How to Break Cycles with Allison Russell (Best Of)

We Can Do Hard Things

Glennon Doyle & Audacy

Society & Culture, Relationships, Education, Self-improvement

4.8 • 41.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Allison Russell, shares her incredible life story and teaches us how she healed from abuse through music, sisterhood, and returning to her body. This hour is a soul-stirring reminder of the life-saving, cycle-breaking power of truth telling, art, and love. About Allison: Allison Russell has spent her career in multiple bands, including Po’ Girl, Our Native Daughters and Birds of Chicago. After a career spent as a gifted multi-instrumentalist, backing numerous other artists, she finally dared to release her solo project in 2021. She made her Opry debut and appeared at the Country Music Hall of Fame and performed at the 2022 GRAMMY’s Premiere Ceremony. In addition to her four GRAMMY nominations, she has earned three 2022 Americana Award nominations and a win for Album of the Year, two International Folk Music Award wins, a 2022 Juno nomination for ‘Songwriter of the Year,’ and her first-ever Juno Award win for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year. Russell received two 2021 Americana Awards nominations, won three Canadian Folk Music Awards, two UK Americana Music Awards, and more. She was recently nominated for Song of the Year and Artist of the Year for the 2023 Americana Awards. TW: ⁠@outsidechild13⁠ IG: ⁠@allisonrussellmusic To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome Pod Squad. Today we are delighted to tell you that we have the Allison Russell with us.
0:18.6	After career spent as a gifted multi-instrumentalist backing numerous other artists,
0:23.9	she finally released her solo project in 2021. She made her opera debut, appeared at the Country
0:29.8	Music Hall of Fame, and performed at the 2022 Grammy's premiere ceremony. She has been nominated
0:36.2	for four Grammys. She has earned three Americana Awards. Her recent album, The Returner, is just, it's a real experience. You've got to listen. Alice and Russell, welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Yes. There she is. I'm so excited to talk to y'all. I was just listening to your incredible conversation with Andrea Gibson and me, bang, my beautiful literary agent, Meg Thompson, sent it to me and just intuitively didn't know we were doing this, you know, and just sent it to me. No way. Yeah. She was like, you need to listen to this.
1:11.8	It's going to change your life. I will. Well, thank you for listening. And we've already started.
1:17.5	So, hi. Welcome you, Alice and Russell.
1:20.9	Wonderful to meet you all sort of officially. I remember seeing y'all and seeing high,
1:30.5	kind of in a dark green room at Red Rocks,
1:37.8	but that was a while ago. I was thinking about that in preparation for this moment. I think that you and I, the first time we met, we were sitting on the floor in a huge green room, the back of Red Rocks, eating in and out.
1:45.6	I think there was like 400 boxes of In-N-Out burgers. It was at backstage after a brandy
1:51.6	Alison Russell, Sister Strings, everybody was there.
1:55.0	Yes.
1:55.5	Show. It was midnight and I was so proud of myself for being awake and I was like, oh, this is what
2:01.5	it's like behind the scenes at a rock star show, except that I don't think this is how it is at a rock star
2:09.7	show because it was 500 cheeseburgers, 500 children.
2:17.3	Yeah.
2:17.6	There was like...
2:18.1	The feral wolf pack.
2:19.0	It was the feral wolf pack.
2:21.0	My daughter was among them, Ida.
2:22.7	I know.
	...

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