Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome back to Work in Progress friends. Today we
Speaker 1: are joined by an old friend of the podcast who
Speaker 1: is absolutely one of the most inspiring humans that I know,
Speaker 1: none other than Shannon Watts, the founder of Mom's Demand Action,
Speaker 1: which is the nation's largest grassroots group fighting against gun violence.
Speaker 1: She has gathered over ten million women from disparate geographies, backgrounds,
Speaker 1: political parties. She is known as a summoner of women's audacity,
Speaker 1: and she used Mom's Demand Action not only to fight
Speaker 1: for the future of our families and our children, but
Speaker 1: also as a field experiment for mobilizing women. She has
Speaker 1: figured out what fires us up up and keeps us engaged.
Speaker 1: And though she passed the baton of leadership at Mom's
Speaker 1: Demand Action to another leader so she could take a
Speaker 1: much deserved year off after working seven days a week,
Speaker 1: almost twenty four hours a day for eleven straight years
Speaker 1: on this, did she take a sabbatical. No, she decided
Speaker 1: to write a book. Shannon is here to discuss her
Speaker 1: new book, Fired Up, How to turn your Spark into
Speaker 1: a flame and come Alive at any age. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear about the lessons that she's learned, the
Speaker 1: gems that she's gleaned, and the way that she sees
Speaker 1: women as a bonfire when they gather together, work for community,
Speaker 1: and figure out what truly makes them happy. Let's dive
Speaker 1: in with Shannon Watts. Hi, my dear, and welcome back
Speaker 1: to the show.
Speaker 2: I'm so thrilled to be here with you.
Speaker 1: I'm just so excited we're here in person too. I
Speaker 1: feel like you and I have to so often when
Speaker 1: we want to be together figure out what city we're
Speaker 1: going to overlap in during what month of the year,
Speaker 1: and so to get you, I want to squeeze you.
Speaker 2: You're just far in a way that I can squeeze me.
Speaker 1: I will. I'll squeeze you again after we're done. I
Speaker 1: know this is a really loaded question these days, But
Speaker 1: how are you?
Speaker 2: It is a loaded question. You know, I'm good. I think,
Speaker 2: as the famous activist has said, Mariam Cambay, that hope
Speaker 2: it is a discipline that's always been my mindset, that
Speaker 2: it is very easy to be cynical and therefore disengaged.
Speaker 2: If you actually practice hope, if you look around for
Speaker 2: the things that are hopeful, yeah, then you can stay
Speaker 2: engaged and you can take breaks, but come back to
Speaker 2: the work. And I think the next four years is
Speaker 2: going to be a discipline, a practice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. I think it's a thing I've
Speaker 1: been I don't want to say meditating on but really
Speaker 1: thinking a lot about and trying to do so consciously
Speaker 1: is what it means to hold so many things to
Speaker 1: be true at the same time, especially when some of
Speaker 1: those things feel oppositional to each other. Things are wonderful
Speaker 1: and terrible. There is joy, there is pain. You know
Speaker 1: how you can be grateful for your own life inside
Speaker 1: the four walls of your home and also really know
Speaker 1: that the world around you needs help and figure out
Speaker 1: how to give to your point the hope, to both
Speaker 1: the joy and the hurting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, joy, I think is a really important word. When
Speaker 2: I started Moms to Be in Action, we came together
Speaker 2: each year, all the volunteer leadership and it was a
Speaker 2: weekend for training and lifting up the stories of survivors
Speaker 2: and talking about legislation. You know, it was tough stuff,
Speaker 2: and we decided to add a dance party at the
Speaker 2: end of the weekend, and there was a lot of pushback,
Speaker 2: particularly from non survivors, who said like, is this appropriate?
Speaker 2: Are we being unserious? It ended up being the most
Speaker 2: popular part of that weekend. The lights went off, people
Speaker 2: took up their shoes, they got all sweaty, they danced,
Speaker 2: and they had joy. What is the point of activism
Speaker 2: or life without joy? And so to imagine that we're
Speaker 2: going to get through this next four years just bare
Speaker 2: knuckling it and still be able to be activists and
Speaker 2: it's just not possible. We have to look for joy
Speaker 2: and that comes in community, absolutely.
Speaker 1: And I think that the idea that you have to
Speaker 1: bare knuckle it or you're unseerious, particularly for women, is
Speaker 1: such a vestige of patriarchy, you know, this thing that
Speaker 1: we're meant to suffer. It's why so many women get
Speaker 1: so burned out, yes, because we're told our joy makes
Speaker 1: us unseerious, unprofessional. And I love the way that, even
Speaker 1: in this break that you've taken from Mom's demand, you know,
Speaker 1: you're stepping back from running the organization, you've really leaned
Speaker 1: into your activism as a woman, having frank conversations about
Speaker 1: burnout and joy and aging and life. And it's been
Speaker 1: really beautiful to watch you put this sort of energy
Speaker 1: and specificity that you poured into an organization and out
Speaker 1: into the world for so long into you, and then
Speaker 1: by seeing you do it, I think we all feel
Speaker 1: we have permission to do it.
Speaker 2: That means a lot to me. I think what I
Speaker 2: realized in creating Mom's dem in Action, which was not
Speaker 2: only the largest women led nonprofit in the nation with
Speaker 2: ten million supporters, but it also became the largest real
Speaker 2: life laboratory for what empowers women, what makes them come alive.
Speaker 2: I saw this over and over again, and you were
Speaker 2: just talking about women and suffering. What I saw so
Speaker 2: many times and even in my own life, is that
Speaker 2: women are taught to fulfill their obligations and men are
Speaker 2: taught to follow their desires. Yes, and what would our
Speaker 2: lives be like if the only question we asked ourselves
Speaker 2: was what do we want?
Speaker 1: I love that you said that, because it is the
Speaker 1: emotional version of what happens to women versus men around money.
Speaker 1: If men are taught to chase and fulfill their desires,
Speaker 1: they are taught to seek and be poured in to
Speaker 1: pour into themselves. If women are taught to fulfill their obligations,
Speaker 1: they're taught to give and give and give and give
Speaker 1: and give to others. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: was the most arresting to me really starting to work
Speaker 1: on gender equity in terms of finance, in terms of
Speaker 1: access to capital. The work Nia and I do at
Speaker 1: the First Women's Bank is the data around how when
Speaker 1: women begin to accrue any version of personal wealth it
Speaker 1: can be five thousand dollars or five million dollars, they
Speaker 1: are approached to become philanthropic donors. And when men begin
Speaker 1: accruing any version of personal wealth, they get approached to
Speaker 1: invest it. So they get approached to go out and
Speaker 1: fulfill and pour into and make more. And women are
Speaker 1: asked to give and give and give and give and gift.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting you bring this up because I talk
Speaker 2: about this, which is in many ways the bucket of
Speaker 2: the passion tex Because women are passionate about something, because
Speaker 2: they care about something, they're expected to do it for free.
Speaker 2: I am guilty of this me too. I worked at
Speaker 2: Mom's Demand Action. I say worked. I was a full
Speaker 2: time volunteer for eleven years. I do not take a dime. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all the money I made from my book from speeches
Speaker 2: all got funneled back into the organization. And I write
Speaker 2: about this in the book that we're going to talk about.
Speaker 2: And I thought I was being really noble, and maybe
Speaker 2: I was actually being a martin. I thought I was
Speaker 2: a good girl for doing this, and that no one
Speaker 2: could point a finger at me and say, oh, look
Speaker 2: at that woman. She's enriching herself because of you know,
Speaker 2: gun violence or all the different reasons I had for
Speaker 2: why I shouldn't take a salary, and yet all of
Speaker 2: the other, mostly men, who were working in the organization
Speaker 2: did and it set an example for our volunteers, right
Speaker 2: chapter leaders. It's all volunteer work, and so I think
Speaker 2: there's a really important conversation to be had about why
Speaker 2: do we expect women to put their blood, sweat and
Speaker 2: tears into things and not be compensated and that isn't
Speaker 2: the case for men.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so surreal. You know, we talked about this
Speaker 1: because you were one of my first guests in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: So thank you so much for having a longtime friend
Speaker 1: of the podcast. I know that I asked you then
Speaker 1: what it would be like if you could spend some
Speaker 1: time with your younger self, if you would see yourself
Speaker 1: in her, if you think she would be like I
Speaker 1: get how I turned into that woman. What does it
Speaker 1: feel like now, you know, almost six years later, after
Speaker 1: you've been through so many life shifts, when you think
Speaker 1: about maybe more than one of the younger versions of
Speaker 1: yourself that you carry with the woman you are today,
Speaker 1: what would have changed? What's the advice you might give
Speaker 1: yourself in college or yourself in middle school from this seat,
Speaker 1: at this table, on this day.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love this question. So when we met for
Speaker 2: this podcast, you know, five years ago, I was in
Speaker 2: a very different place. You know, I still had young
Speaker 2: kids or youngish kids who were teens, and I was
Speaker 2: kind of figuring out who I was as an activist
Speaker 2: and what was next. And here I am now, a
Speaker 2: fifty four year old woman who's gone through menopause, who
Speaker 2: has grown children. And what is really interesting to me
Speaker 2: is that for I interviewed over seventy women for this book,
Speaker 2: and when I asked them what they were worried their deathbed,
Speaker 2: regret would be almost all of them, maybe one or two,
Speaker 2: Almost all of them said to me, I will regret
Speaker 2: not having spent more time with my children while pursuing
Speaker 2: what was important to me, which is tragic because I
Speaker 2: don't think there is a man who would have the
Speaker 2: same answer. And now that I'm on the other side
Speaker 2: of that fifty four years old, my youngest is twenty four,
Speaker 2: I can promise you that my kids have not once
Speaker 2: said to me you missed the soccer game in two
Speaker 2: thousand and two, or you didn't come to the fifth
Speaker 2: showing of my Peter Pan play. What they say is,
Speaker 2: we are so incredibly proud of you. We are so
Speaker 2: grateful you took us along on your activism journey. You
Speaker 2: gave us permission to pursue what is important to us.
Speaker 2: I think it's really important for women to remember that
Speaker 2: they are human beings before and after their children, and
Speaker 2: that you don't want to get to the end of
Speaker 2: your life and feel like you didn't burn. You want
Speaker 2: to have lived a life that is fulfilling to you,
Speaker 2: and that doesn't make you a bad parent. And so
Speaker 2: that's who I am right now, trying to tell all
Speaker 2: the women who are worried about that, who are fulfilling
Speaker 2: their obligations instead of wondering what their desires are, that
Speaker 2: you can do all of it.
Speaker 1: And I think it's important to realize not only to
Speaker 1: you as an individual outside of your children, your marriage,
Speaker 1: your career deserve it, but that you model it for
Speaker 1: your kids. Yes, you know. Two of the most profound
Speaker 1: parenting lessons I've been given in the last few weeks.
Speaker 1: One was on this show and one was at our
Speaker 1: home for Easter weekend with some friends. And the person
Speaker 1: who came on the show, what an insane sentence, like
Speaker 1: we've done some really cool stuff. You know you and
Speaker 1: I I know you have these things where you go.
Speaker 1: I can't believe what I'm about to say out loud.
Speaker 1: When Michelle Obama was on the show two weeks ago.
Speaker 2: I would just open every show with that, right be like, just.
Speaker 1: Engage you missited she was here. She said something to
Speaker 1: me when I asked her about, you know, this empty
Speaker 1: nest phase which people talk about like it's a bad thing,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you have like a freedom nest.
Speaker 2: You taught them to fly, they flew. What are you
Speaker 2: doing in your big nest?
Speaker 1: Now? You know, we're laughing about some things. And she
Speaker 1: said that it would be really impossible to talk about
Speaker 1: the ways that she learned to mother without lessons from
Speaker 1: her own mother, and how her mother said to her
Speaker 1: her whole life, I'm not raising babies, I'm raising adults
Speaker 1: and empowered her and her brother to feel like they
Speaker 1: could have agency, to feel like they were in control
Speaker 1: of things, you know, to learn lessons and know that
Speaker 1: they were pursuing their adult nests. And then my friend
Speaker 1: Genevieve this weekend said, the best thing you can do,
Speaker 1: especially for your daughters, is to live a full life
Speaker 1: as a woman in front of them. Yes, And so
Speaker 1: she was talking about her six year old and how
Speaker 1: she makes sure she meditates some of her daughter. She
Speaker 1: makes sure to move her body in front of her daughter.
Speaker 1: She makes sure to go over her calendar for the
Speaker 1: day the night before in front of her daughter, so
Speaker 1: her daughter sees her having executive meetings, understands it. On
Speaker 1: a Tuesday night, she has a business dinner, but she'll
Speaker 1: see her when she gets home. And on Wednesday night
Speaker 1: they'll be home together and they'll cook. And she talked
Speaker 1: about the balance because she wants her daughter to be
Speaker 1: able to do exactly what you're discussing and to always
Speaker 1: know that she can not to feel like she's starting
Speaker 1: to reclaim her time in her mid forties or in
Speaker 1: her mid fifties or in her mid sixties. Event, and
Speaker 1: it's such a generational shift because, and I don't say
Speaker 1: it critically, my mom made her whole life about me
Speaker 1: and my life, and it was a really jarring transition
Speaker 1: for her to then have me leave to go to college.
Speaker 1: I was going off to learn something, and when I left,
Speaker 1: she had to learn a whole new thing too. And
Speaker 1: we talk a lot of about out how in our
Speaker 1: adulthood together we found a different way of being. And
Speaker 1: I just, I don't know. I think it's really profound
Speaker 1: what you're talking about and what you're helping encourage other
Speaker 1: women to do, because maybe our generation gets to be
Speaker 1: the one that helps shift it for our kids.
Speaker 2: What you're talking about is leaving a legacy, and I
Speaker 2: don't think we ask women a lot what they want
Speaker 2: their legacy to be. We think of legacy as your
Speaker 2: name on a hospital or a huge endowment or a foundation,
Speaker 2: but it's not. It's simply knowing that you lived a
Speaker 2: life that is true to you. And what you're talking
Speaker 2: about is the second half of life, which my mother's
Speaker 2: generation was not expected to have. You turned forty forty five,
Speaker 2: and you were sort of invisible, and you went off
Speaker 2: and did whatever until you know the end of your
Speaker 2: life that isn't true anymore. I'm fifty four. I feel
Speaker 2: like I'm just getting started.
Speaker 1: Well, also, look at your face. You have perfect skin,
Speaker 1: enviable hair like and it goes back to that thing
Speaker 1: where women and are supposed to be serious or they're
Speaker 1: just girly. Yes, I'm like, no way, I'm coming in
Speaker 1: with the hair out and the outfit on. I know
Speaker 1: all the points of this policy. We're arguing, and we're
Speaker 1: going to go lobby in DC and figure out it.
Speaker 1: We can do it all. Yes, I just think we
Speaker 1: have to give ourselves permission to actually do what we want.
Speaker 2: And to have the courage right and to ask yourself
Speaker 2: to check in regularly at all stages of your life.
Speaker 2: What am I doing? Is this fulfilling to me? Am
Speaker 2: I leaving anything on the table? You know? And I
Speaker 2: don't want to get to the end of my life
Speaker 2: and feel like I haven't burned. I mean that's the
Speaker 2: whole That's the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Okay. So can I ask you, because you use that
Speaker 1: phrase a lot and for people at home, what do
Speaker 1: you mean by burned? You want to feel like you
Speaker 1: haven't burned? Yes? How do you How did you select
Speaker 1: that word? And what's the ethos for you.
Speaker 2: So the metaphor for the book came up because I
Speaker 2: was talking about I was at the home of an
Speaker 2: author who was helping me figure out my book after
Speaker 2: Maria Striver made the generous offer of writing about what
Speaker 2: I'd learned about women, which is sort of you know
Speaker 2: a lot. How do you boil that down? And this woman,
Speaker 2: this author, said to me, you're very fiery, like that
Speaker 2: is your personality, that is who you are. And so
Speaker 2: fire became the metaphor of the book. And when I
Speaker 2: started to think about what is living on fire, it
Speaker 2: is it is the ability to see things clearly, two
Speaker 2: specific things. What is limiting you and what is calling you?
Speaker 2: And there is a very specific formula for that that
Speaker 2: I learned in my life, but that I saw women
Speaker 2: come into Mom's men action and replicate over and over
Speaker 2: and over again. And that is what are your abilities?
Speaker 2: What are your values? And what are your desires? Because
Speaker 2: when those three things come together, you are burning. You
Speaker 2: are creating a fire in your life. And your life
Speaker 2: is a series of fires. It's not just one thing.
Speaker 2: It's not this. You know, sometimes we're sold this idea
Speaker 2: about purpose, as if we're only here for one thing,
Speaker 2: and if we don't figure out what that is, we've somehow,
Speaker 2: you know, are not living a life that is true
Speaker 2: to us. That's not true. You know, after Mom's de
Speaker 2: man action was over and for me, I stepped away
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three, I thought, who am I without
Speaker 2: Mom's de man action? This has become my identity. And
Speaker 2: yet I started another fire. I wrote a book, I
Speaker 2: became a surrogate for Kamala Harris. You know, after this,
Speaker 2: there are more things that I want to do, and
Speaker 2: I will continue to implement that formula in order to
Speaker 2: make those things happen. And I want every woman to
Speaker 2: try this formula right now. Out in the zeitgeist, there's
Speaker 2: so much about what what are women in midlife doing?
Speaker 2: What are older women doing? Not a lot of how
Speaker 2: I want to show women, how how do you get
Speaker 2: to where these other women are that you're learning about,
Speaker 2: because you can do it too.
Speaker 1: I love that We'll be back in just a minute
Speaker 1: after a few words from our favorite sponsors. To your point,
Speaker 1: you know, I I think this idea, even when we
Speaker 1: talk about midlife, when we talk about older women, all
Speaker 1: of the terminology has been used to kind of shame us,
Speaker 1: even you know, you hear those things in society like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: men just get better looking with age and women just age,
Speaker 1: And it's like again, I look around at our group
Speaker 1: of friends, I'm like, I actually think we've never looked better.
Speaker 1: I think I'm way cuter than I was in my twenties.
Speaker 1: Early odds fashion was very questionable and horrible. I had
Speaker 1: a very bad haircut. We are well also same Yeah
Speaker 1: those thank god there were no iPhones. Then those pictures
Speaker 1: are buried and locked away forever. I overplucked my eyebrows
Speaker 1: for a while. I mean, just not good. And I'm
Speaker 1: excited about this fiery woman kind of iconography because what
Speaker 1: I've realized in doing this myself is we only grow
Speaker 1: in power and purpose. And I think when you have
Speaker 1: the courage to reinvent yourself or to say I'm not
Speaker 1: having a good time at this party, I'm leaving and
Speaker 1: I'm going to plan another, it can be so jarring
Speaker 1: for people because they're not used to seeing us choose ourselves.
Speaker 1: I experienced that going through a divorce. I've watched women
Speaker 1: other friends of mine experience it in that way. Leaving careers,
Speaker 1: changing careers, moving to another country, you know, whatever, it
Speaker 1: might be women choosing themselves seems like it freaks people out.
Speaker 1: So when you think about how you began to focus
Speaker 1: on this and I want to hear that Maria Shreve
Speaker 1: her phone call story. But how you began to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to interview all these women about how they
Speaker 1: burst into flame in like the most beautiful way. How
Speaker 1: did you even really know where to start or were
Speaker 1: you Also? Do you think the questions came from you
Speaker 1: saying I'm doing this and I want to know who
Speaker 1: else is doing this? Sometimes from when I think I'm
Speaker 1: going to do something terrifying or requires so much courage,
Speaker 1: it's really helpful for me to know other people doing it. Yes,
Speaker 1: like my best friend in the world and I literally
Speaker 1: got We got engaged and then married and then divorced
Speaker 1: in the same timeline together and we were like, wow,
Speaker 1: do we just learn lessons like the hard way?
Speaker 2: Or can we only do things together?
Speaker 1: Maybe we should have gone on a trip.
Speaker 2: Would have been so much cheaper than this life.
Speaker 1: Lesson, you know, But there is something about having someone
Speaker 1: you love model that kind of courage for you, you know,
Speaker 1: make legal recommendations for you, teach you how to go
Speaker 1: get a job, or have a baby, or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: So do you think the book came from you seeking
Speaker 1: out other women doing the next stage of life? Fire building? Oh?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know. I start with my story, and I
Speaker 2: had this experience. I lived a very me life, I
Speaker 2: call it until I was in my forties because I
Speaker 2: married right out of college. My parents were going through
Speaker 2: a horrible divorce, and so I think I was seeking
Speaker 2: out solace of my college boyfriend. I got pregnant three
Speaker 2: months later. I got pregnant three months after that baby
Speaker 2: was born. By the time I was twenty nine, I
Speaker 2: had three children. I was married to someone I wouldn't
Speaker 2: have married had I waited until I was after thirty
Speaker 2: years old. I was in a job I didn't like.
Speaker 2: I wanted to be an investigative journalist and I was
Speaker 2: doing public relations. And I found myself one day in
Speaker 2: the emergency room absolutely covered head to toe and ezema
Speaker 2: in every orifice, on my eyelids, on my ears. I mean,
Speaker 2: They're horrific. I couldn't sleep, I was miserable. I was suffering.
Speaker 2: And I tell the story of being in that office
Speaker 2: and the doctor really connecting with me, and I just
Speaker 2: had a breakdown. And I realized I was at a crossroads.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I could look at my life and the mistakes I'd
Speaker 2: made and make different choices going forward, or I could
Speaker 2: continue to live this life. And it wasn't easy to
Speaker 2: leave a marriage and leave my career and start all
Speaker 2: over again. And I'm so glad I did, because I
Speaker 2: would never have started Mom's de man action. I would
Speaker 2: never be where I am now. And so I wanted
Speaker 2: to talk to other women who had had those experiences.
Speaker 2: And I tell so many stories because I think stories
Speaker 2: are the model to help other women do these things.
Speaker 2: And so I talked to one woman named Amber Goodwin
Speaker 2: who applied to law school almost two dozen right out
Speaker 2: of college, didn't get in. Then, when she was forty
Speaker 2: years old, after Donald Trump was elected, she decided, you know,
Speaker 2: if he can be president, I can become a lawyer.
Speaker 2: So she applied again in her forties, got in, and
Speaker 2: ended up being the president of her law school and
Speaker 2: now is working to get other women of color into
Speaker 2: law schools all over the country. I talked to a
Speaker 2: woman who wanted to be an author. Because of her
Speaker 2: financial circumstances, she took a job as a gym teacher.
Speaker 2: Did that for thirty years, retired, started volunteering at an
Speaker 2: animal shelter, came up with this idea in her head
Speaker 2: of a love story between two people who meet at
Speaker 2: the shelter. Taught herself how to write dialogue, how to
Speaker 2: create a book, wrote a book, and then decided she
Speaker 2: deserved to have it published. She sent it to two
Speaker 2: hundred and eighteen publishing houses and got rejected every time.
Speaker 2: On the two hundred and nineteenth she got a two
Speaker 2: book deal and became a published author in her seventies. Wow,
Speaker 2: so that's what I wanted to convey to other women.
Speaker 2: It's never too late. You're not too old. You have
Speaker 2: something important to offer, no matter what age you are,
Speaker 2: no matter what stage of life, if you pursue it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. Did you see that that talk
Speaker 1: that went sort of viral online? I feel like we
Speaker 1: have similar algorithms, so maybe you saw it as well.
Speaker 1: Of a professor, we'll have to do a little research
Speaker 1: and put it in the show notes. He gave a
Speaker 1: talk at a university. I think he's a I don't
Speaker 1: know if he's a biology teacher, essentially asking the question,
Speaker 1: what are women in their third in their last third
Speaker 1: of life? Four, and you know, the class kind of
Speaker 1: gets like and you hear the murmurs, and he says,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean that in the way that you
Speaker 1: think he said, but you know, men can be fathers
Speaker 1: into their eighties. No one judges them when they do that,
Speaker 1: by the way, but God forbid a woman in her
Speaker 1: forties as a kid. That's verse every day. But he
Speaker 1: was saying, you know, women, once you go through men
Speaker 1: a pause, you cease being able to birth a child.
Speaker 1: So societally, what are women for? And he says, you know,
Speaker 1: we outlive men almost always and by quite a long time.
Speaker 1: And essentially a long story longer I'll try to paraphrase,
Speaker 1: is that he pausits that women, as they enter the
Speaker 1: grandmother stage, whether that's you have grandchildren or you are
Speaker 1: a grandmother, in society, that we are the ones who
Speaker 1: are the wisdom givers. Yes, we are actually the teachers.
Speaker 1: And I thought about it for weeks after I watch
Speaker 1: this talk, because I thought, oh, women have actually been
Speaker 1: taught that our only value, our biggest value in society
Speaker 1: is motherhood. But actually, essentially men's only value, add is
Speaker 1: fatherhood and they can do it forever. We literally have
Speaker 1: a third of our lives where that is not our value,
Speaker 1: where we serve a greater purpose. And when he started
Speaker 1: to talk about us being the wisdom givers, the teachers,
Speaker 1: the ones who continue to shepherd's society, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we've inverted our roles. There's a reason that women have been,
Speaker 1: you know, removed from so many of the holy books
Speaker 1: around the world. Right, It's that they're scared of our power. Yes,
Speaker 1: the divine veeminine there used to be the goddess for
Speaker 1: the God and they've tried to, you know, really reduce us.
Speaker 1: And it makes me feel like we're finally getting back
Speaker 1: to something as I look around at all my friends
Speaker 1: their forties to their seventies doing what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: because I actually look at women as the ones who
Speaker 1: hold the most power and the greatest ideas, and who
Speaker 1: teach the most generously and to pursue a book, a
Speaker 1: second career. Whatever it is you love feeds you as well.
Speaker 1: So I think it shifts that give give give versus take, take, take,
Speaker 1: and it actually creates a healthier cycle, something more natural
Speaker 1: that moves, you know, in and out, ebb and flow
Speaker 1: all the time. Do you feel like you've got your
Speaker 1: personal ebb and flow in a place where you love it.
Speaker 2: I do right now, I do, But I want to
Speaker 2: be clear like it does ebb and flow. Yeah, you're
Speaker 2: going to have ups and downs. Yeah, that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: you should back down.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I made a choice when I started Mom'stuman Action and
Speaker 2: I started receiving all these threats that I didn't expect.
Speaker 2: You know, I had to back down or double down,
Speaker 2: and I decided to double down. And you know, I
Speaker 2: had someone say to me when I was writing this book,
Speaker 2: I wish I had had a handbook for all the
Speaker 2: blowback that I will receive. It doesn't mean you're starting
Speaker 2: a huge thing like an organization. It may be just
Speaker 2: a difficult conversation. Maybe you're getting out of a relationship,
Speaker 2: maybe you're pursuing another job. It can be personal, political, professional.
Speaker 2: But if you apply this formula and if you know
Speaker 2: what to expect, you know that you will feel imposter syndrome,
Speaker 2: that your perfectionism will get in the way, that you
Speaker 2: will start to think people don't want to hear your
Speaker 2: story or you don't have a story to tell. If
Speaker 2: you know there will be a messy middle, then you
Speaker 2: can get through it. And that is what this is really,
Speaker 2: you know, a guide for that.
Speaker 1: Wow, messy middle.
Speaker 2: Messy middle can be brutal. It's hard, but you learn
Speaker 2: so much there you do.
Speaker 1: But I think you're right. A guidebook would have been helpful.
Speaker 1: You know, we bonded and became friends in activism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was not prepared either for not only how much
Speaker 1: the world hates an outspoken woman, a politically educated woman.
Speaker 1: Oh God, here we go. And you know, nobody tells
Speaker 1: you how to deal with the threats. Nobody tells you
Speaker 1: how to deal with you know, the blowback. And it's
Speaker 1: not lost on me that I think as an observer,
Speaker 1: you can tell me if it's correct. I think part
Speaker 1: of the reason so many people were so incensed by
Speaker 1: Mom's demand is that it was so nonpartisan. You got
Speaker 1: so many people who have been cultured or encouraged or
Speaker 1: algorithmically targeted to fight a culture war, a red versus blue,
Speaker 1: a left versus right, YadA, YadA, YadA. You got them
Speaker 1: all to say, oh, yeah, every country in the world
Speaker 1: has mental health issues. Every country in the world on
Speaker 1: par with ours, has access to the same video games.
Speaker 1: Everywhere is basically the same. When you are in a
Speaker 1: similar country of you know, population and economic means and
Speaker 1: all the things. The only difference here is the access
Speaker 1: to the guns. It's the guns, It's not anything else.
Speaker 1: And I say, this is a kid who got her
Speaker 1: first gun for her twelfth birthday. You know, people are
Speaker 1: always very shocked when they find out that, like they're
Speaker 1: liberal Hollywood blah blah blah. Person they want to scream
Speaker 1: about is like actually a sharpshooter. Yeah, we can mean
Speaker 1: many things, guys. It's the guns. Yes. And when you
Speaker 1: had moms from San Francisco to Oakland, to Texas to
Speaker 1: New Mexico to Florida to Northern Vermont rallying together, I
Speaker 1: think you really scared a lot of people because they
Speaker 1: knew that the truth was more powerful than the pr Oh,
Speaker 1: the facts are more powerful than any money the gun
Speaker 1: lobby spends. And you can't unsee something once you know it.
Speaker 1: And yet we find ourselves back here in this dystopian
Speaker 1: Trump two point oh Land, How I know you took
Speaker 1: a break which you deserved. You know, you did the
Speaker 1: most wonderful thing that I think women do, which is
Speaker 1: they build power and then share it. You say, I'm
Speaker 1: going to run Mom's demand until the day I die
Speaker 1: because it's fine, you pass the baton, but from outside,
Speaker 1: still having built it and being so close to it,
Speaker 1: how do you? How do you want to speak to
Speaker 1: those women about what we do now? Because it feels
Speaker 1: like it for all this progress we've made, the people
Speaker 1: with the most money who want the progress for themselves
Speaker 1: and not for any of us, are winning in this moment,
Speaker 1: and they're just they're lighting everything on fire, and not
Speaker 1: in a good way, not in a fired up way,
Speaker 1: in like I've burdened all burnt, all down, nightmare kind
Speaker 1: of way. So what do you if you were still
Speaker 1: at the home of Mom's demand, or if you were
Speaker 1: just going to talk to us I don't know on
Speaker 1: Instagram on Saturday morning, like what would you? What do
Speaker 1: you want to say to the women who go? But Shannon,
Speaker 1: what do we do now? You know?
Speaker 2: I knew intuitively the day after the santy Hook School
Speaker 2: shooting that women were the secret sauce to taking on
Speaker 2: the largest, most powerful, wealthy special interests that's ever existed,
Speaker 2: right the gun lobby. And I simply put out a
Speaker 2: plea on Facebook that women come together like they did
Speaker 2: through Mothers against Drunk Driving, which was so incredibly influential
Speaker 2: to me as a teen in the eighties. They made
Speaker 2: unbelievable progress in under a decade. So I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: we need women to take on the gun lobby. And
Speaker 2: I was right. This was the gun lobby's worst nightmare,
Speaker 2: that women would rise up against them to protect their
Speaker 2: children in their communities because women are so powerful. Yes,
Speaker 2: we only hold twenty five percent of the five hundred
Speaker 2: thousand elected positions in this country. We are less than
Speaker 2: five percent of fortunate one thousand CEOs, so we're not
Speaker 2: pulling the levers of power that really make the policies
Speaker 2: that protect our families and communities. But we're the majority
Speaker 2: of the voting population and we can use our voices.
Speaker 2: So when you combine voices and votes, we're unstoppable. And
Speaker 2: so that is why when millions of women began to
Speaker 2: show up in their state houses, in their city councils,
Speaker 2: even at Congress, we went from a corp of all
Speaker 2: Democrats in Congress having an A rating from the NA
Speaker 2: to none. Now it's a seismic shift in American politics.
Speaker 2: It's how we passed the first federal gun safety legislation
Speaker 2: in twenty two in a generation and that is a
Speaker 2: formula just like living on fire, right, that is the
Speaker 2: formula for successful activism. Women have immense power when we
Speaker 2: come together in community. And I talk about this in
Speaker 2: the book is building a bonfire? You know, you take
Speaker 2: your flame and you put it with other women's and
Speaker 2: it just becomes this huge, unstoppable fire that you know,
Speaker 2: shows you what you want to do, but also shows
Speaker 2: you the people you want to do it with. And
Speaker 2: that is what Moms to Men action became. And so
Speaker 2: I think in this moment, it is so we're all
Speaker 2: talking about community. It is so important to find your community.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be gun safety activism, it doesn't
Speaker 2: even have to be activism, but find your community and
Speaker 2: find your strength because that is what we need to
Speaker 2: get us through the next four years. And I will
Speaker 2: just say that as an Emerge America board member, this
Speaker 2: is an organization that trains women to run profice. I
Speaker 2: think there's a moral imperative for women to run profice
Speaker 2: in this country. Yes, I don't care if it's county corner,
Speaker 2: I don't care if it's city's sheriff. It can be
Speaker 2: a very small elected officials office. But if we are
Speaker 2: able to do it. We need to do it because
Speaker 2: only having twenty five percent of the elected positions. You know,
Speaker 2: the saying is when you don't have a seat at
Speaker 2: the table, you're probably on the menu. Many women right
Speaker 2: now in this country are the main course.
Speaker 1: Yes, and now a word from our sponsors that I
Speaker 1: really enjoy and I think you will too. Well. I
Speaker 1: saw a statistic today. The administration is saying they want
Speaker 1: to give baby bonuses, they want more children born in America.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh, you mean you want to give
Speaker 1: families a baby bonus that's over one thousand dollars less
Speaker 1: than the child tax credit that you're party killed that
Speaker 1: lifted fifty percent of all families in poverty out of poverty. Interesting,
Speaker 1: So you want women to have more babies in a
Speaker 1: country where you are making it impossible to access maternal healthcare,
Speaker 1: where you're defunding cancer research for children, where you are
Speaker 1: trying to take away women's rights to IVF so if
Speaker 1: they actually want to have children, they can't. And the
Speaker 1: list just goes on. You're defunding education, You want everybody
Speaker 1: to have guns. Why do you think people maybe are
Speaker 1: scared to bring children into this world? Weird? It's so
Speaker 1: crazy making. And I think it's why it's so important
Speaker 1: what you're putting in the book and also what you're
Speaker 1: reminding us out in the world is to see and
Speaker 1: identify the problem and then congregate in community to figure
Speaker 1: out how to fix it. And you are right. One
Speaker 1: of the ways we have to fix it is by
Speaker 1: taking those seats women running for office, whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: Emerge America or Emily's List or any of these groups
Speaker 1: that is helping she should run. Yes, helping run for something. Oh,
Speaker 1: that really feels like a shift that has been a
Speaker 1: long time coming from your vantage point. Do you see
Speaker 1: more women in your peer group? You know, women whose
Speaker 1: kids are off in college and so they're beginning to
Speaker 1: reclaim more of their daily time. Do you see more
Speaker 1: women talking about it, thinking about it, gearing up for it?
Speaker 2: I do? You know? Women don't not live on fire
Speaker 2: because they're weak. It's because they're wise. They see the
Speaker 2: system is set up for them to fail and the
Speaker 2: only way to fix that is to find the courage
Speaker 2: to step out into the arena. And you know this
Speaker 2: formula I was talking about your abilities, your values, and
Speaker 2: your desires. That is different for every single person. My
Speaker 2: abilities were my communication skills. I had been in comms
Speaker 2: for almost twenty years before I started Mom's Demand Action.
Speaker 2: My values were protecting my family and my community, and
Speaker 2: my desire was to be an activist. I had grown
Speaker 2: up in Rochester, New York, where I was taught that
Speaker 2: people I carry at Tubman and Susan b. Anthony and
Speaker 2: I think she's been canceled now. But like all these
Speaker 2: different activists right who sort of were women at the forefront,
Speaker 2: and each one of us has that different recipe, the
Speaker 2: different formula that will come into play.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I've seen women come into Mom's de Maan Action and
Speaker 2: they decided to be a data lead because maybe they
Speaker 2: were an accountant in their professional life, and they come
Speaker 2: into the organization and they're surrounded by other supportive women
Speaker 2: and they think, wow, I'm really good at being a
Speaker 2: data lead. I'm really doing a great job at this.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll try to be the chapter leader. And then
Speaker 2: they become the chapter leader and they say, wow, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm really smart and I'm getting people to feel good
Speaker 2: about themselves and to make progress. Maybe I will run
Speaker 2: for city council and they do and they win, and
Speaker 2: it is just really those it's like taking the next
Speaker 2: buyery step over and over again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, coming into writing the book, you dropped this
Speaker 1: gem earlier that you got a phone call from Maria Shriver?
Speaker 1: Did you have a book in the works, and she
Speaker 1: heard about it? What happened? Tell me that story, because
Speaker 1: that feels very cool.
Speaker 2: I had just step back from Moms to Man Action,
Speaker 2: and I thought, Okay, I'm going to take a year
Speaker 2: off figure out what's next. You know, I'd been working
Speaker 2: seven days a week as a full time volunteer for
Speaker 2: over a decade and Maria Shriver had DMed me out
Speaker 2: of the blue on Instagram and said, can I have
Speaker 2: your phone number? And you know, this was a few
Speaker 2: weeks went by. I'm running on the treadmill and I
Speaker 2: looked down on my phone and it says Maria Shriver,
Speaker 2: And obviously I get off the treadmill and answer the phone,
Speaker 2: and she says, you know, I so admire your voice.
Speaker 2: I think you have a lot to tell women. I
Speaker 2: have a book imprint called Open Field. Would you write
Speaker 2: a book for me? Which you know is a very
Speaker 2: big question, like you can write about whatever you want?
Speaker 2: And I said yes. You know I could have said no.
Speaker 2: I could have said I'm not the right person, I'm
Speaker 2: not an author, I'm not I don't have anything to tell.
Speaker 2: But I knew that wasn't true, you know. I knew
Speaker 2: that I did have something to say to women that
Speaker 2: I had learned so much through my leadership of Moms
Speaker 2: U Man Action, and then I wanted to empower other women,
Speaker 2: especially women my age, to keep doing things till their end,
Speaker 2: till the end of their life. And so I said yes.
Speaker 2: And I had written a book before, but I had
Speaker 2: written it with a co author, and it was very
Speaker 2: fact based about gun violence. This was something different. This
Speaker 2: was my story and the stories of other women. And
Speaker 2: I'm not going to say it wasn't hard. You know.
Speaker 2: There were days when I thought, why did I take
Speaker 2: this on? Why am I not on vacation? What if
Speaker 2: this isn't good? What if people don't like it? And
Speaker 2: I had to push through all those feelings, all these stories,
Speaker 2: these narratives that I was making up and telling myself.
Speaker 2: And I've gotten such incredible feedback. I mean, the poet
Speaker 2: Maggie Smith blurbed this book and she was reading it
Speaker 2: and she would email me and say, I wish I
Speaker 2: had had this book when I was getting divorced. So
Speaker 2: many women who I admire have supported the book, are
Speaker 2: supporting the book, women like you, and I'm just so
Speaker 2: glad I said yes to Maurice Shriver, a perfect stranger
Speaker 2: who has become a friend and is interviewed in the book.
Speaker 1: That's so cool. That's just so cool. Something that you've
Speaker 1: also talked about, which I really cherish because it's been
Speaker 1: my journey as well, seems common in our kind of
Speaker 1: overlapping generation. You've opened up a lot about your struggle
Speaker 1: with untreated ADHD getting diagnosed later in life. You and
Speaker 1: me both sister, and in one way, I feel so
Speaker 1: relieved to understand that some of what is hard for
Speaker 1: me is not a personal failing. It's literally how my
Speaker 1: brain is wired. It also is probably part of the
Speaker 1: reason I can go through policies so quickly, because I
Speaker 1: have a weird memory for that kind of stuff. Don't
Speaker 1: ask me what day it is, anytime, any anywhere. What
Speaker 1: was the kind of push pull, the relief and the
Speaker 1: Oh I wish I'd understood this earlier for you.
Speaker 2: You know what's interesting is I was a speaker at
Speaker 2: a conference a couple of weeks ago in Orlando, and
Speaker 2: I was asked by the moderator, what did you learn
Speaker 2: while interviewing women for this book? And I said over
Speaker 2: a third of them had ADHD, either undiagnosed or late
Speaker 2: in life diagnosed, and that it was the secret sauce
Speaker 2: for becoming who they are. Now do you know that
Speaker 2: the entire audience began to cheer and some of the
Speaker 2: women started crying, Like that touched women so much, this
Speaker 2: phenomenon of ADHD. I was actually diagnosed when I was fourteen,
Speaker 2: really in the eighties, So that tells you how bad
Speaker 2: my ADHD was. Wow, because women, girls were not being
Speaker 2: diagnosed in the eighties.
Speaker 1: Oh uncommon, I mean then, and especially thing for young
Speaker 1: women now.
Speaker 2: And I had all the comorbidities. I had OCD, I
Speaker 2: had anxiety, I had skin picking, I had nervous ticks.
Speaker 2: Like I was, you know, a kid who was really struggling.
Speaker 2: And I started to fail out of school in the
Speaker 2: eighth grade and that's when I got diagnosed. But there
Speaker 2: was such a stigma around medication that I was never medicated,
Speaker 2: and so it didn't get better. It got worse right
Speaker 2: throughout my lifetime. And it wasn't until I was in
Speaker 2: my mid twenties, and I think my brain was fully
Speaker 2: developed that I would learned workarounds for things that come
Speaker 2: intuitively to other people. But it was a real struggle.
Speaker 2: I tried medicating myself when I went through menopause because
Speaker 2: I saw the symptoms becoming so much more severe, and
Speaker 2: it just didn't work for me. I think my brain
Speaker 2: is so now solidified in the way I do things
Speaker 2: to get around the ADHD obstacles. But this is a
Speaker 2: real thing, particularly for gen X women, who you know.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of resentment for the way that
Speaker 2: my parents handled it, the school system handled it. I
Speaker 2: was treated as someone who was weird or different or unsuccessful,
Speaker 2: right like, like I was always destined to be a loser.
Speaker 2: I tell this story of I was in Catholic school
Speaker 2: and there was an English assignment sent home and it
Speaker 2: was compare your daughter to someone in history. I was
Speaker 2: in an all girls school and people would come in
Speaker 2: and their parents would have compared them to Joan of
Speaker 2: Arc or you know, the Virgin Mother. My parents compared
Speaker 2: me to Willie Lowman, the tragic figure and death of
Speaker 2: a salesman. Oh my god. Because I was kind of
Speaker 2: a loser, right like, I had potential, but I couldn't
Speaker 2: live up to it, and that's how I felt my
Speaker 2: whole life. And my parents, you know, I don't mean
Speaker 2: to be too harsh on them, but you know, as
Speaker 2: an only child, and they they didn't know why I
Speaker 2: was so different. But I'm so grateful now that I
Speaker 2: had that experience, and it certainly prepared me to be
Speaker 2: the parent of three of my children have ADHD, right,
Speaker 2: and so I think that that made me who I am.
Speaker 2: And you were talking about hyperfocus. How else could I
Speaker 2: have worked on gun mine with prevention seven days a week,
Speaker 2: twelve hours a day for eleven years only because of
Speaker 2: my ADHD.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, Because people will say to me, how do
Speaker 1: you get so much done in a day, and my
Speaker 1: response is always I never even get halfway through my
Speaker 1: to do list. Yes, And then people who love me
Speaker 1: have had to sit me down and say, I think
Speaker 1: you do too much in a day. I think you
Speaker 1: need to go for a walk. Like it's going to
Speaker 1: sound so crazy, but I know you'll get it. My
Speaker 1: therapist gave me an exercise and said, when you are
Speaker 1: working from home, or you know, when you wrap a
Speaker 1: podcast or whatever it is, because obviously not everything can
Speaker 1: be broken into these increments. But when you're in control
Speaker 1: of your timing, I want you to set a thirty
Speaker 1: minute timer and when it goes off, I don't care
Speaker 1: what you're doing, stop doing it and walk outside to
Speaker 1: the end of the block and back, take five minutes
Speaker 1: and go for a walk, and then come back and
Speaker 1: start the thirty minute timer again. That's thirty on five off,
Speaker 1: thirty on five off. For me, that feels like learning Mandarin.
Speaker 1: We're not in the same alphabet, we're not in a
Speaker 1: language I understand, and it's so simple. But what it's
Speaker 1: beginning to do is help my brain take a breath,
Speaker 1: because hyperfocus can feel like holding your breath all day. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it shouldn't be that hard for a forty two
Speaker 1: year old woman to walk to the end of the
Speaker 1: block and back, But it's hard for me to stop
Speaker 1: doing what I'm doing. And I am learning this thing
Speaker 1: that would probably be easy for a five year old,
Speaker 1: but for me is difficult, and it is really transforming
Speaker 1: not only the way I learn to pause, but what
Speaker 1: I what I realized kind of emotionally recently, was much
Speaker 1: like you in my own way, I was going through
Speaker 1: my own massive life shift and the exzema, and the
Speaker 1: sort of physical stress response was my body. My body
Speaker 1: had been trying to talk to me for so long
Speaker 1: that it stopped talking and it started screaming, and I
Speaker 1: had to start to pay attention to it. And the
Speaker 1: coolest side effect I've realized of this thirty on to
Speaker 1: five off thing is that I'm teaching my body it
Speaker 1: can trust me. When the alarm goes off and I
Speaker 1: get up and I go for a walk and I
Speaker 1: look at the sun and I take deep breaths and
Speaker 1: I jump around and then I come back to work.
Speaker 1: My body knows I'm going to give it what it needs.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to ignore what it needs. And in
Speaker 1: this very weird way, I almost feel like I'm reparenting
Speaker 1: myself now that I understand how my brain works.
Speaker 2: And it's so difficult in a relationship too, because what
Speaker 2: you're talking about, you know, is the same thing with
Speaker 2: my husban been wondering where do I go and when
Speaker 2: I become so immersed in something, you know, I organized
Speaker 2: a zoom conference to raise money for Kamala Harris, the
Speaker 2: White Woman answer the calls.
Speaker 1: Let's get into that I disappeared.
Speaker 2: For like four days. If my husband would just bring
Speaker 2: me power bars in liquid and he's had to adjust too, right, like,
Speaker 2: this is what she does, this is where she goes.
Speaker 1: But it's also part of your superpower. Yes, that's your
Speaker 1: hero stuff. And what I think is really precious is
Speaker 1: especially when you've tried to do what the world tells
Speaker 1: you to do and you have woken up realizing you're
Speaker 1: in the wrong marriage, and you go, okay, I have
Speaker 1: to start over. I think when you are in the
Speaker 1: right one and someone sees you and says, don't get up,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to slide this bullet food in front
Speaker 1: of your face.
Speaker 2: This is who you are, and I'm going to take
Speaker 2: care of you.
Speaker 1: You know, during the election, much like you, I was
Speaker 1: just in it. I was on a plane every day
Speaker 1: when I was home. I was on forty zooms a day,
Speaker 1: it felt like, and I'd be on a zoom and
Speaker 1: I would just I would like, see appear from the
Speaker 1: left and she'd hand me this like beautifully cooked breakfast
Speaker 1: and and just you know, pat my arm off camera
Speaker 1: and walk away. And I was like, you, angel, we have.
Speaker 2: The same partner, right, Like, what is it like to
Speaker 2: be loved?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: And I think there's something so special in when you're
Speaker 1: seen and supported so you can be who you are.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you have this, I do
Speaker 1: know it's quite a common thing for people with ADHD.
Speaker 1: You know, we start to do something and then get distracted.
Speaker 1: And I know for someone like her, who is the
Speaker 1: most orderly, cleanly person, clutter or a mess can drive
Speaker 1: her crazy. And instead of losing her mind when she finds, like,
Speaker 1: next to the bookshelf my plate with peanut butter toast
Speaker 1: half eaten amidst the books, she just texts me pictures
Speaker 1: of the weird places that I leave things around the
Speaker 1: house and is like, you're ridiculous. I love you, and
Speaker 1: it makes us both laugh and so's so sweet because
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's where I left that, Like I couldn't
Speaker 1: find my smoothie and it was like, you know, on
Speaker 1: a shelf in the hall closet. And it's so different
Speaker 1: to have a person who can see your thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got someone with an endless supply of
Speaker 1: power bars because he knows and loves you and it's
Speaker 1: really special. And now a word from our sponsors. How
Speaker 1: was the call organizing itself? You're obviously so amazing at it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, ten million women you organized from
Speaker 1: every disparate place space, political background for Mom's demand. You
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, you got the first gun legislation in a
Speaker 1: generation passed. Then you decide to take a break, and
Speaker 1: then we get into an incredibly consequent election, and as
Speaker 1: you do, you do things big and you organize this
Speaker 1: call that really helped collect a lot of women that
Speaker 1: look like us. I remember because I was in France
Speaker 1: for the Olympics and I was on the HRC call,
Speaker 1: which was at the same time as your call. So
Speaker 1: I had two computers open, going back and forth, you know,
Speaker 1: making sure I could do my speaking thing and watch
Speaker 1: everybody here. And I was like, God, I'm so inspired.
Speaker 1: I'm sad now obviously.
Speaker 2: Thinking about it, but there was so much energy. Well yeah,
Speaker 2: what did it feel like?
Speaker 1: And how how did you build it?
Speaker 2: So I was reading on Twitter there were these tweets
Speaker 2: from a woman named Joteika Edie. She's who has run
Speaker 2: when with black women for a long time, and I
Speaker 2: saw all these black women on Instagram and Twitter saying
Speaker 2: I'm on this call for Kamala Harris. Now there's a
Speaker 2: thousand people. Now there's five thousand people. Now there's ten
Speaker 2: thousand people. We have to call Zoom, they have to
Speaker 2: open up. I mean, it was so exciting, and they
Speaker 2: raised millions of dollars right. And then the next day,
Speaker 2: my friend Roland Martin got together with a group of
Speaker 2: black men and did the same thing, and they had
Speaker 2: even more people and raised more money. And as I
Speaker 2: do when I wake up in the middle of the
Speaker 2: morning because of menopause, like at four am, I just
Speaker 2: tweeted out into the ether, when are white women going
Speaker 2: to do the same thing? Yeah, not thinking, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: going to organize this, you.
Speaker 1: Were like I turns out I volunteered as trick.
Speaker 2: That was a question, not a suggestion.
Speaker 1: It was just a question.
Speaker 2: So all of these women start dming me I'm in,
Speaker 2: I'm in, I'm in. When is this? Tell us when?
Speaker 2: And so that was the beginning, and I got connected
Speaker 2: to Joe Tika and thought, Okay, this seems like there's
Speaker 2: a lot of interest. But I never imagined it would
Speaker 2: be what it was. I mean, we used a simple
Speaker 2: Zoom link, and we used my own fundraising link that
Speaker 2: I had from the campaign, not even Act Blue right
Speaker 2: just to my link. Suddenly the zooms started and coming
Speaker 2: back on it was like we were writing waves. We
Speaker 2: got an email from Zoom saying congratulations, this is a
Speaker 2: large Zoom call in history. By the end of the call,
Speaker 2: we knew from my link we'd raise two million dollars,
Speaker 2: and I thought, well, that's great, that's good. Cool. The
Speaker 2: next morning I get a call. Now it's five million,
Speaker 2: then it was eight million, then it was ended up
Speaker 2: being eleven million dollars in two hours. And look, I
Speaker 2: still am disappointed in the way white women voted, but
Speaker 2: there was a five point increase from Biden among college
Speaker 2: educated white women. I hope we can build on that
Speaker 2: progress going forward. And you know, people always are bashing
Speaker 2: so called identity of politics. I think it was a
Speaker 2: really important conversation that needed to be had, which is,
Speaker 2: why do white women vote in their own self interests
Speaker 2: and not in all women's best interests.
Speaker 1: But I think the question goes deeper than that, because
Speaker 1: white women are not voting in their own self interest.
Speaker 2: They think they are, they think.
Speaker 1: They are, they think they're voting to uphold some semblance
Speaker 1: of normalcy for their family, their husband, their neighborhood, but
Speaker 1: they're actually voting against all of our interests.
Speaker 2: As my friend Brittany Pagnet Cunningham says, my favorite, lady,
Speaker 2: your whiteness will not save you from what the patriarchy
Speaker 2: has in store for you.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the illusion that patriarchy has given
Speaker 1: to us, is that you know these men are here
Speaker 1: to protect us. I look at women and I go
Speaker 1: protect us from who men? Men. I don't want to
Speaker 1: be protected from them. I want to be protected in
Speaker 1: the law. I want to be protected in ways that
Speaker 1: can't change with their mood. Because you see these men
Speaker 1: in power now, you see Donald Trump, you see j
Speaker 1: ad Vance. What they say is not what they're doing,
Speaker 1: and what they're doing is so abhorrent, especially for women,
Speaker 1: And I guess I want to know why you think
Speaker 1: so many white women Bristle had the phrase white women?
Speaker 1: Why why do so many white women get upset when
Speaker 1: we say, hey, if we center black women in American politics,
Speaker 1: American politics will get better for every woman, including with yes.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that makes people feel so upset
Speaker 1: or so left out, or so like high school click terrible?
Speaker 1: What is that reaction about?
Speaker 2: I think because we know that deep down inside there
Speaker 2: is truth to the fact that we vote with white men,
Speaker 2: whether it's our fathers, husbands, sons, and not with the
Speaker 2: backbone of the party and the people who are truly
Speaker 2: the most vulnerable and the people who would truly benefit
Speaker 2: from our votes going in their favor. And that doesn't
Speaker 2: feel great, right, there's sort of an innate defensiveness. I remember,
Speaker 2: you know, after Hillary Clinton lost and there was a
Speaker 2: discussion about this. I wasn't quite there yet. I was like,
Speaker 2: don't criticize me. I voted for Hillary Clinton. And then
Speaker 2: I thought, there's actually so much more I can do
Speaker 2: because a lot of white women in my family did
Speaker 2: not vote for Hillary Clinton. Ye, And those are conversations
Speaker 2: I'm obligated to have. That's an not the work of
Speaker 2: black women or women of color. It is the work
Speaker 2: of white women who are positioned in friends and families
Speaker 2: and who have impact and affluence that say here's how
Speaker 2: I'm voting and here's why. And that is almost like
Speaker 2: living on fire.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That is a brave and important conversation to have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a thing we have to do, and it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I have a woman in my life who if we
Speaker 1: met today, we would not be friends. But we've known
Speaker 1: each other a long time. We have fought over equality, equity,
Speaker 1: civil rights for a long time, and I have people
Speaker 1: in my life who say, just be done with it.
Speaker 1: And the thing I keep saying is I will not
Speaker 1: sick this woman on any woman of color that I love.
Speaker 1: It's not their job to teach her. Part of my
Speaker 1: job is to sit with her and work on these issues,
Speaker 1: explaining the truth, work on helping her undo her own
Speaker 1: internalized misogyny, her own illusions that whiteness is going to
Speaker 1: protect her these things. And it feels important to me
Speaker 1: because it doesn't feel by accident, and I think that
Speaker 1: has been a great learning for me. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: I was like, if you voted this way, we cannot
Speaker 1: be friends. I am done. This isn't political, this is
Speaker 1: about humanity. And I realize that that's actually a very
Speaker 1: privileged reaction. Yes, because I can be done, but many
Speaker 1: of the women in my life can't be. And so
Speaker 1: I've actually doubled down on long patient conversations where I
Speaker 1: don't get into any facts for thirty minutes to an hour,
Speaker 1: I talk about personal experience, emotion, my own story, their
Speaker 1: own story, and then it's this will bump into your
Speaker 1: confirmation bias. You will not want to believe what I'm
Speaker 1: about to show you because it will trigger shame. We
Speaker 1: can talk about our shame together. Here's what's really going on.
Speaker 1: Here's the bills they've passed. Here's what they're doing to IVF,
Speaker 1: Here's what they're doing to access for hungry children to
Speaker 1: have food in school. Here's what they're doing. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about it. And it requires an immense amount of work,
Speaker 1: but I do feel like for me, it is part
Speaker 1: of my flame. I've learned that that's part of my fire.
Speaker 2: And what you're talking about is incremental progress.
Speaker 1: And oh but it's so hard to be so pacious.
Speaker 2: It is, and it's such a dirty word, particularly with
Speaker 2: young people, incrementalism. But I have seen incrementalism lead to revolutions.
Speaker 1: Well, that's it.
Speaker 2: And I think I think also when you talk about privilege,
Speaker 2: you know, Rebecca Tracter, the feminist rights about this, women,
Speaker 2: White women are used to winning, and when they don't win,
Speaker 2: they walk away. And so we really do have to
Speaker 2: not back down but double down and keep going even
Speaker 2: when it's hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's really really important to be willing
Speaker 1: to do that. And I also think it's really important
Speaker 1: on this subject of walking away, you know, to to
Speaker 1: do that self inventory and figure out when we want
Speaker 1: to walk away, maybe why, But then to also take
Speaker 1: that out into the community and be really honest about
Speaker 1: the fact that activism doesn't end after an election. Yea,
Speaker 1: you know, there would have been a lot. Had Kamala want,
Speaker 1: there would have been a lot we would have been
Speaker 1: pressing her on. There would have been a lot we
Speaker 1: would have pressed that administration on. I think we would
Speaker 1: be in such a better position, but we would have
Speaker 1: still had work to do. Now we are in a
Speaker 1: worse position, and we have so much more work to do.
Speaker 1: How do you inspire listeners or suggest that they not
Speaker 1: lose hope despite the amount of backsliding we're seeing because
Speaker 1: we didn't. We didn't start a little ahead and then
Speaker 1: get ways to go. We started potentially a little ahead
Speaker 1: and then we slid all the way back. And how
Speaker 1: we got a double you know the yardage essentially, how.
Speaker 2: Do you.
Speaker 1: Not just get exhausted and stop?
Speaker 2: You know, it is a marathon, not a sprint, but
Speaker 2: it's also a relay race, and when you have to
Speaker 2: pass the baton, you do that right. I had many
Speaker 2: instances during the eleven years I led Moms to Me
Speaker 2: in action where I had a kid in crisis, or
Speaker 2: I had other things in my life I had to
Speaker 2: pay attention to. And you know, I think women are
Speaker 2: reluctant to give other people their work. They feel guilty,
Speaker 2: or they feel worried that other people might, you know,
Speaker 2: do it better. There's all that stuff built into us.
Speaker 2: And I felt that way. And what I realized was
Speaker 2: when I came back, the work was still there, and
Speaker 2: other people brought their energy and their ideas to it.
Speaker 2: That's what it makes That's what makes a community right,
Speaker 2: leaning on one another. So I would say think of
Speaker 2: it as a relay race, but also loose forward. And
Speaker 2: this was a motto at Mom's to me in action,
Speaker 2: you were going to lose. It's always going to be
Speaker 2: two steps forward, one step back. It's the incrementalism we
Speaker 2: talked about. But look for the hope, look for the wins.
Speaker 2: Maybe you lost on a legislation that you were trying
Speaker 2: to pass, but what did you win. You grew your chapter,
Speaker 2: You created new relationships with lawmakers, You figured out what
Speaker 2: it will take to win the next time. And I
Speaker 2: saw this happen over and over again, where you know,
Speaker 2: in states, you would think we would never make progress,
Speaker 2: either by defeating bad bills or passing go bills, and
Speaker 2: we did. It's cyclical. Politics is cyclical. What we're going
Speaker 2: through now will not last forever. So build that foundation
Speaker 2: you can build on when we win again.
Speaker 1: I love that when you talk about Emerge America and
Speaker 1: she should run in all these organizations, do you ever
Speaker 1: see yourself leaving for elected office?
Speaker 2: I get asked a lot. I never say never. I'm
Speaker 2: actually becoming a resident of Florida, which is exciting to
Speaker 2: me because California is great, but it's not as much
Speaker 2: of a pill battle as Florida, which I think will
Speaker 2: be fun to kind of get in the middle of.
Speaker 1: Oh she's ready.
Speaker 2: But you know, I think what I learned during Moms
Speaker 2: Do in action. Yes, I'm passionate about gun safety, but
Speaker 2: that wasn't what kept me going. I live to some
Speaker 2: in the audacity of other women, and so encouraging other
Speaker 2: women to step up to run, showing them they can
Speaker 2: do this, show them they can do anything personal, political, professional.
Speaker 2: That is what I'm focused on.
Speaker 1: Right Yeah. I love that. So then what feels like
Speaker 1: you're work in progress right now?
Speaker 2: My work in progress is bringing this book into the world.
Speaker 2: It has been like giving birth, writing it and now
Speaker 2: announcing that it's here and letting people read it and
Speaker 2: getting their reactions. I'm so excited about that. Fire Starter
Speaker 2: University is going to start in the fall, so it's
Speaker 2: a year long online program based on the book. And
Speaker 2: you know, then maybe I'll say, oh, I'm taking that
Speaker 2: break that I talked about last time, and he knows
Speaker 2: what will pop up.
Speaker 1: I know, I think back to when we were all
Speaker 1: away for our friend's birthday and you were like, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it. I'm going to take a sabbatical.
Speaker 2: Yep, we'll see, we'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1: We can plan more getaways in the meantime. Maybe our
Speaker 1: sabbaticals are just meant to be seventy two hours a time.
Speaker 1: That's okay, you know, good bottle of wine. Nice you,
Speaker 1: and then we're right back at it.
Speaker 2: We're done.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming today. Thank you for
Speaker 1: the book. It it really is I'll echo, Maggie, it
Speaker 1: really is exactly what we all needed and I'm glad
Speaker 1: it's here.
Speaker 2: Thank you.