I'm Listening with Karen Sherman

She had no makeup on. She looked like she’d just rolled out of bed, completely as it’s meant to be with this podcast, unstripped, like, who gives a fuck? And she, you know, we got on the podcast, she said, how are you? You know, so sweet. How are you? And I was like, totally and utterly shit. And she just burst out laughing. So I haven’t known Karen very long, probably just a few weeks or maybe a month or so.
But there are some people that, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve known them, you connect instantly. Hello. How are you? Oh, God. Completely and utterly shit. That sounds about right. What about beyond? I don’t know. I’m like, is it just it’s Friday? What is it? And she’s someone else who opens my eyes to what is happening in the world. And she gives me such a strong sense of perspective. When I complain or I’m thinking that things are tough for me or tough for women in the developed world, she’s someone who very gently and kindly reminds me that things are a lot tougher for women in all over the globe right now.
And she’s funny. She’s so funny. She swears a lot, which I love. It just did not work. And everything seemed like it was a must do. And then you find yourself just working one, then two, then three, then four hours. And then you’re just like, what the fuck? Yeah, what did I do? What did I do? It seemed like such a good idea at the time. I can do that. I have so much capacity.
And I generally sort of do. And then I think on Friday, I just kind of, my body is, I woke up this morning and… I really did think that I heard my body say, ooh, you know, like, stop. Yeah. We have to listen to those signals, don’t we? I think so. I think so. Like, my eyes were sore, my stomach was sore, my head was sore. And then I was like, thank God I’m doing these podcast interviews today, because they’re the most fun I’m having all week.
Yeah. The unscripted nature of it.

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the fact that there’s there’s we all put on I think they’re sort of public and private faces right the face you show to the rest of the world and then sort of there’s what you really think the things that you really shouldn’t say out loud if you want to continue. If you want to continue… If you want to continue in your job, if you want to continue having friends, if you want to not alienate your circle of family, you know, all of those things that you’re like, I should just, you know, not say that out loud.
And your description of this podcast about raw, unplugged, unscripted was really compelling to me because we don’t get a chance to do that very often in our lives. And then I think sort of suppressing our real thoughts becomes kind of a force of habit, right? Because we all want to be accepted and, you know, we don’t want to offend and, you know, for all good reasons too, right? Maybe. I don’t know.
What is it? So what is it, what’s really going on in your head? Like if it was, you could say, because we don’t have to use any of it, right? This is just sort of an experiment and you can always say to me like, oh, you know, no, you can’t use that bit. I think that I’m sitting on a bunch of anger, politically and otherwise about just all of the mistakes. I’m watching the news about politics, how every single discussion and decision has been politicized.
I’m watching Oregon, where I’m from, where they’ve had, it’s always raining. There’s no rain there, but there’s floods in Bethesda, Maryland, where I’m from. Colorado’s covered in snow right now. There’s wildfires destroying towns and villages. We’re having ridiculous hurricanes, but we’re still having people who question climate change. That kind of thing makes me crazy. And then I think about politics and COVID and how politicized things like the Postmaster is and the CDC is, and I’m like, why are those political positions?
Why are they Democrat or Republican? Why are those political positions? That makes me angry too. So just sitting on a bunch of little bits of anger that I just try and… squash down so, you know, we can function in our day-to-day lives. If you could scream at the top of your lungs, like, they gave you a spot in the Senate or something outside the White House. It’s okay, Karen. You can scream whatever you want at the top of your lungs.
There will be no repercussions. Go for it. What would you scream? You guys are such jackasses for the most part. So we’re screaming together, right? You’re such jackasses! I mean, AOC is trying to do that without quite saying that. I mean, like I said, there’s some real standouts and a number of them are women who are just saying, this is ridiculous. And then I think about

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COVID and the disproportionate impacts on women, things that we’ve known for a really long time, the double burden on women, how women are absorbing a lot of the extra work through unpaid labor as it relates to managing during COVID, whether it’s teaching your kids at home, doing more of the housework and cleaning. And meanwhile, violence against women is going through the roof. That makes me angry. I’ve actually got quite good at cleaning toilets.
I find it weirdly therapeutic. Like I sort of dread it and I’m like, okay, Tuesday afternoon is my cleaning toilets afternoon. And now I’m quite into it. As weird as it sounds. What do you like about it? I don’t know. I think I might like the smell of bleach. I like the fact, I don’t know, it’s sort of maybe a sort of cleansing thing. I can be sure that my toilets are clean because I was in a privileged position before where I did have somebody who would come in and clean them for me.
And I always kind of thought in my head, I wonder how clean they really are. And I was quite sort of environmental with my cleaning materials and now I’m full-on bleach woman. You’re like, give me the hard stuff. Let’s use the hard stuff. And even though it says like use a cap or use half a cap, I think I use like about triple that. So do you feel extra clean and certain now that you’re doing it yourself?
Something like that. I’m sure it’s sort of a psychological sort of relief, and I know that my toilets are clean. It doesn’t mean anything else in the house is particularly clean. That’s right. That’s your dirty little secret, right? Yeah, I know the toilets are clean. It’s an interesting place to be when, you know, one minute I’m thinking about, okay, how might I, me, how might I impact climate change the next minute i’m thinking about cleaning the toilets the next minute i’m thinking about homeschooling the next minute i’m just thinking about whether i can crawl into bed for 10 minutes and no one will notice yeah maybe they won’t notice and i will be able to get like 10 minutes of sleep and it all will be all will be well with well but i think one of the things that you bring which i think is so critical right now because we are hearing much much more about the additional burden on women uh during covid Especially women of color.
And our hello world. This is no news story. Karen and I have been working on this, as many women and men have, for years and years and years. But now it’s like, whoa, really? Women take more of the workload? Really? Domestic violence is increasing? What world were you living in that you never realized that before? Anyway, this is not such new news. but it is exacerbated right now. But one of the things you bring is also we’re carrying this burden, which I believe that we do as women, which is we have to heal the planet.
It’s our job, it’s our role as women, as mothers, as friends, as sisters, that’s our job too. So I know about you, but I’m also holding domestic violence, climate change, vaccines, the education system. the political system, women in third world countries. I mean, it’s all round and round and round. It’s a vortex, isn’t it? Right? Yeah. I have struggled. I mean, and I think we…

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We do this as women in the development sector. We do this as women professionals, women with children, women with their own families and lives, and yet also trying to hold the big picture and the small picture at the same time. And I remember thinking, I spent 10 years working with women survivors of war in some of the most difficult places on earth to be a woman. And then I’d go home to my Bethesda house, my very nice Bethesda house, which I was grateful to have and my three little boys and sort of like, and they’re showing me their homework and they’re this and that.
And I’m like, how do you hold those truths, those worlds in your hand? Because that’s all true. what women are going through, they’re real and lived lives. Those are absolutely true. And yet you’ve got these three children in front of you too, and that’s equally real. And I have struggled with how do you hold that? How do you balance that and be present for both the big things and the small things?
And I think what you just said about sort of the… the toilet not that it’s the toilet but it’s a metaphor for like life goes on and I’ve got to have a clean toilet and I want to save the world and I want to do this and I want to do that and that has been the rub for women I think throughout the ages. You know as exhausting as it can be it’s a wonderful thing to hold and we are capable of holding many things.
I think we can judge ourselves and others can judge, oh, I hate the work-life balance. Try and balance it all. Well, no, it’s impossible to do, but we are able to live in a complex web of many things. It isn’t difficult for us. We can think about climate change one minute and paying the bills the next and our life purpose the next and changing a diaper the next. We have done this forever.

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This is, again, not new. That’s right. But what is different, I think, right now is that things are bad, right? Things are… They are bad. Things are tanking. And I believe there’s such huge… I’ve always believed, I know you have always believed in the potential of women. And so on one half of it, I’m like, well, we… Fantastic. This is such an opportunity for women to really rise right now. And we are seeing that, aren’t we?
We’re seeing that with a number of female political leaders, which is great to see. Again, you know, the media is suddenly saying, soft skills are great, female skills are great. Like, yeah, hello. Where were you? But… It is good to get that kind of coverage because it does give more validation and more credibility. And when more people see that source and that credibility, then they’re going to believe it more because they don’t think about it directly as much as we have been thinking about it for so long.
And so I think the potential for women is really vast right now. But at the same time, you have this competing force of how difficult it is for women right now. And I’m not saying it’s not difficult for men or anybody else, but we’re talking here about women and it is more difficult for women. And we’re seeing also one of the things that’s really worrying me is the mental health statistics right now that are starting to come out.
And when we’re handling so many difficult, complex things in our minds and combine that with a level of isolation, that’s a scary place for a lot of women. So I think you know, you’ve got these two, do you think that, you know, there’s like these two different things, like women are rising, but women are falling at the same time. So how do you, how do you, you know, how do we do that?
And how do we, how do we, we can’t just say like, okay, women go change the world. Cause they’re like exhausted. I think, you know.

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What we often don’t do as women is meet each other where they are. I think we’re like, well, you should be bigger than that and you should be thinking bigger things or you shouldn’t have your head in the toilet. You need to rise up and you need to feel good and you need to take care of your family and you need to do all of these things. But the fact is sometimes it’s super hard and sometimes you get low and depressed or you want to have a drink or you want to do this or that because it is so much to deal with.
And I think to give each other the space, the luxury to be in that place. And we need to provide support for each other and allow that. I think the biggest disservice we do as women is putting down other women for not being in a different place. I know that I have done that at times. Women where they’re they’re self-critical, but they’re also they’re judging hat and they put other women down which makes women feel even worse about all the things that they’re doing or not doing and I think we need to give each other a break and say yeah, it is hard.
Yeah, we need support Yeah, sometimes I do feel depressed and sometimes I’m elated right and it could be the same thing and you know five hours later, right so

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just being more mindful about how we can support other women at this difficult time and knowing that we’re not all in the same place. I think what you’re speaking to is judgment. One of the things that was highlighted to me recently is when I judge someone else, I’m actually judging myself. I’d never really thought about it like that. It was a bit of an eye-opener. I think that we do do that.
You know, we sort of say when we say something like, oh, she should be doing that or you should be doing this, whatever. I think we need to realize that that is a judgment, even if it’s sort of. I never really thought about it in this way. This is the first time I thought about it in this way. But when we say to someone, oh, in a bad way, or well, you should lose weight, or you should be able to clean your own toilets, whatever it is, it’s a little bit more negative.
It’s easier to identify as a judgment, isn’t it, Karen? But if you say to somebody, oh, you should really be stepping up, and you could do so much more in your career or something like that, it’s actually also a judgment too. in some way. I never really thought about it, but it sort of makes you feel like, oh God, I need to be doing more. I’m not good enough. Right. Well, and before those words come out of your mouth, if you put I in front of it, we might be less likely to say it out loud.
And I think that’s great. I think just catching that judgment, I know that I’ve really tried to watch myself and as I was writing this book too, I thought about it and sort of the the judgments that we just instinctively make about other women’s choices. It made me super conscious of that and sort of the choices that my mother has made, my sister has made, some friends have made, and I felt like I was giving it back because they were judging me.
But really… A lot of it is driven, I think, by our own guilt and insecurities and fears, right, that we are projecting on to other women, as you said. And so just being more mindful and examining those truths a little bit more carefully, I think would serve us all well. I agree. I mean, there’s nothing like a good old… dose of judgment and guilt and shame to stop your day. Just whip that in with a toilet bowl, right?
Yeah. And being aware of being in those places. I mean, so many people are doing great work on guilt and shame, you know, Brené Brown being one of those people. And just being aware of our own guilt and shame. I mean, we can sit in it for days, months, or years, and then suddenly realize, oh, look where I have been for so long. And it’s been driving my decisions. It’s been driving how I influence other people.
It drives every single thing. And so I think the realization of it is really, really key. You also made me think about there is another

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There’s a great woman who’s going to be speaking at our conference and I know you’re going to be too. And Karen, excellent. She’s in the Philippines. Anyway, her job is to be an encourager. This is really interesting. So rather than asking women, women say, you know, I’m doing this, I’m doing that, or if I’m, you know, I’m not happy, I’m depressed or whatever. So she says, rather than saying, you know, stop crying or stop doing that, stop doing something else.
She will say, I’m listening. I’m listening. And so I just thought that was so fantastic. And you made me think about that when you were speaking. So rather than telling women what to do, or telling anyone what to do, or you should do this, or you should do that, or have you thought about this, just to say, I’m listening. Yep. I’m hearing you, and I’m taking it in. And I can absorb all of that.
And I’ll speak for myself. Sometimes there’s a rush to want to fix other people’s problems, maybe fix our own problems very quickly because it feels uncomfortable to sit with it and just to know that you can say it out loud, that somebody can hear you, take it in, feel your pain, feel your confusion or whatever that is and just sit with it. I’m listening. Perfect. Should be the name of your podcast.
I’m listening. Maybe. So I love what you’re saying here. And I know that you are so passionate about what you do. But you said to me right at the start, and one of the things I can hear from you between the lines here, is there’s some stuff bubbling in you. There’s a level that you are sort of diplomatically keep down. Because as you said, it’s the

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correct thing to do. It’s the good girl thing to do. That’s right, that’s right. Yeah, I think that, you know, I’m at the point in my life and my career where I’ve been so fortunate to have wonderful work, work that is really designed to empower women educationally, economically, to put women forward. But I had to really learn how to put my own self forward in that. I realized maybe even a few years ago that I consciously took a role which was kind of a number two role, if you will, because I was comfortable taking on other people’s vision versus my own vision.
And I don’t know if that was so intentional at the beginning, but I do feel like as I’ve grown that maybe I’ve been a little bit of a cop out and this is me judging myself, like, well, why haven’t I put my own vision forward? Because my vision is not necessarily the same as your vision. And so, you know, I’ve asked myself, you know, I think of myself as a really solid professional development person, but like, when is the time and place to put my vision forward?
And what does that look like? And I’ve been wrestling with those questions really over the last few months. And right, I think when you take on somebody else’s vision versus your own, you do have to stifle yourself. And sometimes you reach a point where that doesn’t feel good anymore. Tell me about your vision. Thank you for asking me that question. And you’re listening, right?

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You know, it’s the things I really care about are women’s education and employment I really feel like the knowledge and resource piece are Game changers for women based on all the work that I’ve done all the research that I’ve been part of and I’ve seen this play out in every single country context and I Would like to spend the rest of my days trying to move those issues forward and, you know, whatever that looks like.
I just had a conversation before this, our conversation here about developing a new Women’s Leadership Institute in Africa, not built around what feminism, how feminism looks in other countries or how it looks in the United States, but something that is really meaningful in the African context. And I think we would all agree that feminism doesn’t look the same country to country, woman to woman, and really creating a place for women who can show different ways of leading.
And I’m excited about that, thinking about what that could look like and trying to create future leaders who are empowered by virtue of their education and their income. That really, that moves me. that is worth getting up every day for. How does it feel focusing on your vision instead of someone else’s vision? Better. In what way? Inspiring. Owning it and then feeling like it’s in my hands.

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to manifest that, that I’m not counting on somebody else to drive that vision forward, that I could drive that vision. It’s empowering, and it’s also a little scary if I’m being honest. What’s scary about it? I’ve always had this issue around responsibility and accountability versus authority. And so I think when you take on a big vision, you have both the authority as well as the accountability. And it’s easy to divorce those two things.
We all want to be like, do our work diligently, et cetera. But the power to make a vision happen is an awesome power and an awesome responsibility. You think that there’s more chance that it’s going to happen and to a higher standard if it’s your vision that you’re working on? I can’t speak for other people’s standards or sort of how they judge themselves. I’m pretty tough on myself. And so I feel like I would be really vigilant and meticulous about getting executing against that vision.
So I feel like I can vouch for the high standards of it. I think everybody leads in different ways. To me, you know, it’s not worth doing if you can’t do it with the level of integrity that you think is important. So it’s not, you know, the whole Peter the Great, well, you gotta break a few eggs to, you know, build this city. And it’s not worth it to implement your vision and have like a bunch of bodies scattered on the ground.
I think the how is just as important as the what.

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And so that takes a lot of mindfulness. So that would be a yes then. Yes. Yes. That would be a yes. One of the things that you were talking about is that you took a support role. And this is something that many, many, many women do. It’s really sort of embedded in our DNA generationally. to be in support. That’s what we’re wired to do. We’re wired to support. That’s right. That’s not saying that support is a bad thing.
But what I’m seeing now is that’s starting to change. Do you see this where women are saying, it’s time for me now to lead? And when I say lead, it may or may not mean that you apply for that bigger role, that bigger leadership role. When I’m talking about leading, I’m saying leading. our lives, leading our careers. You’re saying, I’m leading my own vision now. And with that comes with this great excitement and creativity and accountability and authority and fear.
I think that’s really, really fair. And I wouldn’t want to be really Pollyanna about things and say that there’s no fear. Without fear, what’s the point? I always say that’s a great sort of combination if you’ve got that fear and you’ve got that excitement at the same time. I think it’s the ideal formula really for any vision. Could not agree more. I mean, fear is part of it. Fear is a driver.
Not fear of failure, but just fear that you’re pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and you don’t know what it’s going to look like. And that’s okay. It took me a while to find my own voice. And I think that, you know, going back to what I had said previously about education and income, it does help women to find their voice. It gives them the means to act on that voice and to make different choices and to have choices.
And I think you’ve seen it with the Me Too movement. You’ve seen it with women in Congress and politically. women have really found their voice and executed against that leadership at all levels. And I feel like that’s super inspiring. It’s inspiring to me as somebody who has struggled with that and hopefully come out the other side. What would you say to women who are trying to find their voice, haven’t found their voice yet?
Start small.

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You don’t have to say I’m a big fan of incremental progress I think some people tend to think and maybe women a I’m afraid They don’t have the confidence to speak out or they have to say everything versus nothing Start with something small, you know, if you’re talking to your husband pick up the damn toys, you know It’s not just me or if you’re working full-time and this you know, you’re still doing the cleaning the cooking the child rearing Start small say, you know, I’m sorry.
That’s not happening anymore And this is what I really think or push back in small ways and you find that it becomes really a new habit to actually say it out loud and And I think it’s it’s like a muscle that you practice and I think about all the women who have suffered Violence against women rape and abuse who are starting to find their voice now and come out and tell their stories There is nothing more powerful than telling your story and owning your story.
I felt like, you know, my book was like having that baby. I put it all down there, the good, the bad, the ugly. And that helped me find my voice in writing and then verbally because it’s my truth. It’s not anybody else’s truth. It’s my truth. And I said it out loud. And I can tell you some people have, I will tell you other women. Even before it was published said, you know Karen I don’t think it’s gonna land the way you think it is like too vulnerable or I was also told that people might question your leadership by virtue of putting your story out like that and You know, I and I had to say, you know that may happen and that may be true and it’s going out Anyway, it’s my story.
I own it and it’s coming out And that was hugely empowering for me. And when other people read this book and they tell me that, other women tell me that I saw myself in this book and it’s helping me tell my own story, I can’t think of a better compliment than that, that women are finding their own voice and telling their own stories by virtue of reading this. So that also gets me up in the day.
And what would you say to women who have found their voice? Imagine you’ve got

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10,000 women in front of you, and you’re about to go in to speak, and you have, again, full permission to be as raw as you like, and they are expecting that, and they paid big bucks for you to be as authentic as you possibly could be. What would you say? Don’t stop there. I would say that it’s all about incremental progress, and your evolution as a woman, as a mother, as a human being, that’s all we have. our evolution as human beings.
We’re responsible for the kind of person that we want to be in this world. We’re responsible for how we act, our contributions, our integrity, both personally as well as professionally. And that’s us. We own that completely. Nobody can give that to you. Nobody can take it away from you. That’s all you. So if you can be your authentic self, say that out loud and engage that way. whether you’re talking about personally or professionally, then that’s a life well lived.
That’s my vision, a part of my vision, sort of women unleashed. Yeah. It’s about time, isn’t it? It’s about fucking time. I’m serious. Yeah, this whole good girl thing is just well overrated. I think that’s, thanks to COVID, if you can say such a thing, that is really starting to change. Because when I speak to women in Africa, India, across the globe, in countries that are less developed than the US, for example, they say things like, their circumstances are more extreme in many ways than here, although things are really starting to tank here for women as well, as we know.
But they say things like, I have no choice. I had to do it.

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And now we’re finding that across the globe, we’re in the middle of COVID, if you’ve lost your job, if things are not going well for you, we don’t have the luxury anymore to sit down and develop a five-year plan and do a coaching program or whatever it is to discover all these things. We have to be alive here in the moment, reacting to the day to day. Things are changing so rapidly.
It’s like being on quicksand. And so we have to be able to learn to deal with that uncertainty and even not just to survive it, but I think to actually thrive in it and learn this is how it is now. I was talking to my daughter Grace yesterday and Now this is a really very resilient kid. She was brought up in Congo and I adopted her as I was telling you. Anyway, she was getting very stressed out yesterday because Zoom was going out on her homeschool as it does.
There’s always something that’s going wrong with this homeschooling right now. And I said, how was your day? And she said, well, Zoom went down again and something always happens that gives me a bad day. And I said, well, you know what? Tomorrow, you’re going to expect Zoom to go down. And she was like, what? And I’m like, yeah, expect it. Zoom’s going to go down, or Schoology’s going to go down, or something’s going to happen.
And if you expect it, and you’re ready for it, and you can even laugh when it happens, then life’s going to be so much easier for you. So true. And she sort of looked at me like, you’re she does this, she looks at me as if this is the crazy mama again. But you know, I’m like, listen, kid, this is it now. And so these kids are growing up in this really weird time.
I mean, I think yesterday I was, I read something, I think it was, I sort of regularly watched BBC being a Brit as well as watching CNN and also watching Fox just to kind of. Know what’s going on. You want to see the spectrum? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah and the craziness of it Oh anyway on BBC there was in England now, they’ve just implemented Something where no more than six people can get together So it’s like they’re keeping it really tight in this Concerned about the resurgence of a second wave of COVID and and it made me think that I haven’t actually thought about COVID for a day or two Whereas in the first few months of COVID, I was like every day sort of obsessed by it.
I’ve been keeping a diary and we’re on week 26 of lockdown here now in California. And I was reminded, or it was sort of an insight, like we’re living with this now. It’s almost like the new normal. There’s homeschooling. It’s at home. We don’t go out. If we go out, we wear a mask. We think really carefully what we do. And this is what we’re living in. And it really struck me that this is the normal for these kids.
And this is what they’re growing up in. And a part of me was sort of obviously concerned about that. But a part of me was like, this is really going to be good training for them. If they can learn how to deal with this kind of uncertainty and instability at the this age. My kids now, a little younger than your kids, are sort of preteen. But if they can learn this at this age, then this is pretty phenomenal because we’re having to learn this now in our 40s, our 50s, our 60s.
A lot of people are really, really struggling with instability because they’re just not used to it. If you’ve had it before, you’re ready. That’s right. Well, I remember when the pandemic first happened and there were

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dire predictions about the number of people who would die in Africa. And well, it turns out that most of the African nations are coping extremely well with COVID because they’re used to adversity and they’ve dealt with this before. I think as Americans, we tend to feel like, well, it’s all gonna work out and it’s gonna be fine. And for those of us with means, let me be honest. And our kids also feel like it’s all going to be fine.
But I think having this level of adversity is eye opening for them. And I agree with you about kids and resilience and sort of What that will mean for them as they become adults and parents and enter the workforce I think it’s going to be really hard to go back to the way things were there’s no there’s no rose-colored glasses anymore You know, my son interestingly went off to college the school had done I think a really good job trying to prepare this bubble there and you know, he called me up probably five or six days later and just said I can’t do this.
It’s not good for my mental health. I’m worried. He’s like, I’m not an anxious person, but I feel very anxious. I feel like I’m in prison. And he’s like, I can take all my classes remotely and I want to come home. And I think that was an amazing level of self-awareness. that you would not expect in a teenager, right? To know that about himself and say, I don’t think this is good for me, and I don’t think this is good for my mental health.
I was really impressed by that. And it’s forcing a level of maturity, I think, in our kids. Some of it good, some of it perhaps not so good. You know, you don’t want them to grow up so fast. sort of that innocence is gone, isn’t it? That the world’s gonna be a great place and I’m gonna, it’s all gonna be wonderful and I’m gonna go to parties and I’m gonna go, you know, out and I’m gonna get this great job and I’m gonna be able to travel and do all those things that you want to do.
And you’re like, not so sure now. Different generation of kids experiencing this. I mean, I have this sort of interesting thing. We’re talking about Africa and the US. So I have two kids born and bred in the US and one born and bred in Congo. And it is really interesting to see the difference in them. And Grace will always be one like, we had a flood in the house, and so we have to move out in the middle of COVID, of course, add something else to all of this.
And my boys were getting quite stressed out about, where are we going, and where are we going, and will they like it, and does it have all the things that they want to have in terms of the house? And I said to Grace, you know, this is the house we’re moving to for a couple of weeks. Cool. I said, do you want to have a look at it? No. Are you OK with moving?
Yeah. Like, just absolutely no. It was not a complete non-event for her. And I think that that resilience that she had is really remarkable. And we don’t, I would worry about this actually with my boys. I would think, how am I going to give them a good old dose of resilience? it was done for me because we want our kids to learn these skills and now they’re learning them anyway. I mean, goodness knows, I hope we all come out a bit sane.
I’m not sure some days whether that’s going to happen, but I think it’s sort of really interesting to think about generation. It’s really interesting to talk about Africa and talk about the US. I mean, I was talking to a good friend of mine actually in Johannesburg and he was saying, COVID spared us. The cases are less in Africa for many different reasons, but I think a big part of it, as you were saying, is that sort of resilience and being used to that uncertainty.
But I mean, when I speak to women I’ve spoken to recently in Nigeria, there really is a level of stress around food supplies and…

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being able to access the same things and it is concerning. And I think to be able to do something that you’re doing with your vision for what you want to do in Africa and what you are already doing in Africa through the work that you do is phenomenal. But something I wanted to come back to, because I think that it’s really, really key, is this point about following your own vision. And I think that so many women want to do that and are not doing that right now.
Or they may think that they’re doing it, but actually, and this is a good question to ask yourself, whose vision am I following? Am I following my boss’s vision? Am I following my company’s vision? Am I following my partner’s vision? And the big one, and I think we all really need to challenge ourselves on this, is am I following society’s vision? That’s right. For what? I should and shouldn’t be doing as a woman.
And I’ve been giving myself some very strong questions on that recently. And sometimes I don’t really like the answers. Sure. It may not be one answer, too. It could be all of the above, right? It is a more comfortable place traditionally to follow than lead. Because with that leadership, as we’ve been talking about, comes a level of both responsibility, accountability, a bit of fear, but also the excitement of driving your own vision forward.
But that’s a lot to handle. And so I think some of us defer because we feel societal constraints, we feel marital constraints, we feel professional constraints. and we hold ourselves back as women. And we also do that because we compare ourselves to other women. And I think just allowing ourselves the freedom to not hold back, to be unleashed, as you said, I loved the unleashed piece. What does that look like? And that’s not a single answer for every woman.
It could look completely different woman to woman, but what does your unleashed look like? That’s really exciting.

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And I think about this idea of, Amartya Sen talked about agency for women and the things that give women agency are education, employment outside the home, and ownership, property ownership. Basically, all of them are tools to help women have a life for their own choosing, right? And so I think that vision is very much tied to agency and what you have that gives you agency, that allows you to have agency or find your agency.
That helps unleash that vision. What is happening right now is so many of the sort of traditional societal systems are starting to break down. Love it or hate it, believe it or not. They are. There’s a rebellion happening against how organizations are structured. how schools are structured, how the government is structured. And so I think there’s this anger and imbalance, which in many ways is a good thing because it will start to drive change.
But I think what we’re talking about here is also to have an influence and impact on changing those systems or recreating them is probably a better word. Stepping outside of the structures and recreating something. I know that there is a case to stay within the structures and say, OK, let me try and drive change. But I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen so many women just exhausted by that to try and change the inner organizational structure or government structure.
God bless those women that are doing that every day. I remember, actually, and it was…

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You know, Karen, it came up for me recently. It might be because I have a 50th birthday coming up soon, so it seems to happen to me on Decade Turners. But I remember when I was turning 30 and I thought I was really old and I needed to do something with my life. I’d been thinking that up to 30, but at 30 I was like, now it needs to get serious, Sam, you really do need to do something.
And… it was when I wanted to start Aspire, and I remember thinking to myself, among many things, how would I do it and how would I survive financially, all those kind of things, of course, everyone thinks about. But one of the things I did think about was, if you do this, you will never again be able to enter the corporate structure. You’ll never again be able to be in that structure because for many reasons, it won’t suit you and it would be hard to sort of crack back into it again.
And so you have to make a choice, you’re in or you’re out. And I was very sort of sure that this was true for me. Like I would never again be able to enter that structure. And, you know, reflecting back now, I was pretty young at the time, you know, 29 years old to make that choice. And I’m so glad I did. I’m so glad I did because I thought that that was what I should do.
You know, I should be in a career working in a big company. That’s the business degree that I did. And even though there was a big part of me that knew that wasn’t the right thing for me, and I never really did well working for anybody else because I just can’t take authority. I’m like, I always sort of joke that I’m unemployable. And so I’m so glad I did that. But I’m sort of getting this recurring feeling now about the school system because I’m starting to realize that the school system does not work for my children.
And if we come out of it, I think we’re going to come out of it forever, potentially. It won’t be that we’ll homeschool for a little while and then we’ll go back into the system. I think that if we choose to come out of the system, we will forever be out of the system. And when you choose to come out of a system, whether it’s a business or an organization or whatever system you’re in, a family system, a societal system, I think that you really have to sort of think through the pros and cons of that.
The pros of that. You have to be really sure about why you’re doing it. and how it aligns to who you are as a person. And it feels so good. As you said, it’s empowering. It’s so empowering. And that’s what I want women to know is a hugely empowering thing. And also there is a price to pay. You have to decide, am I willing to pay this price? I mean, sometimes you think often you think the price is higher than it actually is, but… it’s not as bad as you think.
You know, we’re very good at awfulising. It’s going to be so awful. It’s going to be so terrible. This is going to happen. Often that doesn’t happen at all. But there is a price to pay. Absolutely. You know, when you realize that, you say, okay, like anything, I’m going into a store. I’m going to buy this packet of rice. It costs $5. I’m okay with that. You make those choices. And I think we have to start making these choices.
And I really applaud women right now who are making these choices because

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If we can have more women like you and me, let’s say, who are leading the way in our own stuff and still making money and we’re still paying the bills and we’re still alive and we’re healthy and we’re doing the things that we want to do, then that’s got to be super, super good for our mental health. It’s got to be amazing for the mental health of those around us. And it’s got to be really, really good for the planet, really, really good for the planet.
Because I think there’s tons and tons of women out there, I’m on a bit of a rant now, and there’s tons of women out there who are really quite depressed about it, about their lives and what they’re doing. Maybe they wouldn’t say it, maybe they wouldn’t admit it, maybe they wouldn’t have that sort of clinical diagnosis. But for God’s sake, even Michelle Obama said she’s mildly depressed the other day. Absolutely. I mean, when you feel like things are happening to you that you cannot control, it’s depressing and that sort of how do you turn that on its head and your description of what you did when you were 30 years old where you sort of examined those trade-offs and sort of where you wanted to go with that is sort of the height of empowerment, isn’t it? where you’ve really examined it taken over ownership and decided to leave even if you didn’t know exactly where you were going to land right you knew that it was worth the risk to put yourself in a different place that that was more important than maybe the safe option than sort of following that trajectory that was expected of you because of society or your educational background or or, or, or, right?
And here’s what I think is important and what I’ve learned so much from working with women survivors of war. You talk about war and conflict creating a window of opportunity to change the dynamic in terms of women’s roles and responsibilities and opportunities. And I think the same about this pandemic right now, that it creates a window of opportunity for women to re-examine their values, their choices, their options, and opportunities. And that has to be very liberating.
So I don’t know if that’s a silver lining kind of thing, but it is sort of a, let’s take three steps back and say, actually, I’m not actually happy with this, or this isn’t doing it for me, or there’s a different way. Being able to have those conversations at least with yourself is liberating Because it takes some of those things that feel very amorphous very kind of even victimizing because they’re they’re happening to you and it puts it in your hands for you to be able to create that change yourself and Give yourself a life of your own choosing and that to me is is what it’s all about for women

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Well, I think that’s a phenomenal way to end. I’m so happy I know you. Me too. I’m happy to know you. And I aspire. You’ve made me aspirational through your work and example. So thank you, Sam, for all of that. And I never told you this, but when I was… in my early teens. I changed my name informally to Sam because I thought it was the coolest name, and I refused to respond to anybody unless they called me Sam.
Actually, being a Sam versus a Karen these days is probably a better thing. Maybe you should go back to Sam. I think I should go back. I might have to go back to Sam. Sam Sherman sounds super cool. Yeah, sounds a little bit like my my uncle or my grandfather, but still, I could get there. Oh, you could be known as Sam. Just Sam. The woman known as Sam. Madonna. Like Madonna, Prince.
No, we joke about it, but there’s so much in that. There’s so much in the identity of our names. And I get rather pissed off that my name was given to me by someone else. Well, and I feel, I mean, several people have come up to me recently, like, how does it feel to be a Karen? And I mean, it is my name and, you know, I hope I’m a good Karen, or at least I’m the best Karen I can be, but that is the reality of it.
And, you know, we can just try and be our best selves, whatever our name is, right? Right, absolutely. Well, any last words that you want to scream at the world? Nope. This has been enlightening and therapeutic all at the same time. I know, it does feel very therapeutic, doesn’t it? It does, to say it out loud. I’ve really enjoyed this, so thank you so much, Sam. Oh, my pleasure. We’ll speak soon.
Take care. She’s phenomenal. Another phenomenal woman. There are so many phenomenal women out there that we don’t know about. And this is a way to really shine light on…

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women like her and me and you and others that are doing great things that are perhaps not as visible as we should be in the world. She’s written this book brick by brick, building hope and opportunity for women survivors everywhere. I mean, that’s amazing in itself, isn’t it? After a 25-year career fighting for women’s rights around the globe. She’s also taken the time to really record these stories and I loved what she spoke about when she said that some people might say that it wouldn’t be received well or she wouldn’t be perceived as a leader with releasing this book and I strongly believe these are the kind of books we need right now.
These are the kind of books that inspire us, that make us realise that there are women around the world just like us who are authentic. who want to make a difference, who are vulnerable and have great days and have bad days too and I would encourage you to look at this book and pick it up brick by brick, written by Karen Sherman.

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