Incredible Resilience

And I thought to myself, no, you are completely and utterly mad. There's no way I want to go to Rwanda. And I remember thinking to myself and looking at her big wide eyes and thinking, oh my God, what is this woman on? You know, the other thing I was thinking about actually just this morning is the choice of language. that we use with each other is so important right now. And I don't mean necessarily like the exact words, although that's helpful, but there's so much wonderful evidence that says that if you are positive and you frame things in the positive, first of all, you see it more positively and you feel energized by that.
And I think there's just factual evidence to that effect, but also you channel that to other people. Conversely if you are negative you can actually measure The drag effect that that has on other people's inspiration and motivation to get things done So, you know when we're thinking about everything that we're going through right now I certainly don't want to be Pollyanna ish about it because these are real serious challenges But the mindset that we have and how we telegraph that to the rest of the world will help us to succeed if we, we need to add every little bit of wind to our sails that we possibly can.
And so, yeah, it's an opportunity. It's an opportunity for change. You know, you're brightening up my morning, definitely. But I wanted to come back to what you said about the women that you work with in countries like Rwanda and Bosnia and Congo and the places that you do a lot of work. and this attitude of I have no choice. And I just wonder about that because I'm just sort of thinking about that in the context of the American woman or the UK woman.
And we're seeing more inequality in the developed world now than we have ever seen. Or is it just that it's being highlighted more? It was always there. there were always race issues, there were always income issues, there were always education issues. And now finally, they were getting some press, you know, like, okay, we can see them and we can start to want to do something about them and we can start to try and play our part.
But then something else that you said, I'm going to go with this, is, you know, so…

I mean, I've had this other theory, you know, you like my theories, but I've had this other theory for years that if women were less tired, got more sleep, were less stressed, we would be running the world and we would be doing it really well. And there'd be lots of self-care stuff going on and there'd be lots more collaboration going on. And I think we're really starting to see that now. And I worry for us women, Andree, I worry for us because we're taking on so much right now and it doesn't seem to be ending any time soon.
And so for women listening that are saying, okay, great, you know, I really would like to see the world be a better place, but you know, I've got a list as long as my arm right now to deal with the housework and the kids and my job. And I'm not making any enough money right now, or I've got health bills to pay or whatever it is. What can we say right now that will even help?
Yeah. I mean, that's like, Sam, that is an impossible question to answer because I think a lot of what we're talking about is you just doing the best that you can every single day. And you said something super important around self-care, which I actually, everybody, no matter what their situation on some level can do self-care. whether it's a five-minute meditation or you know and obviously I'm referring to the things that I know but everybody has culturally in their toolkit something that resonates with them around I'm doing this for myself and I do think that we as a gender you know and as a social construct have an awful lot of baggage around putting ourselves last. and meeting everybody else's needs and not just feeling like it's okay to let the battery charge to 100% before you go giving the energy away.
And I'm one of those people too. I think the reality is that people are facing super stark choices. The women that I work with in places like DR Congo and all across East Africa, but Central America and Eurasia too, those women have much harder choices to make in some respects. And I have the luxury of choice that they don't have, but we can still… um make sure that we are taking care of ourselves on some level and I think that is a common lesson that we all have to digest and and be okay with um and frankly I think that um and you know that's I hate making generalizations because there's always a reason it doesn't work um but I do think that um in our culture especially this culture of speed and you know constantly doing this and that and everything else um

We in some respects are much more twisted up about it than cultures where the pace of life is simply much, much slower and much more grounded in like day-to-day activities. Because we have all of these choices, it's become very complex and we allow that complexity to happen to us and accept it as a given. And one of the things that I have genuinely enjoyed about this crisis and, you know, I think probably everybody who hears this is gonna be like, you enjoyed this, what's wrong with you?
But I have enjoyed jettisoning some of the things that I took as requirements in my life that became impossible for me to do because of the lockdowns that I, after several months now of not having been able to do them, have been able to look at in a much more unemotional fashion and say, you really didn't need to do that. Like what, tell us what kind of things. Well, like I got up every morning and you know, did my hair.
And the thing is, okay, yes, it's a great thing to do, but I spent an awful lot of time and energy focused on that. And the people that I really care about and love the most in the world, do not care one way or the other whether my hair is up in a top knot on my head or flowing in beautiful long curls down my back. What they care about is that I'm happy and well and I am energized about what I'm doing because that transfers joy to them.
And so I do think a lot of it is around the cosmetic external stuff, but also it's around the gifts of time that I have recovered personally and what I choose to do with those things. So for years, I said, I don't have time to read. And I was schlepping around books that I never cracked the spine of because there was always something else that took that place. And now that I do not have to spend every weekend traveling to and from an airport and hours and hours on a plane, I find myself taking those books off the shelf.
And it has been this just incredible enriching experience where before, if I was too tired to do anything else, I might've said, okay, well, I'm just gonna, you know, lie here and watch my kids watch anime. you know, whatever it is. And now, you know, I sit and I read my book. And it's also been a great thing for my kids to see because I remember the first time they found me sitting in an armchair in the house reading a book.
They said, what are you doing, mom? Like, why are you sitting there? Because I never sit unless I'm in front of my computer. And I said, I'm reading this book and it's really good and you have to go away and you can't come back for another 45 minutes. That's been great. You're one of those people. What does that mean? You are, you're one of those people. You're one of those people that has…

turned Covid into a time where they they've started exercising they've started reading you know that it's like where there's awakening time me i've put on 20 pounds i'm like completely stressed out um My kids' homeschooling is completely a disaster. Our house is flooded. It's like very biblical and there's fires and floods and diseases and everything circulating around me. And they're like, you know, you're like one of those people that I see on Facebook that I'm instantly deleting right now, but I would never instantly delete you.
They're like happily smiling because they've lost 20 pounds and they've like used COVID as this wonderful time. I mean, I joke because it's a wonderful thing that you're doing, but… I mean, I love because it's such, it can be, I think what you're saying is it can be such an awakening and I'm getting there now. And I love what you said about not doing your hair because the objective of this podcast, I wanted to do something that is really stripped back, but we're not really, as women especially, we're not focusing on things that We did, perhaps, we did them not for ourselves.
It's okay to do your hair every day if you really want to do your hair every day. It's okay to put lipstick on, but if you're doing it because you think you should. I always used to do Zoom calls, right, in pajamas or shorts, depending on what time of year it was, and then like a fancy, you know, fully made up, you know, the shirt, the jewelry, the earrings. I can't even imagine wearing earrings these days.
And… And I have been experimenting with and loving, like, no makeup. No makeup. I mean, my hair, I don't know what's going on with it right now. It doesn't really matter. I actually yesterday went to put a little makeup on because I thought I wanted to do it. And I pulled out this mascara, which I couldn't find for ages. Like, where's my mascara? Can you imagine that before, like, I would have four mascaras?
Where's my mascara? And I pull out this thing and it's like, clumpy and cracked. And I just think that actually, as silly as it may sound to some, I think it's actually quite a radical thing to not do these things. And I actually, a friend of mine was telling me, a male friend of mine was telling me that he was doing a Zoom call with two He's a communications consultant. He was doing a zoom call with two potential clients and they were quite senior in some big company in the UK Anyway, these two guys had like t-shirts on and they were like sitting back You know, one of them was kind of picking his nose, you know, like whatever they were doing and and then he did a zoom call, you know a little later with a couple of women and also from from the same organization, and they were kind of like, they looked immaculate, and they had their hair all styled and everything, and he was just like, it's really interesting that there's still that sort of social pressure as a woman, perhaps, that you need to look a certain way, sound a certain way, act a certain way, do things a certain way.
And I am delighted that many women, and I invite women who are listening to this, to just get rid of that shit. Like, it's over. You don't have to worry about it anymore. Who cares? And so much time was wasted, to your point. How much time do we waste in a year doing our hair? Well, yeah, and look- Putting makeup on. Finding the right outfit. Whatever. Getting bras. I'm over bras, by the way.
I mean, I just can't stand them anymore. I mean, I know they perform a function, but I mean, really, they're so uncomfortable. I totally agree. And look, I think that it really, again, it comes back to Are you doing it for yourself? Are you doing it for somebody else? Cause if you're doing it for yourself and that's the thing. And that's what I have found to be liberating about it. It's like, I realized that there were things that I was doing for other people and I wasn't doing them for myself and I don't need to do that right now.
And that's like a huge gift, right? And I do really struggle with that question of like,

What are you supposed to look like? What are you supposed to sound like? How do people judge that? Because the truth is that bias is there, right? It is just there across the whole society. And it's there, you know, whether you're a woman or a man. But it is something that is still so dominant and strong. I'll tell you, you know, we want to talk about something that makes me angry. One thing that actually really upset me was I've talked to a lot of different people and they said, oh, you know, I really like Elizabeth Warren and I really liked her politics, but she's just too strident.
And I was like, what does that mean? Like really, what does that mean? You know, and it was around the fact that her voice got really high pitched when she was excited about things. And I thought to myself, and this is something I wrestle with, right? I really do wrestle with it because some of it's true and some of it's not. And it's always, you want to get to the truth, but that bias around how we judge women versus how we judge men still, I think it's super powerful.
It's huge. It seems to be, as a UK person living in America, we grow up with this idea of America being the leader of the world, culturally diverse, open, innovative, creative. And I'm gonna say in many respects, it's been disappointing. And I remember actually one time this was going back when Hillary was running And a friend of mine, male friend of mine said, I'm not sure that her hair is presidential. She doesn't have presidential hair.
I mean, hello, presidential hair. I mean, think about that right now, the current context of our current president, if you want to go down presidential hair. But I did ask the question, and I think it's really important to not let this stuff go because I think as women, we kind of just let it go because it sort of is what it is. But I said, well what does presidential hair mean? And it's hard not to do it in a kind of like presidential hair mean you know like for god's sake I'm over this.
So I suppose we need to do it in some kind of way that we will be heard to your point about language but it does need to be said.

I think that we don't say it enough. We don't for fear of judgment, for fear of rocking the boat, for fear of it being career limiting. I've heard that many times. Oh, I don't want to be seen as the feminist. I don't want to be seen as the diversity person. I don't want to be seen as the equality person. How about you just seen as a person who is raising something that's really not okay?
Because I find that many, especially men, when you do raise it, when you say something to them, They're kind of like befuddled, like, whoa, whoa, I didn't mean it. You know, oh, I didn't think of it like that. And they're, you know, nine out of 10 times, I guess it depends on who you're talking to, but nine out of 10 times, they take it on board. It's almost like they've been told off, you know, I'm never doing that again.
Right. But I think you're exactly right. So my whole issue with it is it needs to be a dialogue, right? And in order for there to be a dialogue, it has to feel safe to say it. And it has to feel safe also to respond to it. And we still have not managed to create that constructive space where the issue can be raised on both sides. Because let's be honest, how people speak has a huge impact on how their words are heard, 100%.
Like body language and tone and eye contact, all of these elements, whether it's a man or a woman, matter. And you need to be able to talk about that. But we also need to be able to dissect within that, what is gender bias and where there is, like you're saying, like, is it worth, it's worth challenging that preconception and having that conversation. And I think that we have not had a space where we've been able to feel really confident around doing that.
And it's really hard to foster that open dialogue. I have had that experience even, you know, over the course of the summer where we've tried to create spaces for people to have dialogues that are, you know, much richer around diversity. And, you know, we're super, obviously we're super committed to diversity and inclusion in our organization. And I was really surprised at at how hard it was for people to have that conversation, even in a place that I consider to be really aligned around those core values.
And so I guess it starts at home in some ways, or it starts certainly in our communities with people that we really do trust who

Who can give us feedback also, you know, I've had very close friends say to me I don't think you're thinking through for your perspective on that at all And you know, I think it was around a gender issue I've had my son say to me. Oh my god, you're so ignorant mom like, you know, you really don't understand Gender identity at all and and let me teach you about this and that's great I think that's great because we are the product of our experiences and we are the product of the knowledge that's been put in front of us that we've hopefully absorbed and sometimes you need people to be honest with you and check you and call you out and you need to be able to tap people on the shoulder and say, I really don't think that that's okay.
I had this amazing experience once when I was in Pakistan where as three women, we went to a shop. We did not have a chaperone with us, super powerful, talented women that I was with. And we were, one of my colleagues wanted to go into a fabric shop. And so we went in and there were only men in the shop and we sat down and started looking at the fabrics and everything else.
And my colleague who is an Afghan American woman and super just one of the toughest, coolest women you're ever going to meet in your entire life. The shopkeeper was kind of flirting with her and so she started interrogating him in a very aggressive way about gender equality and how did he treat women and why didn't he believe that women were fully equal to men and what did he do for the women in his family.
But it was done with such a spirit of love and affection. And he was engaging back with her in like such an awesome way. And we sat there for like 15 minutes while this whole conversation went on. And I will admit it was translated for me by my other colleague because I obviously don't speak the language. But I thought it's moments like that where people are willing to have those conversations about taboo things as trivial as that one might've seemed.
That that helped to needle the cultural biases that are ingrained in what we do And and if you do it with love and respect and a spirit of genuine inquiry It's kind of hard for people to take offense what's happening right now is I see a lot of people throwing Molotov cocktails at each other and wanting to punish each other for not making the right choices around certain things and I think that's a shame because I think it's actually going to drive people further away from each other and I am working really hard to try and create a space where people can tell me I'm stupid if I am.
You're not stupid. Far from it. You're one of the most powerful, toughest women I know.

smiling to myself as well because I was thinking about a few months ago when you contacted me again we hadn't spoken for a little while and I think that's one of the signs of great friends when they don't speak for a while and they can you know instantly reconnect and you said something along the lines of um and maybe this was in one of your moments when you were sitting quietly uh you said something along the lines of uh you know I've made a list of the people that I like it's not long um but you're on it And so I'm reaching out to you and see if you want to have a conversation.
And I just thought that was just so hilarious because it's such an honor for me to be on your list. I made you, I made Andree Simon's list. I was so delighted about that. And I love what you're saying. I think that I want to come back to what you said about this comment from these women that you had worked with in Rwanda. I think you said was that I have no choice and that In Rwanda, when you have that, okay, if I don't do this, I can't pay for this.
I won't be able to live my life. I won't be able to do the things I want to do. I have no choice. I have to do it. I have to get up in the morning. I have to provide for my children. I have to do these things. I think this is something now that is actually the world over. World over, we have no choice. We have no choice. We have to homeschool if we have children.
We have to work still. And if it has to be by Zoom, we have to do it by Zoom. If we're a frontline worker, we have to go out. We have to wear the mask if it's uncomfortable. We have to do what we have to do. I think this attitude right now, if you like, is prevalent everywhere. Not everybody is following this attitude, but I think this, I have no choice and we're back to basics.
I think it's really, really important. that you bring that to this conversation. And also this point around being confident enough in yourself to raise taboo subjects and to talk about them and to do it. And this is where I need to work on it. So thank you for this, you know, in this spirit of love and generosity, because often I just sort of get frustrated and, you know, it doesn't end good.
All right. So I think that, you know, I just sort of got to a point, I think now where I'm sort of done with being so diplomatic because I just say, what the, you know, what are you doing? Like enough is enough. But I think the more of us that can

you know, if you're starting on this journey, if your husband or partner does or says something inappropriate, or they're not pulling their weight in the house, or it's your boss at work, or it's your work colleague, or it's someone down the street, or it's someone even in… You know, I had a time very recently, actually, where I took Grace, my daughter, who, you know, I adopted from Congo, and so obviously we're different… races in different colors and I had a time where we were going into the doctor's office and there was security there kind of checking masks and everything and making sure everyone was six feet apart and he wanted us to be six feet apart because he didn't think we were together. you know, because you can be together if you're a mother and daughter, but if you're not, then you separate.
And she's, you know, she's older, so she looks, you know, she looks like a young woman now, but, and so he made this assumption, and my first thought was, are you effing kidding me? You know, in the time of Black Lives Matter, you're really- Picking my daughter away, yeah. Yeah, really, you know, and so I said, you know, just nicely, like you said, with the spirit of love and generosity, because he didn't, I didn't get that it was intentional.
I said, you know, we're together and she's my daughter and he just kind of looks really embarrassed and shocked. And then I don't, so I, listen, I don't think he's going to do that again. But then, you know, we went into the doctor's office and we were both actually having an ultrasound for something, my knee is just something else, small. And again, they were, they did the same thing again. I was just like, okay, I've just been through this once, I'm going to do this again.
So I think. we shouldn't let it go. This is my point, and I think it's part of what you're saying here, that we need to be willing to say something. And we can say it diplomatically, we can say it with love and generosity, we can be frustrated. However it comes out, it's our truth. And I think this is where we as women need to be way more vocal on our truth every day in the moment of the day.
If you want to change the world, you don't necessarily have to go and march, you don't have to run a not-for-profit, you don't have to run for office, all of those things are fantastic. But you can speak to, on the daily journey of our lives every day, we can be raising this up. Think about this, if several billion women around the world started doing this every day, two or three times a day, what's gonna happen in a couple of weeks?
Yeah. Revolution, radical change. Yeah.

No, listen. Am I naive? I mean, I don't think it's that tricky. No, I think teaching people to use their voices, coaching each other and using our voices is one of the most powerful things that we can do. And I think the other side of that is also teaching people to be open to where it's coming from. And you know, it's really hard right now and I am a very privileged white woman.
And so my perspective on this is pretty limited in terms of like some of the stuff that you're talking about and a lot of just like this horrible egregious stuff that's gone on. But we have to, I think we really have to try and parse out for ourselves, like first it's, this is not okay, right? That's a good statement and it's a clear statement and it's okay to say it's not okay.
But then also, and this is my struggle, as I am working with, and I will talk to you about this from a completely different perspective, but I have been working, across so many different cultures trying to come up with this common vision and very frequently across all of those different cultures a lot of things get lost in communication and There is a natural tendency for human beings when they're stressed and worried and scared to view everything as a threat And if you walk into a dialogue looking at everything as a threat, and I'm separating that very deliberately from some of the Black Lives Matter stuff because I actually think that a lot of that really is physically threatening people and just not okay and demands a completely different response.
But when I'm thinking about bridging these cultural differences across my team, you almost, you have to approach everything like people have the best of intentions and they're not communicating it correctly. And my bias is always, what are we not understanding about each other? As opposed to there is malintent that is driving any one of these different dialogues. And I have to have that kind of orientation for myself personally, because it drives a lot of my positivity. you know, that I actually genuinely believe that most of the time people are coming from a good place and it's just not understanding each other and not putting ourselves enough in the other person's shoes to be able to bridge that.
And then, you know, sometimes you realize that that's not the case and then you have a different kind of response, right? You believe that about Trump? He's coming from a good place? Yeah, I know.

benefit and I want to tell you about two conversations I had recently that I think that you will resonate with. One was with a woman who is a businesswoman in India. I was talking with her yesterday and she was telling me that she was really talking about the sort of deeply embedded societal values of India and its impacts on women and she was telling me that when she was about to marry her husband she was asked to meet his father and she was told okay dress appropriately don't say much you know dress in a sari dress in the sari and all the things which was really not her and so she went to this now this has got to be like 25 years ago or so she went to this um very formal meeting with the husband's, the potential husband's father in a crop top and jeans.
I love it. Well, think about that. I mean, in the context of Indian society 25 years ago, I mean, talk about a rebel. Yeah. And she said that she was sort of terrified about it, but she knew that she had to be herself, she had to be authentic, she had to live her truth, or she knew in her heart that she was sort of committing herself to a life of being inauthentic if she didn't do it.
And so she took this massive risk, I would imagine at the time this was a massive risk for her. And she went into this meeting and she met with the grandfather and he didn't really say much and it was all quite formal and the rest of it. And she thought, oh my God, completely blown this. And she apparently said to him, Hi, I'm wearing these clothes because I want you to know that this is who I am and I will I always I will She said it isn't this brilliant.
I will always be honest with you. This is who I am I will always be honest with you and one of the ways of me being honest with you is to wear these clothes and Apparently he said you know was the effect of if someone is this honest and this is a great match for my son So this worked out really well for her. But it could have gone really the other way, couldn't it?
It could have gone completely the other way. And maybe she wouldn't have married the son, and maybe that would have been a good thing, so maybe it's good both ways. But I so admired that she did this. And then the other example is this woman I was speaking to a couple of days ago. I'm so privileged, as you are, to speak to such amazing women around the world.

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