Coming To Terms With Your Shadow Side - Uncut with Abby Wambach
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This episode was recorded on Camaragal land. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany. And I'm Keisha. And today we are so lucky. This guest that is joining us has been on our bucket list for...

I'd say a couple years now. Well, yeah, you guys know that I'm a bit of a football girly now. I'm a soccer girly. I'm officially a wag as of the last couple of weeks. But today's a bit of a flex for anyone in the football world. But I think even if you're not in the football soccer world, you'd be hard pressed not to know who our guest is.

Do you know what? It was actually so hard to write this intro because there were so many things that she's done and so many achievements. I was like, wow, we don't overachieve, Abbey. Yeah.

After winning the Women's World Cup in 2015, Abby retired and has gone on to be one of the most prominent voices fighting for equality and inclusion. Abby has recently released her latest book that she co-authored with her wife, Glennon Doyle, and Amanda Doyle. It is called We Can Do Hard Things. The book is broken into 20 of life's biggest questions like, why am I like this? How do I figure out what I want? Why can't I be happy? And how do I forgive?

This book, you get bang for your buck. It's over 500 pages. So it's like cost per page, very, very low. And from YouTube, I'm showing you now. It includes additions from some of the world's most interesting and influential people like Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Gilbert, who we have been lucky enough to chat with, Brene Brown, Esther Perel, Reese Witherspoon, just to name a couple. So today we wanted to chat with Abby about some of the hard things that she has faced in life and what those challenges taught her about herself and the world. Abby, on

Welcome to the podcast. Thank you guys both for having me. And I just want to say, give a big shout out to my favorite Aussie footballer, Sam Kerr. Yes. Come on, Sam Kerr. I love her so much. And what you all did with the World Cup was just so fun to watch last time around. It's actually been so incredible. And I mean, Sam here is like...

I don't know what it was and I'm trying to put my finger on it, but it just exploded in the football world here. Like the World Cup just changed everything for women's sport, not just in Australia, but I think around the world. But in Australia, I think football was always of interest. Soccer was always of interest, but it wasn't like the number one sport. And after that World Cup, it's all anyone talks about. It outsells the men's sports. It's actually so incredible to watch.

And there were also such high percentage increases in girls that were being signed up to join like local league soccer teams and that kind of thing. It was just amazing. And I think it was the most viewed thing in Australian TV history. Yeah. Which is really, really – I will fact check that before this goes down.

And the birth name for females of Matilda went up like, I'm making this up, 50%. That was a statistic I made up. Abby, we start every episode with an Accidentally Unfiltered, your most embarrassing story. I can only assume for some reason you're giving the energy of that you've got many. I've got a lot. And for the listener who has no clue who I am, just stay with me.

Stay with me here. I am hard. It is hard to embarrass me because I'm the youngest of seven children. Yeah. I've basically been abused and teased and battered my whole life around just being the youngest of seven children. And so it is very difficult to embarrass me. And by the way, this is going to sound pretty serious when I say what I'm going to say, but don't worry. There's a lot of healing that has taken place.

Here's what happened. I won the World Cup in 2015, was deciding on whether I was going to retire or continue on to play in the Olympics in 2016. I was living in Portland, Oregon in the Pacific Northwest of the United States at the time. And I made the very stupid decision to go golfing with some buddies of mine.

And I was drinking a lot of alcohol that day. And we went to a barbecue after the round of golf. And I thought that I was fine to drive home.

I got in a car and I got a DUI, got pulled over and I get a DUI. And I'm sure, I think that most places other than the United States, like that is abhorrent behavior. Like I know in the UK, like if you get a DUI, like you're like people, people are like, what the fuck is wrong with you? So I went to jail and, and I woke up and my face was on the ESPN, which is like the most famous sports television show here. Um,

My mugshot was on the ticker, the bottom where they... It was just like the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me. The most shameful because it really pointed out a bigger problem that I was having with alcohol that I was hiding and I was keeping secret from the rest of the world. A lot of my people knew that I had this problem and I was kind of suffering and struggling with alcohol at the time. But, you know...

decision ever. Yeah. Best outcome because I have not had a drink since that night. You know, almost 10 years sober, which is the part of the story that gets better, folks. Yeah. Congratulations. Most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me. Abby, I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie.

That's the most serious accidentally unfiltered we've ever had. But I understand it because before we started this conversation, guys, we said to Abby, do you have this accidentally unfiltered? She's like, yeah, does it have to be funny? And I said, no, it doesn't have to be. And then in my head I thought, what could it be that could be that embarrassing? Because every story almost ends in –

in laughter and that one doesn't like that that that actually you're like then I went to prison and then the whole nation knew that I guess it's either roundabout way because it ended well for you now I guess you can look back and I mean probably be grateful and have a laugh at that moment yeah you know I think that you know I'm sure that there's a lot of people in the world that struggle

struggle with alcohol. I know Aussies love to party. Honestly, in the Olympic Village, the Aussie house was like the one that was always going off. Like, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. It's so wild. They're like the biggest partiers. But I do think that like embarrassment comes in all forms. And if you knew what it was like to be me,

at the end of my retirement when you're a professional athlete there's this weird relationship you have with the public where it matters to you more because so much of your livelihood is dependent on whether people like you or not which is terrible but it's just true especially at the time for a woman footballer I

I was making most of my money in endorsements off the field. And that has everything to do with if people like me and if people think I'm a good footballer. Right. And so that is the biggest for sure embarrassment of my life. I mean, look, I perioded on my pants during a couple of soccer games, like white shorts and,

I think now Nike and the national team doesn't allow their women to wear white shorts for this purpose. So you're welcome. I took one for the team. Not all heroes wear capes, Abby. They just bleed on their pants. Exactly. Exactly.

Abby, I don't want to jump ahead too much because, you know, we had planned on talking to you about alcohol and your decision to go sober and that kind of thing. But I can't remember the name. There is like a psychological term for this. And essentially it's around the concept of if things are medium bad, you don't tend to make change in your life. But things sometimes have to get so bad that

that you are forced to make a big change. Was that moment of getting a DUI, having your face on every news program and you probably internationally for it, like if not nationally, it was likely an international news. I'm curious about how bad it had to get for you to be like, holy shit, I need to change everything about this. My relationship with alcohol is not a good one. And this is like the impetus for change. That was the only thing that was going to wake me up. Right.

You know, I tried a couple of times before to go and as an athlete, like, look, I trained really hard. And when I was with the team, I never drank. Right. But then when I'd get home, I'd party really hard. And so my ability to have like a high functioning alcoholism was really difficult to even admit that I had a problem because I was winning like gold medals and shit, you know, like

It's very difficult and it makes a lot of sense. I do understand why so many of us pro athletes struggle with addiction because we

We're so accustomed to having our brains and the dopamine and the pleasures parts of our brains utilized a lot. Like when we're out in the field and you're being screamed for by 50,000 people and then you go back to your hotel room, you're like, well, this sucks. And so that's like an easy fix for it. So yeah, that moment needed to happen.

Because it had to be so horrific and so shameful and so embarrassing. By the way, I've processed through it. I don't feel that way about myself anymore. Yeah.

Cause I was just like hurting and I was suffering so much. And I was, I was having a lot of mental health stuff. I was coming up into, I was going into a retirement that I didn't plan for. Yeah. I didn't know what the hell I was going to do. I didn't know what to call myself. I didn't know what to feel. I didn't identity wise. I was just having a total existential crisis. In fact, I,

When I got this DUI, I actually ended up changing and completely reorganizing my entire life. I moved to Florida. I moved totally out of state. I don't talk to a lot of the friends that I had at the time for various reasons, but mostly it's due to geographical proximity. Here's the thing. What does Oprah say? She said, life will send you whispers. And if you're not listening...

then life eventually will send you a big brick in the face. And that's what you got. That's what I got. Did you know that you had a problem with alcohol? Like was it, were you, every time you drank, were you like, I know this isn't right. I know I'm drinking to excess. I know I need to change it. Or was it just a really normal part of your life because you'd been doing it for so long? I had no idea. Yeah. For a long time. It wasn't until my first wife started to ask me questions about it. Like, and here's the thing, like,

I think that the alcoholism and addiction is a symptom to something else that was going on inside of me. And I was suffering because I was struggling in this first marriage and I didn't know how to fix it and I didn't know what to do about it. I was struggling because I was coming upon this retirement. I did not know what to do. And that was the only thing that I had ever learned throughout my life that was able to soothe me quickly.

was to like soothe this desperation, this horror, this fear, and without like guardrails of soccer, because soccer really did protect me from going into like a real full-fledged addiction because I had to go into camp every few weeks. I had to keep playing soccer for most of the year.

So it in some ways saved me and also some ways kind of covered and like camouflage the addiction for all the years. Because if I were to be really honest, I've been a problem drinker since the very first time I ever drank alcohol. I was I was drinking to get drunk as soon as it hit my lips.

I didn't have like an off button. Like I watched, you know, being the youngest of seven kids, my dad is a drinker and my brothers and sisters were all drinkers and watching them do it kind of gave me this like aspiration for it in a way. Yeah. And there's parts of me that still like think like at least in the memory of the person I wanted to become, like there were parts of me growing up that wanted to be like my dad.

where he got to like go to the golf course and drink with his buddies during the day in his retirement. Like that was like the dream. And now I'm like, that is kind of an absurd dream. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's a really good place for us to go now is back to your childhood, Abby. But you do say you're one of the youngest of seven kids, which I imagine is a bit manic. What was it at that time that led you to get into football? And I know you speak about it pretty beautifully in the book, but for those playing at home,

Was it something that the rest of your siblings did? Was it, you know, you just something that your parents really put you into? Or was it something that you found on your own? Yeah, I came from a family of athletes. The way that the brothers and sisters are oriented, there's two older sisters that are like 10 years older and 11 years older. And then there are four boys and then me.

And so because all of them, my sisters included, were very into sports, soccer, basketball, primarily those are the big sports. My brothers also played ice hockey. Interestingly enough, my sister Beth actually, her friends were playing basketball when she was like really young. And she said to my mom, I want to learn how to play soccer. And my mom said, I don't know how to do that. Let's go to the library. So they like checked out a book.

on like how to play soccer for my sister Beth to learn which is I think so important as to like how then I became the soccer player I became like literally anything is possible folks is Beth pissed like yeah she was the one a little bit

Yeah. I mean, she's fine. She went to Harvard and played basketball and became a doctor. Like she's fine. She's like, fuck you. I did the research. I did the soccer research. Your family of real achievers, aren't they? Yeah. Harvard basketball. Okay. Well, here's the thing. I saw what she did and I was like, I'm not going to go that route. I'm just going to play. She played basketball. I played soccer. And I definitely, I went to the University of Florida. I did not go to Harvard. But anyways, to answer your question. Yeah. I think that

Being in a big family of athletes, it put me in an environment where I was like always on a team. And I think that it kind of gave me the ability to watch people and to learn a lot from watching. Even now, I'm 45 and I just started to play beach volleyball.

And somebody can tell me how to do something 1 million times and I don't understand what they're saying. But if they literally visually show me how to do it, I can do that. And so I spent my whole like literal childhood before I could walk. And then I was like jumping off the diving board in 18 months or two years.

And then as time goes on, you know, I start to develop like actual interest, interest in soccer. And I'm good because I've been playing against 10-year-olds and I'm five. I've been playing against my bigger brothers and sisters, 10, 15, 20, you know, and as I'm getting older, they're getting older. So I'm always competing against somebody that's far stronger, taller, faster than me, which I think was really inevitably something that

absolutely shaped me as a pro athlete. It also just sounds like you're probably a natural athlete as well. Like some people, when you say you can just look at something and pick it up, like some people just have that. But you wrote in your book, I really liked this and I'm really interested.

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 and it worked.

I was celebrated, but that kind of affirmation was something I could never really latch onto. I came home from soccer and my family would be so amazed at all of my goals, but I always felt like, what if I stop scoring goals? Will they be able to love what's left?

That is beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time to think that that is how you found yourself in sport. But then it sounds like you just felt like you needed so much validation and you were only getting that from football. Talk us through that. Yeah, some people ask me a lot like why I played soccer and how I achieved the level of success that I did. And I think like if I got to the bottom of it,

It's basically like a bigger version of like, mom, watch this. Yeah. You know, at the Olympics though.

Exactly. Like people woke up. Seriously. And I know that that like, that's funny, but, but it's true. Like a lot of what motivated me deeply is just childhood stuff. And being in a family that a lot of us, I would say all seven of us were always wanting more attention than we were getting. Cause God forbid, like,

My mom didn't have enough time to be able to give all of us the attention that we needed. She tried her best, but it's just impossible. There's seven fucking people that are looking to you for something, you know? And so, yeah, it's like, it's hard to say at this point. I've done a lot of healing around this because...

I love the family that I grew up in and I wouldn't change any of it because it's made me who I am. But I like wonder if I would have been as good of a soccer player, uh,

Had I not had that kind of motivation, like I wonder like if I had like Glennon has asked me a few times, like what if you had the kind of attention and love that that your person needed that you needed? Do you think you would have been striving so hard? And I'm like, I don't know. Like, I kind of think that a lot of us pro athletes are.

We're out there to prove something. There's something. And yeah, I think greatness and being the best is one faction of it. But I also think that there's a deeper part of it that is

truly heartbreaking like what we're actually doing it's like watch me mom or show up for me dad or whatever it might be it's like there is some sort of unmet need from our younger years that we are trying to create in this avenue of professional sports in fact I think it's like

I think it's probably pretty pervasive if you were to get, I mean, it's hard to get athletes to be as honest as this and as open about their families and their childhood, especially ones that were famous, blah, blah, blah. But it is a little heartbreaking to wonder if had I not had soccer, like,

Would I, because it's about self-love at the end of it, right? Like I was always looking for external validation. And in the end, I've had to really do a lot of work for myself around actually loving who I am because I get to take myself everywhere I go. And then I don't need, I do need people, but I'm not like at the mercy of them. It is not going to kill me if they decide they want to leave. Because guess what? Like parents leave.

Right. They they end up dying. And and what then? Like, I need to be able to hold myself back.

and hold my little kid heart too, that just wanted to have the attention she deserved. Abby, I think it's so incredibly relatable, even though very few of us will take it to the extent of being professional athletes. But that question of like, am I good enough? Am I doing enough for you? Are you proud of me? Yeah. And I think it really impacts a lot of us in the sense that it's something that we tend to carry throughout life. It can create anxious attachment styles. It can create

kind of an insatiable need for validation. I know that this is something I very much experienced in my romantic relationships before. Like you said, you kind of do the work, you unpack where that's coming from and

Yeah, I think that that's one of the most relatable things that a lot of us experience when it's just that question of like, am I good enough? And with professional athletes, something that I know you experienced was a lot of change in a very short period of time. And it was when you decided to quit soccer, quit your marriage, quit alcohol, quit

But when you were conditioned in a way to kind of still seek that validation, how do you go from getting all of that validation and being reinforced that you are fantastic and people adore you and you decide to stop doing the thing that gives you that adoration and go into retirement? How did you adjust to all of that change? This is a great question. And actually nobody's ever asked me this question. And I've, so I've never actually told anybody how I've done this part because

Because there was about two years of my life before I felt well enough, like stable enough, I should say, post-alcohol, where I felt strong enough to actually want to start doing the real work. Yes, I was doing the work by just staying sober. That's hard fucking enough. And the only way I can describe this is what I did. So as an athlete...

This is going to sound so freaking crazy, y'all. But I'm going to say it anyway. The only medal that I ever kept up and out for me to see is this third place medal from the qualifying tournament for the 2011 Women's World Cup where we didn't straight away qualify. We got...

second place and had to play a home and away match against somebody to qualify for the World Cup. And that was a huge deal in the women's soccer world. I took a lot of responsibility for it because I felt like I let my team down. Anyway, this is the medal that drove me that it was like the constant reminder, things happen. You need to make sure that you're working harder than everybody else. You need to make sure that you're scoring the goals that the team needs you to score the goals.

So this was the symbol, this motivation, this motivated me. Right. And when I retired, I switched that out, especially going through all of what you just said. I switched it out with my gold medal as a reminder that if my ego started to get back online, cause my ego got like, it was interestingly like in the jail, like the light switch of my ego just got shut down. It just turned off. Like it,

Oh no. Like it was like the most humbling thing that's ever happened to me. Like, Oh wow. But that perception of the shiny athlete was shattered. Not only for the external, but for the internal, like I'm untouchable. I am immortal. I mean the amount of times people as an athlete tell you that, and especially for me, like I was a big strong player for this moment to actually happen. Um,

to be able to open myself up to healing and to doing this like work, the gold medal symbolized this remembering of like, wow, you, you are a good person and you have done really good things. This one moment in your life is not going to define you and you will also make it right. You will somehow find a way to make the best out of this. This is not, this is a moment where you,

A lot of people pivot in certain ways. And I just like, I am a firm believer that things happen for reasons. And also if things just happen, period. And what you do with what happens kind of cultivates your character. And yeah, so that was a really weird and wicked time. And when I got to, it was about 18 months that I started, I gave myself a full like 18 month break of not working out.

Cause my body literally needed like a total reset. And then around 18 months later, I was like, you know what? I'm going to start, I'm going to start walking and like getting back into the embodied Abby and

And then of course it like turns into like, I'm running and then I'm training for a marathon and then I'm running a marathon. And so that addictive ego part of me gets back online and goes for it. And so when we moved to Los Angeles in 2021, I said, okay, I'm going to figure out how to love myself once and for all. And part of what I thought was a

was on the menu for how you love yourself is through suffering. Like self-esteem only came from the grind, but I didn't realize that my self-esteem was so attached to my ego. And so I just took that offline and I was like, okay, I'm going to spend the next year and a half to two years learning how to establish self-esteem without engaging my ego or

by the suffering proxy, if that makes sense. So that's what I did. What did that look like in practice though? Because like, I think everyone has an element of that where it's like, okay,

I need to learn to love myself internally. How? Do I write in a diary? Do I just write the things that I think I'm a good person for? Yeah, I think that it's different for everybody. We all have our different backgrounds and traumas and the things that we're working through and dealing with, blah, blah, blah. But the things that work for me, I can only tell you what worked for me.

is I have a very strong will. Like I can do something for a long period of time and I have an ability to maintain that suffering experience or

because I've had so much positive outcome from those suffering experiences. So when I was planning out the next like 18 months of this search for self-love, I decided, okay, I'm not going to run. And it was also really good timing because the marathon that I did really messed up my ankle. So I couldn't actually run. And I'm going to go to the gym five days a week. And I'm not going to

When I get my body into a state where I have the thought, I don't want to do this because I would have the thought, this is so hard. I don't want to keep doing this set. Like I'm on, I'm on rep eight of 50 pound chest press or whatever. Like I go into this weird pain cave, dark place that I can, I can do it. I can rep it out, but I just, okay, that's going to be my limit.

I'm going to go to the limit and I'm not going to go beyond it. And like over time, it was interesting because the first couple of weeks I was like, oh, I feel like I'm kind of weak. You know, I'm like, I'm weak minded in some way. But what's been able to happen is I've been able to like turn back about 18 months later and the suffering is,

There's like a torture. I was like torturing myself. There was a torturing element to it. So how could I love myself if I'm literally torturing myself? How could those two things can't happen at the same time, at least for me? So when I look back, I just thought, wow, you really had a hard time for a lot of years being a pro athlete. And it psychologically wires your brain in a certain way that makes it very difficult to

in my experience, to understand what self-love could possibly be because you're always overriding your natural needs. You're always saying, oh, that feels wrong. Oh, my, that hurts. And you're just saying, doesn't matter. Yeah. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.

So I don't know how to do that. It's just being soft with yourself and like kind of being like your friend. You know, I think a lot of people work with a lot of psychedelics. I also have worked with psychedelics in my life and they've been really profound. And I remember during an experience, I was just like, oh my gosh, I'm so in love with myself. Yeah.

That's so good. I know. And I just think, yes, that's the energy we need, right? Have you done ayahuasca? No, I'm a little bit scared of that. And I know everybody like...

I don't know. I just don't know if I want to like shit myself and throw up in the same bucket. I was actually in the Amazon jungle, booked in with a shaman, like ready to go. And then I pulled out last minute because I was like, I just don't think I want to shit myself and vomit. And like, and I get this thought of being stuck in that psychedelic world. And I've heard the horror stories, but you do talk a lot about the fact that this all stems back from because you didn't love yourself. And that's a lot of your struggle coming to terms with who you are.

How much of that stems back to your sexuality and figuring out who you were as a teenager? And I know you grew up in quite a religious household. Yeah. Do you, I don't want to use the word blame, but do you come back to that being a really big driving force of your battles?

I think one of the things that I've been taking into my daily life, my parents are aging, they're getting older. They were like little kids at one point too. And that form of compassion exercise has been really helping me with trying really hard not to blame them because I

I do believe that they were given the set of circumstances they were given. They had the parents that they had. They had the time that they were born into. And in fact, when one of our kids came out to us when they were 16, I had this like profound experience in my body. You know, Glennon and I are like the gayest gays who've ever, who ever gayed. Like we are gay squid. We are exactly gay.

But then when your child comes to you and they say, you know, I think I'm queer. And there was an extraordinary amount of fear that lived in me. So some of that is tied back into the conditions of my childhood. Some of that is also tied into my fear for him of the world. Because I have walked the walk.

I have experienced what it is like as a queer person in the world. And especially during a time when it wasn't cool. Yeah. Right. When it was uncool and unpopular and untalked about. Not really accepted. And illegal in some parts. And illegal. Exactly. Exactly. So when this happened, I was talking with Glennon and she was just like, wow, I think that this might mean a lot for you if you can really hear it. And what she said was,

maybe your mom was scared for you, honey, and not of you. And I mean, like, it was like one of the most like profound and important things somebody could ever say to me because yeah, like growing up in the Catholic church, look, I'm not a religious person anymore, but I do believe that like what the faith communities are trying to do, like the good ones, like the good people are,

that they're not attaching themselves to the financial institution of it all. What they're trying to do is spread peace and love. Like I understand that language, but I do think that some of these institutions and religions have these, like these rules that make you feel like you are either in or out, whether like you belong or you don't. And when you're a queer teenager, like,

And you are hearing it from the pulpit that the way you feel in your body is not the way of the parish, of the church itself.

And that now you are going to not belong if you come out and be this way. And for me, I just remember being like, I wish I could fucking help this. I wish I could choose. But it's just not an option for me. It just will never be an option. It's a hard way to grow up. And yet there's a part of me that's like a lot of the way that I love myself now is

is due in large part to the care and strength that it took for me to say, not that religion, this life. I mean, I went against the grain. I went against what was expected of me, knowing that I was going to probably be in more of a public position in the world, dealing with

brands and partnerships that at the time, nobody was coming out. This is like the early 2000s. So being closeted in that way, because it very much affected my livelihood, like all of these things, when you stack them up, it's like, wow, you're amazing for going through all of that for yourself. You're incredible. And also,

I really wish you didn't have to do that. You know, I really like this sentiment or this idea of it's our parents' first time walking this world as well. Like it's our parents' first time walking this path and making their discoveries and dealing with everything that life throws their way. And I think it's amazing that you can now go back and look at the way that your parents'

interacted with you or the lessons that they taught you and have a little bit of grace for it. I think that that's really important as well. And I don't know if that's something that you've even realized more now that you have become a parent. Yeah, of course. I mean, when you're a parent, children are incredibly wonderful, but also incredibly annoying. I've never heard truer sentiment. Yeah. And they just do things that you're just like, what are you doing? Yeah.

And so patience is the thing that I think about parenting that I did not interact with my parents the way that our children interact with me, with my parents. And I feel like I didn't tell them how much gratitude I had enough. Like I had this idea that them being my parents was their job. Like this is what they chose to do. You know, like this is what they get. But it's a partnership. It's a friendship. And if I could go back, I think I would probably change that relationship

part of my childhood, but I was a stubborn asshole. I was like, really wanted to do what I wanted to do all the time. And I didn't care what the consequences are also hallmark for addiction down the road. But yeah, having kids is a great humility. And also the time I think in which you can have the opportunity to reconnect with your parents if they're still with us, like, yeah, it's really interesting.

Parenting is a fucking bitch. Yeah, I don't think you're alone at that feeling. Like I feel like every kid is an asshole until they grow up and they're an adult and they realize how fucking hard life is. Like life, I said to my husband yesterday, I don't want to adult anymore. I don't want to do it. I got so many bills on the table and I was like, I'm done with it. I was like, and I don't even have kids. Can't even look after my dog.

You speak about the shadow side and I had never heard of that term before, honestly, until... Me neither, by the way. Me neither, before Suzanne Stabile, yes. Yeah, yeah. And you write about the fact that you had this conversation with her. What is it? Tell everyone what a shadow side is and how it relates to you. Yeah. So we were doing this Enneagram interview with Suzanne Stabile. She's wonderful. And she's

And if you don't know what the Enneagram is, I'm going to totally botch how to describe it. But it's like an ancient BuzzFeed quiz about your personality. Right. And so it's nine numbers and it's,

You do the test online nowadays. Like back in the day, you have to like read a book and decide which short story felt most like you. But now you can do like the quiz online, Enneagram Institute.org or something. And it gives you this number. And this number is like essentially gives you an understanding of who you are and also like,

parts of yourself that you might not be as aware of or in constant conversation with. So for an example, I'm a seven, which means I'm like an enthusiast and I love to like have a good time and experience is really important to me. And I can see the bright side of everything and I'm very resilient and all of these really cool things. And in this interview, Suzanne Stabile was just like,

Well, my son's a seven and I do think it would be really good for you to work on your shadow side, like my dark side, essentially. Like,

Like the sad, the sad feelings, the sad part, like, you know, an in and out. So I'm talking a lot of in like internal family systems. And I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but it's a psychological approach to understanding all of the different parts of ourselves that sometimes can be at war with each other. The movie in and out is like one of the best ways to understand the

internal family systems. I'm so sorry, Abby. When you said in and out, I thought you meant the burger joint. No. Yeah. Inside, inside out. In and out.

I was like, my most profound moments have happened at the burger place. Yeah. No, it's called Inside Out. Inside Out. Maybe I said it wrong. So Inside Out, it's like, it's the animation movie. I don't know if you've seen it. Yes, that's what I was thinking of. I was like, I thought it was a movie. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And so internal family systems, it feels like you have a team of beings of things inside of you yourself. Right. And so sometimes like a part will come online and

that will be protecting yourself, right? Like anger can come online and it's because something's happened and you are, you are in protection mode or joy or whatever. In my Enneagram world as a seven, um,

I don't allow sadness to come online and drive the bus very often. It's the sadness. It's a foreign body inside of me. I've not had a really great relationship with it. And so I have actually been spending the last two years since I talked to Suzanne Stabile in therapy, in IFS therapy.

discussing all of this stuff and trying to figure out what the shadow side is for me. And lo and behold, like a year and a half ago, my oldest brother, Peter died of a heart attack and talk about shadow side and the serendipity of the conversation with Suzanne, um,

And the timing of it when my brother passed away and having already been doing this work on my shadow side or the sadder feelings or the less muted parts of me, it really made going through the grief of my brother and losing him, I think probably much more fruitful. I actually had access to my sadness and anger and frustration and disappointment more than I ever had before because I just like, I just...

covered it up with joy and with overwork and with excellence, you know? And so that is, I think I've probably done a terrible job explaining the Enneagram. Just like go watch a video on it. It'll be easier to understand. We'll try and find a link to the quiz. We also haven't done it, but Abby, speaking about your brother, Peter and him passing away, there was a part of your most recent book that

that it really hit me in the heart, to be honest. And we've had many conversations in the podcast about grief and the fact that we really struggle in grief as a culture. I don't think that we're very good at talking about it. I don't think that we're very good at processing it for ourselves. And this one thing that you wrote about, you said...

often we will say there are no words, you know, and when we're talking to people who have lost loved ones or pets or like going through something really heartbreaking, we're like, wow, I just have no words. I'm so sorry. I have no words to describe how I feel. And you wrote that that was not how you've learned to feel and not how you've learned to act. Can you talk us through kind of this revelation you had about grief? Yeah.

Oh, I mean, I've had so many. And so you might get maybe even a different version because it's a beyond when the book was published version. Specifically about this one story, as a person who's been on both sides now, it is hard to come up with words that feel appropriate in moments that are completely devastating to a friend or a family member. I get it. I get it.

Not knowing the words. And so not reaching out. I get it. I've done it. And then I also get now being on the other side where my brother has died. A lot of the messages or the words that were said to me, all were so appreciated. Like all were so appreciated because when you say something, you are witnessing that person's pain. And that is all that matters.

you can do with somebody in grief is to witness their pain. You can't do it's frustrating. I think that what gets people hung up is that they can't fix it. This hard situation, this, this thing that has happened, there's no going back. And so one of my friends actually taught me the most beautiful lesson in the whole world. And it makes me like tear up every time because I think about the story and it's so, I just, I love her so much for this.

She wrote me this long text because her mother had passed away recently. And a lot of people write things that they don't mean. And, you know, it was always darkest before the dawn and all of these cliches. And she said, but the things that mattered and meant the most to me is what I'm going to do now. And she just shared this beautiful, beautiful story about my brother and how he

he and what he meant to her and what kind of joyful, beautiful person he was to her and how when that story came through and I read it, it was just like, oh my gosh, I am not alone because this loss, even though she was my friend and not his brother, um,

His personality and his life shaped other people in similar ways that it shaped me. And it meant similar things. And it was just such an important moment for me to learn about how to deal with somebody going through grief when somebody dies. And then ironically, when the one year anniversary of his death hit, and this is like the second part,

This is like the grief 2.0 that I'm like learning right now about and going through. Our culture has like a stop clock, like a stopwatch on grief. Like you only get one year. And once that year comes up, we are all moving on. We don't talk about it anymore. We just learn to live with it and accept that this thing has happened. Yeah.

And that has been the really big kick in the ass for me. Cause I'm like, wait a second. Cause I did it. My, I did it internally and I'm also getting the, the external affirmation that this is the correct thing to do culturally. Cause people stop talking about it. People stop asking about him. People stop because they don't know, should I bring them up? Should I not bring them up and all of this. And so I actually just had to ask Glennon a couple of weeks ago when we were doing a book tour event,

Can you ask me more about my brother? Because I'm afraid to talk about him. Yeah. Like I'm afraid to talk about him a little, and it would mean a lot to be able to know that I have the space to

to feel about this still because I'm still thinking about it and I'm still feeling about it. It's still something that is actually happening. We've spoken a lot about grief over the years to different kinds of people and had different kind of exposure to grief. But there's this one story that stands out and it was not on the podcast. It was actually Laura who had this interaction and she met a woman at a pool on holiday.

And the woman started to play with her daughter in the pool. So like, sorry, this woman she met was playing with Laura's daughter. They got talking for a little while and Laura was like, I'm really sorry if she's annoying you, let me know. And she said, no, I actually lost my daughter and this is really –

making me feel the feels and the conversation continues to say people often don't know what to say they get really uncomfortable with it and they think that bringing up is going to hurt their feelings but in fact all they want to do is relive it they not relive the pain but relive the person and they want to be asked about exactly what you just said and I think that's probably one of the biggest lessons that I've taken away from the conversation about grief is like people

don't want to relive the pain, but they don't want to forget the person. It's not like you tick off. Yeah. And I think that's such an important lesson to say, like, maybe you do need to ask your loved one to, to continue to bring up something in your life that is hard so you can relive it. And to relive it in a way that feels productive. Right. Like, cause I also understand that there's a lot of stuff that people grieve, not, not just losing people, but grieving, uh,

I mean a lot of us in the United States right now. We're grieving the myth, the idea of what it is to be an American. Safe. We're grieving the idea of safety. We're grieving democracy. We're grieving things. And I think culturally, and this is not true for every culture, but like death especially is hidden.

You know, like in some cultures, like they keep the body out and they wash the body and they do all of these beautiful ceremonies and these things that make death so real that we cannot not see it, which allows, I think, us to live more fully into our daily lives. You know, so many of us Western cultured folk who, you know, the person dies and they just get like swept away. Yeah.

It's like this weird, it feels like death is shameful, like this grieving of death is there's a shame attached to it. So that's what I want to unwind and I want to continue to work through. Yeah, I mean, I've always kind of been curious about this because I was also brought up in the church and I am now non-religious. Also, culturally, a lot of us are shifting that way. A lot more non-religious people exist now.

And I've wondered whether we deal with death in particular really differently when we don't believe or we don't have faith in, you know, an afterlife. And I think it's something that I've kind of battled with myself where I'm like, well, now my belief system is that there's a bit of a full stop on this person, you know, and I don't really know

I no longer believe that they've gone somewhere else. And I kind of have been, in a way, this is a weird thing to kind of come to terms with, but I've almost been jealous of people who still have faith and have that understanding that their loved one has gone to a better place. And I wonder whether that's maybe a reason that a lot of us do struggle with death in particular now. I think that what you're saying is exactly how I feel and have felt before.

I think that I like vacillate, if that's the word, oscillate. Oscillate, yeah. Vacillate might be sexual. It sounds sexual all of a sudden. It does sound pretty sexy, yeah. I think I oscillate between this idea of nothing, there's nothing after this and the hope that

that there is something. And it's weird because I was, I loved going to church when I was a little kid. I love singing the songs. I love the community. And then I got gay. And so I got gay and became like a hardcore atheist because I had to reject the, you're not going to reject me. I will reject you. Yeah. And then I met Glennon who I think kind of walks the walk that Jesus tried to teach us to walk.

And she softened my edges a little bit. And I think that there's probably more than we know what's going on. Nobody knows. I think if you're atheist, I think Ricky Gervais has this really great line that he said he was debating religion with Stephen Colbert here in the U.S.,

And he said, but I just believe in one less God than you. Like, you know what it's like to not believe in things. You don't believe in a lot of religions. I just believe in one less. And a lot of us millennial, Gen Zers, the religious institution is giving them and us all the ick in a way. But I think that there is so much beauty in the hope

And through so much of my healing and my therapy with the grief of my brother, I have learned that I am actually not worried about what comes after life. I am very concerned about losing this particular life. Like I love my life and I have worked really hard for it. And I love the people that I love.

And then one day over Christmas, Glennon gave me this St. Christopher necklace, or sorry, St. Peter necklace. And I didn't know this, but St. Peter evidently in the Christian religion, St. Peter was like,

Jesus's best friend BFFs. Okay. And evidently Jesus gave St. Peter the keys to heaven. Now Glennon says to me when she's handing me this beautiful medallion is like, so your brother is St. Peter and now he has the keys to heaven. And if you are worried for any reason about,

whether heaven exists or not or where we go or whether you would be accepted because all along you've been kind of getting told that you're going to hell for being gay. Do you think your brother is letting you into heaven? And I was like burst into tears. I was like, oh my God.

God! Hell yeah, he is. Not only that, but Peter, my brother, like if you knew him, dude loved to party and everybody was welcome. Heaven's going off right now. It's lit. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't even know what the question was, but I think that I answered something in there. I'm so sorry. I don't even know if I asked you a question. I think it's just, it's something I've thought about for a while and I don't think I'm at a point of resolution with it yet. And it's something that I think I'm trying to work out for myself in terms of

dealing with, you know, various forms of grief in my own life. And yeah, I was just curious about your thoughts and it kind of is related to you writing the book. You know, a lot of us, and we speak all the time that we share things publicly. We share a lot. We're classic oversharers.

But often we won't share things until we're at a point of resolution with it. We'll share from a scar, not a wound. But when you wrote this book, you were in the wound stage and it was really interesting to read certain things that I don't think you've come to resolution with. I mean, I guess you've written quite a few books. How is this one different in terms of writing from that place? I think that if you've ever really gone through grief...

And done it without denying it. And done it honestly. As we were writing this book all last year, I understood and have understood deeply that there is no getting over this. There is no end line. That this is an accepting, this is like accepting to live with it forever. Mm-hmm.

And that's also part of like the reason why people don't want to deal with grief is because at the end of it, when you do all the work and you get all the way to the end and you're like, okay, I want this to be done. It doesn't, it grief doesn't die. It evolves. It evolves and it changes. And you know, my brother, it's the way that I live with him now. Like I don't get to call him on the phone, but like,

this grief, the function of grief isn't always negative. Like the function of grief is also a reminder.

It's also the thing that's connecting me to him, ironically. And so, yeah, if you're wanting to do the grief thing correctly and not skip over any steps, like at the end for me, it's just I've had to get to accepting that it is a forever relationship. It is a forever part of me now. I think it's interesting just what we're talking about. Just to touch on it briefly, I don't – I'm not religious at all, but I –

don't associate whether you believe in an afterlife with religion personally. I've never been religious, assume I never will be, but I do believe there is something after, not necessarily heaven, but I believe that we live on. Maybe we come back in reincarnation or another life, or sometimes I'm convinced that's what deja vu is, that we've walked this earth before. But

I am leaving here to get married. So I never thought that Abby Wambach would be a part of my marriage day, but here we are. But we were talking before, Abby, just before we jumped on the interview, we're talking about the fact that I'm going to get married today and you were giving me some advice just off the cuff. You said, hey, I want to give you like a piece of advice surrounding weakness and

And I know that you had that advice in your own wedding vows to your wife, Glennon. Tell us what you mean by that, what your advice is and where did it stem from? Yeah. So both Glennon and I are on our second marriages, which sadly for you, I just wouldn't recommend it enough. Like it's like the, like,

- What, having to? - Damn it, don't tell my husband. - Don't tell Ben. - No, but in all seriousness, the things that we struggled with in our first marriages, both in the relating part and in the interpersonal part, the stuff that we could control, we just put it all on the table. 'Cause neither one of us really wanted to be back in the same scenario, and we knew that we actually needed to figure out why that happened. So when we put all of our cards on the table,

We were able to like figure out very, very quickly what our hot button issues were. What were my triggers? What were her triggers? What were her fears? What were my fears? What were her wounds? What were my wounds? And then what we did in not just the creation of vows, but in the creation of like the way that we live our life every day is that we never use those things against each other.

We never try to capitalize on some other, on her wound or her fear in order to get something that we want. And there's also, I'm going to give you a second tip that we do this like who cares more rule. When we're trying to decide, like you can also attach percentages to it. Some people like to do that game where it's like, hey, I want Indian food like 60% and I want...

Mexican food 40% and she's like, okay, but I want Mexican food 70% and I want Indian food 30%. The 70% wins. So whoever cares the more about the thing, you don't even need to bring percentages to it because eventually you will start understanding who historically cares more about this one thing. It's like, okay, we're going to do it her way. And what's more important to a hotel owner? Yeah, making decisions is

about dinner every night is not the best part of marriage.

Yeah. So if you can break down the ways to make it the easiest and easier for each other, the better off you'll be. I love that the first tip was really profound. And the second tip was like, if you want Mexican, you lay it out there. You put that. Exactly. Exactly. You just said that that picking what you want for dinner is not the best part of marriage. What is the best part of marriage for you? It's interesting because I think relationship, I think love is different than marriage.

I think love is this two-way outward expression and internal acceptance of somebody else who cares deeply, who knows you deeply, who loves you deeply with the good and the bad, right? Like I think love is not all peaches and milkshakes. It's like love is the whole, you're getting the whole package. And marriage is different. I think marriage is...

Teammate.

Somebody that like, you're going to build this shit together. You're like, you're in the weeds. You want to pull your hair out. You're so tired, but you just keep, you're just trucking along. You're doing this thing. You've got these kids and one person is going this way. The other person's going that way. You got business stuff going on and you're tired and you figure out a way in marriage to not forget and prioritize the piece of love inside of you.

the partnership and the teammate. Cause that's, that's how I see it. I'm like, you know, I'm a sports person. So I'm like, okay, like we're the co-captains of this team of this whole unit or the CEOs of our, our lives or the CEOs of our children's lives for now. And like, they're like the vice presidents right now. They're teenagers. They're like, they're just like, they're climbing the ladder of their own life. And they're about to like go out in the world and we're about to like hand them their own business. Right.

Go stand on business kids is what we want to say. And I think that that is, that's marriage and love to me. Best friendship, deep understanding, deep acknowledgement of the other, of their, of their existence, of their life. I mean, there's nobody better to be in a marriage with and in love with than Glennon because she's such a, we're so different the way that we interpret things.

a single experience is just so different. And it's so interesting. Like I'm never not interested in my day because she gets to tell me her story about her experience. And then I get to tell her my story. We kind of use each other as this mirror and this bouncing off ideas of to, in a lot of ways, come up with the best idea and the best path and the plan forward. Yeah.

So that's it. Abby, you're so fascinating, interesting, funny all at once. I genuinely wish I could talk to you for so long, but I do have to go get married. Yes, I'm so excited for you. I have to get to my wedding. But I cannot thank you enough. I really mean that. This has been one of the most interesting interviews I've done in a very, very long time. I think the word vulnerability is thrown around like a hot cake, especially on social media. Yeah.

You are someone who I think is so authentic, again, another buzzword, authentic and genuine in your vulnerability. Yeah, nothing performative. Nothing at all. It's like this is just how it is, you know. And I think a lot of us accessing those, like especially the shadow side, you know, it's fine to be vulnerable about the things that you've come to resolution with and the things that you can kind of tie a bow on and be like, I'm sober now. Yeah.

But it's harder to be honest about the darker parts of ourselves. And, yeah, I'm really grateful for that. I've learned a lot from you. I'm very grateful that we got to have this chat with you. Well, thank you for having me on your show. We're big fans. And have the best wedding. I'm so pumped for you. You're going to be on part of my anniversary for the rest of your life. Thank you.

Every day, every year today I'll be thinking of you so you can rest easy. Thank you so much. If anyone would like more details about Abby's social media, her podcast or her brand new book, We Can Do Hard Things, everything will be linked for you in our show notes. Thank you so much, Abby. Thanks, y'all. I really appreciate having you.