Glennon Doyle

So the thing that I have as an adult that I didn't have as a kid is agency.

It doesn't feel like a lot of agency, even when you're 50 and you're with your family of origin.

It still feels scary.

But

The difference, I think, is that when I am feeling that I'm in a system, a group, a country that feels to me very much like a dysfunctional family, almost parallel to a lot of the dysfunction in our own families.

Some of us had fathers who didn't know how to regulate, fathers who were authoritarianism, fathers who were angry, and then

mothers who are afraid and complicit it feels very much like the micro of our family is being reenacted in the country a lot and that is hard for all of us and that's why it doesn't just feel like it's happening out there it feels like it's happening in our bodies because we're like seven again and feel like we don't have agency and all of this is just happening to us and so the way that I know how to try now is to use some agency

whether it's with my family of origin or whether it's with my American family, it's to refuse to dissociate.

I think that what we can do is decide what power or control we do have.

Like what is a thing that we can say?

What is a thing that we can make?

What is a table that we can leave?

What is a table that we can create with different rules?

So I think for me, whether it's in eating disorder language or in community language or political language, I'm just trying to refuse to abandon my agency.

And I'm trying to stay with all of it.

I don't want to abandon myself anymore.

I don't want to leave.

Okay, that's not true.

I want to leave a lot of places.

But I guess what I'm saying is if I'm leaving, I want to take myself with me.