Podcast Summary: We Can Do Hard Things – “Your Nervous System Needs This”

Podcast: We Can Do Hard Things
Hosts: Glennon Doyle, with guest Isette Rose
Date: December 23, 2025
Recorded at: Kripalu Center, Massachusetts

Episode Overview

In this year-end special, Glennon Doyle sits down for a heartfelt, wide-ranging conversation with artist, healer, and thought leader Isette Rose. The episode is framed by the challenges of the holiday season and transitions (menopause, empty nesting, midlife, societal upheaval), exploring how agency, grief, community, and enoughness intersect with our nervous systems. Together, Glennon and Isette examine ways to remain truthful, connected, and alive through periods of upheaval, discomfort, and transformation.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Welcoming the Hard Conversations & Setting the Scene

• Glennon expresses gratitude for the Pod Squad and introduces Isette Rose:

  "Our hope for you is peaceful, cozy, slow days with your people full of warmth, gentleness, and rest... This is our last episode of the year." (00:00)

• Glennon frames the conversation as touching on agency, self-abandonment, burning old scripts, relationships, menopause, midlife, and redefining enoughness.

2. Fury, Agency, and Self-Abandonment

• Isette asks about channeling fury into creativity and boundaries.
  (02:02)
• Glennon shares her experience with eating disorder recovery and how family-of-origin dynamics trigger regression and dissociation:

  “When I get back around my family of origin, I’m seven, right? … you have to leave so you can stay when you’re a kid.” (06:36)

• On adult agency:

  “…the thing that I have as an adult that I didn’t have as a kid is agency. It doesn’t feel like a lot … but the difference is, I can refuse to dissociate.” (07:37)

• Insights: Emotional regressions are real; reclaiming adult agency is critical to staying present and not abandoning yourself.

3. Reimagining Family, Partnership, and Midlife

• On chosen family, menopause, and empty nesting:

  “I’m living at the intersection of menopause, fascism, and empty nesting. I find it upsetting.” (09:48) “Perimenopause hit me really hard... I made an emergency appointment with my doctor and then found out Abby had done the same.” (10:33)

• On loss and identity shifts:

  “I just created an entire identity around ‘mom’… this little crew of three kids and Abby is the first little community that I ever felt belonging in.” (12:41) “It feels like a landslide… I am unable to tolerate stuff that I was able to tolerate before. Maybe menopause is spiritually important because of that.” (15:21)

• Memorable Moment: The “lake house / homo stead” fantasy as the next unattainable carrot (see Section on Enoughness).

4. The “Not This” Stage & Embracing Uncertainty

• Naming the “Not This” phase:

  “My friend Liz calls it the ‘not this’ stage. Like, I don’t know what the next is, I just know not this, which is a really important stage.” (18:01)

• Insight: Naming periods of confusion is powerful; clarity often begins by recognizing what isn’t working.

5. Community as the Answer (But It’s Hard!)

• On the necessity and challenge of community:

  “Community… I think it might be the answer. I just keep looking for a different one because it’s so hard.” (21:48)

• Glennon recounts the AIDS-era activist wisdom:

  “Every day we wake up and we bury our friends in the morning, we march in the afternoon, and at night we dance... there’s something about that holy trinity of grieve, work, dance that I think is the way forward." (22:03)

• Metaphors: The personal vigil, the candle outside the White House — not to change others, but to stay true to yourself (25:29).

6. On Grief, Artistry, and Brokenheartedness

• Brokenheartedness as proof of inner vision:

  “Brokenheartedness is a badge of honor … if you’re not rejecting what’s going on, then maybe you don’t hold the vision of something more beautiful. I don’t want to be around anyone right now who’s not pissed off and sad.” (28:36)

• On parenting and modeling authenticity:

  "I let him feel so alone because he needed to see his brokenheartedness reflected in his family." (32:07)

7. Capitalism, Enoughness, & The Metrics of Worth

• On capitalism’s trickery:

  “The trick of capitalism is to take all of these birthrights from us and then sell them back to us and make us earn them. Sex, food, rest, community. None of these things were ever supposed to be things we had to buy.” (38:54)

• Audre Lorde reference:

  “Look at what you’re building today. It should look a lot like what you want to be building for the future.” (39:42)

• On rest sounding like death:

  “If we actually start talking about enoughness, it sounds like death. Like people only have enough right before they die … That cannot be right.” (46:43)

• Lake House Metaphor:

  “So Abby wants a lake house. What does the lake house mean? Rest. So then we’re going to get another job, save up, to buy this thing so we can rest. Or we could just … rest.” (45:13)

• Experience of Enough:

  “What if everything that we’ve ever wanted is somehow inside of now?” (47:45)

8. Transgenerational Healing & Parenting

• On passing down anxiety, judgment, and raising emotionally attuned kids:

  “It’s like putting my dirty glasses on your clear eyes… I want you to be like you. Your way is better.” (54:24)

• Repair, not perfection:

  “Maybe with each generation some of the mud comes out, and we get a little clearer.” (58:56)

• Isette's parenting story:

  “As soon as he had words, he said: ‘Mommy, I just need some time in the car before we go in.’” (60:23)

9. Leaving and Beginning Anew

• On knowing when to leave, with or without a clear “next”:

  “I’m most amazed by people who leave situations that aren’t for them without something else that is for them ready. I think that’s the most badass thing you can do.” (61:50)

• Desire is enough:

  “The desire to leave is enough to leave.” (65:13)

10. Queer Joy & Friendship in Midlife

• Finding friendship as the ‘final frontier’ in her 50s:

  “I might be, like, cultivating what people call a friend group ... I think that's what I want to do with my 50s, is like, figure that out.” (65:55)

11. Having Hard Conversations

• Timing: when you are not charged:

  "It has to be when you're not charged about it. ... The brilliance of what you're teaching is the simplest, hardest thing, which is when the activation happens to sit with it and breathe through it..." (67:32)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On self-abandonment:
  "I don't want to abandon myself anymore. I don't want to leave... If I'm leaving, I want to take myself with me." – Glennon Doyle (08:02)

• On menopause as a moral injury:
  “We hold up the whole sky… and then we get to this time in our life when we actually need medical research, support, ideas, and every— it’s just not there. So I find it infuriating.” – Glennon Doyle (10:02)

• On the “not this” phase:
  “My friend Liz calls it the ‘not this’ stage. Like, I don’t know what the next is, I just know not this, which is a really important stage.” – Glennon Doyle (18:01)

• On brokenheartedness:
  “I want to be with the brokenhearted because I just know right away those people have an inner vision that is aligned with mine.” – Glennon Doyle (28:36)

• On the metrics of enough:
  "Is it possible we have right now everything we've ever hoped and dreamed for?" – Glennon Doyle (45:28)

• On leaving:
  “The desire to leave is enough to leave.” – Glennon Doyle (65:13)

Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:00 – Glennon’s warm holiday wishes & intro to the Kripalu conversation
• 02:02 – Isette’s first question: “How do you channel fury?”
• 06:36 – Glennon’s family-of-origin story and eating disorder recovery insight
• 09:48 – Reimagining family: menopause, empty nesting, and identity
• 17:23 – "Is it the fallen estrogen or the fallen democracy?"
• 21:48 – Community as survival (“It might be the answer. I just keep looking for a different one because it’s so hard.”)
• 28:36 – Brokenheartedness and artistry; story about parenting through sadness
• 38:54 – The trick of capitalism and reclaiming birthrights
• 45:13 – Lake house metaphor for rest & enoughness
• 53:00 – How to break cycles of judgment, anxiety, and shame with your children
• 61:50 – The courage to leave without knowing the next step
• 65:55 – Queer joy and building a chosen family in midlife
• 67:32 – When to have hard conversations: only when you are not emotionally charged
• 70:49 – Final thoughts: "Maybe we do need friends and community."

Closing Tone

The conversation is candid, humorous, self-deprecating, and deeply humanizing. Glennon and Isette model radical honesty about messiness, grief, and transformation — with both laughter and tears, skepticism of capitalist metrics and an abiding belief in the possibility and necessity of new ways of being and connecting.

For listeners seeking solace, validation, and practical wisdom for navigating their own “not this” seasons, resilience amid societal turbulence, or transitions in body and family — this episode offers a fiercely compassionate roadmap.