We Can Do Hard Things
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First published in the United States of America in 2025 by The Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York First published in Great Britain by Vermilion in 2025 1
Copyright © Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle 2025 Art direction, cover design, illustration and interior design by Valerie Gnaedig and Annie Lenon Word illustrations by Glennon Doyle The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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For our children,
Alice Amma Bobby Chase Cosmo
Elliott Frieda Senna Theodore Tish:
GLENNON DOYLE
We Can Do Hard Things
Glennon Doyle Abby Wambach Amanda Doyle
One Why am I like this? 1
Three How do I know when I’ve lost myself? 71
Five How do I figure out what I want? 111
Seven How do I do the hard thing? 149
Nine How do I go on? 193
Two Who am I really? 53
Four How do I return to myself? 87
Six How do I know what to do? 133
Eight How do I let go? 167
Ten How do I make peace with my body? 219
Eleven
How do I make and keep real friends? 245
Thirteen
Sex. Am I doing this right? 299
Fifteen
Why can’t I be happy? 355
Seventeen
How do I forgive? 387
Nineteen
How do I feel better right now? 423
Twelve How do I love my person? 269
Fourteen Parenting. Am I doing this right? 323
Sixteen
Why am I so angry? 373
Eighteen
How do I get unstuck? 403
Twenty
What is the point? 449
ALOK
Justina Blakeney
Alua Arthur Ashton Applewhite
Tarana Burke
Kaitlin Curtice
Dr. Yaba Blay
Kate Bowler
Dr. Mariel Buqué
Lily Collins
Cameron Esposito
Ashley C. Ford
Hannah Gadsby
adrienne maree brown
Dr. Galit Atlas
Sara Bareilles
Brené Brown
Martha Beck
Dr. Lori Brotto
Kelly Clarkson
Brittney Cooper
Brandi Carlile
Megan Falley
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford
Ina Garten
Andrea Gibson
Dr. Marisa G. Franco
Sloane Crosley
Jane Fonda
Melody Beattie
Susan Cain
Brittany Packnett Cunningham
Sarah Edmondson
Alex Elle
Stephanie Foo
Roxane Gay
Dr. Orna Guralnik
Elizabeth Gilbert Aubrey Gordon
Former Vice President Kamala Harris Jen Hatmaker
Tricia Hersey
Tobin Heath
Alegra Kastens
Alex Hedison
Lindsay C. Gibson
Chelsea Handler
Prentis Hemphill Laurie Hernandez
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
Suleika Jaouad
Abbi Jacobson
Chloé Cooper Jones
Luvvie Ajayi Jones
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Billie Jean King
Samantha Irby
Ali Krieger
Dr. Pooja Lakshmin
Dr. Kate Mangino
Melissa McCarthy
Resmaa Menakem
Celeste Ng
Tig Notaro
Devon Price
Dan Levy
Jenny Lawson
Vanessa Marin
Chanel Miller
Emily Nagoski
Jenny Odell
Catherine Price
Megan Rapinoe
Amanda Ripley
Bozoma Saint John
Briana Scurry
Emily Saliers
Mae
Martin
Laura McKowen
Marisa
Renee Lee
Tish Melton
Alex Morgan
Dr. Kristin Neff Chani
Nicholas
Former First Lady
Michelle Obama
Esther Perel
Katherine
May
Alanis Morissette
Dr. Hillary McBride
Morgan Harper Nichols
Sarah Paulson
Natalie Portman Christen Press
Ai-jen Poo
Amy Ray
Tracee
Ellis Ross
Dr. Laurie Santos
Maggie Smith
Gloria Steinem Mori Taheripour
Allison Russell
Cole Arthur Riley
Richard C. Schwartz
Dr. Alexandra Solomon
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
Sarah Spain
Sonya Renee Taylor
Cheryl Strayed
Nedra Glover Tawwab
Gabrielle Union
Reese Witherspoon
Rebecca Traister
Ocean Vuong
Evelyn Tribole
Ruby Warrington
Jessica Yellin
Carson Tueller
Kerry Washington
Every day I spiral around the same questions: Why am I like this? How do I figure out what I want? How do I know what to do? Why can’t I be happy? Am I doing this right?
Each morning, I’ve somehow forgotten all the freaking answers. Another day arrives along with the inevitable, entirely predictable questions of being human and I swirl around them like I’m brand new here. I blink and think: Wait. Hold on. I feel like I knew that one. Didn’t I learn that answer at some point?
Yes, I did. I’ve been a human among humans at this earth school for almost a half century. I survived childhood and adolescence, for God’s sake. I’ve recovered from addiction after addiction. I’ve built a marriage, dismantled it, and built a new one. I’ve raised three entire people who have grown up and left me, which I’m told is the best-case scenario (even though it feels like a stupid heartshattering system to me). I’ve lost friends and animals and versions of myself I couldn’t live without. I’ve written four whole books that people swear to me helped them find their way. Like you—like everyone who has survived as much as we’ve survived— I have certainly learned stuff. So why do I wake up every morning having forgotten everything I know?
My sister, Amanda, and my wife, Abby, are the people I call first when I’m drowning, because they are my life preservers. Recently, all within a year, I was diagnosed with anorexia, Amanda was diagnosed with breast cancer, and Abby lost her beloved brother. We felt so alone and so lost. Our spiraling questions became: What is the point? How do we go on? How do we feel better right now? At first, our conversations fell strangely silent. For the first time, we were all drowning at the same time. So, we started turning outward for life rafts, toward the only thing that’s ever saved us: deep, honest conversations with wise, kind, brave people.
On our podcast, on phone calls, on long early morning emails and late-night frantic texts with each other and our friends, we asked: Do you spiral around these questions all day, too? Do you have any answers?
Two things became thrillingly clear:
We are not alone: It seems that everyone swirls around the same 20 human questions.
We do not have to stay lost: There are answers.
As we wrote down every life-saving answer we discovered during those conversations, we realized we were creating our own personal survival guide. Now we had a place to turn to when we woke up, yet again, feeling clueless, alone, and afraid. A place to go when we needed language for how we felt. A place of clarity in the chaos. A place not to learn—but to remember—what we already knew. A place to save ourselves. Together, we built one huge locker of life preservers. Eventually, one of us said: Wait, why are we keeping this to ourselves? What better thing could we give to the world than this? That’s how this book was born.
Halfway through this book’s creation, I decided to stop the presses. Abby was still deep in grief, I was in a new level of anorexia recovery hell, and Amanda was facing a double mastectomy. I told my colleague, Valerie: I know we can do hard things, but this is just too hard. We have to stop.
A few hours later, Valerie’s reply arrived: I understand. If you ever want to begin again, know this: This book is it. This is the life guide I want to hand to my daughter. To help her make sense of her life, her people, and her world. To remind her that she already has all the wisdom she needs inside of her. To help make this hard, beautiful life just a little bit easier for her. This book is the life preserver I want to leave her with so she remembers she can always save herself. Because that is what this book does for me.
We began again, even though life was hard. We began again because life is hard. Our hope is that this book makes yours just a little bit easier.
We Can Do Hard Things.
Why am I like this?
I am a great mystery to me. Understanding why I do the things I do is important to me because the things I do affect the people I love. So I don’t want to live on autopilot. I want to choose carefully which patterns to pass on. I want to break cycles. I want to live with freedom and agency and intentionality. This means I have to look under my own hood and tinker with and examine my programming.
Responsible adulthood is being both the engine and the mechanic.
I’m the mystery and the detective. Tricky.
GLENNON
As soon as we’re born, we enter into cultural and familial systems that say: You cannot trust your appetite. You cannot trust your desire. You cannot trust yourself. Since you cannot trust yourself, here’s a list of rules for you to follow instead. So we lost vital parts of ourselves. We had to lose those parts of ourselves to survive in families, institutions, and societies that denied us access to our history, power, and innate wisdom.
We’ve been losing and losing and losing parts of ourselves for our entire lives. So of course we are not fully present now. Of course we are not able to be present in an authentic, whole way. The very path that we’ve taken to survive leaves us here, fractured.
AMANDA
I am aware now, more than ever, of the boxes I’ve placed myself into—the ones that were introduced to me by my family and by my culture. I consciously stepped into them and closed the lid in order to stay safe, in order to be liked, in order to fit in. Now I’m pushing the boundaries I’ve set for myself so that I can settle into a new acceptance of who I am. It’s almost like I’m stuck in a flowerpot and I’m expanding while it’s breaking. It’s breaking. But in order to do that, in order to break out of my molds, I need to understand what they are and why they were made in the first place.
ALEX HEDISON
I’m like this because
I carry the patterns of my family of origin.
The moment we’re born, we look up at our caretakers. We notice— before we even have language—what makes them smile and come close, what makes them frown and turn away. We notice—and we keep noticing—and then we adapt to survive. We magnify the parts of ourselves that earn us love and protection, and we hide what doesn’t. We know instinctively that we need our caretakers to survive—so we become what we believe they want us to be.
And then we grow up and one day we look in the mirror and wonder: Why am I still hiding so much of myself? Have I ever even met my real self?
Why am I like this?
GLENNON
I became an athlete to get my mother’s love. All I really wanted was love, full acceptance, and attention from my mom. But because I had this deep knowing about my gayness, I felt like my mom would never accept this part of me. So I developed an athlete persona to make up for my gayness. It worked! I was celebrated. But that kind of affirmation was something I could never really latch on to. I’d come home from soccer and my family would be so amazed at all my goals. But I always felt like: What if I stop scoring goals? Will they be able to love what’s left?
ABBY
I became more attuned to others’ emotions than my own.
In my family, there was one person whose emotional fluctuations dictated everyone’s experience. This dynamic teaches a child to be highly attuned and vigilant to others’ emotions to keep the peace. I did that my entire life and only recently learned that it’s an actual thing. It’s called emotional monitoring, and it involves living your life as a fixer in hyperactive awareness of everyone else’s experience. You’re so busy keeping everyone comfortable that you completely lose any boundary between everybody else’s experience of a situation and your own. And because of that, you actually do not have your own experience. Their experience is your experience.
AMANDA
I became extreme to be seen. I used to speak in extremes. I didn’t just dislike someone, I hated them. I wasn’t just a little bit bored, I was going to die of boredom. It’s interesting to consider what kind of people feel the need to express themselves so dramatically. Maybe some of us learn early that our needs won’t be met unless we become extreme about them.
GLENNON
I’m like this because
I learned what earned me love and what didn’t.
Why am I like this?
I became a reflection of my dad’s values.
Growing up, my dad was making films like Grapes of Wrath and Twelve Angry Men, with strong, brave characters who stuck up for the underdogs. And I always knew those were the roles that he loved, representing the values that he respected. I wasn’t conscious of it then, but I think seeing the roles he loved was like fertilizer that was being sprinkled on my soul. When I learned the truth of the Vietnam War, that fertilizer allowed the sprouts of my activism to start growing.
JANE FONDA
I
became a comedian to make my mom laugh.
It’s so hard to tell what part of our personality is a coping mechanism that was formed years ago and what’s our actual personality. Like, who would I have been if I’d grown up on a beach alone? I don’t know that I would’ve done comedy. I’m pretty introverted. I think we’re all just trying to cheer up our moms.
MAE MARTIN
Attachment Styles
WITH DR. ALEXANDRA SOLOMON
The way we show up in our relationships today is a reflection of the way our caregivers showed up for us. Their ability to meet, or failure to meet, our earliest needs—to feel safe and secure, to be seen and validated—leads us to form an “attachment style.” Our attachment style is formed in early childhood—before we are two years old!—and follows us into adulthood. Learning about attachment helps us understand why we are the way we are, heal from insecurities, end painful relationship patterns, and move toward more trusting bonds. Although attachment has a pretty profound effect on how we do relationships, our attachment style is not our destiny; we can move from insecure to secure attachment.
Secure Attachment
1 2
Secure attachment is what we’re all working toward: feeling safe, confident, and trusting in our relationships. I might have a secure attachment style if I have high self-esteem and can communicate my needs. I feel comfortable being emotionally close to my partner. I’m confident doing my thing out in the world because I trust that there’s someone at home who gets me and believes in me.
If I have a secure attachment style, my caregivers were attuned to my emotional and physical needs and responded with care. They encouraged me to explore the world and gave me room to grow. Their words and actions said: You are worthy. You are safe. You matter. Even if I didn’t form a secure attachment in childhood, I can have secure attachment later in life by cultivating healthy and trusting relationships.
Anxious Attachment
I have a hard time trusting my partner, even if they’ve proven themself to be trustworthy. I need constant reassurance that they won’t leave me, and I am terrified of rejection or abandonment. I feel like my worth depends on my partner’s validation. My anxious attachment formed because my caregivers were inconsistent in meeting my physical and emotional needs, which made me constantly question our connection. My caregivers also may have turned to me to satisfy their emotional cravings, rather than providing me with the consistent love and support I needed to grow.
My healing involves learning to soothe myself, affirm my worth, and give myself the affirmation I am craving so that my relationships feel more reciprocal and less frantic.
I’m like this because I learned what earned me love and what didn’t.
ABBY: Glennon and I could not be more opposite in our attachment styles. I’m anxious, she’s avoidant. So when we get in an argument, I always jump to: Am I loved? Don’t leave me! I’m desperate for comfort.
GLENNON: And I immediately turn to ice. The second there’s a disconnect between us, I can actually feel my walls go up. Then Abby’s trapped outside my wall. I’m trapped inside my wall. And we’re both alone.
Avoidant Attachment
3 4
I might have an avoidant attachment style if people say I’m self-sufficient. Even though I may have high selfesteem, I struggle to emotionally connect with partners. I tend to push people away when they get too close. I often think: I don’t need them. I don’t need anyone. I developed an avoidant attachment style because my caregivers were emotionally distant. When I reached out for emotional connection, I may have been neglected, shamed, or punished. To cope with my caregivers’ distance, I learned not to depend on anyone but myself.
My healing involves letting myself get close to people, trusting that I won’t be smothered by them, and knowing that someone’s desire to be near me does not mean they want to, or will be able to, control me.
Disorganized Attachment
If I have a disorganized attachment style, I feel conflicted about loving relationships. I desperately want them, but I’m terrified of letting people in. Instead of clinging to partners or pushing them away, I do both. I seek out emotional closeness and then lash out or push people away because I’m intensely afraid of being hurt. Disorganized attachment often stems from childhood abuse. As a child, I craved my caregivers’ love and nourishment, but they were also a source of fear.
My healing involves recognizing that my strong emotional reactions, like anger, reflect that I feel scared or confused and then taking steps to calm myself. My ability to practice self-awareness and self-compassion will help me feel sturdier on the inside and create more consistency in my relationships.
Attraction in adulthood is an activation of our earliest attachment patterns. That’s all attraction is. Our body is saying: I know how to be the corresponding puzzle piece to this person.
Think about that. Going back to the years before age three, how many times do you think a kid had to work hard to get attention, had to perform, had to be a certain way? I don’t know, a million? A million moments. Well, that’s a very practiced circuit. So as an adult when the body is like: Wait, I think I see this pattern again, it makes sense why the body would be attracted to that.
DR. BECKY KENNEDY
I’m like this because I learned what earned me love and what didn’t.
In large families like mine, it’s hard for each kid to get the attention they need from their parents. I learned that I had to chase love to get it. So when I sought out relationships as an adult, I was attracted to people who were a little aloof and even a little bit mean. I recognized the feeling of the chase as love.
I thought: That relationship feels like home to me.
When I met Glennon, she was the polar opposite. She was all there, all open, all love already. When I felt that, I didn’t get it, because it was new. There was probably a little grief inside of me about it, actually. My whole life, I was trying to win over people’s affection to somehow prove that I was worthy and good enough. It was so tiring and scary. When Glennon loved me and wanted me as I was, I had to give up on the chase of winning her over. I’ve had to rewire my brain to say: Oh, this is real love. Her love for me is done, and I have to just trust it instead of chasing or forcing or controlling it.
It’s scary in a different way. But this is the way I want to be.
ABBY
Why am I like this?
In a perfect world, my family would have embraced and nurtured my full self. But all families face stress. To adapt to that stress, we become rigid and one- dimensional. We learn to play characters to restore status quo to the family dynamic. But playing our roles comes at a cost. We aren’t able to develop into our full, real selves. Now I’m waking up and realizing that my family role isn’t my actual personality; it’s just the script I was given. The good news is that every role has a particular hero’s journey, and if we embark upon it, we learn to break character, become fully human, and begin to bring our full self to our relationships, work, and world.
GLENNON
I’m
like this because
I played a role in my family to keep the peace.
Why am I like this?
I performed to prove everything was okay. By performing, accomplishing, and excelling while growing up, I was trying to be the “easy one.” I was trying to say: Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. Everything’s fine over here. Our family is fine! I was doing the work of proving that as a family, we were okay, we could be proud, even. And along the line, I internalized that the way to prove to the world and to myself that I am okay is by performing, accomplishing, and excelling. But I don’t want to have to excel to be okay anymore. I want to be a fully human person. I don’t want to have to perform to receive love and acceptance, and I don’t want the people I love to have to perform to receive my love and acceptance.
AMANDA
I became the hero. My athleticism allowed me to become, in some ways, the hero of my family— the shiny, powerful, exciting one. But I despised that part of myself, because I knew it wasn’t real enough. I was idolized but never known. One of my deepest wounds is the fear of not being known. And I wasn’t.
ABBY
I thought I had to stay sick.
The story I’ve had about myself forever is: I am the sick one. My role was to stay sick, to stay damaged. My job was to embody inside me the unhealth of the family. It didn’t matter how that damage was manifesting; it could be anxiety, depression, bulimia, alcoholism. The important thing was that if I stayed sick, everyone else understood their roles and all was balanced in the family. That kept all of our family damage contained and easily explained away. I’ve spent my life saying that I was “born broken.” How can that be true? No one is born broken. I was not born broken. I got sick from breathing in all of the toxins of the family unit. So now I’m entertaining this idea: What if I’m not broken at all? What if I never was? How would I live differently? How would my life story change if I adjusted my understanding of the main character?
GLENNON
Family Roles
WITH DR. ALEXANDRA SOLOMON
Hero/Perfect One
I’m the responsible one. I got good grades and believed that if I was perfect enough, my family’s problems would go away. I’m high performing and competent. Because I expect a lot from myself and others, I find it difficult to embrace imperfection in myself and others. I’m self-critical and never satisfied with my effort. Now, my healing work is to be less controlling and more patient, especially in stressful moments.
Parentified Child
I felt a deep responsibility to empathize with and provide comfort to the adults in my family. I often acted as a “little adult” for others to confide in and was expected to tend to their emotional experiences. I’m compassionate and collaborative. But I often seek out relationships with people who need to be “fixed” and try to solve their problems for them. Now, my healing work is to set clear boundaries and tune in to my own desires.
Lost Child/Easy One
I was easygoing in an attempt to reduce the stress on the grown-ups. I went with the flow and withdrew to avoid being a burden. But all I wanted was to be seen and loved. My gifts include my flexibility, adaptability, and independence. But I have a hard time letting myself be seen or asking for support. Now, my healing work is to express my needs and take up space.
Scapegoat/Rebel
I often said what no one else would say. I called people out to try to help the family function better, which created distance between me and the people I love. Now I’m a gifted leader— ferocious and fearless. But sometimes I feel misunderstood. I struggle with hypervigilance because I’m used to standing outside the family system and criticizing it. Now, my healing work is to find comfort in connection and belonging.
Peacemaker/Mascot
I learned to defuse family conflict with humor, mediation skills, and diplomacy. As the “middleman,” I drew attention away from conflict. I kept calm under pressure and brought laughter as a form of distraction. Now I can be an entertainer or mediator during times of intensity. But because I was so attuned to others, I have trouble accessing my own feelings. Now, my healing work is to explore suppressed emotions.
Identified Patient
I was my family’s “reason” for having problems or for coming to therapy, the common cause my family organized themselves around. Allowing others to focus on my challenges served as a distraction from deeper issues and let others off the hook. Now my strengths include self-advocacy, self-awareness, and resilience. Now, my healing work is to consider that I’m not broken at all.
I’m like this because I played a role in my family to keep the peace.
We can heal from the roles we played, but I think it starts with grieving. If you were the scapegoat and you were outcast and vilified by your family; if you were the one who could never be a kid because you were mediating between people; if you were the invisible one who was never seen and so you think you’re not worthy of being seen; if you had to take care of your family by making everyone laugh even when someone else should have been taking care of you; if you were told you were broken when really your family was broken—there’s a lot to grieve there. It’s sad.
But it’s also liberating to know that family roles are a scam, because it means you can put down your script.
I no longer want to be a hero. No one can love a hero, because heroes aren’t real. Stepping out of a role takes time. It’s a million little choices that feel excruciatingly uncomfortable before they feel like freedom. It’s saying out loud, “I can’t get everything perfect right now.” “I can’t do all of this.” “Too much depends on me.” Or “I’m not going to pretend to be sick anymore. I’m not going to act helpless anymore.” Or “I’m resisting the urge to defuse this tension with a joke, because your behavior is not funny.” Slowly, we can put down the script and learn to become our full, complicated selves.
AMANDA
AMANDA: Every cell in our body has DNA. And DNA is covered in molecules, markers that tell that particular DNA how it should be expressed, which is how we end up with one cell that’s an eye cell and another cell that’s an ear cell and another that’s a liver cell. When we go through trauma, the trauma changes us on a molecular level; it pushes on those markers, which results in different genetic expression, literally changing the way our DNA works. The study of how our environment changes the way our DNA works is the science of epigenetics. And epigenetics shows that our trauma is passed down genetically from generation to generation. There was a study done in the Netherlands which found that the DNA in descendants of famine survivors reflected the trauma of famine even though that trauma never even happened to them. They inherited the trauma from their ancestors; it lived in them through their DNA expression. Their body remembered something they never experienced.
DR. GALIT ATLAS: Exactly right. Trauma doesn’t change the genes; it changes the expression of the genes, which some people like to call the memory. The genes have memory. But what we find in our clinical work is that we don’t only inherit the anxiety or biological response to the trauma; our minds also know something about the actual content of the trauma. We inherit things that sometimes seem amazing and incredible about different times in our ancestors’ lives, like dates or specific memories. For example, my mother’s brother drowned when she was ten years old. He was fourteen. And, even before hearing this story, the children in the next generation were afraid of water. That happens often if you have been explicitly told about the trauma, but many times even if you have not.
I’m like this because
I carry the trauma and triumphs of my ancestors.
I was severely beaten if I got a B+, and I know lots of other kids who were, too. Our parents went through a lot of really tough stuff, and when they came here, they were like: The way that you’re going to survive is you’re going to get good grades and make money and become a doctor, and then you’ll be safe in this world. The physical abuse was driven by fear and trauma. San Jose has the biggest concentration of Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam, and there are a lot of Vietnamese refugees in my community. There are a lot of Korean War survivors. There are a lot of Chinese survivors of the Cultural Revolution. There’s a big Cambodian population who are survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide. Over time, I realized they were terrified. I have come to understand that I was part of a community of trauma. Coming to terms with that helped take some of my self-loathing away, that critical part that kept saying: I’m a freak. I’m the worst. I realized I’m a product of war and capitalism and big global socioeconomic factors that are a lot larger than me.
STEPHANIE FOO
Every single person has some element of trauma that is generational. And the pain of generational trauma will have some form of rage. That’s righteous rage. It’s rage that has to be honored.
DR. MARIEL BUQUÉ
Why am I like this?
Understanding why we are the way we are isn’t just about learning what happened to us and how we survived it; it’s also about learning what happened before us and how they survived it.
GLENNON
I draw so much inspiration from my ancestors, from the freedom makers of my past. There was no way out, but they made a way. They had a trickster energy. They existed in two different worlds; they were able to build community within a culture that was so toxic and violent. My grandmother was working two jobs, raising eight children, and healing from post-traumatic stress because she left Mississippi after seeing a lynching during Jim Crow terrorism. I say that my ancestors floated on a spaceship that they built out of uncertainty and hope. They floated up north, away from the South, hoping for a new world. And they built new worlds within a world that didn’t want them free, that didn’t see them as human beings. That’s the resistance I’m pulled to. No one can tell me that something is impossible. I don’t believe it.
TRICIA HERSEY
I’m like this because I carry the trauma and triumphs of my ancestors.
Why am I like this?
GLENNON: I’ve had many moments in this healing journey when I think: Thanks a lot, ancestors. Why did I end up with all of this work to do? What the hell were you doing? My sister and I actually started looking back at our ancestors and discovered that it was only a few generations ago that my great-great-grandfather was separated from his parents—ripped from his family, home, and country— and put on a boat to cross the ocean and escape starvation in Ireland. Sometimes I can almost hear my ancestors saying: Okay, this assignment you have—healing this bit of generational trauma—this is your ocean. You are the one in our lineage who transforms this so that it stops with you. We weren’t able to because we didn’t have the time or the resources. We had different oceans to cross. Now, lucky one, this is the ocean you cross for us.
ABBY: The blessing and the curse.
PRENTIS HEMPHILL: That’s right. It’s a beautiful thing to honor where we’ve come from. It’s a remembering. And they are us. Like you said, this is your part in it. You’re the edge of your lineage, and there’s something for you to attend to. There’s something for you to transform.
There’s an intergenerational unconscious, which means that one generation lives inside the other and they share unconsciousness and then communicate with each other bidirectionally. They communicate with each other things that they’re not aware of and often that they don’t intend to communicate.
DR. GALIT ATLAS
Seeking to understand where our loved one’s pain comes from may be the thesis of all of my work. Where does pain come from? When you ask that question and start to find answers, you realize that the complexity of the various violences we experience with our mothers or otherwise come from them being hurt by systems that began way before they were even born. They were up against so much. It doesn’t erase the harm that we’ve experienced, but it throws it into context and amplifies them as people who tried their best. It’s actually really beautiful to see that every mother had their limit, which actually renders them human.
I can’t speak for others, but for me, I saw that the violence in my mother was an expression of her powerlessness. She had no agency as a person, as a woman, in her relationships with men, in her relationship with the world, with society, at her job. And so it just exploded out of that frustration. Her frustration was always a desire to make me better, to protect me. It sounds so antithetical, but that’s what trauma is. Trauma doesn’t make sense. It should never make sense.
When we think about PTSD, we’re talking about people who are displaced in memory. They are acting as if the danger is around the corner, even when they’re in relative safety. This is true with survivors of domestic violence; it’s true with refugees and veterans. If you think about veterans’ hypervigilance and paranoia, they’re thinking in the war zone.
A lot of Holocaust scholars are trying to reorient what we think about epigenetic trauma as something akin to epigenetic strength. It wasn’t just the passing of trauma or baggage or suffering; it was the passing of strength, vigilance, or even paranoia, this desire to control. My mother would, before she went to the DMV, for example, prepare days in advance: the paper, the files, the money, cash to slip. She prepared to go to the DMV like she was preparing for war. On one hand, it’s really sad to see. But on the other hand, that was a skill. There’s innovation there, there’s survival. Nobody
survivesbyaccident. Survival is a creative act.
OCEAN VUONG
I’m like this because
What happened to me shaped me.
Trauma is not conscious. It’s your body saying: This particular thing that happened is too much, too fast, too soon, or too long without enough repair. When trauma activates, your sense of self in the world drifts and gets stuck. But pervasive trauma that happens over long periods of time—in the world or in a person’s body— can begin to be perceived as personality traits. Trauma in family systems can look like family traits. Trauma in a people can look like culture. Trauma in a culture can look natural and/or standard. Someone who’s endured trauma might seem “crazy.” They’re not crazy. They’re keeping themselves alive. Untended trauma responses are not defective; they are protective.
RESMAA MENAKEM
Why am I like this?
I survived ongoing sexual abuse as a child. This happened during a time when kids are supposed to be learning how to move in their bodies, the age that they’re learning how to be free and have agency in their bodies—that they can jump from here to there. And I was learning how to leave my body to survive. I’m certainly no expert, but we know that’s a very common and necessary trauma response. Dissociation gets a bad name, but in the immediacy of trauma, it’s actually a mercy. Unfortunately, that disembodiment can extend into our later life even when the threat is no longer there and we no longer need it for survival.
COLE ARTHUR RILEY
If you get in a car accident—let’s say you’re getting doughnuts—your brain encodes all of the details around you. Maybe the guy who hit you was wearing a blue sweater and you’re in front of this doughnut place. So it encodes all of these details as potential threats because you’re going through a traumatic incident. In the future, your brain isn’t trying to be sensible; it’s trying to save your life. So you might see a doughnut and you might feel panicky. That doesn’t make any sense, of course, but that’s how your brain works. This is the adaptation that our brilliant bodies have come up with to try to keep us alive.
STEPHANIE FOO
It’s an odd thing to be a Black child raised in a white supremacist abusive family. There was physical abuse, and your body eventually heals from that abuse generally; but it’s always the psychological abuse that’s more insidious. It’s the colonization of our minds. I think we’re all decolonizing our minds all the time because we’ve been raised in these toxic systems of hierarchy.
ALLISON RUSSELL
There was this abuse that was happening during one season of my childhood. Something was happening to me at night from a child that was an acquaintance of the family. I knew something was happening, but I didn’t know what it was. I had a sense that the reality was different from the performance that we were all engaged in. But I was told that sense was wrong or that sense was to be ignored or that sense made me crazy. And so I learned very early on to not trust myself.
KERRY WASHINGTON
Glennon: Okay, Sam, did you have a happy childhood, or are you funny?
Samantha Irby: I’m funny. No, no. Let’s say I’m very funny. Whenever you meet anyone you think is funny, you just get to the point where you’re like: Okay, what’s your damage? How did you get here?
I’m like this because
What happened to me shaped me.
Why am I like this?
GLENNON: You said, “Somewhere around the same time that my internal shame alarm started going off, I started leading a double life. I joked instead of crying. I shoved my pain way down and put a joke on top, getting funnier and funnier by the minute.” You say, “Eleven was the age my self-hatred became sentient.”
As I read, I wrote down in my notes, “At eleven years old: Glennon became bulimic, Abby became a soccer star, Cameron became funny.” We know that from age eight to twelve we begin to split—we hide our real self, and we become something else to present to the world.
CAMERON ESPOSITO: Yes. I didn’t realize this until just a few years ago, but I think I was pretty badly bullied as a child. I thought that’s how everybody was treated. I had glasses and braces and a bowl cut and something weird was going on with my gender and I was gay and I had crossed eyes. So I tried to make the joke first, like: I know what you’re going to say. Well, here’s an even funnier spin. I also did this to have value. I wasn’t able to play the game of being a girl that might be valuable for some other stuff that women are valued for. So I got super funny.
I’m like this because
I have many selves inside of me.
Is the self a fixed, understandable entity? Probably not. I feel more like a community than a singular self. I feel like I’m made up of many competing, conflicting parts that developed in response to the trauma and magic of living. As Whitman said, we each contain multitudes.
GLENNON
Why am I like this?
The core idea of Internal Family Systems is that we are all made up of many autonomous little parts. They are little minds inside of us, and they are what we usually call “thinking.” They argue or talk or try to give us advice all the time. Like kids in a family, parts start out innocent and pure and open—eager inner children. But traumas force them out of their natural roles into extreme roles. These are the most sensitive parts of us, so they get hurt the most by the traumas and the rejections and the betrayals. They take on the burdens of emotional pain, terror, and worthlessness. They get scared the most by whatever trauma happened. And they get stuck at the age of that trauma—frozen at that scene and terrified. We don’t want to feel that pain all the time, so we lock these parts of ourselves away. We exile them to inner basements. And we do that without realizing that we’re actually distancing ourselves from our most precious qualities. But through Internal Family Systems therapy, we can learn to heal and gain access to these exiled parts again. What we often find is that as people gain access to their exiled parts, they want to start to paint, they want to start to play. They get access to these things that they had locked away.
RICHARD SCHWARTZ
Our parts develop to protect us. They try to keep us from feeling too much—to keep us a little dissociated from our bodies. When our parts experience injuries or trauma, they take on what Richard Schwartz calls “burdens.” And then their job becomes controlling the outside world so those burdens don’t get triggered. Our parts started to protect us when we were just children; they think we are still children, and they protect us the way they did back then. And these behaviors, which protected us when we were little, often become something that hurts us later on like an eating disorder or an addiction. The world tells us: That part of you is bad. It is creating pain for you and everyone around you. Tell that part to go away. Focus on these other parts of you. But when we try to drown out any part of ourselves, it just gets stronger, defending itself; it flails around wildly, taking over until it can get our attention. Because every part is equally valuable and beneficial to us. Our parts served their purpose at the time of the trauma. That’s why we have to look deeper and say, “I trust that you are trying to help. What are you trying to protect? What are you trying to say?”
AMANDA
There are certain voices inside my head that will never quiet down until they first feel fully heard, acknowledged, and understood. I find myself wondering: What is this part’s problem? Why on earth is it telling me not to eat? Why? Why? Why? Turn it down, turn it down, turn it down. No. Turn it all the way up. It needs to be heard. It’s saying: Glennon, your house wasn’t a safe place to indulge your appetite. So I protected you by keeping us small and safe. That’s what I’m still trying to do. I’m trying to keep you small and safe so we can survive. I’m just trying to protect you. We have these parts that have worked so hard for so long and have done a really good job helping us survive. They just have old information. They just don’t know that we’re safe now and all the rules are different. They just need an update.
GLENNON
I created a little avatar, a little fighter in the video game of life who wears a motorcycle jacket and holds a microphone to go out into the world in front of me. It’s a dissociative protection of the real me, my little self, and it’s actually very sweet. Thinking about taking care of myself like that, especially at a young age and also still now, I like thinking that there’s someone saying: “I got you. You hang out back there, I got this one.” And then that high-haired stand-up comic goes out into the world and takes care of my more tender self.
CAMERON ESPOSITO
I’m like this because
I have many selves inside of me.
I had a client who cut herself in addition to having bulimia. I got curious and asked, “Why do you do this to her?” The part proceeded to tell me the whole history of how when she was being abused as a child, it had to step in and distract her from that. And it turned out that it was a heroic story. I could actually shift and have a huge appreciation for how it basically saved her life. As I did that, the part broke into tears because everyone had demonized it and tried to get rid of it. And finally somebody was understanding and appreciating it. Our parts think they are helping us survive.
RICHARD SCHWARTZ
How old were you when you looked around and thought: I have to take control of this. Elementary school? You were just a little kid, and you took on the responsibility, probably for your family, for the rest of the world, because you wanted the best for everyone. So you put your own happiness into the furnace. And you were just a little kid. So how do you feel toward this little one who was trying to help their parents be happy, help keep the world on its axis? How do you feel toward that person now?
MARTHA BECK
I’m
like this because
I am shaped by my culture.
There are two kinds of suffering in the world.
There’s a kind of suffering that is inevitable, that’s a part of the human experience, like we are all going to have our hearts broken. We’re all going to have loss and grief. We’re all going to have to work hard at some point.
I believe— and this is an idea adapted from wisdom originally shared by john powell—that there’s another kind of suffering that is actually avoidable. That has to do with the systems we live within and what they tell us about who we are and how much power we have.
AI-JEN POO
The label is not a finite container; it’s a project; it’s a field of knowledge. When I say I’m Asian American, I’m talking about a journey, I’m not talking about a checkbox. People try to put me into a checkbox, but how can we be finished with anything: masculinity, femininity, anything? I don’t know what this is yet. How could you know? How could any of us know?
I’m
like this because
I am shaped by the boxes culture put me in.
OCEAN VUONG
When we go out to eat, I look at the menu and I’m like: Okay, so here are my options. I order from the menu. Then the waiter turns to Abby, and she’s like “Can you please do that but add that, and then can you take away that?” Then she gets her dish, and it’s always so much better than mine. Every time I secretly feel jealous because it’s like she’s broken the rules and been rewarded for it. I thought we were supposed to stay on the menu to be polite.
That is how women feel when another woman goes off the menu and she seems to have this delicious, creative life in front of her. We look at her, and we think: Well, it’s too late for me, because I already ordered. So instead of admitting we feel cheated—we get angry at her.
The
world gives us a menu about sexuality, gender, work, motherhood. There are specific reasons why we have limited options. It’s because the menu doesn’t serve the person ordering; it serves the order of things. Somebody made that menu, and it wasn’t us.
GLENNON
Isn’t it so weird that we only have two categories that we’re allowed to be?
ABBY
We view gender as inherent and inborn—something that just exists. But in reality, we make gender exist by giving it meaning.
We create gender by telling a child who they are a thousand times a day, even before the child is born—through our overt and implied expectations, reactions, fears, and goals for them. What is appropriate for them? What is taboo for them? What do they get shunned for? What do they get praised for?
Kids have different experiences of the world based on our gender-specific expectations, reactions, fears, and goals for them. This difference becomes embedded in their identity, in their sense of self-worth, creating different people. Then we say, “Look! These people are different! Gender must be why!”—instead of seeing that our constant construction, policing, and reinforcement of gender is the reason for that difference.
People believe that biology is destiny. But actually, culture is destiny. Because cultural rules become infused into who we are. And then we point to who we are as evidence of inborn biology. And the self-fulfilling prophecy continues.
But the good news is that culture is always changing—and so too is our destiny.
AMANDA
I’m like this because
I’ve been shaped by my culture’s gender rules.
Why am I like this?
It’s so funny to me that people accuse trans and nonbinary people of imposing this gender conversation on them, when the real imposition was dividing billions of complex, divine, nuanced souls into two categories: men and women. They tell you that there are only two genders, and they get away with it because they kill, disappear, erase, discredit, and delegitimize all of us who, for hundreds of years, have lived alongside you.
ALOK
When I watch men play sports or see them in the stands, I’m amazed by how they hug and kiss each other, become giddy together, lie on the field and cry together, express unbridled sorrow, vulnerable enthusiasm, passion, tears. I always wonder: Is this why men love sports? Because it’s a place where they can let go of the boy rules: don’t touch each other, don’t show vulnerability, don’t care too much, don’t show joy or connection? Is sports the place where they’re allowed to be free from all of that and finally be fully human? And women and girls in sports, they seem so free, too: free to abandon the girl rules and be fierce, animalistic, mighty, competitive. In a realm that is so deeply gendered, it’s fascinating to see people free from gender rules.
GLENNON
As a teacher, I observed up close how we train little girls and boys. Every time a boy had an issue with another boy, the boys would be instructed to deal with each other in an honest, direct way. But when little girls had conflicts with each other, the adults would become extremely uncomfortable. The imperative was always “Just be nicer. Be nice. Get along.” It was very, very important that all the girls made peace, even if it was a false peace maintained by swallowing their feelings and never even addressing the original rift. The girls didn’t have the right to have a rift. Girls are always being trained to choose their own inner conflict instead of daring to create outer conflict.
So it’s not shocking that women might struggle to handle conflict with each other plainly and directly. We were taught to swallow conflict, to ignore when people hurt us, to fake it when we don’t like people—to act like we do like them. But the truth always comes out. If you can’t tell the truth directly, it comes out sideways—which is where the trope of “cattiness” comes from. I think that women would stab each other in the back less if, when we were young, we were allowed to stab each other in the front and then get on with things.
GLENNON
I’m like
because I’ve been shaped by my culture’s gender rules.