We Can Do Hard Things

Dr. Becky Kennedy returns to walk us through the #1 strategy for all relationships: REPAIR. She teaches us how to repair by revisiting hard moments to infuse them with love, connection, and new perspectives – and what happens when we don’t repair (it’s not good). Dr. Becky highlights how lack of repair can traumatize us by leaving us alone to make meaning of disconnection. 

Plus, we deep dive into the difference between repair and apology, and why it can be so hard to apologize (particularly for Abby to the kids and for Glennon to Abby).

About Dr. Becky: 

Dr. Becky Kennedy is a clinical psychologist, bestselling author, and mom of three – who’s rethinking the way we raise our children – and named “The Millennial Parenting Whisperer” by TIME Magazine. Dr. Becky is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be and founder of the Good Inside Membership platform, a hub with Dr. Becky’s complete parenting content collection all in one place. Dr. Becky hosts Good Inside with Dr Becky, a chart-topping podcast with over 20M downloads. In 2023, Dr. Becky delivered a TED Talk in which she shares “the single most important parenting strategy”.

TW: @goodinside

IG: @drbeckyatgoodinside

Just in time for the holidays: adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown join us for a heart-opening, mind-bending conversation about sisterhood, justice, family, and how to love ourselves and people with different values simultaneously. 

• Why their family holidays used to end in explosions – and the strategy they used to transform family time into peaceful respites.

• Their intentional practice for creating a more beautiful way of spending time together - including their weekly “Sister Check-ins.” 

• What their mother did as children to protect their dignity, and what they are doing now to protect hers.

• Their beautiful vision for the future – and invitation to all of us to go with them. 

For our conversation with adrienne, check out 239. Why Are We Never Satisfied? With adrienne maree brown. 

About adrienne: 

adrienne maree brown grows healing ideas in public through writing, music, and podcasts. adrienne has nurtured Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination and Transformative Justice as ideas, frameworks, networks and practices for transformation. adrienne’s work is informed by 25 years of social and environmental justice facilitation primarily supporting Black liberation. adrienne is the author/editor of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds; Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good; Grievers; and Maroons.adrienne lives in Durham, NC.

TW: @adriennemaree

IG:@adriennemareebrown

About Autumn: 

Autumn Brown is a mother, organizer, theologian, artist, and facilitator. The youngest child of an interracial marriage, rooted in the complex lineages of counter-culturalism and the military industrial complex, Autumn is a queer, mixed-race Black woman who identifies closely with her African and European lineages, and a gifted facilitator who grounds her work in healing from the trauma of oppression. 

Autumn is a facilitator with the Anti-Oppression Resource & Training Alliance (AORTA), a worker-owned cooperative devoted to strengthening movements for social justice and a solidarity economy through political education, training, and planning. Prior to joining AORTA, Autumn served as the Executive Director of RECLAIM!, a non-profit that works to increase access to mental health support so that queer and trans youth may reclaim their lives from oppression in all its forms.

Autumn co-hosts the podcast "How to Survive the End of the World" with her sister, adrienne maree brown. She lives in Minneapolis with her three brilliant children.

IG:@autumnmeghanbrown

When was the first time you were made aware of your body or made to feel ashamed of your body? As promised, poet and author, Megan Falley, returns and blows Glennon’s mind with her explorations into the complexities of body, gender, and love. 

Megan reflects on her earliest memories of body shame and the lessons she learned about love from her family (and how she’s able to hold both the good and the bad at once). Megan shares about her summers at “fat camp,” her decision to leave an abusive relationship, and finding love with poet Andrea Gibson that redefined for her what it means to truly love and be loved. At the end, she tells a story that Glennon decides is the best description she’s heard of what forgiveness might actually be. 

For our Andrea Gibson and double date episodes, check out: 

Ep 245 An Unforgettable Double Date with Andrea Gibson & Megan Falley

Ep 215 The Bravest Conversation We’ve Had: Andrea Gibson

About Megan: 

Megan Falley is a nationally-ranked slam poet and the author of three full-length collections of poetry – most recently her book “Drive Here and Devastate Me”. Since transitioning to writing prose, excerpts from her memoir-in-progress have won several first- and second-place national prizes. She runs an online writing workshop called “Poems That Don’t Suck” which has been heralded as “a degree’s worth of education in 5 short weeks.”

TW: @megan_falley

IG: @meganfalley

Author and clinical psychologist, Lindsay C. Gibson, is back to share practical steps to disentangle ourselves from emotionally immature people (EIPs), emphasizing the importance of repetition, persistence, and consistency in communication as well as boundary setting.

Lindsay addresses questions about being in relationship with EIPs including: 

• Are people raised by EIPs prone to entering relationships with similar dynamics?

• What happens when we try to have conversations or engage in conflict with EIPs?

• How do we ACTUALLY HEAL as adult children of EIPs and maintain healthy detachment?

For Part 1 of our conversation, check out: 263. Healing from Emotionally Immature Parents with Lindsay C. Gibson.

Lindsay C. Gibson’s books can be found here:  http://www.lindsaygibsonpsyd.com/books.html

About Lindsay:

Lindsay C. Gibson is an author and clinical psychologist, and practicing psychotherapist for over thirty years. She has written several books, including Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and Disentangling from Emotionally Immature People. Dr. Gibson specializes in therapy and coaching with adults to attain new levels of personal growth and confidence in dealing with emotionally immature people. 

Website: http://www.lindsaygibsonpsyd.com/

Author and clinical psychologist, Lindsay C. Gibson, helps us identify the characteristics of emotionally immature people (EIPs) like ego-centrism, lack of empathy, and fear of emotional intimacy.

Lindsay shares the effects of being raised by emotionally immature parents, mapping out two routes children often take – becoming internalizers or externalizers – and how that plays out in adult relationships and professional lives. 

Emphasizing the importance of self-compassion, Lindsay explains how often the most important step toward healing is identifying the EIPs in our lives. 

Lindsay C. Gibson’s books can be found here:  http://www.lindsaygibsonpsyd.com/books.html

About Lindsay:

Lindsay C. Gibson is an author and clinical psychologist, and practicing psychotherapist for over thirty years. She has written several books, including Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and Disentangling from Emotionally Immature People. Dr. Gibson specializes in therapy and coaching with adults to attain new levels of personal growth and confidence in dealing with emotionally immature people. 

Website: http://www.lindsaygibsonpsyd.com/

Aubrey Gordon – activist, author, and teacher – talks to us about anti-fat bias and the way it manifests in employment disparities, our healthcare system, our dinner table conversations, and our parenting. She teaches us about “concern trolling” and other ways anti-fatness hides inside of our “do-gooding.” Sharing her personal experiences, Aubrey illuminates the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that our culture perpetuates anti-fatness – and examines the roots of thinness as a system of supremacy. She points us toward a world where we are all safer and freer. 

Plus, a heart-piercing voicemail from a concerned Pod Squader about their 11-year-old daughter's body image struggles.

For more information on why BMI is horseshit, check out Ep 10 OUR BODIES: Why are we at war with them and can we ever make peace?

About Aubrey:

Aubrey Gordon is an author, columnist, and cohost of the Maintenance Phase podcast. She is the author of the New York Times and Indie bestseller “You Just Need to Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths About Fat People, and What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Vox, SELF, Health, Glamour and more. Aubrey is also the subject of the new documentary film YOUR FAT FRIEND, which explores her journey from anonymous blogger to bestselling author and activist.

TW: @yrfatfriend

IG: @yrfatfriend

Author and artist, Jenny Odell, discusses how to break from the attention economy long enough to feel fully alive in a culture obsessed with productivity. She shares stories of her encounters with nature, how to be creative instead of productive, how to be less useful in order to survive, and the real reason for art and rest. This is a deep dive about how to stay human in a world that wants us to become machines.

About Jenny: 

Jenny Odell is a multidisciplinary artist and the New York Times bestselling author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy and Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Sierra magazine, and other publications. She lives in Oakland, California.

TW: @the_jennitaur

IG: @jennitaur

Glennon, Abby, Amanda and the Pod Squad share their most brutiful and hilarious holiday stories.

Author and cultural observer, Roxane Gay, examines the landscape of the internet and our relationship with it. We discuss the line between constructive criticism and online toxicity; how to decide when to speak up and when to stay quiet; and how to stay human and allow redemption in an online world that demands perfection.

Plus, a breakdown of our shared unguilty pleasure: Naked Attraction.

About Roxane: 

Roxane Gay is the author of several books, including Ayiti, An Untamed State, New York Times bestsellers Bad Feminist and Hunger; and the national bestseller Difficult Women.

Her writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Short Stories, Best Sex Writing, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. 

She also has a newsletter, “The Audacity” – and once had a podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda.

Her latest book, Opinions, is available now.

TW: @rgay

IG: @roxanegay74

How do we bring our full selves into our relationships without fear of rejection? 

Today, Abby shares more about what’s been happening in her life since she’s stopped “bright siding” including powerful truth-telling she’s unleashed in business and her family of origin.

Glennon shares how Abby embracing her full emotions has led to deeper intimacy and connection, and a feeling of “un-loneliness” in their partnership – the opposite of what Abby feared might happen. 

Plus, we discuss how toxic positivity and polarized dynamics in relationships can lead to emotional disconnection and loneliness. 

For the first part of our conversation, check out 258. Abby Asks, “Why Can’t I Love Myself?”