‘You're the first person to ask me about that': Glennon Doyle on body image, resilience and Ivanka Trump
Stellar: Your new book We Can Do Hard Things was created with the backdrop of a very difficult time for yourself, your wife Abby Wambach and your sister Amanda Doyle, who co-wrote this book and host the popular podcast of the same name with you. You were dealing with an anorexia diagnosis. Abby had lost her beloved brother. Amanda had a breast cancer diagnosis. What was navigating that time like for you?
Glennon Doyle: My sister and my wife are my people. Maybe because I depend on the two of them [so much], I don't actually have many friends in a wider circle. I'm used to one of them being steady.
When I got my new anorexia diagnosis – I've been dealing with eating disorders since I was 10 – I felt humiliated. Embarrassed.
I couldn't believe I'm still dealing with this. I felt like everyone in my life was gonna be like, get over it. But it felt like I was drowning and I looked over at the shore and both the lifeguards were passed out.
My lifeguards were also having their own moment.
Glennon Doyle (continued): It feels like a very bad design of life that when trauma comes, that's the time that we can't remember anything we know. That's the time we can't call up all the wisdom we've learnt about how to make it through. That sucks. Trauma causes this little mini dissociation.
Unfortunately Abby felt the same way and so did Amanda. So we were just kind of staring at each other blinking. And this cool thing happened.
I started writing down little sentences or quotes or paragraphs that we had said to each other on the podcast and sending them to my sister to help her through the cancer thing.
Listen to the full interview with Glennon Doyle on Something To Talk About below:
Then she started writing down things about grief for Abby. And we had this little file going around. And Abby started writing things down for me about bodies. We kept this file that we were just using as an anchor outside of ourselves, which is funny because I've spent my entire life telling people that they have all the answers inside of them. I'm no longer positive that's true.
Three months later, my friend was going through this horrible break-up and I sent her the file we had about grief. And she wrote back and said, 'Glennon, can you make me this for all the categories of life? This is what I need.' And
I thought, yeah. I actually can do that. And that's how it started. That's how the book was born.
Stellar: The book is an exploration of 20 questions that we all wrestle with throughout our lives, and features conversations you've had with 118 'of the world's most brilliant wayfinders'. How did you pull that off?
Glennon Doyle: Some of the passages are from texts between friends, but most of them are from conversations that we had on our podcast. Over time the conversations we had on that podcast really rewired our minds and hearts and the way we saw the world. As we pored through those conversations, we realised people are really talking about the same 20 questions over and over again from their particular slice of life.
So all I had to do was to wrangle all these people and say 'How about this incredible, brilliant thing that you said be put in print?' And most of them were like, 'Great. I sound very smart in that.' The people in this book are some of the most open-minded, justice-minded, love-minded and community-minded people on earth.
We've got a lot going on in this country [the US] right now. It really feels like the whole idea of self-help and individual optimisation has failed us.
And so what I'm very proud of is that this book is about collective wisdom. It's about: we can't figure this out by ourselves, we have to look at the world from as many different perspectives as there are people. And I just think that's why it's resonating so much here. It's about the collective.
Stellar: You're often referred to as a self-help guru. Would you agree with that assessment?
Glennon Doyle: Don't get me started on the self-help. I have so many male counterparts who write about the same things that I write about, who write about power and power dynamics and life and relationships even, and politics and community. Do you think that any of them are ever labelled 'self-help'?
My books will be in the self-help aisle. My counterparts, men, will be in leadership.
Do you ever hear a man's work described as self-help?
No, no, no. Because men, they're good to go. They just need some leadership skills. Women are just a mess, and they just need help with their little selves.
That distinction is in every area, right? That's the literary version, but even, [with] our bodies, men are taught to bulk up [and get] bigger, bigger, bigger and women are taught to get smaller. Money. Men are taught to invest. Women are taught to save. Every single category is about men. Just get bigger, get bolder, go for it. And women … Self-help. You're not even ready to leave the room. Just get smaller and smaller and fix yourself before you can even approach the world.
So yes, I have many issues with the self-help title and I think it has a lot to do with gender.
The whole navel-gazing thing is so interesting. Like, God forbid a man do a little bit
of self-reflection. I would like some men to look harder at their navels. Honestly, I think that would do us all a little bit of good.
Stellar: In your home country of the United States, does it feel like a time when people are searching for answers and feeling more isolated than ever?
Glennon Doyle: It's a nightmare here. It's awful. We're seeing our neighbours be rounded up in front of us. I see
it with my own eyes all the time. I was just in children's immigration court watching two-year-olds represent themselves, separated from their families.
My family and every LGBTQ family I know is terrified. Parents with trans kids are leaving if they can. It's a really scary time here.
With this book, we did a tour. I didn't want to do that. That's so much 'leaving of my house'. Not just answering my door, but standing on the actual stages. The incredible thing was, I think we have this feeling in the States right now, a lot of media is being suppressed and so it can feel like you're the only one who cares or the only one who's afraid or angry or wishes for something better. And this tour was so important to me because it was auditoriums and theatres full of people who were so hopeful and so angry and so united and so beautiful.
They say hopelessness is just the feeling that nobody else cares, that you're alone. And so that tour that we did with the We Can Do Hard Things book, I think reinvigorated a lot of us and just reminded us there are still a lot of people here who care, and who will not stand for what's going down right now here.
Listen to the full interview with Glennon Doyle on Something To Talk About below:
Stellar: You have used your platform to advocate for many causes, including speaking out against the Trump administration, particularly during the election campaign in 2024. Recently Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka posted on Instagram a picture of herself holding your memoir Untamed. How did that moment sit with you?
Glennon Doyle: You're the first person to ask me about that. My team sent it to me. I was stunned. I just didn't process it completely.
I can tell you honestly that my best guess is she didn't read it all the way through.
There's an entire essay about her dad in it that is about how unbelievable it is that this man is being seen as a leader of what is supposed to be Christian nationalism.
So I think she probably didn't get all the way through. But all I can say is, I hope that she does read it. I hope she reads it really, really carefully. That's what I'll say about that.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
29 minutes ago
- ABC News
As South Australia deals with its algal bloom, California is dealing with another
A dead sea lion is discovered on one end of the coast, and not far away an entire pod of long-beaked common dolphins lay stranded. It is becoming a familiar scene for those living along the coast of Southern California. And much like in South Australia, where thousands of dead sea creatures have washed ashore since March, a harmful algal bloom is to blame. Warning: This story contains content that some readers may find distressing. In California, this is the fourth consecutive year of death and destruction along the coastline. There have been scores of marine mammals and sea birds injured and killed, with US rescuers dealing with "by far historically the largest mass stranding event" relating to algal blooms. In South Australia, the Karenia mikimotoi bloom, kills fish and other sea creatures by impacting their gills, causing them to drown. In the US, authorities have been dealing with different types of algae, including one that produces domoic acid which can cause mammals like sea lions to experience seizures, behave aggressively or die. The Pacific Marine Mammal Center (PMMC) said the harmful algal bloom on the Southern California coast had significantly impacted sea lion and common dolphin populations and had killed two humpback whales and a minke whale. "In 2025, we've experienced the worst domoic acid algae bloom that we've ever experienced in Southern California history," Alissa Deming, PMMC vice president of Conservation, Medicine and Science told ABC News. Dr Deming said the PMMC hospital had taken in hundreds of sick mammals, which had been "physically demanding and very emotionally taxing" on staff and volunteers trying to help while protecting the public from aggressive animals. "A number of the sea lions were also pregnant, and that resulted in reproductive losses of over 85 fetuses born and lost in our hospital as a result of this bloom," she said. The veterinarian said there were likely similar drivers for its bloom to the one happening in South Australia including increasing marine temperatures and more nutrients from cold water upwelling. "By combining the warm sea surface temperatures with increased nutrients, that has resulted in us having a bloom event every year since 2022, with them seemingly becoming larger, longer lasting and covering a lot larger geographic region," Dr Deming said. Investigations are underway if the destructive Los Angeles wildfires in January and the associated run-off have contributed to the bloom. The US National Office for Harmful Algal Blooms said a conservative estimated cost of harmful algal blooms for the the US was about $50 million, but experts say expenses are hard to quantify. A 2024 study estimated losses to tourism-related businesses during the 2018 Florida red tide bloom at $US2.7 billion. Dr Deming said the US government agencies continued to have monitoring and management practices in place to support the commercial seafood industry. "Being able to have good federal and state agencies that can do surveillance to test to ensure seafood is safe for the public, as well as trying to come up with preventative measures or best management practices to prevent blooms, … are really high priority items," she said. "We're happy we have some of those systems in place, but there's absolutely room for improvement I think all around the world to help prevent the conditions that support these really long lasting and devastating blooms." Other algal blooms have also wreaked havoc in other parts of the world. An algae surge choked to death an estimated 40,000 tonnes of salmon in Chile in 2016 while hundreds of elephant deaths in Botswana in 2020 were linked to cyanobacteria, often called blue-green algae in Australia. The scale of each harmful algal bloom event seems to be increasing, professor Gretta Pecl from the University of Tasmania's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies told the ABC. "If there isn't something done to mitigate, to reduce climate emissions, warming will continue and these kinds of events will be more and more likely," she said. US research biologist at NOAA Fisheries Kathi Lefebvre, who has been studying harmful algal blooms for 25 years, said the blooms were getting worse and reaching areas "where we used to not have problems". "It is turning out to be a major impact of climate change." Authorities in South Australia have linked South Australia's algal bloom to climate change, and state and federal governments have pledged a collective $28 million for a suite of measures to tackle the algal bloom, including more funding for testing. Dr Lefebvre said authorities needed to take action now to mitigate the effects of future blooms. "What's going to happen if these blooms are going to be continuing is that there's going to need to be ways to test for toxins … to protect human health," Dr Lefebvre said. "The more information we have, the better decisions we can make.
News.com.au
a day ago
- News.com.au
The most common question I get asked about my 5 year sobriety
At 29, I've been sober for five and a half years. What started as an optimistic New Year's Resolution in my 20s, to finally break free from my weekly binge drinking, became a defining decision in my life. Since writing an article about my journey earlier this month, my inbox has been flooded with questions, many of which echo the ones I've come across before. In a culture that normalises and even romanticises drinking, I get it. Before I quit, I myself had my own private judgments and doubts about those who chose to abstain. So here, I list the most common questions I receive, along with my honest answers to them. Why did you quit? From the age of 14 to 24, I was caught in a relentless cycle of binge drinking most weekends. Monday through Thursday, I was fine, but then came Friday to Sunday where I transformed into the classic party girl – the last to leave and always urging everyone for 'just one more'. I thought, if you're going to have a drink, you might as well get drunk. Moderation wasn't something I had ever considered. Drinking was my shortcut to confidence, my tool for fitting in anywhere. But beneath the wild night outs and hanxiety, it was unravelling me. On Sundays, I would always try to piece together what I'd said, what I'd done, who I might have hurt. Reckless decisions piled up, and relationships were strained. By 24 and at the end of 2019, I made the decision on a whim to quit cold turkey. I was finally ready to learn who I was without the constant hum of alcohol and get rid of the cognitive dissonance between the person I was acting like and who I wanted to be. Was it difficult? If you read my first article (hi, hello, glad you're back), you'll know I categorised sobriety into three stages. The first two stages were surprisingly straightforward. Stage one was full of novelty and excitement, trying all the non-alcoholic drinks and embracing my new lifestyle. My motivation was strong, as my 'why' was front and centre. Stage two, the maintenance phase, was also manageable as sobriety became woven into my everyday life. I met my now-husband, built meaningful friendships and got my health and fitness in order. But stage three, which I'm currently navigating (hopefully on the tail end now), has proven a little tougher. Although I'm almost certain I won't drink again, a familiar inner voice has recently surfaced, tempting me with the lure of a 'good time'. It's saying, 'You're different now, go on, have a drink'. The novelty has worn off, and the Fade Effect Bias – the psychological tendency to soften the intensity of painful memories – has me seeing the past through rose-tinted glasses. This stage requires constant self-negotiation. I remind myself that if drinking were truly enjoyable and manageable, I wouldn't have stopped in the first place. I know that these doubts don't mean that I don't like my current sober life. I love it. However, our brains crave change. And sharing these struggles recently, I realised that a lot of others in long-term sobriety have a similar internal dialogue. The best advice I received was to ride it out and know these feelings aren't failures, but a normal part of the process. What have you learnt? To get the obvious benefits out of the way, your sleep, mood, relationships, and finances improve. But here are some things that surprised me: – You will become more in touch with your personal identity – You'll have increased mental clarity and be able to better deal with whatever life throws at you – You'll realise who your party friends are, versus your real friends – You'll develop more self-respect – You'll get genuine confidence, not alcohol-security-blanket confidence – Quitting alcohol will create a ripple effect in other areas of your life as you realise you have more self-control than you thought (I also decided to stop drinking coffee three years ago). – You feel less guilty when buying a new piece of clothing each week, since it still costs far less than what you'd spend on a single night out – People will judge you, but often this is a projection of how they feel (a.k.a they might think your sobriety is a judgment on their habits, but it's not) – You'll realise how widespread drinking culture is in our world. Once you're on the outside, you'll see it everywhere. How do you socialise? I socialise as much, if not more, than I used to, but now I actually enjoy it. I made a point early on to try and shift my socialising to revolve around my hobbies and interests, and finding like-minded people who also enjoy hanging out sober, helped a lot. I've started a Sydney hiking club with over 70 members, created a casual cafe book club for women in their 20s and 30s, and organised monthly ping pong tournaments with my neighbours in my building. I'll catch up with friends over a walk or an exercise class, and I'll always offer to host a dinner party rather than going out to catch up at a bar. That said, if I do want a night out, you can still find sober-friendly spots to have a boogie that don't involve going to a typical nightclub. For example, if you love musical theatre, Club Broadway hosts monthly musical singalongs. Or, Bungalow 8 in Sydney just launched a Friday dancefloor with a piano in the middle, where everyone sings along to well-known ballads. Of course, there will always be times when you're around people who are drinking or at an event that revolves around booze, like Christmas, birthdays, weddings, and bottomless brunches. Where possible, I bring things like board games or conversation card games to provide an alternative activity to do. (If you're eyerolling at this, fair enough – but you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes to get through). Think of it like this: when you take alcohol out of the equation, you're forced to make your own fun. You need to bring interesting topics and a good vibe to the table because you're not relying on alcohol to create them for you and be a social lubricant. Is it difficult that your partner drinks? Why doesn't he abstain? Yes, it can be challenging at times, but I don't expect or want him to quit. My husband has always maintained a healthy, moderate relationship with alcohol and drinks responsibly (most of the time). It was tough that he drank at our wedding, and of course, I would have loved to toast him with real Champagne – but people just handle their alcohol differently, and I can't pretend to be able to drink like him when I can't. And of course, it was hard when he was sipping cocktails on our honeymoon by the beach. But I respect his enjoyment and believe drinking is his choice and not my issue to control. Lasting change needs to come from within, and expecting him to abstain for my sake isn't sustainable or fair, in my opinion. That's not to say I don't give him the cheeky nudge on New Year's or Dry July, but deep down, I really don't mind if he drinks or not. Plus, his drinking has naturally decreased since we've been together, and he'll never drink in excess when we go out together, which I appreciate. Oh, and one more thing – seeing him nurse a raging hangover a couple of times a year when he drinks a bit too much with the boys only reinforces how much better I feel about my decision. Hah. How do you relax? I never drank to unwind, but I know that drinking was still a form of escapism in some way for me. Now, my coping mechanisms include taking long phone-free walks, getting good sleep, breathwork, meditation, sauna and exercising. They are all awfully wholesome, I know. And unfortunately, they all work. Is your life boring? Yes. In conventional terms. I don't have wild nights out, drama-filled stories or binge-fuelled memory montages. But my life is infinitely more fun now, in a deeper, more authentic way. If I fall into the trap of comparing my low-key, quiet weekends to those I see on Instagram, I remind myself that I'd rather be boring than blackout. 'Can you just have one? You weren't an alcoholic' For those who never struggled with drinking, this question makes sense. For me, it doesn't. Whether classified as an alcoholic or not is irrelevant. What matters is that moderation never felt like it was an option for me. Trying to 'just have one' never worked, and if it did, I wouldn't have quit. Personally, an all-or-nothing approach led me to my binge drinking in the first place, so I knew an all-or-nothing approach was the only way to get me out. What do you drink? Initially, non-alcoholic drinks helped with the transition. I love Plus Minus non-alcoholic wines, Lyre's spirit alternatives, and Naked Life ready-to-drink cocktails. Nowadays, I find myself needing them less and am comfortable just ordering a Diet Coke. I do try to make them feel fancy, though, often adding lime juice, pickle juice or jalapeños. Don't knock it 'till you try it!
News.com.au
a day ago
- News.com.au
‘You're the first person to ask me about that': Glennon Doyle on body image, resilience and Ivanka Trump
Author and podcaster Glennon Doyle tackles life's biggest questions, the 'self-help' label – and the Trumps. Stellar: Your new book We Can Do Hard Things was created with the backdrop of a very difficult time for yourself, your wife Abby Wambach and your sister Amanda Doyle, who co-wrote this book and host the popular podcast of the same name with you. You were dealing with an anorexia diagnosis. Abby had lost her beloved brother. Amanda had a breast cancer diagnosis. What was navigating that time like for you? Glennon Doyle: My sister and my wife are my people. Maybe because I depend on the two of them [so much], I don't actually have many friends in a wider circle. I'm used to one of them being steady. When I got my new anorexia diagnosis – I've been dealing with eating disorders since I was 10 – I felt humiliated. Embarrassed. I couldn't believe I'm still dealing with this. I felt like everyone in my life was gonna be like, get over it. But it felt like I was drowning and I looked over at the shore and both the lifeguards were passed out. My lifeguards were also having their own moment. Glennon Doyle (continued): It feels like a very bad design of life that when trauma comes, that's the time that we can't remember anything we know. That's the time we can't call up all the wisdom we've learnt about how to make it through. That sucks. Trauma causes this little mini dissociation. Unfortunately Abby felt the same way and so did Amanda. So we were just kind of staring at each other blinking. And this cool thing happened. I started writing down little sentences or quotes or paragraphs that we had said to each other on the podcast and sending them to my sister to help her through the cancer thing. Listen to the full interview with Glennon Doyle on Something To Talk About below: Then she started writing down things about grief for Abby. And we had this little file going around. And Abby started writing things down for me about bodies. We kept this file that we were just using as an anchor outside of ourselves, which is funny because I've spent my entire life telling people that they have all the answers inside of them. I'm no longer positive that's true. Three months later, my friend was going through this horrible break-up and I sent her the file we had about grief. And she wrote back and said, 'Glennon, can you make me this for all the categories of life? This is what I need.' And I thought, yeah. I actually can do that. And that's how it started. That's how the book was born. Stellar: The book is an exploration of 20 questions that we all wrestle with throughout our lives, and features conversations you've had with 118 'of the world's most brilliant wayfinders'. How did you pull that off? Glennon Doyle: Some of the passages are from texts between friends, but most of them are from conversations that we had on our podcast. Over time the conversations we had on that podcast really rewired our minds and hearts and the way we saw the world. As we pored through those conversations, we realised people are really talking about the same 20 questions over and over again from their particular slice of life. So all I had to do was to wrangle all these people and say 'How about this incredible, brilliant thing that you said be put in print?' And most of them were like, 'Great. I sound very smart in that.' The people in this book are some of the most open-minded, justice-minded, love-minded and community-minded people on earth. We've got a lot going on in this country [the US] right now. It really feels like the whole idea of self-help and individual optimisation has failed us. And so what I'm very proud of is that this book is about collective wisdom. It's about: we can't figure this out by ourselves, we have to look at the world from as many different perspectives as there are people. And I just think that's why it's resonating so much here. It's about the collective. Stellar: You're often referred to as a self-help guru. Would you agree with that assessment? Glennon Doyle: Don't get me started on the self-help. I have so many male counterparts who write about the same things that I write about, who write about power and power dynamics and life and relationships even, and politics and community. Do you think that any of them are ever labelled 'self-help'? My books will be in the self-help aisle. My counterparts, men, will be in leadership. Do you ever hear a man's work described as self-help? No, no, no. Because men, they're good to go. They just need some leadership skills. Women are just a mess, and they just need help with their little selves. That distinction is in every area, right? That's the literary version, but even, [with] our bodies, men are taught to bulk up [and get] bigger, bigger, bigger and women are taught to get smaller. Money. Men are taught to invest. Women are taught to save. Every single category is about men. Just get bigger, get bolder, go for it. And women … Self-help. You're not even ready to leave the room. Just get smaller and smaller and fix yourself before you can even approach the world. So yes, I have many issues with the self-help title and I think it has a lot to do with gender. The whole navel-gazing thing is so interesting. Like, God forbid a man do a little bit of self-reflection. I would like some men to look harder at their navels. Honestly, I think that would do us all a little bit of good. Stellar: In your home country of the United States, does it feel like a time when people are searching for answers and feeling more isolated than ever? Glennon Doyle: It's a nightmare here. It's awful. We're seeing our neighbours be rounded up in front of us. I see it with my own eyes all the time. I was just in children's immigration court watching two-year-olds represent themselves, separated from their families. My family and every LGBTQ family I know is terrified. Parents with trans kids are leaving if they can. It's a really scary time here. With this book, we did a tour. I didn't want to do that. That's so much 'leaving of my house'. Not just answering my door, but standing on the actual stages. The incredible thing was, I think we have this feeling in the States right now, a lot of media is being suppressed and so it can feel like you're the only one who cares or the only one who's afraid or angry or wishes for something better. And this tour was so important to me because it was auditoriums and theatres full of people who were so hopeful and so angry and so united and so beautiful. They say hopelessness is just the feeling that nobody else cares, that you're alone. And so that tour that we did with the We Can Do Hard Things book, I think reinvigorated a lot of us and just reminded us there are still a lot of people here who care, and who will not stand for what's going down right now here. Listen to the full interview with Glennon Doyle on Something To Talk About below: Stellar: You have used your platform to advocate for many causes, including speaking out against the Trump administration, particularly during the election campaign in 2024. Recently Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka posted on Instagram a picture of herself holding your memoir Untamed. How did that moment sit with you? Glennon Doyle: You're the first person to ask me about that. My team sent it to me. I was stunned. I just didn't process it completely. I can tell you honestly that my best guess is she didn't read it all the way through. There's an entire essay about her dad in it that is about how unbelievable it is that this man is being seen as a leader of what is supposed to be Christian nationalism. So I think she probably didn't get all the way through. But all I can say is, I hope that she does read it. I hope she reads it really, really carefully. That's what I'll say about that.
