We Can Do Hard Things: Answers to Life's 20 Questions

by Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle, Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, Amanda Doyle

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

We Can Do Hard Things is a friendly — and necessary — reminder that we all need a helping hand through life's tricky bits, from a beloved trio of remarkable women.

The #1 New York Times bestselling authors and award-winning podcasters Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle created We Can Do Hard Things—the guidebook for being alive—to help fellow travelers find their way through life.

When you travel through a new country, you need a guidebook.

When you travel through love, heartbreak, joy, parenting, friendship, uncertainty, aging, grief, new beginnings—life—you need a guidebook, too.

We Can Do Hard Things is the guidebook for being alive.

Every day, Glennon Doyle spirals around the same questions: Why am I like this? How do I figure out what I want? How do I know what to do? Why can’t I be happy? Am I doing this right?

The harder life gets, the less likely she is to remember the answers she’s spent her life learning. She wonders: I’m almost fifty years old. I’ve overcome a hell of a lot. Why do I wake up every day having forgotten everything I know?

Glennon’s compasses are her sister, Amanda, and her wife, Abby. Recently, in the span of a single year, Glennon was diagnosed with anorexia, Amanda was diagnosed with breast cancer, and Abby’s beloved brother died. For the first time, they were all lost at the same time. So they turned toward the only thing that’s ever helped them find their way: deep, honest conversations with other brave, kind, wise people.

They asked each other, their dearest friends, and 118 of the world’s most brilliant wayfinders: As you’ve traveled these roads—marriage, parenting, work, recovery, heartbreak, aging, new beginnings—have you collected any wisdom that might help us find our way?

As Glennon, Abby, and Amanda wrote down every life-saving answer, they discovered two things:

1. No matter what road we are walking down, someone else has traveled the same terrain.
2. The wisdom of our fellow travelers will light our way.

They put all of that wisdom in one place: We Can Do Hard Things—a place to turn when you feel clueless and alone, when you need clarity in the chaos, or when you want wise company on the path of life.

We are all life travelers. We don’t have to travel alone. We Can Do Hard Things is our guidebook.

Featuring wisdom from: ALOK • Sara Bareilles • Dr. Yaba Blay • Kate Bowler • adrienne maree brown • Brandi Carlile • Brittney Cooper • Brittany Packnett Cunningham • Kaitlin Curtice • Megan Falley • Jane Fonda • Stephanie Foo • Ashley C. Ford • Ina Garten • Roxane Gay • Andrea Gibson • Elizabeth Gilbert • Dr. Orna Guralnik • Tricia Hersey • Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson • Luvvie Ajayi Jones • Dr. Becky Kennedy • Emily Nagoski • Esther Perel • Ai-Jen Poo • Cole Arthur Riley • Dr. Alexandra Solomon • Cheryl Strayed • Sonya Renee Taylor • Ocean Vuong • And many others

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593977644
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/06/2025
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Abby Wambach is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, FIFA World Cup champion, six-time winner of the U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year award and one of Time’s Most Influential People. She is a founder of Treat Media, an award-winning media company that makes art for humans who want to stay human. Abby is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Wolfpack and the New York Times bestseller Forward. Named one of the “50 Most Powerful People in Podcasting,” she is co-host of the chart-topping podcast We Can Do Hard Things, which has received over a half billion plays. Abby is an executive producer of the Sundance award-winning film Come See Me in the Good Light, part owner of the NWSL’s Angel City Football Club, and sits on multiple boards. Her most recent book, We Can Do Hard Things: Answers to Life’s 20 Questions, created with Glennon Doyle, Amanda Doyle and Treat Media, is being hailed as “the guidebook for being alive.”

Amanda Doyle is a Founder of Treat Media, an award-winning media company that makes art for humans who want to stay human. With Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach, she authored We Can Do Hard Things: Answers to Life’s 20 Questions, the book being hailed as “the guidebook for being alive.” Named one of the “50 Most Powerful People in Podcasting,” Amanda is co-host of the chart-topping podcast We Can Do Hard Things, which has received over a half billion plays. She is an executive producer of the Sundance award-winning film Come See Me in the Good Light. Amanda was Vice President and General Counsel of Together Rising, a non-profit organization which distributed more than $55 million to women, families and children in crisis. Amanda practiced law at a global corporate firm and as a Legal Fellow with International Justice Mission in Rwanda, securing land rights for women and accountability for child victims of sexual violence. Her academic and political work sits at the intersection of social, institutional, and interpersonal systems of violence, oppression, and liberation—laser-focused on practical justice in everyday lived experience.

Glennon Doyle is the CEO and Founder of Treat Media, an award-winning media company that makes art for humans who want to stay human. She is an author, podcaster, producer, and philanthropist. Her books include the #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed, which has sold more than three million copies; the #1 New York Times bestseller Love Warrior, an Oprah’s Book Club selection; the New York Times bestseller Carry On, Warrior; and Get Untamed: The Journal. Glennon, named one of the “50 Most Powerful People in Podcasting,” is co-host of the chart-topping podcast We Can Do Hard Things, which has received over a half billion plays. She is an executive producer of the Sundance award-winning film Come See Me in the Good Light. Glennon was Founder and President of Together Rising, a nonprofit organization which distributed more than $55 million to women, families and children in crisis. Her most recent book, We Can Do Hard Things: Answers to Life’s 20 Questions, created with Abby Wambach, Amanda Doyle and Treat Media, is being hailed as “the guidebook for being alive.”

Read an Excerpt

One

Why am I like this?

I am a great mystery to me. Understanding why I do the things I do is important to me because the things I do affect the people I love. So I don’t want to live on autopilot. I want to choose carefully which patterns to pass on. I want to break cycles. I want to live with freedom and agency and intentionality. This means I have to look under my own hood and tinker with and examine my programming.

Responsible adulthood is being both the engine and the mechanic.

I’m the mystery and the detective.

Tricky.

Glennon

As soon as we’re born, we enter into cultural and familial systems that say: You cannot trust your appetite. You cannot trust your desire. You cannot trust yourself. Since you cannot trust yourself, here’s a list of rules for you to follow instead.

So we lost vital parts of ourselves. We had to lose those parts of ourselves to survive in families, institutions, and societies that denied us access to our history, power, and innate wisdom.

For our entire lives we’ve been losing and losing and losing parts of ourselves. So of course we are not fully present now. Of course we are not able to be present in an authentic, whole way. The very path that we’ve taken to survive leaves us here, fractured.

Amanda

I am aware now, more than ever, of the boxes I’ve placed myself into—the ones that were introduced to me by my family and by my culture. I consciously stepped into them and closed the lid in order to stay safe, in order to be liked, in order to fit in. Now I’m pushing the boundaries I’ve set for myself so that I can settle into a new acceptance of who I am. It’s almost like I’m stuck in a flowerpot and I’m expanding while it’s breaking. It’s breaking. But in order to do that, in order to break out of my molds, I need to understand what they are and why they were made in the first place.

Alex Hedison

I’m like this because I carry the patterns of my family of origin.

The moment we’re born, we look up at our caretakers. We notice—before we even have language—what makes them smile and come close, what makes them frown and turn away. We notice—and we keep noticing—and then we adapt to survive. We magnify the parts of ourselves that earn us love and protection, and we hide what doesn’t. We know instinctively that we need our caretakers to survive—so we become what we believe they want us to be.

And then we grow up and one day we look in the mirror and wonder: Why am I still hiding so much of myself? Have I ever even met my real self?

Glennon

I became an athlete to get my mother’s love.

All I really wanted was love, full acceptance, and attention from my mom. But because I had this deep knowing about my gayness, I felt like my mom would never accept this part of me. So I developed an athlete persona to make up for my gayness. It worked! I was celebrated. But that kind of affirmation was something I could never really latch on to. I’d come home from soccer and my family would be so amazed at all my goals. But I always felt like: What if I stop scoring goals? Will they be able to love what’s left?

Abby

I became more attuned to others’ emotions than my own.

In my family, there was one person whose emotional fluctuations dictated everyone’s experience. This dynamic teaches a child to be highly attuned and vigilant to others’ emotions to keep the peace. I did that my entire life and only recently learned that it’s an actual thing. It’s called emotional monitoring, and it involves living your life as a fixer in hyperactive awareness of everyone else’s experience. You’re so busy keeping everyone comfortable that you completely lose any boundary between everybody else’s experience of a situation and your own. And because of that, you actually do not have your own experience. Their experience is your experience.

Amanda

I became extreme to be seen.

I used to speak in extremes. I didn’t just dislike someone, I hated them. I wasn’t just a little bit bored, I was going to die of boredom. It’s interesting to consider what kind of people feel the need to express themselves so dramatically. Maybe some of us learn early that our needs won’t be met unless we become extreme about them.

Glennon

I became a reflection of my dad’s values.

Growing up, my dad was making films like Grapes of Wrath and Twelve Angry Men, with strong, brave characters who stuck up for the underdogs. And I always knew those were the roles that he loved, representing the values that he respected. I wasn’t conscious of it then, but I think seeing the roles he loved was like fertilizer that was being sprinkled on my soul. When I learned the truth of the Vietnam War, that fertilizer allowed the sprouts of my activism to start growing.

Jane Fonda

I’m like this becauseI learned what earned me love and what didn’t.

I became a comedian to make my mom laugh.

It’s so hard to tell what part of our personality is a coping mechanism that was formed years ago and what’s our actual personality. Like, who would I have been if I’d grown up on a beach alone? I don’t know that I would’ve done comedy. I’m pretty introverted. I think we’re all just trying to cheer up our moms.

Editorial Reviews

Gathering insights from Michelle Obama on staying in love, Chelsea Handler on getting over a broken heart, and Martha Beck on overcoming anxiety, this book offers a cheat sheet to living.”—Oprah Daily

From the Publisher