, Mass Action for Peace. They join together Christian and Muslim women, and they protest wearing all white in front of the presidential palace to end the Liberian civil war. They just refused, you know, like thecla, at the beginning of the acts of Paul and thecla, they refused to go on with life as is. And that's absolutely where I am. Like, my nervous system can't. I can't not be utterly changed by this. My world has ended. And for me, I. I am actively creating the circumstances for the new world to come about, I have to only focus on that. And I don't know what my action is yet. You know, I love that Florence Welch right now has everybody scream tour. Because I feel like screaming is a form of prayer right now. And Abby, I just want to say as a survivor, it does something to my nervous system. Know for you to have stood up and left the Wasserman agency, it's like at the beginning of the Gospel of Mary there's this beautiful passage that for me is. Is an articulation of love. It's every nature, every modeled form, every creature exists in and with each other. That to me is. That's love. And when you stood up and you refused to be a part of that agency as a direct action, that love was inspiring you to do. I'm connected to you, you're connected to me. You are demonstrating that fact that we exist in and with each other and. And it calmed my nervous system. It changed me, you leading in that way. And that's on my list. How women pray when the world is. You're on my list.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

That's really sweet. And you know, I actually, I've thought a lot about this because I've been. We've. We've actually traveled the world since this all happened. And there are people all over the world that recognize me and are saying. They're not saying like, congratulations on soccer. They're like, what you did really was so important and thank you so much. And it's just like we do have more agency than we think. We just do. And even if it is in a smaller way, maybe you're not a public person, but we all can do something in order to not keep living in the same fucking world that we live in. And this is what you're saying, it's so beautiful.

[Abby Wambach]

We could not do something before we do something. What I loved about your statement when you left Wasserman, when you said, I don't know what my next steps are, I just know where I can't be. And I felt like that was so important. It was vulnerable. But it also was about accountability for other people. Because what people tend to decide is, well, I guess I'll do something when I have everything figured out. When I know my next steps, when I know where I'm going, when. And I don't know that this is a time for that. Like, this is a time what Megan, you're saying is, no, no, no, I'm going to stop my world whether or not I know where I'm Stepping next, I am detaching myself, at least from this monstrous nightmare that I have always known was present. And, Megan, that's why I feel so deeply connected to you, is because as a person who has. And I'm not going to say a lot of this right, because it's still spinning, but who has sat in therapy for 40 years where people. And there's so much I love about therapy, but where basically the message was like, everything's okay, and you're just going to have to understand that everything's okay somehow. And here are your strategies. I have always been like, okay, I guess I have to pretend to believe you. But I have always known that everything was not okay. I have always known that was horseshit. I have always known that just maybe because I'm particularly safe in my home with my. Does not mean that anyone else is safe. Just because I could, you know, protect my peace doesn't mean that that's the definition of what peace is for me. That peace is about continuing to make yourself vulnerable until more people have peace. That I knew that these motherfuckers were doing this shit in every locker room, in every meeting, in every back end. That I knew that they were profiting off of women and then turning around and raping them behind their backs. That they were laughing in locker rooms. That they using the feminist movement to make money and find a place. And then the second they're in private, they are laughing at us. The indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. We all knew this in our bones. And so now is the great UN Gaslighting of women. Now is the time where before maybe we were saying, oh, God, can we trust ourselves? What is this rage? Maybe more meditation. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Maybe more retreats. Maybe more like, no more retreating. As my sister says, the rage now is out. It's outrage. It no longer stays inside of us and eats us alive. We unleash it like dragons. And so when you're talking about the women, you know, what about the troubles in Ireland? That was all the women, the mothers saying, enough death, Enough death. And Protestants and Catholics coming together and saying, that's enough. We're marching. And also, let's tell people, just in case they don't know what you're talking about with this Deepak Chopra piece of shit. It's so funny when I'm talking about these guys now I'm using was all the time, like, they're gone.

[Megan Watterson]

But that's our power.

[Abby Wambach]

Deepak Chopra is some kind of, like, fraudulent wellness, self appointed Guru that claimed to talk about the divine feminine. I guess. I don't know. I've never met him, seen him, been in a room with him. I've always felt utterly repulsed by him.

[Megan Watterson]

But you knew Again, it's that validation.

[Abby Wambach]

Yes, yes. He. He's found all over the Epstein files. One of the most interesting things that he said to directly to Epstein was God is a construct. Little girls are real. So that's who Deepak Chopra was.

[Megan Watterson]

And what's so fascinating for me is that the majority of his followers are women. And that's really, really important for us to. To look at, you know, and to sort of understand. Then, okay, how did this happen? How did he become a spokesperson for the divine feminine right? For me, it really is important for us to understand that if we claim our worth, we will know our power. And the men have position themselves as gatekeepers to the divine via the patriarchy.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

That's right.

[Megan Watterson]

What teachers like Mary Magdalene and Thecla, whose scriptures of course, were removed by the empire when Christianity became patriarchal, what they revealed to us is that there are no gatekeepers. So if the divine is directly accessed from within us, When I use the word power, what I'm really meaning is love.

[Abby Wambach]

Right.

[Megan Watterson]

The ultimate source of power is the love that we can source inside of us. No one can keep it from us. It is unconditional. And we are told the absolute opposite, that it comes from outside of us. We have to prove that we're worthy of it. And the Church positioned itself as the gatekeepers to this worth that we have to fight for, prove that we're. And these two figures in history that were erased systematically. Thecla and Mary Magdalene, they both understood that our worth is inherent, it's eternal, and it's internal. So when I see the iconography of Mary Magdalene holding the egg and really feel this sense of everything comes from within, it's this reminder that. That that ultimate source of power, love, exists within us. And we've always been innately worthy of it. If we think we have to earn or prove our worth and it exists outside of us, then we can be controlled and manipulated.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

That's right.

[Megan Watterson]

If we believe we're not worthy, then we think we have to follow certain rules. And I think what makes an action like Abby's so powerful is it models to us that we don't have to follow any rules given to us by a system, an unjust system of power, telling us that we're unworthy of this access to the divine, which actually exists within us. And so you know, this to me is a sea change moment. This has always been true. But it's like now we can see with intensity and clarity the hypocrisy, the maddening hypocrisy. I mean, I have always said our ideas of the divine directly affect the status of women and girls the world over. I've always said that. And I feel like Chicken Little, you know, I feel like Cassandra. I feel like I've been screaming that for like 20 years, you know, our ideas of the divine affect the status of women and girls the world over. And now I feel like there are those with the ears to hear it and that that level of relief is just so powerful. It's like I'm not just screaming that alone, you know?

[Abby Wambach]

Yes. And it's like the worthiness that's internal. I also feel like whatever is tied to that is the discernment. The knowing is internal. You know, was part of my spiritual upbringing, biblically taught to me that whenever I had an instinct about something, whenever I had a question about something, whenever I had a feeling about someone that I was wrong, that I was not to trust my own understanding, that my heart was wicked, that God worked in mysterious ways, that I was not to question that when I felt something from inside me that was wrong and the answers were outside me. And I think that is also how a bunch of women end up following Deepak Chopra is that along the way they had a million knowings with that creep. They had a million knowings. But I since have being from this world understand ignoring every single bit. I feel like we are returning to a moment where women are returning to themselves, where they are saying, I actually don't have to explain shit to you about how I feel. I just feel something and I don't want to be near you anymore without explanation there. It's like something really returning to instinct, to intuition, to body, to getting out of constructs that other people have made for us and that also being within and enough.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

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[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

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[Megan Watterson]

I recently was interviewed by Diane Sawyer about the Gospel of Mary for a documentary and she asked me this unbelievable question that was so good I kind of left my body. So I have no idea how I answered it. Like for the documentary. But I have super low bar for myself in situations like that. It's pretty much just don't pass out, you know. Cause it's like, it's so unnatural being in a, you know, a studio. And it's just so intense for me. And I know what that costs me, you know, to try to do something like that. So I was just like, mercy for myself, just try not to slowly slip out of the chair and pass out on the floor during the interview. But she asked me this question that was so good. She said, if you could say one thing to Pope Leo, what would it be? And so again, I have no idea what I actually said because I sort of left my body. But I've been thinking about that ever since she asked it. And what I finally came to was the one thing I would say to him is I believe Mary. And the reason I would say that if it could only be one statement that's the most important statement, is that I think that there is a direct connection within the Gospel of Mary. At the end of it, the disciples don't believe her. Peter asks her to tell them what she knows that they don't because she's a woman, because Christ loved her more than all other women. And then at the end of it, he doesn't believe her. He says, are we to think that the Savior gave her secret teachings a woman, and didn't speak openly so that we would all hear? And then he says, surely he did not want to show that she is more worthy than we are. And it's like, yes, Peter, actually that's exactly what Christ wanted to show, is that Mary is as worthy as you are. But he doesn't believe her. And Andrew chimes in, is like, yeah, her teachings are really strange. And then it's only Levi who comes to her defense, and he says, if the Savior considered her worthy, who are you to disregard her? So there's that worth. And I think there's a direct correlation between the fact that the disciples don't believe Mary within her own gospel, that what she's saying is true. Then the church, by the 6th century labels her the prostitute, which she never was. And then here we are in the 21st century and we still don't believe. Survivors, like, to me, there is a direct correlation. We still don't believe Mary. Mary Magdalene, for the majority of people around the world, is still the penitent prostitute, even though that has long since by scholars and by the Church itself, been established as a fiction. She's still the penitent prostitute. And her gospel is still considered apocryphal of doubtful authenticity. To me, there's a connection. There's a direct connection. And I believe Mary, and I believe it matters that we still don't believe Mary.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah. And I think when you're saying, I believe Mary, I'm also hearing you say, I believe Megan. Like, I think we almost miss the boat when we are saying, they must believe us. They must believe us. Because I think what has to happen first is, I must believe me. We must believe us. It is like we learned young. There's, like, strings that are connected between our inner selves and our outer selves. And we became so scared of our inner selves who were raging and questioning and feeling and railing against all of it, that we cut the strings and we handed them to somebody else outside of ourselves. And we said, you move my face, you move my. You feel for me, you tell me what you. And then we became fucking puppets. It disembodied puppets because we disconnected ourselves from our inner selves and we gave the strings away. And now we are going to have to wrest those strings back from outside of ourselves and reconnect it to our inner selves and start believing the questions and the feelings and what happened to us and the stories and stay connected and keep believing.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

I think that there's going to be a lot of folks who are listening to this that haven't connected all of this to rage yet, because a lot of us might be feeling a little bit lost in that. There may have been, I won't say, easier acceptance to what was, like, the way of the world, the world order of. For me growing up in sport, right? Like, I just knew women's sports was not as popular as men's sports. So I was just like, all right, I'm just going to run uphill. I'm going to just. This is what I'm going to do for my life. But there was some kind of internal acceptance to feeling inferior to men. And it wasn't until I was 36 years old, standing on a stage, when the rage finally came. And it was when I was at the ESPYs and I was getting the same Icon ESPY award from espn, the SB nationally televised award show for sports. I was getting the same award as Kobe and Peyton. It wasn't until I walked off that stage knowing that the three of us were walking into three very different retirements, that I actually let myself feel rage. I think that so many of us don't want to express or even feel rage because it Feels counterintuitive in some ways to love. And so I just want to acknowledge anyone out there who might be seeing all that's going on in the world with the Epstein files and our government and all of the. All of it and feeling so confused and kind of muddled up and bottled up. It is okay that you haven't found the rage yet, but I want to invite you because it's a vulnerability. It is letting yourself admit to yourself that this is something you've been carrying kind of silently. I mean, this is going to make me cry a little, but, like, the locker room, the laughter, you know, like, I think of myself as somebody who can just, like, brush it off. And I think we've been doing it for so long, and I keep giving men the benefit of the doubt, especially male athletes, the benefit out. Well, they just don't know. And this is just what their locker rooms are like. And there's just something about the most recent men's hockey locker room incident where they were laughing about the women's hockey team also being invited, needing to be invited to the fucking state of the Union that they declined, thank God. But, like, their laughter fudge you and also our women's hockey team and also our women's soccer team are way more fucking successful than your fucking little baby teams. Like, what are you talking about laughing at us? Are you laughing because there are, like, quote, unquote, less fans in your eyes because we make less money in your eyes? Like, no, this is not okay. And so I just want to say, like, if you haven't yet gotten to rage or let rage in, walk in the door, it could be time. And I just want to acknowledge that, like, it is. It is hard and vulnerable to let that in.

[Abby Wambach]

And it's also love. I think women are told not to be angry. That that is, Christians are told not to be angry. Like that spiritual.

[Megan Watterson]

Yeah, that's right.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah. And isn't that convenient? If I were a guy planning a church where I plan to screw everybody over, I would think they might get pissed. And then I would say, I'm going to write down that getting pissed is a sin. That is exactly what I would do if I were trying to control a group of marginalized people. I would decide to teach them and beat them over the head with the idea that their rage is unholy so that they suppress it. Now, our dear friend Andrea Gibson, before they died, told their friend who was grieving and feeling all kinds of anger and discomfort, they looked at them and said, I want you to Consider everything you're feeling as love. All of it. The anger, the rage, the discomfort, all of it. It's all love. And that is how I feel about this moment. I feel like the people who are most filled with love are the people who are most filled with rage right now. Because only people who are filled with reject hate so strongly. Only people who are filled with love are stunned by hate. Right. If you are stunned, confused, angry, that is because you are filled with love. And I also feel like right now the crazier you feel, the saner you are. Yeah, I don't want to be near anybody who's doing okay right now. Yeah, good God devils, right? Like if you're okay, I am away from you right now. So if you're not to the rage, I guess allowing it is a beautiful thing to consider. And if you're in the rage, labeling it correctly as righteous is sacred.

[Megan Watterson]

It's sacred. Yeah. And it's really important you mentioned that, you know, the entire system and structure, our idea of what it means to be spiritual, what it means to be divine, was created by men. So that's really, really important to pay attention to. So being submissive, being quiet, being secluded, denying our body, starving ourselves, like all of these ideas of what it means to be spiritual, I think we need to really question. And sacred rage is listening to the voice of love. We need to allow it to inform us. We have to listen to it. We don't want to act on it, but we have to listen to it. And we have to allow ourselves to know that the source of this rage is love. It's because we know love. That's why we're so enraged.

[Abby Wambach]

And we have to be okay with the wilderness for a minute. I think, I mean, I know that one of the internal terrors of this moment is losing every faith in every structure that we had before. And this has been a deconstruction for people over time and some people are further ahead than others. But there are a lot of people that had faith that really thought that our political system was for the most part, some good guys and bad guys and that, you know, all of that is gone. For a lot of people, faith in the political system of our country is gone. Faith in religious institutions with the silences and the COVID ups and the abuse and the complicity is gone. Anybody, I don't know anybody personally who had faith in the wellness industry, so I don't know how that faith was created, but certainly that's over. I mean, the amount of people who have professed to be in service of others and have been hurting people behind the scenes. And how many people have been quiet about that? If it doesn't cause a mass exodus from that industry, it should. Honestly, a lot of people's families. I mean, I have a lot of friends who are married to men who are maybe not in the Epstein files. Like, maybe they're not child rapists, but their silence and lukewarm nothingness about this. Where are the good men? I guess I keep hearing that they exist. People keep telling me that, but where the fuck are they? The fact that they are not out in the streets, the fact that they have called themselves protectors, branded themselves as protectors for so long. Where the hell are they? Women are married to these men, having to sleep in bed next to them, or where really all the most they can, you know, muster themselves to do is to. To tolerate their wives. Activism. Where's their rage? Where's their organizing? Where is the effort they can find to make a fucking fantasy football team with their buddies and the organization and care they can put into that? Where is that sort of organizing to protect the women and the children and the humanity in their lives? Any thoughts? Megan Watterson?

[Megan Watterson]

Yeah. We are the ones who are going to save us. That's what is being fully revealed to us. And many of us have known that. But for me, we've already won. Let me explain it in the sense that. And Abby, I need your help with this because, like, what was that moment where somebody ran the fastest or the most? It was like a mile, but it was like in. In a time that no one had seen before.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

Prefontaine in. Yeah. At Nike in Oregon.

[Abby Wambach]

What they do, they just ran so fast.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

He was trying to break the mile record.

[Abby Wambach]

Okay.

[Megan Watterson]

And then more and more people did it, right?

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Megan Watterson]

Once that happened, once it was modeled. So for me, it's like, what is falling?

[Abby Wambach]

What is.

[Megan Watterson]

What we can allow ourselves to completely unplug from is the Christianity that was established in the 4th century under the patriarchy.

[Abby Wambach]

Right?

[Megan Watterson]

So when that falls, what becomes visible is the Christianity that existed before it. And what I want to say is that spiritually for women, we've already seen ourselves unite. We've already seen ourselves beat an empire. We've already triumphed. It's in the acts of Paul and Thecla. It's just that Thela was erased and her scripture was deemed of doubtful authenticity. But we've already seen it happen where women come together, women who represent the ones who have the least amount of power and they prove that there is a power greater than an empire built by men that exist in the heart of a little girl who is loved, who is fully loved, which means an entire arena of women. When they see thecla claim her worth, right, which comes from within. Everything comes from within. They watch her model that no one can control her. No one ever could control her. She claims her worth. She baptizes herself, which to me means, okay, she decides I don't have to wait for Paul to figure out that I'm worthy of being baptized. I can claim my worth within me and I can baptize myself and give myself the power and the authority to lead. So the women in the arena see thecla do this, and they're like, I am being controlled by the ideas of what I'm allowed to do because I'm female, because the world around me sees me as less than. I don't have to be controlled. I'm not controlled in this moment. Claim my worth. I can stand up. So they stand up. They start throwing in really scrappy. Like, it's so relatable because I feel like this is us now. Just whatever they happen to bring with them to the arena, right? Wouldn't we do that? Like, what's.

[Abby Wambach]

Yes.

[Megan Watterson]

What's in our pockets and our baskets. It's like they just start.

[Abby Wambach]

I've got this Instagram account, I've got this neighbor. I've got this attitude, like, what do we have to bring?

[Megan Watterson]

It's Mary Maloney with her belt. It's so scrappy. It's so scrappy. It's like, this is what we're gonna do because this is what love does when it's empowered. We do whatever we have to do. We're not going to be do what we're told to do anymore. That's done, that's ended. That world is over. We're going to do what we have to do to move the way love moves. And so they start throwing cardamom and rose petals and nard into the arena. And they help Fekla save herself, but she baptizes herself first. And that's that part which I feel like coming through you is so powerful that you're saying we have to believe ourselves. We can't wait for somebody to say, you are worthy of being believed. We have to decide right now that we are and have always been worthy of being believed. We have to decide that we are going. We're not going to wait for men to believe us, right? To believe. Survivors to believe Mary. We are going to decide right now that we are going to go ahead and believe in each other instead.

[Abby Wambach]

Pod Squad One of the things that we have talked about incessantly together is how the current representations and use of religion in our systems doesn't match our values. Right now we see White Christian nationalism threatening the safety and well being of our neighbors, stoking hate against our LGBTQ community, and working as hard as they can to restrict reproductive rights in times of deep division. We remember that our faiths call us to love our neighbors and we mean all of our neighbors, immigrant families, LGBTQ youth, and people seeking abortion and reproductive health care. Sacred, the Spiritual alliance of Communities for Reproductive Dignity, is a home for people of faith organizing for a better future. Sacred believes that we are called on by our faith to support those who need it most and to organize around reproductive justice for all. Learn more about how you can help Sacred build a better future rooted in faith and [e-mail] neighbors thanks to our

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

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[Abby Wambach]

Did she baptize herself? I'm thinking about the the horse in the cart here. So you are saying she baptized herself first and then the women started throwing the. Exactly. Please, POD squad. Listen to what Megan is saying. What she is saying is we are not waiting for the guys to tell us what's appropriate to do. But we are also not waiting for our fellow women, our sisters, to deem us worthy of speaking. We have to do it first, ourselves. They need to see us do it. And then they will join us. Yes, but it is each of our responsibilities first to say, I am here. I will move how love requires me to move, not how the system requires me to move. That was not built on love. And it's okay to overreact for a while. Can I put a pin in this one for a second? We've been underreacting for centuries. So if you're on the fence and you're like, is this too much? Do it. Apologize later. This is time. For this, we're gonna have to even the scales by leaning heavy on the overreacting side for a while.

[Megan Watterson]

You reached out to me when you were reading the Girl who Baptized Herself and you said, I'm only on page five and I'm already crying. I've wondered if it can be articulated if you're okay with sharing what made you cry.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

She's crying right now. Thinking of it.

[Abby Wambach]

So you know my villain origin story, which is that I didn't cry for 20 years and it was like a joke in my family. And I would try to fake cry sometimes so that I appeared to be human funerals and stuff. To me, crying is what happens when something finally feels true enough. It doesn't have to do with, like, sadness or happy. I can't attach it to a particular emotion. It's when I'm in the presence of something that makes me feel like. Like I was never crazy.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

That's your thing.

[Abby Wambach]

I think that's a Lot of people's thing.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

I know, but that's for sure your thing.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

Is this unraveling that?

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah. So it was just being in the presence of something that felt true enough. And also I think any woman who has been in the church for long enough and over and over again been just non existent, like not being able to see your own story or your own self anywhere. When you're in the middle of a big ass mystery and somebody finally like walks in. Like you're in a courtroom. Okay, I talked to Abby about this. I've been writing about it recently. But like your whole life you're like in a courtroom and you're. You're on the stand as the defendant. You've put yourself there and you're also the judge and you're also the. You're like the jury and you're everybody. Right. But you yourself is on stand and it's. You're constantly just trying to solve the mystery of yourself. And somebody just like walks in the courtroom with a smoking gun. Like somebody just walks in the courtroom and it's like, this is the evidence that you've been missing. Like you can get off the stand, you're free to go. That's what the tears were. And those kind of tears feel really holy to me. It feels like a baptism.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

And throughout the reading, I watch her read all of these books and every couple of pages she would just go,

[Abby Wambach]

megan,

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

just like intense gratitude sent your way. So I just want you to know that too is like there is so much love and gratitude for you to do the work, to get it into the form that you did and to then give it out into the world.

[Abby Wambach]

Gratitude to feel the way you feel like to sitting with you, that you would cry, that you would refuse to move on, that you would say the world was over. And that is because you're not a zombie, like for real. That's because you have not allowed yourself to be so disembodied that you can be numb to all of this. So I think your work is not just in the books. It's like the way you show up in every single room you're in. You are like a great on gaslighting of people.

[Megan Watterson]

It's just so powerful to me because there's such divine reciprocity because that's who you are to me. It's like you seeing me, you know, I. I really have felt crazy and to be told by major media outlets that what I write is not real theology. You know, that level of like trying to be disparaged it takes, like, this level of keeping on, of persevering. But then when you have somebody outside of you who sees you, too, I would have kept going till my last breath, doing what I do and saying what I say and trying to write what I write. But, like, to have somebody who really sees me, it makes me weep because it's like we're in this together. And you know that word, Dar Shan? It means to see and be seen by God. Or like, in Les, mischievous. My mom and I actually had to be taken out of Les Mis because we cried so hard we were disturbing the audience, and we had to be asked to leave. But it's because of that one line. To love another person is to see the face of God. Like, that's the level of. Of, like, you know, that infinity symbol. Like that, seeing and being seen. And I wanted to ask that question because I wondered if that was the case, because that is what you also give to me. So it's like that divine reciprocity is just so powerful.

[Abby Wambach]

So powerful. Well, you baptized yourself. Like, this is important, I think, in this moment, too, to think about how women can show up for each other. Because the institutions kept telling you that your theology wasn't real. You were like, okay, Paul, I'm just gonna go ahead and baptize myself and write what I know is true. Because there's another path where you just argue with Paul for the rest of your life. I know plenty.

[Megan Watterson]

Right.

[Abby Wambach]

You can waste your entire life deciding that you're going to keep engaging with the institution that has disavowed you, and you're going to keep trying to convince them that you should be baptized instead of disconnecting yourself and baptizing yourself, which is what you did. And then I threw cardamom at you, right?

[Megan Watterson]

Yeah, that's exactly it.

[Abby Wambach]

So that is, please, God, for people who are listening, like, now is the time that if there is a woman who is showing up, who is embodying this, who is doing her work, who has baptized herself, and who your nervous system knows is real, throw cardamom. Do not allow this time. This is not a time for internalized misogyny, which is what is planted by those institutions to take hold. We have to resist that. That does not mean support every woman. I am over that. You can see. Look at Pam Bondi. Like, do not support every woman. Look at Kristi Noem. Like, these are. These are puppets. These are vampires. These are.

[Megan Watterson]

They've internalized the patriarchy. Yes.

[Abby Wambach]

They are water carriers for the patriarchy. It is not about that. You know, when you are in the presence of a woman who is imperfect but is fighting the good fight, you know it. Throw cardamom at her. Oh, Megan. Megan, what are you doing? Like, logistically, I need to know this,

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

like, realistically, like, how are you actually

[Abby Wambach]

making it through the days? Are you staying grounded in anything? Do you have anything to leave us with that is actually logistical?

[Megan Watterson]

First of all, that repetition that we've been emphasizing, that we have to believe in ourselves, that we have to be able to go inward and really validate what it is that we're feeling. So that's absolutely been a practice, and especially as a survivor with how triggering it is, being grounded, trying to stay grounded, which for me has meant I do this soul voice meditation, which really helps. I've been telling myself, you know, just as Abby said, I don't know what's next, but there is a next. The only thing that calms my nervous system is that out of this list, you know, that I'm compiling how women pray when the world is on fire, there will be an action. Like, I am. I am promising myself that because. And I want it to be when I have returned to love. And I know it's the way love is asking me to move, but it was also I was sort of being hard on myself and thinking, like, we'll do it. Like, just. Just do something, you know, I totally get that.

[Abby Wambach]

I so get that.

[Megan Watterson]

Just anything, like, do something, do something. And in going back to the acts of Paul and Thecla, it's interesting because it comes from the collective. What I can do is continue to give myself the power and the agency. I can believe in myself. I can believe in Mary. I can, you know, ground myself in that, knowing that love is going to lead me. But I also think it's not like there's going to be one person who leads, and then we all follow like lemmings, you know, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the seventh season, when Buffy goes back into that cave to the male shamans who gave her the power, and she's like, no, I'm going to reclaim the power. Source it directly inside of myself. This is very similar to thecla, when she takes back her power from all the sources that had given her her slayer power. It was this kind of these male shamans, she called it back. And then she realized that actually every little girl was a slayer. Like, she awoken all of the slayers by calling her power fully back to herself. It's some sort of collective, like, that that it's gonna look like that. Where we awaken in this way that we have never seen before. Where love reaches where it has never been before. Like where we are acting from a place of unifying we haven't demonstrated yet. Because I think the most hopeful thing for me is that these stories that were erased, the Gospel of Mary, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, like, those are stories of what happens when those who have the least amount of power remember that power has always come from within us.

[Abby Wambach]

Right.

[Megan Watterson]

The truest source of power is love, is our direct connection to the divine. That that has always come from within us. So we already have those stories. And those are the stories that remind us of the original roots of what it meant to have a brush with Christ. It was to fully empower you. It was to fully remind you that you are meant to confront and stand up and be a voice of love in face of those unjust systems of power. That's what it meant to be Christian before the 4th century. So the hope comes from the fact. Now those are in print. People are like, well, what is the Acts of Paul and Thecla? It's in mass print now. My feminist theological endeavor was to bring it back from Orisha. Like, you can. You can buy it on Amazon now. It was this obscure scripture that was really hard to get a hold of. And now anybody can read that. Anybody can read the Gospel of Mary. And these are examples of moments when we remembered that truest source of power exists within us.

[Abby Wambach]

You know, there's a lot about the last being first.

[Megan Watterson]

Yes.

[Abby Wambach]

And the first being last in the gospel. And I want you to just look carefully and feel at what we're told is winning and what we're told is losing. And then I want you to judge for yourself. When you think about it and you look at in your body is power. A bunch of guys in a locker room laughing at women and going to sit in the room at the State of the Union while a rapist speaks from the pulpit and lies through his teeth in that den of vipers. Or is it the women who said no thank you and are going to party in Las Vegas with Flavor Flav? Like, which one looks like the Kingdom of God? I think we need to really pay attention to what we are told is winning and how it feels in our body. Who's winning there? And have we already won? And do we still. Does winning look like saying no like they did? No, thank you to that. To being in that space, not this. And creating something full of life and Beauty is that winning?

[Megan Watterson]

Yes. And for me, it's just echoing, you know, the tale of two Christ. It's like there's is. Is Christ this blonde hair, blue eyed shepherd with a staff telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies? Or is Christ Christ this liberator, this Middle Eastern immigrant, liberating women from the illusion that anyone outside of us could ever dictate our worth?

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

That's right.

[Abby Wambach]

Amen. Megan Watterson. We love you. We are with you. We will throw cardamom at you forever.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

And nard.

[Megan Watterson]

And rose petals. Rose petals, Rose petals.

[Abby Wambach]

Oils, all of it.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

What is nard?

[Abby Wambach]

It's such a weird word. What is it?

[Megan Watterson]

It's what Mary Magdalene. It's an oil. It's what Mary Magdalene anointed Christ with. So. So let's anoint each other.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

Let's go.

[Abby Wambach]

Let us forever. We love you, Megan.

[Megan Watterson]

I love you.

[Abby Wambach]

See you here next time. I love you. I love you.

[Megan Watterson]

Love you. Thank you.

[Mary Abigail (likely Abby's full name or a guest named Mary Abigail)]

Love you. Love you.

[Abby Wambach]

Bye. We can do Hard Things is an independent production podcast brought to you by Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us, can do hard things on Instagram and we can do hard things show on TikTok.