This; this is an open letter to 3 women I have never met, who have changed my GD life...
Dear Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle,
Do the three of you even know how special you are? I feel like you do not, and so, I will try to tell you.
I want to start this letter by telling you, that I HATE podcasts. Never liked them. I found them obnoxious, salesy, they weren't about anything, or just too much noise with everyone talking over one another all the time. My partner would play them in the car on the way to the cottage... full of men laughing, talking about sportsing, making gross jokes.
But then, someone recommended yours to me. It took me a loooong time to even bother to listen to one episode. As soon as I heard your beautiful voices, and felt the love that you have for each other, and the pod squad, I was hooked.
I have recently gone back to the very beginning, and am listening to each one, in order, until now.
So often the episode I will be listening to (often while I walk around the dog park, noise cancelling headphones on, hoping no one will talk to me and ask what breed my decidedly strange looking dog is... Lucy is an Aussie Chihuahua cross for anyone dying to know) will correspond so perfectly with what is going on with my life, or other content I am consuming. (I just re-listened to the episode about friendship where you discuss people having different requirements for amount of time spend doing social things, while reading a chapter in the book "Quiet" by Susan Cain talking about studies done showing introverted people are more sensitive to stimuli. I am currently in a phase of life where I am being very mindful of what my body needs and how to be less productive, in favour of rest and activities that recharge me.)
The insightful things the three of you say often help me to see things from a different perspective that allows for more self-compassion, and more than once when I have been in a very dark headspace I have turned to your podcast to feel less alone.
I see so much of myself in both Glennon and Amanda; Glennon's dreamy sensitive creativity, and Amanda's type A, organized drive to be productive and efficient... and Abby! My God Abby. All I want in life, if I have nothing else at all, is for someone to love me the way Abby loves Glennon.
(I may have said as much to my partner, and then keep sending him episodes of the podcast like a little road map of how to love me... Oh, but I did also make him an instruction manual for Christmas)
Abby, when I listen to the way you talk to and about Glennon on the show, it's like I can feel your love for her spilling out over the radio waves (interwebzes?) and onto me as well. You see her. Who she is, not the mask we each wear for everyone else, and you love her even more because of it. I think that is so beautiful.
Glennon, you have taught me (the first born, "good kid", holder togetherer of all the things and all the people), that I have value just for existing. I honestly had no concept of that before you. I need you to know, that you, who you are and how you show up in this world, has SAVED ME, (and likely thousands of other people). The way you speak, and the words you choose, and that way you show up, and the integrity you have... it's inspiring.
Amanda, the way you always find the answers, in the research and the studies, and then find the MOST insightful ways to apply it to your life just tickles my brain in all the right ways. The way you acknowledge the traits or tendencies that hold you back, then hold space for them and find ways to do better and grow as a person is awe inspiring.
Thank you all for doing hard things, and for making We Can Do Hard Things
1 comment:
Post a Comment