Speaker 1: I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to What's
Speaker 1: Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a show
Speaker 1: about the world's most remarkable women. They're professional and personal journeys. Together,
Speaker 1: we'll hear from Gold medalists, best selling authors, and leaders
Speaker 1: of the world's most iconic brands. Listen every Thursday or
Speaker 1: join the conversation anytime on Instagram at What's Her Story Podcast.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Season three of What's Her Story. I am
Speaker 1: more excited for this season than any season before, simply
Speaker 1: because I feel like we're better at telling women's stories
Speaker 1: than we've ever been in the past. And on top
Speaker 1: of it, we have the most unbelievable lineup of guests.
Speaker 1: This lineup will blow your socks off, no questions about it.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to share all of it with you.
Speaker 1: I'm super excited for today's guest, Martha Beck. If you
Speaker 1: don't know, mark that she is Oprah's favorite life coach
Speaker 1: and the best selling author of numerous books, including her newest,
Speaker 1: The Way of Integrity. Take us back to that time
Speaker 1: when you felt like you had hit rock bottom and
Speaker 1: something dramatic needed to change. The year I heard twenty nine,
Speaker 1: I decided not to tell a single lie for a
Speaker 1: whole calendar year. And by the way, I was also
Speaker 1: very physically ill at this time. I had a bunch
Speaker 1: of autoimmune diseases. I could barely get out of bed
Speaker 1: or use my hands. I was in constant chronic pain.
Speaker 1: I mean, things were not ideal. And so I did
Speaker 1: go a whole year without telling a single lie of
Speaker 1: any kind, not polite, not white, not any kind of lie.
Speaker 1: And my entire life exploded because it needed to either
Speaker 1: walked away from or was ejected from my religion, my
Speaker 1: family of origin because of the religion things very religious family.
Speaker 1: Quit my job, which was an assistant professor, quit my industry,
Speaker 1: which is academia, because I hated that and I couldn't
Speaker 1: lie and say I liked it. I because I was
Speaker 1: living in an area. I was raised Mormon in Provo, Utah,
Speaker 1: which is a very Mormon area, and once I left
Speaker 1: the church, it was not really a good place for
Speaker 1: me and my family so left my home realized I
Speaker 1: was gay, so they won't my marriage. Pretty much everything
Speaker 1: that would define a life went away that year, and
Speaker 1: I started to feel happy for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life, even though I was grieving all this stuff,
Speaker 1: like massively, something started healing inside me because I was
Speaker 1: telling the truth about myself all the time, And they're right,
Speaker 1: the truth does say free. Did you feel any guilt
Speaker 1: for not wanting anymore the things that you had chosen,
Speaker 1: the people you had chosen in some instances? Like did
Speaker 1: that feel guilty at all? Yeah? I mean, because I
Speaker 1: was being so incredibly scrupulous about trying to tell the truth,
Speaker 1: I mostly felt just sorrow. But when I would sometimes
Speaker 1: get into the mindset of the people who thought that
Speaker 1: I should have lived, like if I everybody I knew
Speaker 1: growing up was Mormon, right, So when you leave the
Speaker 1: Mormon church, that is considered a sin worse than murder.
Speaker 1: And in addition, I had left partly because my father
Speaker 1: was a sort of very dominant figure in the church,
Speaker 1: and he had also abused me sexually as a child.
Speaker 1: And also I found out during that year had had
Speaker 1: actually published a lot of things that were just lies
Speaker 1: in order to support the church. So a lot of
Speaker 1: people told me I was trying to destroy the entire religion,
Speaker 1: that I was trying to destroy my family, my father
Speaker 1: and everything I knew. I wasn't. I knew absolutely in
Speaker 1: my heart that I was not, But when I got
Speaker 1: into their mindset, I would think, oh, I must be
Speaker 1: such a terrible person to them. So it was a
Speaker 1: kind of guilt, but it was like I knew it
Speaker 1: wasn't true because I've been so careful about doing what
Speaker 1: I felt was right the whole time. And that's what
Speaker 1: I still ask clients. I say, you know, when they're saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I've done the wrong things, I've been a bad mother,
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, I always just say, all right,
Speaker 1: have you ever in your life gotten up in the
Speaker 1: morning trying to do harm to the world or to
Speaker 1: any being, to try to cause suffering? And mostly they
Speaker 1: say no, I know the ones that don't, and I
Speaker 1: don't stick with. And then the other question I always
Speaker 1: ask them is is there any time when you weren't
Speaker 1: trying your hardest to do the right thing? And almost
Speaker 1: everybody says yes. I really believe almost everyone is trying
Speaker 1: to do their best, and we leave integrity, that is
Speaker 1: our true selves, because we split ourselves away from what
Speaker 1: our true nature would have us do in order to
Speaker 1: follow the ways that other people think are right or good.
Speaker 1: So it's really important not to get into somebody else's
Speaker 1: mind st and look at yourself, to stay inside your
Speaker 1: own integrity and just do your best from there, and
Speaker 1: then you can always be sure you've done all you
Speaker 1: can and no one can be expected to do anymore.
Speaker 1: One of the really interesting threads throughout your story is
Speaker 1: that you've been willing to leave the comfort of communities
Speaker 1: so many times. How did you deal with that and
Speaker 1: how do you recommend other people overcome that? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is really a hard one. I mean, we are primates, right,
Speaker 1: and primates are the only kind of animal that in
Speaker 1: a dangerous situation, we don't seek safe places. We seek
Speaker 1: safe others. We go to other primates and huddle together,
Speaker 1: and that makes us feel safe. Other animals, like horses,
Speaker 1: will try to find a safe place. So for us
Speaker 1: to leave a community is a survival fear, and for
Speaker 1: us to lose a community is almost a life threatening grief.
Speaker 1: Like it's such an intense loss, and I experienced it
Speaker 1: as very intense. I remember reading a poem by Stanley
Speaker 1: Kunitz that part of it goes, Oh, I have made
Speaker 1: for myself a tribe out of my true affections, and
Speaker 1: my tribe is scattered. How shall my heart be reconciled
Speaker 1: to its feast of losses. And I remember going around
Speaker 1: thinking how shall my heart be reconciled to its feast
Speaker 1: of losses? And then I remember I'm suddenly quoting a
Speaker 1: lot of poetry. So I guess that's how you get
Speaker 1: through it. You read a lot of poetry. But um,
Speaker 1: what happens is that you grieve and it turns into
Speaker 1: a need for kindness from others, which can lead you
Speaker 1: to kindness to the self, which leads you to healing
Speaker 1: stronger at the broken places. You come away from those
Speaker 1: losses with a kindness where every loss used to be.
Speaker 1: And what that does is it builds you a new tribe.
Speaker 1: And it is a tribe of your true affections. And
Speaker 1: that's what I've experienced since leaving all those communities. Before
Speaker 1: I left them, I was intensely lonely, even though there
Speaker 1: were people around me. Now I'm not lonely. You left
Speaker 1: the world you'd built when you had small children. How
Speaker 1: did you think about your children in that transition and
Speaker 1: how did it work out? I was very worried about them,
Speaker 1: and um, maybe that was right. You can never go
Speaker 1: back and replay it to see what would have happened
Speaker 1: if it had been different. I knew I needed to
Speaker 1: leave when my daughter, my oldest daughter, turned eight and
Speaker 1: Mormon's baptized children at the age of eight, and I
Speaker 1: had already left the church, and one day, right after
Speaker 1: her eighth birthday, um, there was a knock at the
Speaker 1: door and it was a whole group of eight year
Speaker 1: olds from around the neighborhood with a couple of Sunday
Speaker 1: school teachers and they had cookies and balloons and stuff,
Speaker 1: and they said, we're having a party. All you have
Speaker 1: to do is come get baptized and we'll have this
Speaker 1: big party for you. And if you don't come and
Speaker 1: get baptized, you won't be allowed to play with us anymore.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, we're out. We are out.
Speaker 1: And that child she's now I could say she they've
Speaker 1: now come out as a non binary, so they they
Speaker 1: remember that as a traumatic experience. And even my younger daughter,
Speaker 1: who now lives in England, she went to a therapist
Speaker 1: and the therapist said, did you ever have a cult
Speaker 1: around you? Because even that child, who was only four
Speaker 1: when I left, it had changed something in her mind
Speaker 1: that later later required therapy. And I remember when we
Speaker 1: got to our new home, moved to Arizona. She she
Speaker 1: was four, and she came and sat on the steps
Speaker 1: with me one day and she said, I miss everything.
Speaker 1: I missed my friends, and she cried for a while.
Speaker 1: I cried for a while, and then she gave it.
Speaker 1: He this big sigh and she said, oh, well, I
Speaker 1: like the moon they have here. Well, you kind of
Speaker 1: glossed over the part where you said and then I,
Speaker 1: you know, left my marriage, realized I was gay. Talk
Speaker 1: to us about that, because I imagine that that might
Speaker 1: have even been just as hard, or in different ways
Speaker 1: more difficult than even leaving your religion. It actually wasn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't because I had normalized that. I've been living
Speaker 1: outside of Utah. I've known a lot of gay people.
Speaker 1: My then husband, I think we both would have come
Speaker 1: out of as gay in high school, and we went
Speaker 1: to the same high school, so we grew up together.
Speaker 1: We both went to Harvard when we were freshman and
Speaker 1: stayed there for our pH d s and um he
Speaker 1: struggled with a great deal. I never identified as gay.
Speaker 1: I was too traumatized. But we had talked a great
Speaker 1: deal about it, and I remember always thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: he's his best self when he just lets himself be
Speaker 1: this way. So thanks to him, I had normalized it really,
Speaker 1: really deeply. And then we just decided to unmarry. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't a fake marriage. It was I felt deeply
Speaker 1: loved and I certainly loved him, but I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got to let yourself be you, and I've got
Speaker 1: to let myself be me. So because he was my
Speaker 1: closest friend at the time, I said to him first,
Speaker 1: like once we left the church, I was like, you
Speaker 1: need to be you and that's kind of sad because
Speaker 1: well I do. And he said, well you should do
Speaker 1: the same thing. And I said, you mean dat other
Speaker 1: man and he goes, not man, and I thought women.
Speaker 1: And then I was like, yeah, totally. And then I
Speaker 1: met someone that I thought I would experiment with and
Speaker 1: we're still together and it's been like thirty years. And
Speaker 1: now a quick break your evolution in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: you met Karen and then many many years later you
Speaker 1: and Karen introduced another love into your relationship. Can you
Speaker 1: share a bit about that. Yeah. At that point, we
Speaker 1: were living in California, which is a place I also
Speaker 1: went just because I felt a strong inclination to go
Speaker 1: out there and sort of live in a forest area,
Speaker 1: and I sort of lived away from human interaction for
Speaker 1: about six years and it was beautiful. I mean I'd
Speaker 1: go out and track animals in the forest every day.
Speaker 1: And we were there for so long that you forget
Speaker 1: what it's like to be sort of interconnected with human society.
Speaker 1: A lot of those pressures of social expectation start to
Speaker 1: just drop away when you're living in nature. And somebody
Speaker 1: came to visit us at the ranch where I lived,
Speaker 1: and I had met her once before, which is an
Speaker 1: Australian novelist, and I'd been her in Africa where she
Speaker 1: came to go on safari with a group for people
Speaker 1: I was with, and I thought she was amazing, like brilliant, funny, sensitive, amazing.
Speaker 1: So she came to stay at the ranch for a
Speaker 1: while to do work for somebody else who was there,
Speaker 1: and we started talking to her more, and Karen actually
Speaker 1: got to know her before I did really well. And
Speaker 1: one day Karen came to me and she sat down
Speaker 1: and said, I really have to talk to you about something.
Speaker 1: I said, what is it? And she said, well, Rowan.
Speaker 1: I feel things about Rowan and I'm not sure why.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it's like a sister connection. But
Speaker 1: as she talked, she was turning bright red and I
Speaker 1: looked at her and I thought, you're in love, and
Speaker 1: I I felt this burst of joy, absolute joy. I
Speaker 1: was so thrilled for her, and I thought, that's the
Speaker 1: way it's supposed to go, but that is what I feel.
Speaker 1: I just didn't feel the things you're supposed to feel
Speaker 1: in society. I was thrilled. That was like, this is amazing,
Speaker 1: invider to come stay with us, I'll stay in the
Speaker 1: guest room. You guys can get together, like I was
Speaker 1: just I still can't explain this overwhelming joy. I felt
Speaker 1: it was ridiculous. So Roke came and stayed in the
Speaker 1: house with us, yes, and we all sat around talking
Speaker 1: and getting to know each other, and I thought, oh
Speaker 1: my goodness, this person is really amazing. And we just
Speaker 1: talked and talked and talked and talked and talked for
Speaker 1: about three weeks, like almost constantly, and then towards the
Speaker 1: end of that time, we were like, we're all in
Speaker 1: love with each other, Like I'm in love with both
Speaker 1: of you, and you're in love with both of us,
Speaker 1: and you're in love with both of us. Like we
Speaker 1: just sat there. It's not like we said polyamory we wanted.
Speaker 1: We were completely stunned and embarrassed. But we were also
Speaker 1: surrounded by nobody but bears and deer, so we were like, okay,
Speaker 1: and um, we just thought, all right, this, let's see
Speaker 1: how this turns out. And let see, it's been like
Speaker 1: six seven years and we have a two year old now,
Speaker 1: and it's like having a three legged stool. You wonder
Speaker 1: how it ever worked with only two do you all
Speaker 1: share a room? Well, since then, since we had our baby. Um,
Speaker 1: what we realized is Row sleeps in the room next
Speaker 1: to the nursery, and um, Karen gets up early with
Speaker 1: the baby. So Rokan who we're not mourning people, So
Speaker 1: Karen is she gets up with the baby in the morning.
Speaker 1: And I like to stay up late but not be
Speaker 1: waking up with the baby. So it turned out that
Speaker 1: each of us has our own room. And it's like
Speaker 1: a wonderful, wonderful thing. And and it's all as I said,
Speaker 1: we have this amazing Our whole family runs according to
Speaker 1: sort of almost almost it's like you know, nuns would
Speaker 1: get up and do their morning things, and then go
Speaker 1: to their chores and everything. When you have three people,
Speaker 1: you have to be really organ eyes and really communicative.
Speaker 1: And what happens, especially since my son with Down syndrome
Speaker 1: lives with us, and people with Down syndrome tend to
Speaker 1: love ritual every day, is like we have morning communion
Speaker 1: where we all connect and talk. Then we have you know,
Speaker 1: we all go to our separate things during the day.
Speaker 1: We have a schedule who gets Lilah the baby at
Speaker 1: what time? And then at five pm, Adam has decreated,
Speaker 1: is absolutely no work, and we all get together and
Speaker 1: we commune again, and then we have our dinner, and
Speaker 1: then we always have this cuddle time after dinner between
Speaker 1: dinner and sleep. And my god, if nobody out there
Speaker 1: is doing this, do it. It will change your life.
Speaker 1: It is awesome. And then you sleep in your own bed.
Speaker 1: What happened when you left the bears and you had
Speaker 1: to the three of you enter back into society that
Speaker 1: is less accepting of unusual arrangements because everyone is a
Speaker 1: fear the unknown, and so they probably imposed that fear
Speaker 1: on you. I would imagine just when we were ready
Speaker 1: for people to really put pressure on us, there was
Speaker 1: a plague and nobody did anything for two years, so
Speaker 1: nobody ever got in our faces about it because no
Speaker 1: one was there. So it was like we were separated
Speaker 1: by distance, and then we were separated by pandemic. And
Speaker 1: then we went on Glennon Doyle's podcast and talked about it,
Speaker 1: and now we're talking about it with you, and so
Speaker 1: it's sort of out of the out of the box. Now,
Speaker 1: let's talk a bit about your career, because it seems
Speaker 1: almost impossible to people that Oprah has a life coach,
Speaker 1: let alone that you became that. I mean, how does
Speaker 1: one become Oprah's life coach. I hate bursting people's bubble
Speaker 1: on this, but I am not Oprah's like hired and
Speaker 1: paid life coach. I am a life coach who worked
Speaker 1: for Oprah through the whole span of the Oprah magazine.
Speaker 1: Because I wrote columns for the magazine. She read my
Speaker 1: first few columns, and then she wrote to me and
Speaker 1: told me that every episode she read, every every episode
Speaker 1: she study, she always read my column first. So I
Speaker 1: was Oprah's life coach in the sense that I kind
Speaker 1: of belonged to But it's not that she needed a
Speaker 1: life coach, but I was always sort of giving her
Speaker 1: advice through the columns, and sometimes she'd reach back and
Speaker 1: thank me, And then she started sending people to me.
Speaker 1: When celebrities would go to her and say fix me,
Speaker 1: she'd say, I can't do this, and she would call
Speaker 1: me on the phone and say, how do you want
Speaker 1: to deal with this? And I'd be like, send them along.
Speaker 1: So do celebrities have different problems than the rest of us?
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you think about that? They have
Speaker 1: the very same problems, only so much worse, so much worse.
Speaker 1: I have never seen fame or money or power heal
Speaker 1: anybody's life, not ever, ever, ever. I have seen people
Speaker 1: with tremendous fame and money and power who were just
Speaker 1: destroying themselves. I mean, when you have the money and
Speaker 1: the influence to get I had one celebrity client who
Speaker 1: was taking two d oxycontent a day a day would
Speaker 1: have killed an army of elephants. And this was not
Speaker 1: a large person. It's only money and influence that can
Speaker 1: get you that deeply into the horrors that are available
Speaker 1: to people who are trying to kill their own pain,
Speaker 1: and it just gets worse. In this last book, I
Speaker 1: talked about it as being the false solution. Wealth fame, power.
Speaker 1: They look like solutions to us, but they are not.
Speaker 1: They make things much much worse unless you you've come
Speaker 1: back to integrity yourself and become whole, and then they
Speaker 1: can make the whole world better. So replace those three things, money, power, fame.
Speaker 1: What are the three things that do heal, that do
Speaker 1: make a life better? Great question, stillness, self examination, and honesty.
Speaker 1: Those are the three things. That's it, that's all you need.
Speaker 1: And I've seen people take those three things and become
Speaker 1: incredibly famous and powerful. Nelson Mandela did this during the
Speaker 1: twenty seven years he was imprisoned in Robin Island. He
Speaker 1: went in as an angry young activist and he spent
Speaker 1: those twenty seven years in stillness, self contemplation and getting
Speaker 1: really really honest with himself. And he looked at things
Speaker 1: like the fact that he was against racism and yet
Speaker 1: he was angry at white people, which you know, he
Speaker 1: was being really self scrutinizing as an anti racist and saying, no,
Speaker 1: I have to He started to learn Afrikaans, he made
Speaker 1: friends with the guards. In those twenty seven years of stillness,
Speaker 1: self scrutiny and just absolutely relentless honesty, he became so powerful,
Speaker 1: and not even his picture was allowed out of Robin Island.
Speaker 1: Nothing of him was that. And yet his his fame
Speaker 1: has influence. His power circled the whole world. And when
Speaker 1: he came out, he was able to quiet the whole
Speaker 1: country without bloodshed and become this incredible inspiration to the
Speaker 1: whole world. But he didn't want When he went on Oprah,
Speaker 1: he sat down on the stage and then he started
Speaker 1: the show and he said, so, what are we talking about?
Speaker 1: And Oprad laughed for like a full minute, and then
Speaker 1: she said you. He was like, well, why would you
Speaker 1: do that? Like he was so he was so whole
Speaker 1: in himself, he didn't need anything. And that's the point
Speaker 1: at which we can access everything. And now a quick break,
Speaker 1: how do we become more helpful to each other? And
Speaker 1: now there's a lot of layers to this question. One
Speaker 1: is just in general, how can we be more helpful
Speaker 1: to one another? But also, um, and you and I
Speaker 1: have just us as way long ago Marthin you probably
Speaker 1: don't remember, but and you help me so much. I
Speaker 1: I was sharing with you that I have this blessing
Speaker 1: or curse where I see pain. Right, so I'll be
Speaker 1: in a supermarket and I can see who is beaten
Speaker 1: by their husband or like I just I see pain
Speaker 1: everywhere and I absorb that and and it's been a
Speaker 1: problem for me. And you shared with me at that
Speaker 1: time that the best way to help someone if you
Speaker 1: see that is often to stand near them and look
Speaker 1: them in the eye and let them know they're not alone,
Speaker 1: just by being there. I don't know if your answer
Speaker 1: to that has changed since then. I would still say
Speaker 1: that's a really good way to do it. But another
Speaker 1: thing that may have changed a bit. If you look
Speaker 1: at psychological research, you will see that in our brains
Speaker 1: we have something called a negativity bias. And it's because
Speaker 1: our brains evolved to pick up danger and problems so
Speaker 1: we could avoid them. But what happens is we get
Speaker 1: stuck in our negativity bias and we don't see things
Speaker 1: that aren't negative. I remember getting on a plane one day.
Speaker 1: I was talking to a guy who was a white
Speaker 1: water river rafter before I got on the plane, and
Speaker 1: he said, you know, even in a channel where there's
Speaker 1: almost no water, there's just rocks. Never look at the rocks,
Speaker 1: because where your eyes go, the boat goes. Then I
Speaker 1: get on the plane and I sat next to a
Speaker 1: hockey player, professional hockey player, and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're shooting the put, the goalie is so huge
Speaker 1: and the goal is so small that you only have
Speaker 1: these tiny little apertures where the puck can get through.
Speaker 1: And he says, but never look at the goalie. Only
Speaker 1: look at the spaces, because where your eyes go, the
Speaker 1: puck goes. Then I got off the plane. I was
Speaker 1: talking to someone about horse riding and they said, well,
Speaker 1: you got to make sure you don't look at the
Speaker 1: places you don't want the horse to go, because where
Speaker 1: your eyes go, the horse goes. And this was in
Speaker 1: one day, and I was like, Okay, I get it.
Speaker 1: Where your attention goes, everything goes, your life goes. So
Speaker 1: you're a negativity biases helping you pick out pain, destruction,
Speaker 1: abuse and all of that. What I invite you to
Speaker 1: do is start pulling away from from your negativity bias
Speaker 1: and seeing the way a dog sees like, find the
Speaker 1: joy in people, find what what is working for them.
Speaker 1: Stand by someone and don't just say in your mind,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry you're being beaten by your husband. In
Speaker 1: your mind say I know you have the strength to
Speaker 1: leave that asshole. Excuse my language, you know, but like
Speaker 1: I know, you can get out of this. You are
Speaker 1: incredibly resourceful. You are a human, for Heaven's sake, in
Speaker 1: the twenty one century. You can do this like it's
Speaker 1: going to be okay, and when your attention goes there.
Speaker 1: This is what I found with my clients, the other
Speaker 1: person has an easier time going there too. I love that.
Speaker 1: I just read this great article about therapy that so
Speaker 1: that therapist should really change how they approach the conversation
Speaker 1: from saying, so, what's wrong or you know, what's been
Speaker 1: bothering you? Just saying like, what's the best thing that's
Speaker 1: been happening this week for you? And then that changes
Speaker 1: the whole conversation. Yeah. I think that's why people like
Speaker 1: coaches and are starting to hire coaches instead of therapists.
Speaker 1: Therapy means something's wrong with you, and coaching means you're
Speaker 1: just going to get better. How do you take what
Speaker 1: you've learned When you think about your young daughter Lila,
Speaker 1: will you be able to teach her things at a
Speaker 1: younger age than you could your three older children because
Speaker 1: you've had these transformations, like what what are messages you
Speaker 1: would want her to learn now? Or when she's three
Speaker 1: or four or five. The biggest thing that I wish
Speaker 1: I had done with my first three children that I
Speaker 1: think I have a chance to do with her is
Speaker 1: too absolutely respect and validate every emotion she has all
Speaker 1: the time, because little kids don't start out trying to
Speaker 1: be bad or anything. And with my older kids, I
Speaker 1: tried to make them. You know, I remember taking them
Speaker 1: to church in Utah before I left the church, and
Speaker 1: there was this whole thing about if you're child is
Speaker 1: making a noise in church, you go into an empty
Speaker 1: room and you make them face a wall for the
Speaker 1: full hour of the church meeting. And I remember hearing
Speaker 1: that and going, Okay, I don't think that's what Jesus
Speaker 1: would do. So we just stopped going to church and
Speaker 1: we spend time in nature playing on Sunday. So I
Speaker 1: didn't do that much. But then they went to school,
Speaker 1: and some of them loved you know, two of them
Speaker 1: love school. One of them didn't. But I tried to
Speaker 1: make them fit in with school culture. Not so much
Speaker 1: at home, but at school. You gotta do what they say.
Speaker 1: No you don't like if Lila just has an oil
Speaker 1: and water relationship with school, I'm gonna pull her out
Speaker 1: that so fast. And you know, I've now met people
Speaker 1: who have been schooled by a tutor who flew to
Speaker 1: different places in the world with them on an absolute
Speaker 1: shoe string budget. You know you want to learn history,
Speaker 1: Let's go to France and live there on five dollars
Speaker 1: a day. And my god, these are some of the
Speaker 1: most brilliantly educated people I know. So I would shape
Speaker 1: I want to shape her experience around her feelings instead
Speaker 1: of trying to push her feelings into some sort of
Speaker 1: a social category or a box. What do you do
Speaker 1: when you feel like you have conflict with your partners,
Speaker 1: or your friends or your clients, the same thing every time.
Speaker 1: There's actually a script, and I really recommend you do it.
Speaker 1: And it works with two year olds, and it works
Speaker 1: with I am not kidding psychopathic terrorists, because the FBI
Speaker 1: uses the same things to calm down a terrorist a
Speaker 1: psychopath that parenting experts advice we do to calm down
Speaker 1: our children, and that is to sit down, give them
Speaker 1: your absolute full attention, get completely calm in yourself, which
Speaker 1: takes a lot of practice on your own before you're
Speaker 1: facing it, and say, tell me what you're experiencing, Tell
Speaker 1: me everything, Tell me everything, and then as they tell
Speaker 1: you, you you say, I really get that. I have felt
Speaker 1: that way. Every anybody going through what you're going through
Speaker 1: would feel that way. Tell me more, tell me everything,
Speaker 1: and then say, yep, I get it. I totally feel
Speaker 1: why you. And I've never had an experience with a
Speaker 1: person where when I asked them that I didn't empathize
Speaker 1: with them. They were always doing what I would have
Speaker 1: done in the same situation. So yeah, I do that.
Speaker 1: And there's not really any cont not what like, there
Speaker 1: isn't conflict when you sit down with somebody who's upset
Speaker 1: and say, tell me everything. I'm listening. Oh, I get it.
Speaker 1: There's no more arguments like we have in an argument
Speaker 1: in our family for a very long time. We have
Speaker 1: a lot of discussions. Let me tell you how I feel. Oh,
Speaker 1: I get it. That's it. That's all it is. That's
Speaker 1: a perfect ending. Um. I think we can all take
Speaker 1: that with us. But before we end, we have a
Speaker 1: bunch of quick questions for our speed around. What is
Speaker 1: your favorite beverage sparkling more, I'm so boring you are
Speaker 1: not defined by that, Martha, Okay, favorite trip you've ever
Speaker 1: taken life the whole damn thing other than that. Every
Speaker 1: time I go to long to Losy, which is a
Speaker 1: game preserve in South Africa where I teach people on
Speaker 1: change your life Safari's Heaven. What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
Speaker 1: Now that I have in my own room, you gotta understand.
Speaker 1: I went from sharing a room with siblings, to sharing
Speaker 1: a dorm room in college, to sharing a room biasban
Speaker 1: to sharing a room with Karen, just sharing room and
Speaker 1: like all this room sharing. Well, now I have my
Speaker 1: own room. When everybody goes out, I closed the door,
Speaker 1: I get in a king size bed and I just
Speaker 1: roll and roll and roll from side to side, just like.
Speaker 1: I love this. It's a wonderful time. Other than our
Speaker 1: podcast or your podcast, what is a podcast that you love? Well, Glenn,
Speaker 1: and I mean you can't. Oh, and there's another one
Speaker 1: for those of you who are ex Mormon lesbians. There's
Speaker 1: one called Latter Day Lesbians that is really good. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Martha. We love you and we can't wait
Speaker 1: to have you back so we could have an entirely
Speaker 1: different conversation next time. Thank you guys so much, keep
Speaker 1: doing your wonderful work, and hugs to all your loved ones. Well,
Speaker 1: that was an amazing interview, But Sam, should we tell
Speaker 1: them you have to? This was not our first interview
Speaker 1: with Martha. We recorded an entire episode with Martha, and
Speaker 1: in a way we couldn't have known until the very end,
Speaker 1: Martha's audio just didn't record, so it's lost in the cloud.
Speaker 1: But the wild thing about Martha, I think if this
Speaker 1: had happened with any other guest, the interviews would have
Speaker 1: been very similar. But what's funny about Martha is like
Speaker 1: she is so full of wisdom. She's like some I
Speaker 1: don't know, she's otherworldly in some ways. And so because
Speaker 1: of that, we ended up having an entirely different conversation
Speaker 1: this time than we had last time. And I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that makes her so incredibly fascinating.
Speaker 1: I mean, I could talk to Martha forever. Amy, I
Speaker 1: told you this story. But years ago, she and I
Speaker 1: were asked by the Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Texas Conferences for
Speaker 1: Women to do this kind of like fireside chat where
Speaker 1: I interviewed her in all three places, and selfishly, I
Speaker 1: asked her three different sets of questions just because I'm
Speaker 1: always interested in what she's thinking and doing. And she
Speaker 1: always surprises me. I really don't doubt that because the
Speaker 1: two interviews we had, like you said, just took completely
Speaker 1: different paths, and I was really inspired to ask her
Speaker 1: at the end of our second interview just about like
Speaker 1: how she handles conflict, because she seems like someone who
Speaker 1: just a pro coach is life with this really open,
Speaker 1: authentic and honest heart in a way that I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever seen anybody do quite like her. And
Speaker 1: I have to recommend her books because I've read all
Speaker 1: of her books at this point and they are life changing,
Speaker 1: so I highly recommend digging into them, especially her newest
Speaker 1: The Way of Integrity. She's really a gift in many ways.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever shared this with everybody, Sam,
Speaker 1: I've shared it with you, but my dream is that
Speaker 1: we all go on like a camp retreat somewhere. It
Speaker 1: would be a nice camp you don't have to rough it,
Speaker 1: but I feel like Martha Back would be like the
Speaker 1: best camp leader on earth ever. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: What's her Story with Sam and Amy. We would appreciate
Speaker 1: it if you leave her of you wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts, and of course connect with us on social
Speaker 1: media at What's Her Story. Podcast What's Her Story with
Speaker 1: Sam and Amy is powered by my company, The Riveter
Speaker 1: at the Riveter dot Co and Sam's company, park Place
Speaker 1: Payments at park place payments dot com. Thanks to our
Speaker 1: producer Stacy Parra and our male perspective blue Burns m
Speaker 1: HM