Hello everybody. Today in celebration of our favorite month, which is Pride Month, we are sharing

one of our favorite episodes from the early weeks of the pod when Abby shared what she learned as a child

from church that made her feel shame for being herself and how she got free.

Hope you

to believe

the best people are free.

Hi everybody welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.

Today the hard thing we are going to be discussing is queerness and shame.

And in particular the kind of false shame that many of us learn from religion. It's like we're handed the shame and

we're told it's from God, so we just take it without questioning it and we carry

it throughout our lives and we end up

walking through life a little hunched over.

Burdened, tired, angry about all the heaviness.

My wife, Abby, for example, she's a pro athlete,

champion, a beloved leader, an American icon, so many people adore her.

People have been cheering her on for decades.

But right beneath the surface of her is a little girl who learned that God rejected her.

And she carries that bad news and her bones to this day.

As you will hear in this conversation today.

There's lots of laughter and lots of tears in our conversation today so get ready.

Tears for me are a sign that the work is happening, that progress is being made, that healing is imminent.

It always makes me cringe when anybody says,

...