The Passionistas Project Podcast

The Power of Innovation with Jessie Young

Jessie Young is an Aussie in New York who is leading new business lines at Uber, currently focusing on grocery and retail delivery. While Jessie solves difficult puzzles in a pioneering environment, she is also a yoga teacher and amateur surfer. And on the side, she runs her own e-commerce business, “halo” — a held space for women that matches females for mentoring and sells halo headbands.

Learn more about Jessie.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

 

IN THIS EPISODE

Jessie Young on what she’s most passionate about

Jessie Young on her childhood in Australia and moving to New York

Jessie Young on her work at Uber

Jessie Young on her eCommerce business Hao

Jessie Young on the Halo mentor program

Jessie Young on why it’s important to empower people through her work

Jessie Young on the biggest risk she’s taken personally and professionally

Jessie Young on the most rewarding part of her career so far

Jessie Young on her dream for herself and her dream for women

Jessie Young on the mantra that she lives by

Jessie Young on her secret to a rewarding life

Jessie Young on her definition of success

Jessie Young on her proudest achievements

Jessie Young on her advice for women who want to follow their passions

The Power of Grace with Lora DeVore

Lora DeVore is the author of Darkness Was My Candle. This profound and compelling memoir traces her life as a survivor of child abuse, sex trafficking, illegal pharmacological drug research, and institutional abuse.

Now she devotes herself to spreading the word on these atrocities with this personal documentation of her story. With an advanced degree in clinical psychology and recognized as a national expert and catalyst for change, she has witnessed how stories shift consciousness around the world. Her wisdom comes from the field of psychology, transpersonal development, and spiritual psychology.

Lora’s story is ultimately one of hope and healing, that we believe you will find as powerful and inspiring as we do. However, we do want to let you know that portions of the content of today’s show may be emotionally challenging for some of our listeners. Please be aware that this episode contains discussions about sexual assault, abuse, self-harm and suicide at times during the conversation. We just want to empower you, our audience, with the knowledge you need to decide how and if you would like to listen to this podcast content.

Learn more about Lora.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

 

In This Episode:

[01:37] Lora DeVore on what she is most passionate about

[02:30] Lora DeVore on her early childhood

[15:34] Lora DeVore on her college experience and Elgin State Hospital

[24:25] Lora DeVore on her time after Elgin State Hospital

[25:15] Lora DeVore on how she became a therapist

[27:38] Lora DeVore on her book’s inspiration and process

[31:47] Lora DeVore on her book’s message to survivors

[35:00] Lora DeVore on her advice to her younger self

[35:27] Lora DeVore on her dream for women

[36:22] Lora DeVore on her secret to a rewarding life

[39:57] Lora DeVore on her mantra

[42:58] Lora DeVore on how it feels to be an angel for others

[43:25] Lora DeVore on the story behind her book title

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Passionistas: Hi, we’re sisters, Amy and Nancy Harrington, the founders of The Passionista Project Podcast, where we give women a platform to tell their own unfiltered stories.

On every episode, we discuss the unique ways in which each woman is following her passions, talk about how she defines success and explore her path to breaking down the barriers that women too often face. 

Today, we'll be talking with Lora DeVore, the author of “Darkness Was My Candle.” This profound and compelling memoir traces her life as a survivor of child abuse, sex trafficking, illegal pharmacological drug research, and institutional abuse.

Now she devotes herself to spreading the word on these atrocities with this personal documentation of her story. With an advanced degree in clinical psychology and recognized as a national expert and catalyst for change, she has witnessed how stories shift consciousness around the world.

Her wisdom comes from the field of psychology, transpersonal development, and spiritual psychology.

Lora’s story is ultimately one of hope and healing, that we believe you will find as powerful and inspiring as we do. However, we do want to let you know that portions of the content of today’s show may be emotionally challenging for some of our listeners. Please be aware that this episode contains discussions about sexual assault, abuse, self-harm and suicide at times during the conversation. We just want to empower you, our audience, with the knowledge you need to decide how and if you would like to listen to this podcast content.

So please welcome, Lora DeVore.

Lora, what's the one thing you're most passionate about?

Lora: I am passionate about love. I think that's the only thing that's going to save the planet and save us as human beings. And I, I've been passionate about love and trying to learn everything I could about it since I was 9 years old when a neighbor named Dale was the first person who ever said they loved me. And it literally came alive in my body and I had this profound aha and thought that's why I was born, to learn how to experience and take in and feel this thing called love and more importantly, learn how to give it, and it really, really changed the course of my life. I think I was on a trajectory where I would've ended up dead because my life was so miserable prior to that, that interaction.

Passionistas: Can you talk a little bit about your life leading up to that and how that moment happened?

Lora: Sure. I was born from an unwed mother. There's a good possibility that my uncle was my father and we actually lived with him. And I called him daddy when I was 3. And he shot, he had come back from World War II very wounded, and he shot himself one day in front of my mother and I, and my mother went berserk and blamed me for some reason, or at least that's my, what I took in my memory of it and then threw me upstairs—I was still in a crib at the time, but the side rail was down—and left the house. This was in northern Wisconsin and I had a profound experience during the days that I was alone. I got out of the bed at one point because I was so hungry and I went looking for food and luckily I found a loaf of bread on the table. And my uncle's body had been removed. My aunt had come over to give them a piece of my piece of her mind because we hadn't shown up for dinner, and there was a storm that had started up and she saw the dead body, called the sheriff, went halfway up the stairs, but didn't go all the way up, just went halfway up, calling for my mother and assumed that Clinton and my mother had had a fight, my mother had left with me. And it wasn't till 3 days later that my mother staggered in drunk to the memorial service and they then rushed back to the house because my mother had no idea where she'd left me. And what happened is I tried to open the door and a drift of snow came in. I remember sitting on the floor just sobbing and sucking my thumb. And the wind is blowing in because now it's blizzard weather we're, it's, we are literally having a blizzard. So this huge drift of snow blew in. And I could neither close the door nor could I fully open it. And had I been able to fully open it, I'm sure I would've died. I would've frozen to death, but I couldn't get out. And as I'm sitting there, an ethereal present appeared to me that I've never forgotten. And she was very specific. She told me to go back upstairs on my bottom, sitting backwards so I wouldn't fall and get back into my bed and cover up. And that became the foundation of my life and it opened something in me that has stayed open my entire life.

But life was very hard. My mother disappeared out of my life for a couple years after that, and I lived with an aunt and my grandmother. And then my mother eventually came back and said she was moving me to St. Louis, had a horrible fight with my aunt and said she was taking me to my real daddy.

And so she married a man named Bud, and I doubt if he was my real father. But they were seldom together. There was a lot of domestic violence. There was a lot of drug use. She would prostitute and then he'd get mad at her and beat her up. And so there was a lot of violence. And when I was 9, she sold me for the first time to a man. At that point, Bud was out of our lives and that's what she was doing is primarily prostitution and primarily at Army and Navy bases nearby.

And, you know, before I go on, I just want to say my mother had a horrible traumatic history that I won't go into, but I do cover in the book. So I have tremendous compassion for my mother. And when she died, I felt grief for a woman who'd never had a life, who'd never really lived a life. But by age 9, I'd had my first suicide attempt shortly after she sold me to this man. And I couldn't figure out why anybody would possibly want to be here. I didn't know any adults that liked children or that were really nice to children. My guess is my aunt was nice to me, but I, you know, had pretty much forgotten that, it was so eclipsed by the day in day out trauma. And my mother truly, at that point in my life, hated me and was resentful, and frequently told me to get out of her sight. She couldn't stand looking at me, and so I pretty much raised myself and ran wild.

One of the things that was lifesaving is one day I heard church music coming out of the local Catholic church, and I wandered into the church, and the choir was rehearsing up in the balcony, and I just had this need to get as close to the music as I could. So I went and sat in the stairwell, and I felt like God was raining down on my head. And after that, I went to all three churches in town. So I knew when the Methodist had choir rehearsal, and I knew when the Catholics did, and when the Lutherans did, and there was something related to transcendence and being able to get out of that psychological space I lived in. It took me to another place that I think helped keep me going.

And then at age 9 I, as I said, I had my first suicide attempt. And an upstairs neighbor who'd only lived there briefly, and after an accident one day when I'd fallen through the window when some kids were teasing me, her husband had gone to the hardware store and put in a new window while she cleaned everything up. And they knew that I'd been taken to the emergency room, which was only a block away because they saw the trail of blood up there. And when I got home, her husband had finished putting in a new window and said I should go upstairs, that his wife Dale was waiting for me and had made lunch and made chocolate chip cookies. And she was the first nice adult I ever knew. And she was only there for about another month, maybe at the most, but she'd come looking for me if I was alone and I was, by then, I was frequently left alone and frequently left alone without food. And she was kind to me repeatedly. I still have the key that she gave me, that she called the ‘just in case’ key, in case I got scared and wanted to come up and sleep on their couch. And I never did because I was afraid my mother would beat me if I did. But the day she was moving away, I fell apart and begged her not to leave. And she pulled me into her arms and kept rubbing my back and saying I was a good girl and that she loved me. And she made me sit up and look her in the eyes, and traumatized kids have trouble looking people directly in the eyes. But she made me look and she said she had something really important to say. And she said, “I love you, and I would take you with me if you were mine, but you're not.” And she told me that I needed to learn to take better care of myself because my mother was too sick and couldn't care for me, which gave me a huge message. And then she made me promise that I'd reach out to others. And love came alive and a mission. So I started carrying groceries home for people without money and started raking leaves and shoveling snow, and just trying to be kind at that age, which created a whole other parallel universe than the universe I was living in. So that's how that happened.

I was eventually taken away from my mother at age 13 after another very violent suicide attempt. We had been court ordered by then to see a psychiatrist who was moonlighting. He worked at a, he was from a local naval base and he essentially became my mom's pimp and was a child molester and pornographer. And that totally broke my spirit in unspeakable ways. And that's what led to the huge suicide attempt.

So after that suicide attempt, I probably would have attempted again, if not for a very kind nun at the, I was in a Catholic hospital named Sister Sebastian. And the story of my life, it, it's, yes, it's of darkness and horror, but it's as much about light. It’s about the right people coming into my life at exactly the right time. Like Sister Sebastian, who had been in the military, she had been a WAAC in women's armed forces in World War II, and I was a candy striper at that hospital, so she'd gotten to know me pretty well. But she actually told me that she had been raped in the military and that I could survive this and that I would find a new way of living. Which I thought was tremendously courageous of her and so authentic to try to give me hope. And she told me there'd been a time when she was without hope.

And then it was at that point that I was taken away from my mother. And then I lived in a number of placements. This was pre Child Protection years. And I was a really good kid. I had poor self-concept, but I was like a chameleon. I would do anything to get people to like me. And so that they'd keep me. And so there was a failure, not because I was doing anything wrong, but from one situation after another. So there were many placements. And then my senior year in high school, I ended up having a lot of problems again, and I ended up having a suicide attempt after prom after I was raped at prom. A prom I didn't want to go to, but the foster parents made me go with a friend of their son. Now I, you know, and I knew pretty quickly why no one had wanted to go with him and was too afraid to tell them, and so my old default was, I can just kill myself. So I ended up in the county hospital. And the court worker decided she was going to send me back to my mother and nothing had changed. So she sold me to some guy the first night I was there, and I learned that I was capable of murder. And it's amazing that I did not kill her and him that night. He was passed out drunk, but there was a billy club, which is a metal object that's wrapped with leather around it. And I don't know why. I don't know if he was a bouncer in a bar or who he was. I'd seen them before, and they were pretty popular back then. Policeman used him as well. I don't think he was a policeman. And after he'd raped me, I got out of the bed and I picked it up, and my mother had lived in a kitchen at apartment and was sitting at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette and drinking beer and had watched it, and I was going to bash him in the head. And I knew if I started, I'd kill my mother. So I threw it down and grabbed my clothes and got dressed in the hallway and walked around town all night, and then had a very serious suicide attempt and woke up, I don’t know, a week or more later in the county hospital again. And the court worker again came in and she said, “You're not going to manipulate me, young lady. You're going back to your mother's whether you like it or not.” And the medical director of the county hospital came into my room one day, and I had pulled out all the IV tubing and tried to strangle myself after the court worker had left. And he said, “I want to get you outta this bed, but you have to promise you won't run away. And I've come up with a little plan. My nurses tell me you're a bright girl and are supposed to graduate, you know, couple scholarships to college, but I'm afraid that's not going to happen if we don't get you out of here.” So I agreed and he told me his nurse Connie was going to be joining me or joining us, and so he got me out of the bed and we walked up and down the halls a little bit, and then he told me his plan. And it was, if I could pull myself together and bring in my graduation certificate, he would hire me as a nursing assistant. That summer there were cottages out in back of the county hospital. It had once been a TB sanitarium. He said I could live rent free that summer out there. And that's what kept me going.

So the day I got out of the hospital and the court worker took me back to my mother's, she just dumped me outside in front of her apartment building. So I grabbed the bag of stuff I had and put it in a locker at the bus station and then was homeless for a month. And what kept me going is that promise. And the day that I graduated and took my graduation certificate to the hospital—I still tear up when I recall this—I walked into the nurse's station and there were banners and balloons and a graduation cake, a small present from the nursing staff as well as Dr. Callaghan. So it was another one of those angels who'd come into my life at exactly the right moment.

Passionistas: So, you did start college, right?

Lora: Because I'd been homeless and wasn't living anywhere. I never got any mail. And because, you know, I was moving between foster care, foster homes before that, I didn't know I was supposed to sign up for a dorm, and I got to college and there were no dorms. But the Dean of girls was standing nearby when they told me that, that there were no dorms. And I just stepped outta the line and said, I guess I'll try to come back next year. And she came and got me and took me to the guidance counselor, and they were able to find me a temporary place to live with a widow in the neighborhood. And I ended up having to move three times that year. You know, the widow decided she didn't really want a student, and then I lived with a kid who lived in an apartment, but she was on so much LSD and drugs and it was so triggering, and then eventually I moved to another place, but I was working on the weekends at a small hospital as a nursing assistant. They taught me to be a nursing assistant at the county hospital, which was wonderful. And I started getting stalked by the respiratory therapist, a man in his 50s. And he started pulling me into the room closet many times and all kinds of stuff, and then showing up in the halls at school. And one night he showed up at the bottom of my L stop. This was Chicago. And had it not been for a businessman who was coming down the steps, I don't know what would've happened. He tried to pull me into his car, and so I quit my job. And because of exams and stuff, I hadn't even been keeping track of things on the bulletin board and announcements. And then I realized that, and I really went into a funk and felt unsafe. And I had the belief that I was a grownup, so I shouldn't need any help from anyone. And I found that that's true with most kids who've been in the foster care system. With most kids, unless they've come up and have parents who can really guide them. And I realized that they were going to be closing the dorm, and I had no money and nowhere to go.

And I tried looking, you know, in the papers for jobs. I couldn’t find anything. And I was terrified. So again, my old default was, I can just kill myself. So I did something crazy, like just took a, I don't know, a bottle of aspirin or something—I wouldn't have had anything else. And then after immediately I thought, well, that's stupid. I don't want to die. And so I made myself throw up, and then I went to look for the dorm mother. I told her what I'd done, and told her I made myself throw up, and I said, “I really need a grownup’s help.” And she said she was really glad that I came to her and that she could think of a number of places that were looking for students like me for jobs over the summer. But she was going to put me in a taxi and send me across town to get checked out medically. And then I'd come back and we'd sort this out.

I was fine medically, but the next thing you know, they're sending me to another hospital. They said just to, you know, have a few days of rest. And I didn't know it at the time, but that hospital wouldn't let me out because they were doing drug research and they had sent out a flyer to all the local hospitals looking for certain research subjects. And every floor did different kinds of research. And I was put on the floor with young adults who had no family support, which meant I had no one who had my back or could look out for me. And I wouldn't take the drugs. I kept spitting 'em out. I had no idea how they figured that out. Then they started giving me shots and liquid Thorazine and eventually I ran away. They got me back, and then they had me committed to the worst state hospital in the system. This was the summer after my freshman year in college. And there was the day that I came back from the court commitment, I…I can't even tell you what that was like, because in those days they committed you for life. And I could hardly think. My mind was like in shock, and I went back to my room, and I just sat. And I couldn't eat. I couldn't move. I can't remember thinking about much of anything. I felt like I was in a fog. And there was a nurse who came in and out all evening to check on me. And around 10:00 or so, she came in and she said, “I'm concerned about you, and my shift ends at 11:00, and I'm going to come and sit till dawn if that's what it takes to get you to have some feelings, because you're not going to survive where they're sending you, unless you do.” And so she did. She was there till dawn. Her name was Sydney Krampitz. And she was getting her master's in nursing at that point and only worked there three days a week on evenings, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And she told me before I was put on the bus that took me to Elgin, that I hadn't done anything wrong. That she felt what they were doing was illegal, and she was going to do everything in her power to get me out. But there was no way that I could trust that that could happen. How could this nurse override a judge's order?

So I was admitted to the worst state hospital in the Illinois system. And I've been told by people who worked there then and a man named Bill Whitaker—who wrote a book called “Madden America” and did a lot of research about state hospitals and the drug Thorazine—that it's a miracle that I'm alive. And I believe that too. And because at that point in history, or not in history, in that point in life in the Illinois area, there weren't as many freeways as there are now. Now you could get out to Elgin in probably an hour and a half, and Sydney lived back then, about 3 hours from there. So every, and she only had Sundays off, and she had three small children and was the Lutheran minister's wife. And every morning she, on Sunday, she'd think, “I really have to go see her.” And then she kept saying to herself, “She was a bright college student. I can't believe she'd still be in there.” And so then she wouldn't go. And so it was about nine months before she came, and it was almost too late. And she said she felt haunted by me. And so she finally decided to call, just assuming that I would've been released and was shocked that I wasn't. And then she came for the first time and then continued to come and really fight them and threaten them with a lawsuit, which she said she never could have done because she didn't have the money to have a lawsuit. But she threatened them enough and became enough of a pest that eventually she helped get me out after I'd been there for 15 months.

And then many years later, Sydney and I reconnected, and we went back there and we did archival research at the state, in the state capital, and found out that they were actually doing, during the time I was there, the legislature had created a committee to find out why they were having so untimely, many untimely, unexpected deaths at Elgin State Hospital. And one of the reasons was they were always short on staff. The wards were all run by AIDS and orderlies who had never been trained in medication management. And they had one physician, many of which were not licensed at all, or could practice medicine. But they were called physicians, and one of them per anywhere from 500 to 1,000 patients at any given time, and the same with nurses. And so the orderlies were, and the ward I was on was primarily orderlies. And not only were they afraid of the patients, they would over drug us all. And Thorazine is one of the primary medications, and what the report revealed is that because of the overuse of Thorazine, which causes horrendous constipation, and many people had bowel obstructions, had sepsis and died from sepsis. It was just, it’s a horrendous document about this thick, and I still to this day haven't been able to read it all the way through.

Passionistas: So once you got out, where did you go from there?

Lora: I had to be released to a legal relative. And a cousin of mine who was only seven years older than me, who was brand new, married, and had a baby, she was willing to take me for a few months, and then I was able to go back to college. But eventually, I left the Chicago area.

Passionistas: We’re Amy and Nancy Harrington and you’re listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Lora DeVore.

To learn more about her work and get a copy of her book “Darkness Was My Candle,” visit LoraDeVore.com.

Now here’s more of our interview with Lora.

Passionistas: I don't know how you survived all this trauma. You are an amazing human being. Did all of this trauma, is that what inspired you to make the decision to become a therapist?

Lora: No. Not directly. It might have on someone conscious level, but it didn't directly. I was a teacher first, and I was working with deaf blind children in a program in South Dakota with visually handicapped and deaf blind children. And we were off during the summer, and I had a boss, an incredible boss, who gave out weekly awards called the the Annie Sullivan Award. So if we'd have a breakthrough, major breakthrough with a child. And I got a lot of those Annie Sullivan Awards, and I was just really good with the most disturbed kids. And she bet me that, she said, “You've gotta go back to school and get a master's degree.” And I said, “I'm not smart enough.” I still carried the, you know, this old internal message.

I didn't learn to read till the end of third grade. I wouldn't have even read at all had it not been for a substitute teacher who was the first to ask me why I thought I was having trouble. And one thing was they were always put in the back room and I couldn't see, I needed glasses and then I just fell into what's called learned helpless. You know, you try so many times and have trouble with it that I just couldn't get it, I gave up. And so during a very brief time, I think she was there a week, she got me to read, and I became an avid reader. So Marge really pushed me. And so I took a couple of graduate school classes that summer and I found 'em so valuable and that I loved learning and had more confidence in myself than I'd had even when I went to undergraduate school. And so I stayed in. And I think I thought what had happened to me was an anomaly, and so I was in, and I was interested in helping people and interested in understanding people, and particularly interested in understanding families and children. So I think that's what at least consciously motivated me. But it wasn't till many, many, many, many years later that I really began—when I was writing the book—that I really began to learn about the dark history of psychiatry. And the book that I wrote is not the book I set out writing.

Passionistas: Tell us about that. So, so what finally inspired you to write a book and what was that transformation throughout the process?

Lora: You know, I was good at writing. Actually, two of the scholarships I won were because of writing an essay when I was in high school. And I was writing a very different book. I was writing a spiritual autobiography. And I had found a mentor, a woman named Dina Metzger, who's written probably 30 books herself, and she had agreed to be my mentor, and she was having me do some extraordinary practices to get ready for that, which I learned a lot about myself. She had me go back through all my old journals in my memory bank and look at, she was trying to find where the story really was and what contributed to the story. And she believes that spirit talks to each of us in different ways, and then that there are patterns. And so she was having me look through my memory bank and my journals, as I said, and notice any times in which I had gone into joy or bliss because of something that had occurred, or any time there was synchronicity or any important dreams that I had. And because I'd kept a journal since junior high, that wasn't so hard to do. And then she began to help me to see the pattern in my life.

And then one summer, we'd been working probably for a year, year and a half, and she always takes a sabbatical in the summer to write her own book. She writes a book every year. And she said, “What are you doing for the summer?” We were having our last session online. And I said, “I don't know. I have all this paid time off. I'm thinking about a road trip.” She said, “Where to?” And I said, “I don't know.” And she said, “What do you think about a road trip out to see me?” I said, “That sounds like fun.” She lives in California, in Topanga. And I said, “What do you have in mind?” And she said, “I want to interview elders on the Yakima Reservation in Washington state, and if we can get in, usually it takes a couple years to get a reservation. I want a go to Hanford nuclear site, and I'm looking for a driver and a scribe.” And so I agreed. So I drove out to the East coast. I love long distance drives, and I was working at her house for about three days before we were to leave on the trip. She had asked me to do some research for her related to some research that was done on native Americans at the Yakima Reservation and also any research that came up related to Hanford nuclear site or research related to that. And as I was doing the research one day, all of a sudden on the screen, Elgin State Hospital came up. I was in shock. I had not thought about it or talked about it. I mean, I talked about it in therapy years before, but not since then. And later that day, Dina asked me how the research was going, and I said, “It's okay.” And she said, “What's going on with you?” She said, “Is it too hard?” I said, “Well, it's pretty dark research, but I saw something in my history come up in it.” She said, “What part?” And I said, “When I was committed to a state hospital the summer after my freshman year in college.” And she looked at me with her eagle eyes and she said, “And why did I never hear you were in a state hospital?” And that became a defining moment. And I realized all those years later—this was like seven years ago—I still held shame about that. And by the end of our trip together, it became clear, there was this sense of feeling compelled to write about that history and explore and do research and understand it as well as I could. And it almost felt like a spiritual mandate. So the book then became a very different book than it had started off, or I thought it was going to be, although a lot of that early material is in the last part of the book, the transformation part of it. That’s how it changed.

Passionistas: What do you hope that survivors who read your book take away from it? What's the biggest message?

Lora: The biggest message is hope. And that no matter what kind of trauma you've experienced, you can fully recover. So that's one of the biggest messages. And, you know, the other big message is around love and kind. You know, I think we're in a period of history in which everything which has been hidden is coming up to be looked at. And I think unless we look at and examine history, we make the same mistakes going into the future. So I see that as a very good thing. And I think this time that we're in, you know, still with COVID, off and on, et cetera, has caused many people to go into self-reflection and to change patterns, et cetera. And I would invite people to really pay attention to self-love and how important kindness is, to be kind to themselves as well as to others. And so often with trauma, trauma kind of takes over the brain and that's all we can see. And there's a lot of beliefs that get formed around trauma. Like my belief was, “I must have done something wrong,” and “Why do these things keep happening to me? Must be something bad about me.” And I think most trauma survivors part of that have things like that. I've worked with rape survivors and trafficked women, and often the belief is, “I shouldn't have been dressed in that or if I hadn't been walking down that street or if I hadn't looked that way.” Because we hate feeling powerless, so we try to make up a story about how it was our fault. So if we can figure out what I did wrong, then maybe I can keep it from happening in the future. But one of the things that a Native American elder who was a spiritual teacher of mine many years ago suggested I do is, she said I needed to go back through my memory banks and find all the joy markers and literally do a graph of that. And I was on a women's retreat on her land for a month when she suggests that I do that, and I started to remember all the angels that came into my life with human skin wearing the face of compassion. And it begins to change the trauma narrative. So I strongly suggest anyone that's been traumatized do that. Because our life isn't just one thing. It’s a rich tapestry of so much more. But it took that exercise for me to begin to focus on that so much more, and it blew me away. And since then, if I work with trauma survivors, I ask them to do the same thing, and always, it's an astounding exercise.

Passionistas: If you could go back to those early days, what advice would you give your younger self?

Lora: I think at this point, because I've really, really been practicing self-love, unconditional self-love, I think I would say to her, she is just fine, just the way she is. And that she's smart and funny and creative. And that what's happening isn't her fault, and that she's going to grow strong and resilient and learn and grow through it.

Passionistas: What’s your dream for women?

Lora: My dream is that they find out, they really step into loving themselves unconditionally and knowing how beautiful and bright they are, and creative. And I think women intuitively are nurturers, even women who don't have children. There's something about feminine energy that's rising up like never before now. And I hope women can all tap into their own brilliance and step into who they're meant to be, to help begin to make the shifts that need to happen happen on the planet. And I think it's going to take—I hate to say the word army, because I don't like war—it’s going to take a collection of many, many women who do that.

Passionistas: What’s your secret to a rewarding life?

Lora: For me, it's gratitude. I practice gratitude every morning. It’s also, you know, I thank the trees when I go outside in the morning and the sun coming up and the grass growing and the sound of the birds, which sort of sets my day. And at the end of the day, I usually go through a gratitude list, as well. So I think gratitude, for one. The other thing that I have discovered, and it was a hard course to get there—I had COVID a year ago and nearly died. Had two near death experiences, was in the hospital for a month and then came home on oxygen and told I'd never, I'd probably never get off of it and couldn't walk. And I think since I was a kid, there's this determination, if somebody tells me I can't do something, I say, “Watch me.” And so here I am walking and talking and not on any oxygen, and my lungs have been healed, and all the rest of it. And then on top of that, I was just getting better and recovered from the COVID, or mostly recovered. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. But each of those experiences, what they did is they reopened a vulnerability that I'd had as a kid that I had never totally worked through and didn't even know that I'd worked through it in therapy, but, but I hadn't cried as much as I needed to. And I have an amazing coach that helped me through that time, continues to work with me. And I made a commitment that, no matter what, to be vulnerable and to be transparent, and I realized that that's my superpower. And my life has shifted because of that. And that very vulnerability—was sort of like ripping off the band aids that were still covering old scars—has dramatically shifted my life. And I would like all women to know that our transparency and vulnerability really can be our superpower. And I've just been blown away, absolutely blown away by people's response to that vulnerability. I also, when the book was first coming out, I had a, oh, I don't know, a week or two of freak out. It was like, “Oh my God, this book is raw. I mean, I tell it all.” And I kept scaring myself, and then I caught myself one day. I was saying to myself, “I'm going to feel so exposed.” And one day I sat down, I looked at the word exposed and I thought, “I need a different word.” And the word that came to me was ‘revealed.’ And then the sentence that came to me is, “I choose to reveal myself as loving presence in every moment, in every situation.” And that shifted everything.

And so now interviews, no matter who they're with or what they are, feel pretty effortless. But I had to stop scaring myself. So I think the other thing I want women and others to know is it's really important to pay attention to how we talk to ourselves. You know, we can really defeat ourselves in so many ways, and language is really important, and our nervous system takes it.

Passionistas: Do you have a mantra that you live by?

Lora: Every year I set a goal and I've had the same one for the last two years. And that's luminous presence. I want to be a luminous presence on the planet, and I want to be an inspiration and guide to others. And there's a quote that's a favorite of mine as well, and that's, “There is someone somewhere who has a wound that is the exact size of your words.” That's by a man named Sean Thomas Doherty. “There is someone somewhere who has a wound that's the exact size of your words.” And when you really let that sink in, I think it automatically brings up kindness.

An amazing experience at Starbucks not long ago, there was this young woman who was falling apart, and you could tell it was her first job on the day on the job, and she was just a mess. She kept making mistakes and they were really busy, and there wasn't anyone right behind me. And I looked at her and I said, “Do you know you have the most beautiful eyes? Has anyone ever told you that?” And she said, “No.” And I said, “Well, you do.” and then she teared up, and I said, “Is this your first day working?” And she said, “Yeah, can you tell?” I said, “Yeah, but everybody has a first day. You're doing fine. Just take a few deep breaths. You're going to be okay. I would be crazy if I was behind that booth. You know, you're multitasking constantly, so just be kind to yourself.” She said, “Can I touch you?” And I said, “Sure.” She reached over and held my hand, gave my hand a squeeze, and now when I go through that drive-through, she always thanks me. And in the same Starbucks, one of the guys there named Joe, he said to me one day, he says, “You know, you are always so kind to the people who work behind this window, and I just want to thank you, because it really sets their day. Some of these young people, they just get so, you know, depressed and feeling like they can't do it, et cetera.” And he said, “And you've also made a difference in my life. I said, “Really?” And he said, “Yeah, I'll tell you sometime.” And then one day I went through, he says, “We've gotta talk.” And I said, “Okay.” And I said, “How do we do that?” And so we set up a time, and it turns out that he was a sexual abuse survivor himself, and he had bought my book. And so he wanted to tell me that and tell me how my book had impacted him. I mean, we just never know. We just never know.

Passionistas: How does it feel for you now to be that angel that were these people that peppered through your life, that helped you get through these moments? What does it mean now for you to be that person for so many other people?

Lora: It’s a very humbling experience. I feel like the most fortunate woman on the planet. It feels like it was my destiny. And I didn't know that at the time. I became aware that writing “Darkness Was My Candle” was an act of love, but I don't know that I knew the full scope of it until the book came out, the interviews started, et cetera.

Passionistas: Where did the title come from?

Lora: I just woke up one morning and I tend to trust my intuition and there it was. But I think primarily through the years of transformation work and spiritual work, I've learned that oftentimes we go into, you know, John of the Cross used to call it the dark night of the soul, or this, you know, other, other spiritual teachers might talk about it as like the void. And what I began to appreciate is that that period of growth is much like spring before it blossoms. At least in the Midwest, I don't know if you have dramatic springs on the West coast like we have out here, but it's like everything is pregnant, and there's this sort of, it's a fertile void. You know, there's never a time in which there's a winter that's too dark, that doesn't hold spring’s promise. You know, you just have to wait till all those little buds begin to push themselves up, whether it's the tulips or other blossoms. And it feels like times of darkness in our life are exactly that. And I've also come to realize in my own life, and I believe many trauma survivors, is that trauma can become a portal into a very different kind of life of if you have the right kind of support and really do the work that's required. It's not just that another, some other shitty thing happened to you. It literally can open you to a much more magnificent life. And I think it's through the dark in which we ask the big questions like, “Why did this happen to me?” You know, “Will I ever feel different?” We ask the existential crisis, the existential questions, which are both psychological questions and spiritual questions. So another part of the book is, I'm on a mission to not just disclose the dark history of psychiatry to psychiatrists and anyone in the mental health field—and I feel excited about the way that's happening—but also we have got to bring together a world of psychotherapy in which we merge and bring together spiritual psychology and transpersonal development as well. I think it's essential. Because especially with trauma survivors, you can't fully recover unless some of those deeper questions that are in your soul, they tend to be soul questions. You know, “Does life have any meaning?” They can't be answered psychologically. They're spiritual questions. And we leave out a huge equation of what it means to be a person if we don't bring the notion of spirituality. And I'm not talking about religion, religion's how people can choose to practice their spirituality or learn in community and celebrate in community. But we all have a spiritual essence, and that's fed in different ways. For some people, it's a walk in the woods. For some people it's in community. For some people it's in deep meditation, and there are hundreds of meditative techniques. It's different for all of us, but we all have that. And that's who we really are. This is who we live. This is what we are and who we live in. But our spiritual essence is magnificent. And I think we're in a time where more people are finding a longing for that as well as a longing to change the way they’re, that we’re all living our lives.

Thanks for listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Lora DeVore.

To learn more about her work and get a copy of her book “Darkness Was My Candle,” visit LoraDeVore.com.

If you or someone you know needs help, dial 988 or call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which offers free and confidential emotional support around the clock to those experiencing a suicidal crisis.

You can also get support via text by visiting suicidepreventionlifeline.org/chat. Outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for a database of resources.

According to the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, RAINN, "Every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted. And every 9 minutes, that victim is a child." If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, help is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Please call the free and confidential National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or visit rainn.org.

And be sure to visit ThePassionistasProject.com to sign up for our mailing list, find all the ways you can follow us on social media and join our worldwide community of women working together to level the playing field for us all.

We'll be back next week with more Passionistas who are defining success on their own terms and breaking down the barriers for themselves and women everywhere.

Until then. Stay well and stay passionate.

Sabine Josephs on the Power of Acceptance and Unity

Sabine Josephs is the founder of All of Us Crayons. Her beeswax crayons are inspired by a world where all children embrace their skin color, and others, with kindness, acceptance and unity. All of Us crayons are hand-poured in Sabine’s Brooklyn workshop using sustainable beeswax, sustainable palm wax and natural earth pigments. The All of Us team pride themselves on their commitment to our planet and to humanity.

Learn more about Sabine.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

 

Full Transcript:

Passionistas: Hi, we're sisters, Amy and Nancy Harrington, the founders of The Passionistas Project Podcast, where we give women a platform to tell their own unfiltered stories.

On every episode we discuss the unique ways in which each woman is following her passions, talk about how she defines success and explore her path to breaking down the barriers that women too often face. 

Today we'll be talking with Sabine Josephs, the founder of All of Us Crayons. Sabine’s beeswax crayons are inspired by a world where all children embrace their skin color, and others, with kindness, acceptance and unity. All of Us crayons are hand-poured in Sabine’s Brooklyn workshop using sustainable beeswax, sustainable palm wax and natural earth pigments. The All of Us team pride themselves on their commitment to our planet and to humanity.

So please welcome, Sabine Josephs.

Sabine: Hi. What a beautiful intro. Thank you. I'm honored and grateful to be here.

Passionistas: Well, you have a beautiful product and a beautiful mission, and we are thrilled to have you with us. What's the one thing that you are most passionate about?

Sabine: I am most passionate about removing the barriers that prevent us from seeing how wonderful we are because I think when we pull back to our conditioning or, or our criticism and we really step into who we are and step into our gifts, we can change the world. There’s so much to unlock and the whole world benefits from that. So that's, that's my passion.

Passionistas: And how does that translate into the company that you've created?

Sabine: It translates directly into All of Us crayons in removing that barrier of skin tone, shades to be available to all. I realized through our customer base and working closely with families that so much of what a child experiences is not spoken about and is not said.

So, we really wouldn't even understand that they might have had these limiting beliefs about who they are. And so being able to present them with skin tone crayons to just allow them to see that everyone is special and everyone's perfect, and we have created a company to make sure you know that is okay is exactly how that translates to All of Us crayons.

Passionistas: Let's take a step back. Tell us where you grew up, what your childhood was like, and what your beliefs were as a kid.

Sabine: I grew up in New York City and I grew up in a predominantly white school in a predominantly white neighborhood. And being a black child, I knew that my skin tone was different from my peers around me, but I didn't know if that was important, if that mattered or, or what. And then I remember being introduced to “The Snowy Day” by Jack Keats, and that really blew me away because I was able to identify with that child in that book being a child of color. And then, growing up, really understanding how I then sought to look for books that children were represented that looked like me and how realizing how impactful that was in solidifying my worth and my importance in the world around me.

Passionistas: Where did you go from there? Did you go to college? And if you did, what did you study?

Sabine: Yes, I did. I went to college and studied economics with a concentration in business. And right after college, I went right into corporate America working as a financial analyst in the advertising agencies around New York City. So, I did that for 10 years and then was privileged with the opportunity to be a stay-at-home mom and got to really see my child grow and be right there with her. And this is where we discovered the crayons when she asked to draw Grandma and we couldn't flip the skin tone crayons that we had. And so that was really a catalyst to what we've created.

Passionistas: Tell us that story. How did you start the company?

Sabine: We took out our well beeswax crayons and then my little Olivia asked to draw Grandma, and we didn't have that brown shade that Grandma was. And so, I quickly looked online and I didn't find anything. And I immediately just started taking a step back for a minute. I knew that was super important for us to have that. And so that's why it prompted me immediately to look for a company that did that, and I didn't find any.

So, the next route was to see if I can find a crayon recipe online for our home. And I did that and thought that this would be really great for other people to have. And so, on my Instagram account, I posted it and asked if anyone would want these because I would like to give five sets away.

And they were hundreds of comments that said, “I want these, please sell them to me. Don't give them. I will pay you.” And so, as a stay-at-home mom, I had no intention of creating a crayon brand. So, I ignored all of those comments and weeks went by. And then, people were private messaging me saying,” I didn't forget about those crayons. Can I have them please?”

And I quickly put one up on Etsy at like, it was like 11:00 PM at night. I told no one about it and someone bought it like immediately after. And she happened to have like 30,000 followers on Instagram and she loved it and posted about it. And so, I posted that I launched about 45 as a pre-order and that sold out in half an hour.

And then I did a next, like 125. And that sold out in like 45 minutes. And so, I thought, okay, we're making crayons. And so, I knew I had something that was so impactful to people. And although I never intend intended on starting a crayon company. I don't think I wouldn't trade it for the world because of the impact that it had on families and in children's lives to be able to draw themselves and to be able to draw their family and their neighbors just as they are. It is an honor for me to do this work.

Passionistas: What was that early trepidation? Why didn't you want to sell them at first and why didn't you tell anybody that you were putting them up?

Sabine: I think it was fear. I don't know what it would take to start a crayon company. I came from finance. I don't know how to scale a crayon business and I wasn't sure how to begin. And so really like, kind of putting my toe in the water and seeing what happened allowed me to kind of see the importance of it and see the impact of it in out in the world, and that really was a catalyst to really getting it going.

Passionistas: Tell us about that process of growing it from these initial pre-orders to the company that you have today.

Sabine: Gosh, a lot of Googling. A lot of figuring out. I remember the early days just working on my stove top and melting wax and kind of just getting orders out. I remember like really working until like 2:00 AM trying to just get it when I like finished putting my daughter to bed and having my nighttime of work figuring out the exact ratio of all the waxes and pigments to make sure we get like richly colored pigments in each crayon and really being mindful of representing as wide range as we can in in eight crayons.

I think that was really important too. And also, the packaging. The packaging, how that looked, that was really important to me. And also, being sustainable. That was a big piece. So, I took a lot of work in sourcing wax and making sure that they were sourced from apiaries that cared about the importance of bees and their pollinators around our world and making sure that that was a real big part of how we grew our company. And didn't want to skimp there at all.

And so, a lot of trial and error growing. And now we have a team in our open warehouse, and we made Oprah's Favorite Things last holiday season, which was incredible. And so, seeing where I've started in my kitchen to now then be able to meet the demand of being on Oprah's Favorite Things list and really executing that to scale has been quite incredible.

Passionistas: Your daughter was the inspiration for this. What's been her reaction to seeing you grow this company and what it's become?  

Sabine: She has no idea what's happening. She is four now and just sees that mama has crayons everywhere. But I think that is the really special thing about it. So, having skin tone, crayons is a normal part of her life now. So, when she goes to a friend's house that doesn't have crayons like this, she is then the one to say, “Hey, you're missing the skin tone, crayons.” And so I think that's the most beautiful thing to see is, is her non-reaction because it's so normal and she knows how important it is to always have this available to her. So, I think that that has really been really special for me to see.

Passionistas: And what's the reaction and the feedback from the people who are buying your crayons?

Sabine: Gosh, I remember quite vividly an email that I received from a mom and she said that she had just finished crying and wiping her tears because her child just put a photo in front of her and said, “Look, Mama, I can draw me.” And she had no idea that her child had that urge to draw themselves or cared. And so she then realized, wow, like this is being a be for my child to be able to identify with themselves around this world is so important. And so that really unlocked something within her. And so she's been a lot more conscious about presenting a diverse community of diverse representation for her child. And that's been so amazing to see stories like that come across, across my world.

Passionistas: We’re Amy and Nancy Harrington and you’re listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Sabine Josephs.

To learn more about her skin tone beeswax crayons visit All of Us Crayons dot com.

Now here’s more of our interview with Sabine Josephs.

Do you have a plan to expand the colors in any way? What's the future of the company?

Sabine: So, I would love to be able to expand in different art mediums, so different art products such as watercolor and oil pastels. That's where we see the company growing in the future.

Passionistas: We heard about you because we saw you on Amazon's promotional campaign for Women's History Month, where Diane von Furstenberg, the famous designer, chose you to sit with her and our own Passionista founder of Tea Drops, Sashee Chandran. So, tell us what it meant to be included in that and what that experience was like.

Sabine: Oh gosh, that was so incredible. To be able to sit with such an iconic woman who really paved a way for other women, it was really, really incredible. And what a gift it was to gain her wisdom to talk to her about her, the women that she looked up to and really see the impact that we can bring to the world by just being ourselves and just really hone into our passions and how inspiring that is for other women to see. So it was, it was such an incredible experience.

Passionistas: How important is it for you to have other female founders to connect with?

Sabine: I feel like it's been my saving grace on really hard days to be able to have a female founder to just text and say, “Hey, what's happening with you this month and what are your challenges and how can I help you? And how can we leverage each other's strengths to make the journey a little easier?”

And even the connections, the being able to pick somebody's brain that has like no bias and could tell you things, how it is without like that deep emotion that founders usually have on their brand. And to be able to share experiences, I think that is the biggest impact that I've gained to find a community and not feel alone has been really, really impactful.

Passionistas: What advice would you give to your younger self?

Sabine: You are perfect. You are perfect as you are. And there is so much conditioning happening in the world around us that makes us believe that we're not. But we are perfect, and our flaws are our gifts. And if we lean into that, we can create magic.

Passionistas: Is there a particular trait you have that you think has helped you with your success?

Sabine: I would have to say that I have a kind of an engineering architectural mindset. So, I'm very easily able to see the big picture and connect each and every step that we need to get to that big picture and all, and outline all the obstacles and the challenges and really iron that out to get to that big picture has been, I think, my biggest strength in this endeavor. Because as a founder, there are so many challenges that come into our world that we can't plan for. And to be able to keep an eye on that big picture and say, “Okay, this isn't the plan, but let's see how we can keep on going” has been a great influencer on how successful the company has been.

I think also for me, really keeping a close eye on why I started the brand that has been really important for me because as we grow and we scale, it's so easy for sales numbers and revenue numbers and forecasts to really be the driver on a lot of the decisions. But keeping a close reminder, if you are doing this as a passion and really knowing how you want to change the world, people see that, and they gravitate towards that.

And sometimes when you don't have to do much work, and it happens that way. And so yes, the sales and revenue and forecasting numbers are very important, but also really coming back to and having that also be a really big important factor in where we go in the future has been a really big mover for me to keep on going.

Passionistas: What's been your biggest professional challenge and how did you overcome it?

Sabine: Knowing when to scale, I think that is the biggest challenge. And then trusting my gut, that is also a biggest challenge. Because I remember after we were announced as one of Oprah's Favorite Things kind of behind the scenes, I had a decision of whether to get a bigger production space and so much fear set in. Do we need a bigger space? Can we afford a bigger production space? And so, my gut kept on saying, “Yes, you do. Just do it.” And so, I remember just doing it and just getting a bigger space. And now looking back at it, I don't think we would've executed that as flawlessly as we did without that bigger production space.

So, giving my gut a voice and really allowing the fear of scaling to subside and really trusting myself and trusting the process and just trusting. I think that that is the biggest challenge.

Passionistas: What's the biggest sacrifice you've had to make?

Sabine: Time, time is the biggest sacrifice. Time away from my daughter has been the biggest one. Really kind of juggling of growing the business, but also wanting to spend time with her and enjoy making dinner and making cupcakes together and really doing it in a conscious way. And so really sitting with her and being present instead of thinking about what I'm going to do tomorrow on my to-do list tomorrow. And so, really being present and allocating my time has been, I think, yeah, the biggest challenge.

Passionistas: When you were a girl, what lessons did your mother teach you about women's roles in society and what are you passing on to your daughter?

Sabine: So my mom is from Haiti. And in Haiti, I think a lot of cultural norm is kind of the woman should do a lot of the household work and to kind of navigate her life around marriage and raising children. And I hope to pass along that yes, we can do those things, but we can also run businesses and really step into our own passions while having that balance of doing what I guess is the cultural norms of a woman's role. I think if we choose to do that, we can. If we choose not to do that, that is okay too.

And I think that is what I'm passing on, the flexibility to do what you wish to do in your life and having a support system around that to be able to really navigate your life to your own desires and wishes.

Passionistas: What's your dream for your daughter, Olivia?

Sabine: My dream is for her to really be unafraid to step into who she is and to be unafraid to take risks. To step into challenges and to understand or try to understand if it's fear or am I just faced with a challenge that might be hard, but I want to tackle it. And I think with those tools, it opens up a world of possibilities to what she wants to achieve in her life. And so, if she wants to go to college, sure. She doesn't, sure. Let's see where you can lead your life in the happiest way that you thrive as an individual.

Passionistas: What's your dream for women in general?

Sabine: To know how powerful they are, to know how important they are in our world and to really understand so much of our world has conditioned us to think a certain way and to look a certain way and to act a certain way and really see how incredible we are. And we don't need all of that conditioning. We just need to be, and that truly is enough. And with just being, I think so much is unlocked. There are so many things that you might not have seen comes into focus, and then the courage of stepping into that, I think it unlocks so much courage, so much power, and we, we can change the world. We truly can.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to The Passionistas Project and our interview with Sabine Josephs.

To learn more about her skin tone beeswax crayons visit All of Us Crayons dot com.

And be sure to visit ThePassionistasProject.com to sign up for our mailing list, find all the ways you can follow us on social media and join our worldwide community of women working together to level the playing field for us all.

We'll be back next week with another Passionista who is defining success on her own terms and breaking down the barriers for herself and women everywhere.

Until then. Stay well and stay passionate.

The Power of Filmmaking with Cacciatore, Prem Santana and Carylanna Taylor

Amy and Nancy Harrington, Co-Founders of The Passionistas Project talk with the creative team from “I Thought the Earth Remembered Me” about the Power of Filmmaking. Director Prem Santana, producer Carylanna Taylor and star Madonna Cacciatore discuss the process of making the short film, the AFI program and their inspirations.

Learn more about “I Thought The Earth Remembered Me” and Prem Santana.

Learn more about Carylanna Taylor.

Learn more about Madonna Cacciatore.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Passionistas: Hi, we're sisters, Amy and Nancy Harrington, the founders of the Passionista Project Podcast, where we give women a platform to tell their own unfiltered stories.

On every episode, we discuss the unique ways in which each woman is following her passions, talk about how she defines success and explore her path to breaking down the barriers that women too often face. 

Today we’re talking with the team from the gorgeous and powerful short film “I Thought The Earth Remembered Me.” We’d like to welcome the film’s director Prem Santana, producer Carylanna Taylor and star Madonna Cacciatore, who along with her wife Robin McWilliams have been long-time and beloved members of our Passionsitas community.

We’re going to let each of them introduce themselves, tell you a little bit about their backgrounds and share what they are most passionate about.

Madonna: Hello, I'm Madonna Cacciatore. I feel like I'm in a group. So, hi Madonna. I love these two women on the screen with me. And of course, I love you two women who are hosts. You've been friends of mine for a long time, and Robin and I adore you. Prem and I magically met during her work at AFI, at the conservatory.

And I've always been drawn to her sort of directing style and her work. I mean, she's just got a brilliant vision. This is the second film I worked on with Prem. I have a background in theater, dance, film, television, and I also produce events when I'm not, you know, in the downtime. And I do some nonprofit fundraising as well.

I'm passionate about telling stories, helping change the world through stories and being able to create those characters that are brought to me by wonderful people like this. How about you?

Prem: Hi everyone. Thanks so much for having me. My name is Prem Santana and I am a director and a writer. I'm also an actor. I was an actor for over a decade, almost 15 years before I transitioned into becoming a director. I recently graduated as a directing fellow from the American Film Institute Conservatory, where I met my Muse, Madonna. We met in a class and she and her wife Robin were my actors. And I instantly fell in love and saw a talent I had never seen before and started writing.

“I Thought the Earth Remembered Me” based on seeing Madonna's face. There were some other experiences in my life that had inspired the short. Madonna's, my muse, and I've just been very honored and grateful to be able to work with such an actor.

Passionistas: I actually want to follow up on one of the things you were saying, because it was actually a question we had is, and we'll get into it more, but the whole movie that we're talking about really lives or dies on Madonna's face.

Prem: Yeah.

Passionistas: And the amazing range of emotions she can portray through her face. So that really was actually part of the inspiration for writing it?

Prem: Absolutely. Because she's able to, I mean, when an actor can act without words is to me, is the hardest thing is to act in the silences. When there's so much carried in the eyes that is the number one thing that I look for in an actor to collaborate with. And Madonna does it super.

Carylanna: My name's Carylanna Taylor. I'm a filmmaker and anthropologist recent graduate of the AFI producing program and I have the pleasure of producing “I Thought the Earth Remembered Me” with Prem and Madonna. It was really Prem’s script that just gave me a gut punch when I read it and we'd been kind of talking about maybe doing something together but hadn't had a chance to work together yet.

The script, I have an environmental conservation and migration past, and it just really hit me on the environmental connection very strongly in a way that I hadn't felt for a long, long time. And Madonna embodies that beautifully. So, yeah, and, and she's, she said it beautifully.

I'm passionate about bringing stories to life that might just move culture's needle a little bit, might give people a chance to walk in somebody else's shoes that they wouldn't have otherwise. That can come in lots of different forms, but this is certainly one of them.

Passionistas: That's great. Well, sounds like a perfect marriage between the three of you to make this film happen, which is, you can tell when you watch it that the people who created it have that passion for all of those things. So, it’s really well done. And Prem, maybe you could talk a little bit about what the film is about and, and again, a little bit more about your inspiration beyond the beauty of Madonna. What else inspired you to write it?

Prem: I realize I didn't say what I'm passionate about. So, I'll say first that I'm passionate about telling stories from the margins, especially from the female perspective, and I believe that we can make a huge difference. Telling stories and making movies that reflect our human experience. And I'm so grateful to be able to do that. So yeah, that's what I'm passionate about.

But the story, so I also take 35mm photographs. And my mom is also someone I, she's 76, and I've been photographing her throughout my life. And just the process of aging has been something that I find so beautiful. It is something that I find so beautiful. And watching my grandmother who passed away at 98 a couple years ago, go through this transformation from the finite to the infinite or whatever you want to call it.

And then my mom getting older and myself, you know I'm now what they call “of a certain age.” And I've just committed to using that in my art and celebrating aging as something that's not negative or bad or something we have to hide or erase or change or transform or fill up or fill out or whatever.

So anyway, back to the photographs. Sorry. I took a photo of my mom's hand, the beautiful like texture and wrinkles and she laid it against this beautiful oak. And I took this photograph, and I was like, that's the image. That's where originally in the script, we start on her hand. It changed over time but that was the igniting image. I was like, there is a woman and she's in the woods for some reason.

And then, you know, I started writing and just dealing with my own grief and losing a friend during the pandemic. Losing my grandmother. It was a real way for me to cope, was to write this story. And having had such a connection with Madonna, I was able to step into that emotion myself, I feel like, in a way, and write this story about transitioning from end-of-life transition.

Madonna: That's funny because when I saw that, when I saw that, that image of Prem’s mother's hand on the tree, I thought it was my hand. I said, “Oh, when did you take that? I don't remember that?” Like, I remembered us going to the woods and shooting some photos and I thought, oh, that's, that picture we took. And she goes, “That's my mom's hand.”

And I was like, “Our hands look so much alike.” And then her mom came to the premiere we sat and we compared hands.

Prem: Oh yeah. That was so sweet.

Madonna: Yeah, it was very sweet. So, it was cool because I felt like, I felt that connection too, you know, through her and through you, Prem, through your love for her and your heart.

So, it was really, really cool to sort of have that background to know that it actually wasn't my hand that inspired her. It was her mom's, but cosmically. Cosmic.

Prem: Yeah. Cosmically.

Passionistas: So, Madonna, what did you think when you first saw the script?

Madonna: Well, I had worked with Prem on another beautiful script that she wrote called “Dreamhouse of Salt” and also just in that first class where Prem and I really connected. We were on a Zoom. We were all isolated. We were on a Zoom. We weren't in person, but there's just something in her soul and energy that just drew me in right away and I thought, she's going to be getting an Oscar in my lifetime.

This woman, I know that's not why she's doing it, but her work is that impeccable and her stories are beautiful. So, we did this. It was one of your cycle films, wasn't it? It felt like a big studio film because it was just so beautifully done. But it was really just in her process and as a fellow.

And so, I knew when we talked about collaborating again in the future, and I knew whatever she brought to me, it was just going to be, it is going to speak to me, you know? And so when I read it, you know, it's always interesting to have a script that doesn't have dialogue and that has a younger version of me in it.

So it was, you know, back backstory and, and memories and so I'd never done anything quite like it before. So, I was like, yes, let's dive in. You know, in those moments when Prem talks about me connecting, that's because she would come over to me and say something. She would give me something that really resonated with me.

So that was sort of, it was a wonderful process. The whole thing was just incredible. Even it was, it was freezing cold, I think I remember being cold. And it was in that beautiful space. And there was a lot of, you know, everybody on the crew was just, Carylanna was running an amazing production team.

And the cinematography was beautiful, and it was really safe working with a crew of mostly women. You know, it felt really, I felt nurtured through the whole thing by the trees. We were standing from everything from the trees. We were standing into the, just the backdrop to the house to our beautiful crew. So, it was a great experience and so when I saw the script, I knew that's what it was going to be. I knew it was just, I'm ready.

Passionistas: It sounds a little cliché these days to say the location is another character, but it really does feel like that in this production, and it feels, maybe it was right off the main road, but it feels like it's incredibly remote. So Carylanna, talk about finding that location and the complexity of shooting there and bringing your crew there.

Carylanna: Credit for finding it actually goes to our Unit Production Manager and Line Producer Sarah Niver, Prem, the Production Designer Daniel Berkman and our cinematographer Liz Charky. Prem and I had done a lot of scouting from, I don't know, I guess kind of casually starting over the summer and the fall and a little bit more aggressively in January, February. And we weren't finding anything that looked like this vision of the Pacific Northwest that Prem wanted. If you read the script, it sounds like it's either in an old-growth forest in Washington or Oregon, or maybe in the Adirondacks of New York – but nothing. We're limited to shooting within 30 miles of the center of Los Angeles. That's all that we were allowed to shoot at AFI. So, trying to find something that looked even remotely lush was quite the challenge. And we had gotten to the point where we were almost ready to switch it to the desert. I don't know how serious that was, but that's about where we were at. When Sarah started location scouting and she came up with this place.

And it was a challenging location in a lot of ways. It’s in Topanga Canyon and it's like deep down in a canyon. And just the topography of it is such that it keeps the water in. There's just a little stream that runs through, but the moisture stays in. It's cooler than the surrounding areas. This is a place where they used to run liquor during the prohibition. It's got a total history of this area but it's also pretty remote.

Like Madonna was saying we had to go past another film set even to get to where we were at. And we couldn't drive our vehicles right up to the house or right up to any of the scenes that you see shootings. We were having to do a lot of couriering with carts and things like that. So there was a whole logistical element to it. And it was a big enough piece of our budget that we didn't have a full prep day and a full wrap day. So all of that was done in five days in one location including load in and load out.

So it was, yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun logistically. But it's beautiful. I mean, I don't think there's anything quite like it that we would've found elsewhere in the area.

Passionistas: Yeah, it's really extraordinarily beautiful. And like we said, the cinematography just is incredible. It just captures it all so well. The other thing that's amazing is the casting of the other two women — and especially the woman who plays young Lee. So, tell us a little bit.

Madonna: They were calling me Elder Lee, which is really sweet. Always. Just Lee.

Passionistas: You were the original Lee. So, Prem, tell us a little bit about the casting process.

Prem: Well, Madonna was locked in, like day zero. I was determined to find someone that looked like Madonna because I really find it annoying when on TV or in a movie and people are cast and you're just like, that looks nothing like this person.

I'm like, okay, I get it. I get maybe because of this and I'm making justifications or there are limitations and things get in the way, whatever. But it's something I noticed. So, I was determined and our casting director, Rich Mento, gathered so many, like, there were a lot of submissions. We had a ton and I mean honestly it was like going through, I went through every single one. And Penny, it was like one of the last ones. That's how it always is. And I was like, in shock, like how much they looked alike. And then her audition was perfect. So, I wanted, it was those moments where I just wanted to be like, you have the part, but you have to wait and do a callback and follow procedure and really talk about it with Carylanna and, you know have a conversation.

It was all done on Zoom too, so that was… but I guess from what I haven't been acting in a while, but Madonna, I feel like a lot of auditions are Zoom now anyway, right? Or it's self-tape, anyway.

Madonna: Right.

Prem: So I guess that was right — not in the room as much. So, I guess that wasn't too out of the ordinary. And then we found Christine through our Casting Director, as well, and she had this beautiful, just, I felt like she was this angel in this way, that she just carried a light that I think balanced Lee Lee's heaviness and her weight. The weight of the world that Lee sort of is holding so deep inside of her and not wanting to… she's not ready to fully give it all.

But Janine, Christine was able to bring that out in both, I think in Penny's character, younger Lee. But Madonna and I actually rehearsed with Christine. I wanted them two to rehearse together because it wouldn't, it would deepen the memories for Madonna. At least that was the goal. I think it helped, right Madonna, like working with Christine? So yes, even though you're not on screen together, I wanted them to have that established relationship in the energy that they carry on. We would feel that connection. But yeah, we were blessed. We were just blessed with the cast. Like it just really worked out perfectly.

Madonna: Penny has an Irish accent. And it was interesting because you know, I don't say anything. My character Lee, Elder Lee, doesn't say a thing.

Patty does an American dialect, I guess. She drops the accent and beautifully. She's a really talented actor. And when I first saw her, I was, we met… Our first rehearsal together was on a Zoom and I think the first time I couldn't wait to see her. I was like, what? Damn, I was cute when I was young. Okay… So, it was cool to sort of… I've never worked with somebody who's me in my past experience. So, I really enjoyed that process and sort of enjoyed… We hung out together and we just, on set, we just sort of like bonded and that was our opportunity physically to be together because we had really just mostly been…

I think we had one rehearsal in the grass somewhere. Was that this film? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was Christine. That was with Christine, yeah. Yeah. And it was we were at the at the beautiful campus of AFI and a deer showed up when we were… just like walked around by us and. There we were on Las Feliz and Western, you know, Franklin. And there comes a deer. So, it just all felt so storybook like. It felt like a little fairytale we were doing. But it was really great to sort of get that background with Christine and for us to connect. And I hope it helped her with her scenes with Penny as well.

Passionistas: For people who aren't from LA or haven't been here, AFI where you were all attending is right in the middle of the city of Los Angeles. So, it would be like being in Times Square and having a deer walk by.

Madonna: Exactly.

Passionistas: It's really a random thing, but that's how Southern California is. We have peacocks in the middle of our neighborhoods, like suburban neighborhoods. Talk a little bit about AFI for people who don't really understand what that is because it's such a unique and special place and experience. So, what is that program and how does it prepare you for being in the film industry differently than most film schools?

Carylanna: So, it's a two-year conservatory, very hands-on. There are six disciplines producing, directing, cinematography, production design, editing, and screenwriting and it changes each year, but roughly we had about 22 directors and producers and such. There's a track of just classroom classes and watching films and reacting to film classes.

But in addition to that we have two years of production. So, our first year we actually, each of us does at least three films. And we team up around the idea for each of the films. So, someone generates the idea, then there's a pitch process. The producer comes on board, we hire the rest of the team, then we go out and work with volunteers from the filmmaking community like gaffers and art directors, and what have you. And there's a conservatory program for SAG, as well. So, Madonna's part of a SAG/AFTRA AFI conservatory program. So, we have access to these wonderful, wonderful actors even for our classroom exercises and these three short films that we produced our first year. And then the second year everybody produces a thesis film, which is what we're talking about.

“I Thought The Earth Remembered Me” is Prem and my thesis film. So, I produced four, no, six films in two years including the cinematographers had visual essays. And there are, I have classmates who did way more than that. I was actually on the low end, but it's a lot of hands-on.

And our crews aren't union, but we run them like union shoots. So, we follow SAG-AFTRA rules for everything we follow. We try to keep our days tight and our crews are usually around 30 because it was capped because of Covid. Ours were definitely 30 or under and so they're big. They're big projects. We have a lot of gear from AFI that gives us. We shoot in sound stages, but also like, just all around LA. It's a lot of hands-on experience. Pretty amazing.

Passionistas: that's incredible. And so, we keep talking around the COVID thing. When did you film this?

Carylanna: It was it in the midst of COVID or was it sort of towards the tail end of lockdown and. So Prem and I found out that we were accepted into AFI about the week that the shit hit the fan in March 2020. So we had to decide whether we were coming or not. I'm coming from New York. A lot of our classmates were coming internationally, and we had to decide whether to try doing this or not.

Our first year of classes were totally online. And then our production was the only thing we were doing in person. It's like with masks and if we were near actors, we had to have face shields and such. There are lots of social distancing rules. There's like a whole list, COVID compliance officer on set and what have you.

The second-year production continued like that and this was produced during our second year. So, this we produced April 2022. And our classes at that point were mostly in person, kind of.

Passionistas: We’re Amy and Nancy Harrington and you’re listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Prem Santana, Carylanna Taylor and Madonna Cacciatore.

To learn more about “I Thought The Earth Remembered Me” and Prem Santana’s other work visit www.premsantana.com

Go to first encounter productions dot.com to stay up to date on Carylanna Taylor’s projects.

Stay on top of all of the great work that Madonna Cacciatore is doing at IMDb dot com and on her website m cacciatore dot com.

Now here’s more of our interview with Prem, Carylanna and Madonna.

Madonna, why do you like to be a part of these AFI projects?

Madonna: Well, I think, as every actor in town, we work sometimes, sometimes we don't. Like on TV film sets, and commercials, we are always auditioning. And so, when there's an opportunity to work, I want to work, you know?

And I find I don't do every project like this. This particular class of people was extraordinary. I've worked on another director's films, as well. I liked it because of the story. I like also the thesis films, you know go, can go to festivals, so that's great.

But you know, when there's an opportunity to work your craft, work it, you know, and I love working my craft. I love roles. I love working. I love being on set. I love the experience. AFI films are done in such a way that you really are getting the full, you know, you're being treated, I'm treated really well.

It’s like it's working on a SAG set. I also like the Conservatory a lot because of what they do for students and what actors can get out of it, as well. Like sometimes I'll get just called in Victoria Hoffman, you know, call and goes, “Can you do this kind of class or that kind of class?”

Well, for me it's class. I love class. I love working. I love learning. You know, we never stop learning and we never stop connecting. So, every experience onset is different and you know, you learn something new no matter what your age or how many roles you've done.

I came to LA pretty late in my life. So, I didn't get here in time to sort of have a young career here. My background was, I was dancing most of my life and then I ended up going to musical theater. And then I started training in Washington, D.C. at the Studio Theater there in all the forms.

So, I took a lot of classes and, you know, I had this experience. I was in Seattle and I got a little under five part on “The Fugitive” that Tim Daly was in, that they were shooting up there. And I had only ever done as far as film and television at that time. I'd only ever done extra work, background work. So, I go on set and they had an umbrella for me because of course it was Seattle and it was raining. And then they take me and they said, “We’ll take you to your trailer.” I said, “I have a trailer. I have five lines. I'm so excited.” And I thought, I'm moving to L.A. That's it.

But you know, I wish I'd done, you know, I don't regret it because I had a lot of experience along the way and I got to do a lot of wonderful theater and I still love theater very, very much. But it was good to you know, get here. And so, it didn't matter to me because yeah, I was older, but then I just got different roles so I just, you know, I just keep going like we all do.

So, there's, you know, all the auditions, all the ones you don't get, and those gems you do get, just make it, it never leaves you, it's part of you. So, I'm, you know, I'm always happy when AFI called.

Passionistas: Prem, based on what Madonna was saying, do you think as an actor, she brings something to a part because she has those life experiences that weren't all… She wasn't just an actress for 20 years. She had all these other life experiences. Do you think that makes a difference as an actress from a directing standpoint?

Prem: Absolutely. The way Madonna carries, there's her body and the physicality of an all a dancing background and a theater background. You really have to I mean, I also have a theater background and dance actually, but you really have to know space and your emotions are constantly be connected to your physical, and those things are never separate. And so Madonna is a master at… there's just a natural… Madonna carries her body so naturally and is able to sink into it, you know like this is the scene. Because sometimes, you know, you see actors and you can tell that they're not comfortable or they're not… and their physical body shows that. So, to answer your question, I think it's such a treat to have an actor with this diverse background.

And also, I think Madonna, women your age, my age… beautiful time. I feel like that is to see, this is what I'm passionate about too is putting women that are older on screen, you know what I mean? And I think there's such like power in the age that you are, and I can't wait to be, you know, each year it's like, oh, this is so fascinating and interesting, like, my body's changing and, but I have so much more to offer and storytelling and to see. I don't know. To see a face like Madonna's on screen is like, every time I see our short film, I'm like, this is what I think we need more of.

Passionistas: It's funny you say that about her body and her walk because I don't know that I've ever seen an actor act with their back before. Like Madonna walking away from camera. expresses more than most actors can do with a five-page monologue.

Madonna: Wow.

Passionistas: And it was fascinating to see. I'm in tears and all she's doing is walking away from me. I can't even see her face. Because what's going on, even though we're not on her face, like it's all happening still inside of her.

Prem: So, and you're right. You see through everything, you see it. You see it no matter what. Like the camera picks up all of it. Even that, you know, being on her back, I'm not going to give away the shot we're talking about, but yeah, it's really magical. Yeah.

Madonna; But there was a lot of magic in that space too and, in that environment it was, you couldn't have found a better place to shoot this film. Honestly. There were so many natural lines and, and so much beauty in that forest, you know that it was just like, honestly, like the film resonated. The message of the film resonated and the foliage in the trees.

And the house like you were asking earlier, you know, when you asked Carylanna like this almost was another character. The house was definitely another character. The house was like, I felt like I had to be very respectful of the house and we had to have a connection. Honestly, there was just some stuff going on there. And then the outdoors, of course, was, I love being out in nature, so it was very much fun for me.

Passionistas: I love that house. Tell us about it. Was that the condition that it was in or did your production designers bring it to life like that?

Carylanna: A bit of both. Our production designer definitely pushed it. The house was built as a prop house in the eighties for a movie called “Shiloh 2.” And it is just…

Prem: You remember that, Carylanna?

Carylanna: Yeah, especially with my memory for names. But it sat there just open to the elements for what is that now going on 40 years that it was not ever meant to stand for more than the length of a production. So, there are literal holes in the ceiling where vines are growing into the building. And yeah, it's definitely on its way to succumbing to nature. And Daniel and his team definitely pushed it a bit more, but it's, yeah, it's, it's certainly like infused with that environment. It definitely felt like a place with history.

That's interesting that you say that, Madonna, the feeling like you had to respect it. You really see their work whenever they're making it seem present because the past is kind of there. There are some scenes in the kitchen, and they really make that warm and inviting and feel lived in. There are some dark room scenes too that are kind of the same, that's where you see their magic on screen.

Passionistas: Prem, you were saying that it's important for you to foster women in film, on screen and off, and one of the things that you have founded is the Moonfaze Feminist Film Festival. So tell us what that is and why you started it and what's the current situation like that

Prem: The festival is no longer, unfortunately. It lasted for four. Two years in person live events and then we went online but I created it out of just necessity. I directed my first short film called “Luna” which I also acted in, and I was struggling to find a platform for this baby of a film that I'd made. It was my first film, you know, so, I was struggling to find a platform to showcase my work and I just was struck with the idea of why not make a film festival for myself and my peers. And once it was one of those, you know, when you get creative, like, I'm sure you felt that when you started Passionistas, where you're like, oh my God, that's it. This is what I have to do. Right? You're just like, you know, in every cell. And we get those hits. I don't know how many we get in a lifetime, but I’m, I'm grateful for every one. And that was one of them where I was just like the doors started to open and the right people came in and all of a sudden, we had a venue and I had the most amazing experience curating that festival where we celebrated, it was all, you know, female-led, non-binary-led films. And it was amazing.

But as I transitioned into really focusing on directing, I couldn't do both. And it was one of those things that just naturally dissolved, but I'm still hold it up to one of the most amazing experiences of an artist and an activist being able to provide a platform. I wouldn't, maybe someday we'll bring it back because it was pretty amazing to be honest. Yeah, it was cool. You're making me think about it.

Passionistas: Maybe it could be part of the Power of Passionistas Summit some year.

Prem: Yes. Ooh…

Passionistas: We'll have to talk.

Prem: There you go. Oh my God, I would love that. Yeah. I mean, asking about that.

Passionistas: Yeah, there is so much synchronicity in all of us, I think in what we are doing with The Passionistas Project, in what you have all said is your passion and about storytelling and advancing women and social justice issues. So maybe each of you could just talk a little bit about that and about how that informs the film projects that you like to work on.

Madonna: You know, I'm a been an activist since, I've been an out LGBTQIA person since I was, since 1971. I saw a thing one time that said Gay AF Since 1971 on somebody else's thing. I was like, that's me. Uh, I've always sort of been out. I've never really, I mean, I grew up in Texas, so I, you know, there was a lot of opportunity for bad things to happen. I don't know why they didn't, but they didn't. So, I've always been a person who has fought for people's rights one way or the other, and for animals rights, like to protect our, our four-legged and our, and our humans with kindness and respect and dignity, which is what every, I think, every living being deserves. Why we beat each other up, I have no idea. I think it's a horrible model. I think we should stop doing it immediately. I'm putting my foot down. We all need to stop doing that. But, you know, so, any time, like Carylanna was saying, and Prem, we're saying anytime you can tell a story or I can find a character who's revealing something about that, who's helping someone else who might be in a situation and they somehow, something you do helps them through that situation, helps them.

You know, there are many ways, there are many instances where that could happen and I just think, you know, my wife and I have both had people reach out to us from through our acting and through other means because they are young. We've had people reach out to us from Russia and other sort of hostile areas where they could not be themselves and say, you know, something you did helped me see myself. So I think when you can do that through living your life with the passion that we all have in this room, and that I'm sure many people watching have that you, that you are making, by simply living your life, but then to take it further and make films and, and do The Passionistas Project. You know, I watch a lot of the people you interview and your shows, and it's just the work you're doing is making change in the world. So, we've all sort of made that choice.

And sometimes it gets hard to keep the light shining when things are happening, but it's these mediums that help us keep it shining. We can reflect something to someone. And I think that's, for me, that's why it's important and that's why I'll always choose projects. I mean, I, you know, I want to work, but I also love projects that advance social justice for humans and animals and the earth.

Carylanna: So, I mentioned before, I come from cultural anthropology and that's. It's about understanding the world holistically and understanding humanity and all its diversity in time and place and in connection to other things that are going on in the world. So I tend to look for stories that channel that.

And it's never all of that in one thing like I've done a feature film called “Anya” that has, that's like critiquing the idea of what difference truly means and how we can get past that. Because underneath it, we're still humans. And I’m currently working writing a project that's inspired by my research in Honduras with migrants and natural resource management there and trying to shape it as a lens into what makes Central America unstable. Like we have a tendency in the US to look at it as being this very unstable place that's not livable and that that's why we get all these migrants at the border and yada yada, when in reality I've spent, I mean, a decade off and on living in Honduras and working with people from there and they come from a beautiful place, a place that's a home, a place that they love, a place where they love, a place where they work hard and when it becomes unstable, it's tragic. When somebody has to leave home, it's involuntary. So, I'm trying to write, probably a series. It keeps splitting around between a film and a series and a novel that captures that sense of home, but that does it in a way that an American audience can kind of encounter that and understand it — maybe people who wouldn't automatically think like that. So that's what I'm working on right now.

I'm also passionate about mental health issues and working on a script for that. I also get to read for some really interesting companies and have a little bit of an opportunity to say, this is a really great project. You should think about making it. And it's always exciting when I find something that's really, really special that might get made.

Prem: I'm very like, proud of you, Carylanna. I'm like, yes. So exciting. Hard. You know, Madonna said it. It's hard. It's hard to have the faith in yourself to say, I can have a voice in this. I can, yeah. It's worth the next four months of my life to work on this as opposed to like scrambling to find a particular job. It's like it's hard to, yeah, it's hard to hang onto the passion. So, I really appreciate this because it helps remind me to hang onto the passion. Yeah. It reignites the flame that's like, sometimes it's like just about to go out and then things like this happen and I'm like, “Oh, okay. Yes. Okay.”

I was just thinking of, you know, I realized. I tend to write stories that don't have a political or any sort of agenda. I don't think stories necessarily have to have an agenda to shift the paradigm, to have an impact because I think the thing that really does change us is the emotional feeling, connection. That's the beauty of drama and raw, brutal, honest, beautiful truth. So that's where I'm coming from because I think we can get lost in pushing an agenda, political, gender, all of it, you know, and lose the root intention and core and heart and soul of what we're trying to say. And so, to me the most important thing is that and the other stuff will come naturally if that is part of what you're passionate about, and we all are.

Passionistas: What did you each learn about yourself from making this film together?

Carylanna: I'm going to kind of punt and say that I, coming from academia, I'm very, I tend to be very analytical and it gets in the way of filmmaking and it gets in the way of writing sometimes. It's very helpful with research. It's helpful with market analysis. It's helpful with all kinds of things. But in terms of telling a story that just grabs somebody by the lapels and carries them along and immerses them in somebody's life, that requires emotion. And that's why I wanted to work with Prem is because she does such a beautiful job of embodying emotion. So, our relationship was not always like super easy because we're coming at things from very different sides.

But I learned a lot about tapping into emotion and working with somebody who's so in tune with it and watching her work with actors was really enlightening, too. So, I think in that arena, I grew a lot because of this.

Prem: I'm going to dive in if that's okay, because I want to say the same with Carylanna, like working with the other side of my brain and learning how to hone the emotion, but like use it efficiently and productively and adapt to different ways of using it to my best ability. Being on set is such a magical thing… like there's all this emotion and you have to go, and just be like locked in sort of like carrying all this emotion, but also very in a jar, like you have the lid and you're releasing it every now and then to like connect with the actors.

So yeah, I just learned a lot working with Carylanna and working with such a good producer. I learned what the director's part in that collaboration really is. And I think that I can now go forward and, I don't know, have some really beautiful relationships and I'm excited about that.

Madonna: I just learned, I mean, it's just another experience of being with a group of people who have really great hearts and are incredibly talented and can show me something about myself. As an actor, you want to get feedback, you want to get notes.

I mean, Prem and I had the luxury of having some rehearsal time, which you don't often get. And so we got to have some nice conversations. And seeing Prem’s sort of point of view reminded me of myself when I was younger and when I was sort of really, I mean, I'm still passionate, but it's different for me. It's taken a different kind of a vibe. And I was able to sort of harness like Prem’s passion in the way that she works and use that in my, in this character, but also just sort of as an actor, like opening myself up again to my younger self and to my older self. You know, sort of really appreciating my age. And that's what this story does. I've never had a problem aging. I love the lines on my fa I love that Brandi Carlisle song. You know, the story. That's one of my favorite songs. Mm-hmm.., because these lines are my experience in, in this world and I like them, you know?

And so, this film continues to help me see that and embrace that part of myself. Because aging is also not for the fainthearted. You just start going through new things. You just, things hurt that you didn't know were going to hurt. And so, you know, it was really a reflection of honoring my aging process as well.

Prem: So, Carylanna, you were telling us about up your upcoming projects. What about Prem and Madonna, what do you guys have in the pipeline?

Prem: I am developing multiple projects, multiple feature film scripts. One of them is the feature film version of this film, which recently I made it to semi-finalists in the Outfest screenwriting lab. So, that was a win for me. I'm celebrating all semi-finalist things. Every little step counts. So, I was really excited about that, but I also got some feedback that I feel like is really beneficial to the script. So, I'm thrilled to execute that and take it to the next level.

I'm also working on a feature film script about, The California Gold Rush seen from a non-heteronormative female perspective. I'm, I'm obsessed with westerns and period pieces. It's like my other… So, it's a huge undertaking. So that'll probably be in a decade, maybe. And then a horror film I'm slowly working on.

Madonna: Oh, I love horror films.

Prem: Me too.

Madonna: I just keep auditioning. I've got a couple of fingers crossed on a couple of things right now that I can't talk about, but I, you know, just hopefully, I just keep, as all actors do, I, we just keep auditioning. Robin and I set up, we finally have a media area where we can keep our ring light and our backdrop up and we can keep doing scenes. And two of the things that I have had come my way recently, whether I get them or not, they're really great projects. And I always consider an audition like I'm going to work. So, yeah, just fingers crossed on those. And we just keep going, like looking at I've got great agents and a great manager and, and they know me, so I'm really happy about all that.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast and our interviews with Prem Santana, Carylanna Taylor and Madonna Cacciatore.

To learn more about “I Thought The Earth Remembered Me” and Prem Santana’s other work visit www.premsantana.com

Go to first encounter productions dot.com to stay up to date on Carylanna Taylor’s projects.

Stay on top of all of the great work that Madonna Cacciatore is doing at IMDb dot com and on her website m cacciatore dot com.

And be sure to visit ThePassionistasProject.com to sign up for our mailing list, find all the ways you can follow us on social media and join our worldwide community of women working together to level the playing field for us all.

We'll be back next week with another Passionista who is defining success on her own terms and breaking down the barriers for herself and women everywhere.

Until then. Stay well and stay passionate.

Passionistas Persist Visionary Award Recipient Carolyn Koppel

Carolyn Koppel is the 2022 Recipient of the Passionistas Persist Visionary Award and the founder of Aaron’s Coffee Corner. She started her amazing organization after spending many long nights in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) with her son, Aaron. Now, Aaron’s Coffee Corner provides 24/7 access to free, fresh, quality coffee in the family great rooms of hospital PICUs. It is Carolyn’s mission to provide the smallest of comforts to the family, friends and caregivers of critically ill children by providing something familiar in an unfamiliar place. 

Learn more about Aaron's Coffee Corner.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

 

Full Transcript:

Passionistas: Hi, we’re sisters, Amy and Nancy Harrington, the founders of The Passionistas Project. We started The Passionistas Project to tell the stories of women who are following their passions and fighting for equality for all. The more we spoke with women for our podcast, subscription box and the Women’s Equality Summit, the more we saw a common trait in all of them — they are unstoppable.

Whether they choose to use their voices to start a women-owned brand or fight for the rights of the marginalized, we found that all Passionistas are resilient, compassionate and PERSISTENT.

Each year we honor women who embody these qualities by presenting the Passionistas Persist Awards. This episode of the podcast is an interview with one of the 2022 recipients.

For our next award, we asked the Passionistas community to vote daily for the woman-founded or woman-centric non-profit they wanted to see honored with the Passionistas Persist Visionary Award. The nominees were 2Live2Cure, Aaron’s Coffee Corner, Bâtonnage Women in Wine, Be Humanitarian, Home of Champions, Mary Rose Foundation, Miry’s List, Paint the World and Project U First.  
 
Our community cast the most votes for Carolyn Koppel, the founder of Aaron’s Coffee Corner. She started her amazing organization after spending many long nights in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) with her son, Aaron. Now, Aaron’s Coffee Corner provides 24/7 access to free, fresh, quality coffee in the family great rooms of hospital PICUs. It is Carolyn’s mission to provide the smallest of comforts to the family, friends and caregivers of critically ill children by providing something familiar in an unfamiliar place. 
 
So it was our honor to present the Passionistas Persist Visionary Award to Carolyn Koppel.
 
Carolyn: It’s an honor to receive The Passionistas Persist Visionary Award for our efforts in providing direct support to people that often get overlooked in the medical jungle we call healthcare. Parents are a crucial part of the puzzle, and Aaron’s Coffee Corner wants them to know that we see them.

Providing a daily dose of comfort in the form of coffee and tea is the least we can do to acknowledge their courage, their grit, and determination while they care for their children in a uniquely stressful situation. Aaron’s Coffee Corner is thrilled to accept this award on behalf of all of our persistent supporters who voted and acknowledged the work that parents, families, and caregivers and guardians do for their critically ill children, not only when they are in the hospital, but what they do for them every day. We would never have been able to make the progress we have made without the help of Keurig, Dr. Pepper, The Anne and Robert Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, and all of our supporters, family and friends who voted. They voted with their daily wordle or with their morning coffee or they stopped me on the street while I was walking my dog to tell me they were voting every day.

And it was just such an honor to know that people were out there listening and supporting us and we had no idea. It's just an honor to receive this award. It's our first. We hope we set an example that will allow it to be the first of many. We are so proud of the organization because Aaron is a part of it and we are all in the now and people can see where the idea was born. And we just thank you for acknowledging us. It's really, really lovely. 

Passionistas: Tell us what you're most passionate about. 

Carolyn: My passions have changed over the years and right now the thing that is most important to me is helping other people. So as we have worked on our project, I see the impact that we have made and it creates a greater passion for me to continue what we're doing. So I think Aaron's Coffee Corner and my son Aaron are my drivers and they're my passion at the moment along with the rest of my family. 

Passionistas: Tell everybody a little bit about Aaron.

Carolyn: Aaron is 17 years old. We started Aaron’s Coffee Corner when he was 13. He is nonverbal and non-ambulatory. He has an underlying disorder called Dihydropyrimidine Dehydrogenase Deficiency.

Right now, he's the only living survivor of this disorder at this age, so we're very lucky to have him. And we've had great help along the way. Aaron is a critically ill child all the time. He is chronically ill, he suffers from epilepsy, but he's all those things that he can't do. One of the things he can do is he can light up a room with his smile. He's super handsome. He's engaged with the world around him and we are proud of all the things that he has done in these 17 years. And what he has given us has really created an outlook of appreciation. It's kind of cliche, but you really do appreciate every day he wakes up. So it's just one of those… he's just really the light in our lives in so many ways, in so many other people's life as well.

And we're lucky that we started the organization with him as a living legacy instead of [that's my dog.]. instead of memorializing him when he's gone, which is always difficult. And it's best for Aaron to be able to show other people what it's like to be in this life and how he does that is just being a part of the community and people saying, “Oh, Aaron’s Coffee Corner. There's actually Aaron behind the Coffee Corner. Who is Aaron?” And they get to see him instead of just hear about him, right? We were just at our local farmer's market and Aaron was there and everybody's like, “Oh, this is Aaron.” So that kind of personal connection that he brings to our organization is really remarkable. And I think that our supporters really appreciate the fact that they can learn more about Aaron as they support our organization.

Passionistas: Tell us more about Aaron’s Coffee Corner’s mission.

Carolyn: Aaron's Coffee Corner provides a safe place for people to go and get direct support by getting a cup of coffee or a cup of tea in the family in the great rooms at Lurie Children's Hospital’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and their Neonatal Intensive Care Unit now.

So we've created a space where they can go grab a cup of coffee or tea and really just take a moment to get out of their room with their sick child and refresh and just clear their mind for a minute. So what we try and do is create an environment where people feel they can take a moment for themselves and really stay present for their child while they're in the hospital.

Passionistas: So many charities focus on the patients. Why did you decide to create an organization that really focuses more on the families? 

Carolyn: Because I am the family. It was a selfish thing to do, right? It was all about me one night late in a room by myself, and I needed coffee. So I think that it makes it even more important because it's part of my community and I realize that these people need coffee like I need coffee in the middle of the night or whenever I'm admitted into a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit because my son is sick. So I think that it was just circumstance that brought me to the place where I could think, providing something that I know others would really appreciate. And that took me a long time to do. 

I mean, Aaron is 17 and the first few years are hard. It's hard to have a critically ill child that you're caring for 24/7. I had a lot of help and I'm very lucky about that. But there's a lot of mourning, of loss, of all the things that you're not going to have with your child. And that takes a long time to kind of work through. And it's been 14 years past his prognosis. He wasn't supposed to live past the age of three. So when we look around at ourselves, we're very lucky. Aaron is pretty healthy. And I think that is what triggered me thinking, “Oh, maybe we can do something for others who are in the same situation because we've been there.”

We know what the situation is and how we can help them. And I knew from personal experience that coffee was something that was missing to help those families. Because if you help the family recover, the child's going to recover, right? If the people that are caring for the child are tired and disillusioned and disappointed and upset, those kinds of things can be managed a little bit by having a little time to themselves to restore their own being, their self-worth, how to get back in the game and walk back into that room and really stand up for their child and help their child get better. 

Passionistas: Tell us about the process of creating a 501(c)(3). 

Carolyn: It's a bit of a tedious process. And I suggest that you get a lot of help trying to figure it out because it will make it so much faster. Because me, I like to do a little research before I start asking people that know what they're talking about. And I found that the research was really overwhelming. And so I try and reach out to the people that know Aaron that can help us support Aaron in any way they can. So I talked to our family lawyer who was familiar with Aaron. And I said, “Have you ever started a 501(c)(3) for anybody?” And he was like, “Yeah, I just did one for my wife. So let's see what we can do.” 

So here are the things that I find important. One, read all the information because there are shortcuts that you can take if you do it the right way and you follow through on all of your tasks — because there's a lot of tasks — especially with the state, that you have to just kind of tick off. And I know from experience that I may have forgotten one thing and it got me into a little bit of trouble. So it's important to really just kind of find out what you need to do and make a list and just continue to check that list as you go through. And then once you’re in it, it's really pretty simple to manage it in a way that you just have to send something in every year. So if you want to try it and you've got a good reason to do it, I suggest you try. It does a lot of good for people. 

Passionistas: Tell us about a time in your life that you persisted and how you got through it. 

Carolyn: Trying to get Aaron’s Coffee Corner off the ground is my key persistent moment. It took close to a year for things to kind of get everybody in line and on the same page. And to just to say yes to helping these parents in the pediatric intensive care. You'd think that there was already coffee there. And what they used to have was like a bun burner, like a bun stove with a glass coffee pot. And it was always dirty. And I'm like, “No, we can make that better for you.”

And you'd think they'd say, “Oh, that would be great.” But there are a lot of ins and outs in politics and bureaucracy when it comes to a major hospital. And we're lucky enough that we were able to work it out so we could at least start a pilot project. And I knew once we got in, it was going to be be hard to get rid of us.

So my goal was to make it as successful as I could in the first four months and make sure that they saw that our fundraising could keep up with what was needed because it's always hard to take things away from people. And a lot of people in the pediatric intensive care unit are there — it's not fun place — but they end up there because their kids are sick. So it's something that people would notice if it was gone all of a sudden. So the idea of just being sure that we were proving our worth, not to the families and not to the PICU staff and not to the PICU doctors that were using it, but to the bureaucracy that surrounds an organization like this. So I feel like we are pretty persistent and we got it done and now we have two machines. I'm hoping for a third. So we'll see where it goes. But, um, persistence paid off in this particular situation. 

Passionistas: What's your dream for Aaron’s Coffee Corner? 

Carolyn: The dream changes. I find that I get an Instagram post from a family at Lurie's and they say how much it's meant to them to have this coffee. They've been there for 42 days, and that makes staying at Lurie's and just Lurie's worth it because I know that we're really having a direct impact on the people that are using it. I think pre-Covid we had like a five-year plan, which is now maybe like an eight-year plan. And we would like to spread it to a couple of other hospitals, either locally or a hospital that has a number of hospitals throughout the country.

And that would be creating it in a way that we could help them with a grant. And create a lesson plan or a syllabus on how to raise money and how the hospital should raise money. Because what we do for Luries is a separate entity, even though they help us collect money. And I think that it's important as we move forward that the hospitals know how to continue the relationship with their families and how to build on the fact that they are doing something for the families and how working with families can also help children thrive when they are ill. 

So that's our, that's our goal. I don't know when we're going to get there. I am feeling that Lurie's needs us right now. And I feel like we are, we are helping a pretty large population because they're a large hospital. But I would like to help smaller hospitals as we move forward. And that's why I really want them to take part in the fundraising and maybe find a family that could support Aaron’s Coffee Corner as a fundraising family. So I have all these ideas in my head, but right now we're focusing on Aaron’s Coffee Corner and how we raise our funds and that we can continue the legacy. I mean, we're in our fourth year and we'd like that to be for 40 years. There’s no end in sight for our work at Lurie's. So it depends on where the path leads and we're going to, we're going to see what happens.

Passionistas: How can the Passionistas community support Aaron’s Coffee Corner? 

Carolyn: Well, there are a couple of ways. You know the whole thing about, we're basically an online organization because of Covid. So the last few years we have really done all of our fundraising online. And the best way for people to help us with that is to like us and to follow us, to comment because that all is algorithms and they just drive me crazy. So that's the easiest way just to support us by giving us a little like. That is a big support. 

And then we run fundraisers. We run online fundraisers. We're in the middle of one right now for our fourth anniversary. And we also do local fundraising. So we do events. If you're local and you want to do an event and come join us. We do all kinds of things like jewelry. And Estetica Mia has helped us, which was one of the Passionistas group organizations. And we did an online facial. It was awesome and very successful.

We try and support local organizations that are also woman-run. So we have a friend of ours from Deerfield who has a clothing store called Apricot Lane, and we try and work with her. And we try to stay local because we are a local organization. But you would be surprised how many people know somebody that has been in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and can relate to the fact that they’re astounded that there's no coffee there. Or that they know somebody that's actually been to Lurie's because it's a world-renowned hospital, and they know somebody that has, that knows somebody that their child was there. So we have a lot of outreach online on Instagram and Facebook. 

Passionistas: And you have amazing merch. too.

Carolyn: We do have amazing merchandise. We have an online store. Thank you, Nancy. We do have an online store here. Look at that beautiful mug. It's great. It's huge. It's great for breakfast in the morning or mac and cheese in the evening. Whatever you need — also good for coffee. Not going to say it doesn't work for coffee. 

But we have water bottles. We have everything. And our shipping is free. So you can check us out at www.aaronscoffeecorner.org and go to our online store. You can also donate online, and that goes straight to Lurie's. So it's a nice way for us to get everything in one spot on our website.

Passionistas: Tell us what the phrase “Power of Passionistas” means to you. 

Carolyn: It is an interesting concept because women run the world. And I think that the idea of women supporting women is kind of overlooked and sometimes not really appreciated. So I think that it's really important for people to remember that we should be supporting one another as women. And we should be supporting people that are believing in what they're doing because everyone that is participating in this is really trying to find a way to help others be their best selves. Whether that is — remembering to be kind or remembering how to act in an office or to vote. Those are all things that can bring more gusto to what women can do in the world. And it's an important time to remember women have a say in what happens in the world. And we should really take advantage of it.

Passionistas: What's your dream for women? 

Carolyn: Wow. I would like them to get paid as much as men. I would like them to be appreciated for working from home. I would like them to have a right to choose what to do with their body. I mean, these are all very basic things that really haven't quite hit the threshold yet. And I think that we need to look around and those basic levels of necessity be reached.  

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to the awards presentation with Carolyn Koppel. To learn more about how you can support her mission to provide 24/7 access to free, fresh, quality coffee in the family great rooms of pediatric intensive care units visit Aarons Coffee Corner dot com.

And be sure to subscribe to the Passionistas Project Podcast so you don’t miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests.

Until next time, stay well and stay passionate. 

Soraya Chemaly Is Expanding Women’s Civic and Political Participation

Soraya Chemaly is an award-winning author, activist and former Executive Director of the Representation Project and Director and Co-Founder of the Women's Media Center Speech Project. She has long been committed to expanding women's civic and political participation.  She is the author Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger and the recipient of the 2022 Passionistas Persist Trailblazer Award.

Learn nore about Soraya Chemaly.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

 Passionistas: Hi, we're sisters Amy and Nancy Harrington. We founded the Passionistas Project to tell the stories of women who are following their passions and fighting for equality for all. The more we spoke with women for our podcast, subscription box and the annual Power of Passionistas summit, the more we saw a common trait in all of them. They are unstoppable.

Whether they choose to use their voices to start a women-owned brand or fight for the rights of the marginalized, we found that all Passionistas are resilient, compassionate and persistent.

Each year, we honor women who embody these qualities by presenting the Passionista Persist Awards. This episode of the podcast is an interview with one of the 2022 recipients.

Our next award this evening is the Passionista Persist Trailblazer Award. The definition of Trailblazer is a pioneer, an innovator, a person who makes a new track through wild. Tonight's recipient is an activist and author who is pushing boundaries for women daily in this wild country we live in.

The award is being presented by Dr. Melissa Bird, a feminist, author, healer and coach. Melissa's purpose in this world is to teach women how to step into their truth and quit playing small.

Melissa: I am so pleased to be presenting the 2022 Passionist Persist Trailblazer Award to my amazing, inspiring friend Soraya Chemaly. Soraya is an award-winning author, activist and is the former Executive Director of the Representation Project and Director and Co-Founder of the Women's Media Center Speech Project. And she has long been committed to expanding women's civic and political participation.

One of the things I love and adore about Soraya is that she is the author of one of my most favorite books, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger. And I do not think it is any coincidence that on this day of all days, on this year of all years, I get the privilege and the honor of presenting Soraya with this incredible Trailblazer Award.

So, Soraya, thank you so much for joining me today to receive this amazing, beautiful, awesome, well-deserved award because you are certainly blazing many trails in my life and the lives of so many of us.

Soraya: Thank you so much, Missy and thank you to, The Passionistas Project. I am really, genuinely so honored. It has been a difficult year. It's been a difficult decade, actually, and honestly, it's just nice to know that organizations like yours are thinking about the work that people are doing, that requires this kind of persistence, which doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as hope.

But really and truly, I'm genuinely very, very honored and delighted to be able to have this chance to have a conversation with you again and want to just say thank you very much.

Melissa: Oh, you are so welcome. God works in very fascinating ways and the fact that you and I are here together. After the Supreme Court has released so many devastating decisions just this week, like in the last literally six days. Yes, I think it is. Um, I think it is awesome actually, that you and I are together at this moment talking about trailblazing, right? And, and about how are we moving forward. Um, as part of the Passionistas Project, as part of the work, um, that Amy and Nancy have brought together and culminated so that so many people can have a platform for change and a platform for blazing trails.

And I think that, you know, you and I in our professional work, Soraya, we work with so many organizations and so many people who are trying. The thing that I love about the Passionistas Project is they are doing in such an authentically beautiful way. And so the first thing I really want to talk with you about today is about the Power of the Passionista and this mission of bringing all these women together from literally all over the world to talk about making change with diversity, equity and inclusion. Truly doing it this time. Like the lineup just blows my mind every time I think about it. So what does the Power of Passionista mean to you?

Soraya: When I first heard Passionista, my response was a, a little bit viscerally to think, oh, hold on. That's a word that I personally have heard that you have heard that many of us have heard. That's used dismissively. You're so passionate about that project you work on. Right. As though some of the issues that we are fighting against.

Um, our pet projects that we do in our spare time because it makes us feel happy, you know, and so I actually had that initial response, but what I really came to understand and think about was the fact that there's no reason to reject the word passionate or the idea of what it implies and clearly means in this context.

I mean, these are women from all over the world who are dedicating their lives to making change often in situations of. Grave, danger of risk, um, of political, uh, violence. Uh, increasingly we know this is the case. Increasingly, we know that the people at the forefront of so many movements, environmental movements, climate change, indigenous rights, uh, apportion, reproductive rights, racial justice, it's over and over and over.

Women, black women, queer women, trans women, women who are just pushed farther and farther and farther into the margins. And so I think it's really important to understand what it means. Honestly, the word kind of to me lies at the nexus of the personal and political that some people have the luxury to think are.

Right? We know that that's a decades old expression from the feminist world, that the personal is political. But a lot of people really still benefit from separating those two things. And, and, you know, we gain nothing by pretending that they're separated. Um, and I actually think the word Passionista, um, makes people think about that if they care to.

Melissa: I think we have to have passion to keep moving on. If we remain passionate about the things that deeply impact our lives and our world and the world of other people, particularly all of the women you just mentioned, we start talking about disabled women, women who are engaging in decolonizing work. We start talking about rebellious women, women who are trying to get educated and disrupting the education system.

When we think about people being the ones who are potentially gonna get us through. Then we have to understand passion. Because without passion, the drive in hopeless moments becomes diminished. And so what are you the most passionate about?

Soraya: When the Dobbs decision came down, I think like a lot of people, I burst out crying. And the thing is that you've been doing this work, I've been doing this work for, oh, it feels like decades, right? Yeah. Like literally, there was no surprise in this at all. There was just profound loss and disappointment and sadness and rage. That's how I felt, you know? And it was just so eviscerating actually, because I think.

If you have been on this side of this fight, seriously, you understand what just happened, what we just lost, what it represents. And that's not to diminish other losses at all, but it's such a turning point to have the right taken away. But it is a really critical point and a great unraveling. Yes and yes.

Yes, yes. I'm so glad you called it a great unraveling because I think that is profoundly important for people to understand as we're thinking about, I mean, trailblazing the world as we know it will fall apart. And we're seeing it in little tiny anecdotes. Mm-hmm. you know, doctors who have a woman come into their emergency room at 11:30 PM who with an ectopic pregnancy, that's about to blow, but they've gotta get on the phone with the attorney.

Yeah. And make sure they can do the procedure. Cuz her life isn't totally at risk yet, but it will be soon. Right. I, I'm just like, maybe now you understand that the single what the single issues. Not issue. It was always oversimplified into this idea of the act of abortion. And that is never what any of us was talking about, you know?

And so I think the thing you were saying, what am I most passionate about? And I was kind of winnowed down into this nub of real despair. You know, just that feeling that you get, which is hopelessness. But I will admit that that was swamp. Pretty quickly by my rage. Yeah. And I think by many people who, many people had this experience of feeling this justifiable rage, but in fact, you can't let that rage hurt you.

This is the point, right? If the, if the rage you feel is causing you dangerous stress or causing you to hurt yourself in other ways or. To, um, destroy relationships that are important, that that's not a functioning tool. And, and so I'm quite passionate in this moment about acknowledging anger, acknowledging the rage of the moment, and also appreciating that while it's not the conventional, socially acceptable, um, method of displaying. Anger is literally one of the most hopeful emotions because if you can maintain your anger, which is different from resentment, right?

Like I feel resentment when I look back at people's decades of work that feels dismissed and lost, I'm looking back, right? That's different from a rage, which is a feeling that things can and must change. Because you don't feel rage. If you feel really genuinely hopeless. What you feel is sadness and despair and depression, and that's paralyzing.

And it's okay if people feel that way because in fact, this is a sad, depressing, paralyzing moment. But I would just say that I also believe that, again, it's not, not to say embrace a rage and an anger that are destructive. It's not at all what I mean, but acknowledge that the rage and the anger are justifiable and that they need expression and that no matter what, they are hopeful.

They are fundamentally hopeful. We think that in order to make change, we have to, we have to set aside anger and. And yes, what I love to refer to as Righteous Fury. Mm-hmm.  in order to disrupt systems and make a difference. And I remember so many times when I was lobbying at the Capitol in Utah for a Planned Parenthood, I would just be furious.

I can't play poker, I can't keep any emotion off my damn face. And I would be so livid and then I would like take this breath and go, what has to be done? How can I communicate what is necessary to these people to help things move forward? Because I had to focus on, not me, but the thousands and thousands of people that are gonna be impacted by that.

Those pieces of legislation, either that I was trying to push forward or that other people were trying to push forward. And as soon as I channeled that rage and moved it into, everything changed as long as I wasn't screaming and yelling and huffing at, at directly at human beings and being abusive and confrontational, I still got rage. I still had all the rage. Mm-hmm.  And I channeled it.

Melissa: And I'm curious, when you talk about rage, what are the things that you really wanna help people who are part of this Passionistas summit understand.

Soraya: Taking our rage and using it to blaze wherever we're going. There are a few things that really still strike me. Um, it's been three years since the book was published and, um, you know, it, it's one of these books I think that has a very long tale because in fact there is an evergreen quality to these ideas. Mm-hmm, you know, and, and we wanna underst. Emotionality and we in particular, I think wanna understand the role it plays in our cognition because if you are a woman, or if I'm identifying, you know, how quickly and easily people dismiss you, if you express anger.

Which is why so many of us try not to show anger, feel anger, display anger. We've grown up being punished for it or, um, mocked for it. You know, that's the number one worry women have. It's not that someone's gonna be violent, it is that they will be mocked for expressing anger, which is an expression of need or an assertion of will.

Right. And we're, we're, we're not supposed to have either of those, those things. Mm-hmm. , but I, I think. , there are a few things. One is to be a trailblazer and to use your passionate feelings and beliefs. Doesn't require that you take on the whole world all at once or have an institution or a structure. You know, the whole fact of trailblazing is that you find a new way.

You find a way that makes sense to you, and then , most times it also makes sense to other people, but they just either didn't do it or didn't think of it or didn't have the time, but are so appreciative of the fact that you might do it. And so for some people that might be organizing a local choir to resist peacefully.

In a certain way, right. To other people it may be writing legislation to other people. It may be mobilizing, um, transportation, who knows what it is, right? But I think it's really important to not feel paralyzed by the idea that there's a way to trail blades. The point is it's risky. Yes. You, you, you have to take the.

People may call you stupid or you know, any number of terrible, terrible names, which 100% will happen. Okay. How you know you're on the trail. That's how you know you're on the trail. So you really have to, you have to really fundamentally be okay with people not liking you. That's the other lesson that really strikes me about being passionate and being angry as part of.

We are so, so expected and socialized to be likable and to put others first, and not make other people uncomfortable. Trailblazing always makes people uncomfortable. It's okay. We need more people to be very profoundly uncomfortable. I'm thinking about my own moments where friends have come to me, or clients have come to me, or organizations have come to me and said, you know, I have this.

I really wanna do it, and I don't think I should because if I do A, B or C is gonna happen, people won't like me. I'll lose my family, I'll lose my friends, which is what stops us from doing our core, what we are here to do. Right? Right. It stops us from living at our purpose. Oftentimes what I hear from people is that I must be really unique for writing the, the very first bill I ever wrote on my dining room table when I was getting my master's degree.

Thinking about what propels you and the people that you know, all these women who are here as part of the summit, all these people that are connecting with all of us who are involved as either award recipients or speakers. What do you want people to know? You know, there's gonna be a lot of noise, there's gonna be a lot of us versus them.

There's gonna be a lot of polarization cuz there's nothing. This country more loves more than polarizing each other.

Melissa: What do you think people really need to hear about that polarization so they don't get distracted by all that noise?

Soraya: Well, it's so hard, you know, because in fact the stage at which we're in the polarization is intimate, right? We're not talking about someone who lives in another state who feels differently. We may be talking as women about the person who's sleeping next to us in bed. That is a very difficult situation that millions and millions and millions of people find themselves in. The polarization is very gendered and very raced.

The political polarization. Mm-hmm. But at the same time, we all know there are a lot of liberal progressive men and a lot of extremely conservative women. Yes. So, you know, I don't wanna suggest that it's straight down the line that fathers and daughters or, you know, so I, I think it's important to acknowledge.

The intimacy of the issues that we're talking about and it demands of us different tactics and techniques. It demands, honestly, and this is what, this is why I gravitated towards anger as a way of shedding light on some of these issues of inequal. The inequalities are deeply intimate, right? And so the thing about anger in an intimate setting, whether it's a family setting, a religious community, which is almost always patriarchal, right? Our main religious faiths are all mainstream patriarchal, um, regardless of the community you're in. The thing about disdain, anger is that it, it erases the, even the idea of reciprocity, right? So if you're angry at people, you know, and you don't tell them who exactly are you protecting or hurting.

Maybe you're protecting yourself because it's too big a risk to think, I love these people. I have dedicated my life to them. I've taken care of them, or I do it every day. But what if they don't return that care? Right? What if I say I'm very angry? This is very important to me, I need you to support me.

And what they do is get angry at me for the way I express myself or laugh at me and diminish my concerns. Those are legitimate concerns because they happen every day. And so I just think we need to acknowledge the risk because in fact, the hard part about thinking about reciprocity is acknowledging.

There are power. There's power at play, social power at play in our institutions at every level. So yes, in the government, but in our schools and in our places of worship and at our dining room tables, I always say, if you can't practice a hard conversation at home among the people that in that you trust and who in theory love you and support you, how are you supposed to do outside. I think that's really the thing that keeps people from engaging.

Melissa: The topic of this conference is diversity, equity and inclusion, right? And I think that right there, Soraya is why people don't really authentically dig into do I work because I agree. Because if you can't have that conversation at home, right?

Soraya: How in the hell are you supposed to have it in a corporation with thousands of employees. So often the onus of these conversations falls on the minority people who are most negatively affected. When we think about intersectionality, it's very often the case that you think about black women, um, or trans women, right?

Yeah. And what gets erased is the intersectional nature or relevance or political. Identity of a white straight man, for example, or of a, a, a white straight woman. That identity, because it's so often conflated with a normal person mm-hmm.  as opposed to, and, and a person whose identity doesn't matter. That gets very complicated.

And so when you have to do the hard work of talking about those identities, It feels as we know, like an attack on people. That's, that's where the term white fragility comes from, you know? And so imagine being, uh, a woman at the dinner table who wants to talk to her children about whiteness, and that's not really appreciated by her spouse.

How is she also gonna talk about male or straightness, right? If she has a child, if she like. It's a very complicated, and I think the reason it gets so complicated is because these conversations are threats to identity. You know, they're threats to how people think of themselves as being good people. I don't know how many men I've talked to who you know, hate identity politics.

Without thinking about their own identities, right? Because in fact, from their perspective, which we keep hearing over and over again, they've done what everybody can do, which is work hard and provide and protect and do exactly what they were told to do, which in fact, they are doing, they are. And in fact, there are rewards that come with and those rewards do not extend to other people. That's the point.

So the diversity and inclusion conversations come, as you say, to a hard stop because they, they have to happen intimately. Yeah. You know, they, they have, they, that's, that's the only way things are gonna change.

Melissa: One of the things Amy, Nancy and I were talking about as we've been trying to get sponsorships for the conference, right?

Because as you do, like it's a conference, right? Sponsorships. Right. One of the things we realized really early on, because I'm like, this is a DEI, no-brainer. We have elevated like people with disabilities. Yeah. You know, indigenous folks, like trans women, like we've. I've never been so involved with an organization that actually is doing all of this.

Like I, I was really surprised. Yeah. Whoa. Like, this is real, right? We're having such a hard time getting money, and I realized we, we had this moment, this epiphany, Soraya, where I was like, we're elevating the other.

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Every person involved with this conference is the other. Yeah. And corporations can all day talk about how committed they are to whomever we wanna name, but when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is Right, they don't deliver. I agree. And I'm wondering if you think. If you have any ideas about how we can all leave this summit and, and really start to hold people's feet to the fire as we're moving into this new era where so much is gonna get decimated.

Soraya: I belong to many different organizations. I've set on the boards and advisory boards of many organizations dedicated to. Um, representation, diversity and inclusion in lots of different industries. And the first thing that happens, of course, is that you, you go after the easy, theoretically, money, people who you already know are predisposed.

If you belong to, uh, uh, an organization that traditionally focused on women mm-hmm. , you might go after. Women donors, right? Sure, sure. Yeah. Beautiful. To an organization that focused on black women, there were far less women donors that were black women. So, you know, your, your pool might be a little narrower.

Yep. But what what happens is that even as you say, it's, it's not just in your case that you've gone after the other, it's that even a word like Passionista. Marginalize as an organization. Mm-hmm, because of its feminized underlying, vaguely sexualized, you know, kind of con the language, the context, the biases that go into that.

Imagine if you had this kind of organization dedicated to men trailblazers, you just probably wouldn't call it Passionista. And so we end up being marginalized just by virtue of the words and identities that we're trying to support. When we do that, we end up, first of all, just going after about two to 4% of available monies that leaves the other 96 to 98.

That in terms of private money, comes from men, individual men, wealthy men. Mm-hmm and, and I'm always flummoxed. Why, why are we not asking these very outspoken, wealthy men who claim to be supporters of freedom and you know, on and on and on. I'm like, where's their money? Yes, where's their money going? I mean, I only vaguely tongue in cheek did I suggest to a friend yesterday that there should just be a Men of Conscience organization that handed money over. Here's the money.

Mm-hmm, but you know, very often money comes with strings attached. Yep. And that gets very complicated for some organizations, you know? Yeah. Um, so it kind of becomes a vicious, self-fulfilling cycle, cycle of scarcity. Mm-hmm. But we do have to find. To hold people publicly accountable. Yeah. Hold organizations accountable.

There's very little transparency. Yeah. That's a big problem. You know, so I don't, you know, I don't have a really easy solution. I would say though, that if you are a trailblazer and gender is a component of your trailblazing, be aware of the degree to which that becomes marginalizing. By default, I mean, for 10 years now, I've lobbying fighting, engage in activism around freedom of expression, online harassment, violence against women, and really and truly, you have to explain which gobsmacking to me still why that's a matter of democracy.

Yes, right. When your most vulnerable, marginalized citizens cannot speak without the threat of violence, yes, and harm and rape and lynching and horrible things, your democracy is not functioning. We just live in a society as we know where it's not until the freeze breach. Of the most powerful, who still tend to be cisgendered, straight white men, Christian. It's not until the those rights start getting scratched at that people pay attention to democracy. There's nothing new here. This is the, you know, it's the history of the nation that doesn't make it any less frustrating.

How can we come together? I think it's very important to come together. To for, you know, the, the one thing about the internet, despite all of its bad, bad aspects, is that it does enable people to come together to build fluid communities. Um, you can build, you know, chains of ad hoc communities. That are meaningful and valuable and supportive and you know, people can share moments of joy and humor and accomplishment and shared goals and visions.

And I think it's very easy, particularly since we seem to be pretending we still are not in a pandemic, but we are right. In a time like this, I think it's very easy not just to feel isolated, but also to withdraw. You know, I felt that tendency where. I think it's better to be alone than to be to, to subject other people to my particular mindset.

Right now, I know what that's like. We, we went to dinner last week and this weekend and I walked in. I saw a man and I thought, if he offers me a drink, I think I have to just, I'm just gonna say to him, well, what do you want me to have? Because, What the fuck where you're at. Yeah. That's where I am. Right.

I'm like, I can't have a conversation. I need to not have this conversation. Yeah, right. And, but I think that's a bad instinct. What we need is more connection, not disconnection, not connection with people we're angry at. I don't want to suggest that, you know, but we need to build on the relationships that bring us comfort and joy and connect.

And we need to make those connections with more and more and more people. I, I love what I, I, what I love about that is that, um, I've been saying that if we really, truly are ready to disrupt white supremacy and racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, all the things, if we are really truly there, then connecting on.

And allowing ourselves to let this crumble right is really important because I don't wanna live under a regime that is founded on the doctrine of discovery and manifest destiny. That's exactly right. Like we have been, we've been, nobody knows, frankly, what the doctrine of discovery is. Right. It is the document that our constitution is founded on, which says if you go to a piece of land from wherever you are and you, uh, whatever European Christian country, whatever European Christian country you're coming from, and you discover it, then you have free reign to kill everybody who's on it. So you can discover it. Yeah. And that is the Reader's Digest condensed version in literally half a second.

Melissa: But I don't wanna live under that and when we come together and hold each other in all of this and we connect wherever we're at, then we can start to figure out ways to move through this as it is burning around us.

Soraya: Yeah. Yeah. And I think too in, in terms of coming to terms with what all of that really means, I think that. What's very clear is that communities that have been under-resourced and PO and and punished for centuries. For centuries, right, they have been responsible for themselves. They have already been at war with the government.

They have already been punished repeatedly by the society. Yes. You know, this is not new. Honestly, what's new right now I think is the shock to white communities. Just like, just like when Trump was elected, frankly. Yeah, right. Just the shock of it. To some people that, my God, it can actually happen. And you're like, yeah, yes it can.

Yeah, sure enough it can. Cause it has, it's happened over and over and over again. And so that circle of people who are negatively affected is now bigger. And I think part of the problem is the instinct in many communities is, well, we need to do something and then they start from. Instead of stepping back and thinking this would be a really good time to educate myself, to listen, to learn, to support the leaders who've already been doing this, the communities that understand how to do this, you know, and I know this too, I will say this flat out because I have seen this over and over again.

What often happens, particularly among. You've seen this too, right? In feminist organizations, but philanthropic organizations that aren't specifically feminists. White women will replicate patriarchal power structures by default, you know, and, and they will act in ways that are corrosive. To other types of organizations and societies.

So very hierarchical, very dominant, very power over, very top down. We've seen that. We've seen that destroy organizations over and over again. So I think it's just really important in this moment. To step back and be very self-reflective. How am I contributing to this problem structurally without knowing it?

What mistakes have I made? What can I learn? How can I be quiet? How can I learn? How can I learn? Is really, I think, possibly the most important thing that can, the question people can ask right now, we all can learn.

Melissa: Soraya:, thank you so much for your time. Oh, thank you. I'm blazing a trail that I can go running down to.

Soraya: No, thank you again. Really and truly. And you know, I wanna say thank you to Nancy and Amy especially, um, and always such a delight to talk to you and to work with you in solidarity. Um, so thank you all very.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to the awards presentation with Soraya Chemaly, and thanks to Dr. Melissa Bird for the amazing interview.

To learn more about Dr. Bird, visit DrMelissaBird.com. To learn more about Soraya, visit SorayaChemaly.com and be sure to subscribe to The Passionista Project Podcast so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests. Until next time, stay well and stay passionate.

Danay Escanaverino Celebrates, Elevates and Connects People in the Latin Community

We presented Danay Escanaverino with the 2022 Passionista Persist Vanguard Award for her great work celebrating, elevating and connecting people in the Latin community. She is an award-winning Latina serial entrepreneur, a speaker and a community builder. As CEO of Boutique Digital Agency, Luna Sol Media, she connects brands to Latino consumers, delivering millions of leads and sales to her clients. A Cuban immigrant and the daughter of a political prisoner, she’s fiercely passionate about elevating the Latino community. As founder of Latina Meetup, she has introduced thousands of Latina brands to millions of consumers, and as the founder of Amigos, she has facilitated hundreds of job recruitments, grants, scholarships and other resources for Latino professionals.

 

Read more about Danay

Learn more about The Passionistas Project

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Passionistas: Hi, we're sisters Amy and Nancy Harrington. We founded The Passionistas Project to tell the stories of women who are following their passions and fighting for equality for all. The more we spoke with women for our podcast, subscription box, and the annual Power of Passionistas Summit, the more we saw a common trait in all of them — they are unstoppable. Whether they choose to use their voices to start a women-owned brand, or fight for the rights of the marginalized, we found that all Passionistas are resilient, compassionate, and persistent.

Each year we honor women who embody these qualities by presenting the Passionistas Persist Awards. This episode of the podcast is an interview with one of the 2022 recipients.

Our next award is the Passionistas Persist Vanguard Award, which honors a woman who's leading the way in the development of ideas and building communities. The award will be presented by Julie DeLucca-Collins and Dāli Rivera, who nominated this year's honoree.

Julie is the founder and CEO of Go Confidently Services and the host of the popular Casa de Confidence Podcast. Dāli is the creator of the Diversity and Anti-bullying Academy.

Julie: Hello everybody and welcome. My name is Julie DeLucca-Collins and I am here with my friend and Dāli Rivera to honor our friend and colleague Danay Escanaverino. She is being honored with the 2022 Passionistas Persist Vanguard Award for her great work celebrating, elevating and connecting people in the Latin community.

Danay Escanaverino is an award-winning Latina serial entrepreneur. She's a speaker and a community builder. As CEO of boutique digital agency LunaSol Media, she connects brands to Latino consumers, delivering millions of leads and sales to her clients. A Cuban immigrant and the daughter of a political prisoner, Danay is fiercely passionate about elevating the Latino community. As founder of Latina meetup, she has introduced thousands of Latina brands to millions of consumers. And as a founder of Amigos, she has facilitated hundreds of job recruitments, grants, scholarships and other resources for Latino professionals. Danay is a board member of Latinas in Business and is a mentor for several accelerators and Latino youth programs. She's pretty amazing.

Julie: Danay congratulations and thank you again, for all of the work that you do on behalf of Latinas and women overall, you embody this award. So thank you for being here.

Danay: Thank you, Julie. And thank you Valley for this gorgeous award. And thank you to The Passionistas Project. I have to tell you that, when you do stuff that you're so passionate about, and you get recognized, it's just that much more amazing because it means that people get it, people get the impact of what you're so passionate about. And so I really I'm absolutely humbled, especially being presented by two women that I am so, so much a fan of. So yeah, I'm super thrilled. Thank you so much for this award. I'm absolutely humbled and very happy to receive it.

Julie: Thank you, you embody the award. And the one thing that you mentioned that I definitely want to ask you about is what are you passionate about?

Danay: I am passionate about Latinos, the Latino community and specifically about us being unified in supporting each other. And that's my thing. I'm an immigrant. I came from Cuba when I was a little girl. My dad was a political prisoner. And even though, since the 2016 election, where the conversation about Latinos turned really sour and it was all about how we were a drain on the economy and a drain on the immigration system, and that's not what I grew up with. I grew up in Miami, in thriving neighborhoods and businesses. We make the economy go. We've brought the economy back from the last two recessions. We lead in job creation, we lead in business creation, we lead and entrepreneurialism. I just want to continue to change how we talk about Latinos and how we support each other as a community. And so I'm super, super passionate about that. And that's kind of why I do the things I do. That's why I'm really big into community and making sure that we foster opportunities for Latinos to lead and Latinos to help each other out.

Julie: I totally understand and admire that sentiment because it's very much aligned with mine. I also grew up in Miami and I know from the Miami community and also the New York community that I have been so closely tied to, that Latinos definitely are always there to contribute always there to lend a helping hand. And we are going to raise every boat with our tide. We feel very strongly that what we have to offer is not just for us but for everyone. And I love that you're passionate about that. And you're really shedding a light into that. I loved every work that you have done in Clubhouse since I've met you. And since knowing you I knew that I needed to connect you to Nancy and Amy and the Passionistas community. Nancy and Amy are phenomenal individuals who are putting together a group of powerful women and through the summer, the Power of Passionistas really embodies the spirit of women who are making a large impact like you are in communities around you using gifts and talents. What does the power of Passionistas mean to you?

Danay: The power is in the name, right? So when you're passionate, and you're led by that passion, I think that just translates into power and it's up to you how you want to use that power. So really, it's all in the name for me. And then, I'm a big old geek, I'm a dork. Anybody who knows me knows that I love learning. I adore the fact that there's going to be an event where we all get to learn from the community from each other from the leaders in the community. I think that's huge because there's so much power in the wealth of knowledge that's being shared. I'm excited to be part of this community. And I can't thank you enough for introducing me to it.

Julie: You really embody a Passionista. You are so passionate about your community, you are passionate about lifting everyone up. And I think that this is a great opportunity for people to know that something that they feel passionate about their roots, especially in in our current world. We are we're living in a society now that tends to want to minimize the voices of women. And I so appreciate the fact that not only are you allowing to be platforms for women and minority women to be able to speak up but be awarded with grants, opportunities, and also highlighted for the amazing work that they're doing. So this is so much in alignment with being a Passionista, and I so love everything that you're doing. And I cannot be more tickled pink, because I'm a girly girl, that you are here is one of the Passionistas as well.

Dāli: And Danay, I must say before I ask my questions that you have been such an inspiring individual in my life, and as well as in many other people's lives. Every time I tell people about you, I say check her out. And they're like, oh my gosh, she's amazing. Because you do what you say you're going to do. And you always have that lens of where can I help others? What can we do together and you are a great, great mentor. And it's so nice to see Latinas like you doing that for our community. And you have also educated us so much on the power that we hold, because until I met you, I wasn't aware that we had so much economic power that we pulled out of the recession. We weren't the reason why. And I was like holy smokes. Why don't more Latinos know about this? I think that if more Latinos knew if more Latinos came to the night and heard this from her, there would definitely make a difference in how they use their purchasing power. I just wanted to add, that'd be for a question. But do you have a time where you felt that you really had to persist?

Danay: I mean, I think we all do, right? I have my struggles. I’ve had my struggles. I came over here as an immigrant. We were poor. My dad was an alcoholic — very, very toxic childhood. I was the only woman in many spaces. In my in the in the early parts of my career, I would go to trade shows with like, 10,000 people and I was like one of maybe a few women and definitely the only Latina in meetings. My gosh, I remember, the first time I went into a board meeting as a director of marketing for a company, a startup that had been acquired, and the CEO, I guess he didn't like my confidence and he actually tried to belittle me and asked me to order coffee for everybody, when really I was there to make a presentation about all of the things that we were working on. So, and stuff like that has happened consistently in my life.

But I have something that I feel like it's a superpower and that is my perspective. My perspective is, I am so lucky, I literally won the frickin’ like life lottery just for the fact that I get to live in the United States and I get to chase my dreams and my goals. And it's all on me. I get to bring people with me along for the ride, when they want to come with me, and if they're ready, and that's why I'm always trying to educate our community that we're super powerful. Change your perspective, a lot is wrong in society, a lot is wrong in the world, a lot is wrong in this country —— but a lot is right. And mostly the opportunity is right.

I have 60 something cousins and aunts and uncles still living in Cuba, who have absolutely zero future, zero opportunity. They can barely make ends meet. There are no answers. To me, there's nothing there. So that's my perspective, every time I feel like something is difficult or I have something to overcome, that perspective reminds me, okay, but you're in a position of real, real privilege because you have opportunity, and it's on you.

Dāli: I love something that you said in there that there's so much positivity, so much goodness that we can focus on. And I think that's what draws so many people to you. You make us see all of that stuff and especially when we feel like we're stuck, or that there's no options, you use that that positivity to emphasize that and remind us about that. Why is it important for women to lifted each other up?

Danay: Because if we don't do it, who's going to do it? And nothing against men, I have some amazing men in my life, that I have a lot of respect for. Heck, my best mentor was my big brother. But they navigate through life with a totally different lens. Everybody has a different lens based on so many different variables. And so you don't know what you don't know. It's like my kids. My kids don't know what it's like to be poor. My kids don't know what you know what it's like not to be able to pay for your light bill. And so I can tell them as much as I want until I'm blue in the face about what it was like growing up without anything, but they'll never know.

So that's kind of the same thing with men. Men just don't know, the challenges that women face. They can be great allies, but you don't know what you don't know. And so, because we are women, we have that in common, we understand those challenges that we face. Whether it's misogyny, whether it's, pay inequality, all of the different wonderful challenges that women face. So it's up to us to help each other out. It's up to us to elevate each other and really walk that walk with each other, because nobody else is going to do it. So it's our responsibility and we need to take that responsibility and really help each other out. And, be sisters and do our thing for each other help each other out.

Dāli: And I think that the more that we have that conversation, and see leaders like yourself, taking that on and actually taking action, a lot more people are going to follow. And that's going to just change our future. I know it won't happen overnight but I already have seen so much positivity in like women's mindset of let's help each other out. We're not competition, we're just gonna rise together.

Julie: I totally agree with what Dāli is saying and I haven't known you as long as dally has. Since the inception of Clubhouse, when I came in, you were immediately a person that I felt like, oh, I found my people. You are definitely providing opportunities for people to be educated, inspired. You have tangible ways in which, as community members we can connect and really lift each other up. And this is something that you're leading the way. Because a lot of people like we've talked about before, can consider a strong passionate woman competition. But I believe that we are stronger together we can go farther together. And this is what you're providing overall for the people that come in contact with you and it's amazing. I so appreciate that and you do embody this award. Nancy and Amy are definitely so correct to be able to honor you for the work that you're doing.

Danay: I thank you for that. Again, it's very humbling. I really don't know how to take it other than people are noticing the work and that's what's really important to me. And so I accept it with tremendous humility and tremendous love.

Julie: I wanted to mention something that you said, because I think that many women have been in those shoes in which they walk into the boardroom for the first time and they are immediately wanted to be pushed around. And you didn't do that. And I think that we have to create environments in which women hear the story in which maybe there is a male presence that wants to belittle your efforts or your presence, and we have to teach people how to treat us. And I think you are doing that for yourself, but you're forging the way for those that are coming behind us to also know that listen, just because we come from as immigrants or we come from a diverse backgrounds doesn't make us less than. And you are teaching people to define you by the people that you support, you influence and you help. So thank you for that example, as well.

Danay: That is one of many stories that framed my life. And I'm sure so many people can relate to those types of situations. I really think that it's been the status quo for a really long time where women were the secretary, or they were supporting staff. And so I think it's just one of those things that men are not used to, especially in the boardroom, especially in the C suite or anywhere where decisions are made. And so they're just going to have to get used to it. And they're going to have to figure out how to navigate in a world where we make decisions, and we're, we're in the C suite and we're making those power plays. It's more than about time. So I love being able to share that story, even though it's embarrassing, because nobody wants to say, hey, even though I was at a certain level that I earned, my boss decided to try to embarrass me. But I think sharing stories like that really reminds everybody that nobody's alone in this. We all deal with it. So there are definitely ways to work with it and persist with it.

Julie: Well Danay, I have five nieces and the youngest is nine, and you are showing them that they belong. You are showing them that we have representation. You are creating for them a vision of what is possible for them. So I thank you for that.

Danay: Thank you.

Dāli: Now looking back at all of that you've accomplished where you are today. Did you at the age of 15 ever imagine the life that you have right now?

Danay: Yes and no. So, when I was 15, I was actually really angry. First of all teenagers, hello. And then secondly, growing up with an alcoholic father being embarrassed about that, being Latina, being an immigrant, a lot of those things made me feel like I wasn't good enough — the imposter syndrome thing and all of that stuff. On the one hand, no, I couldn't visualize it. But on the other hand, I always had something inside me, that said, prove everybody wrong. You're not going to be the statistic no matter where you came from or what you came from. I refused to be the person that people assumed I would turn into, because of my circumstances. And so yes, that part, the angry part of me that was like, no, I'm not gonna let anybody define me. There's more to this.

And I couldn't visualize it, right? Because if you don't grow up around like wealth, and you don't grow up around entrepreneurs, and you don't grow up around people doing well that looked like you, you really don't know. For me growing up in the projects, I thought that someone who had a two-bedroom, one-bath house in a working-class neighborhood was rich. That was my understanding. So that's why I say I couldn't visualize it.

But I could, in a sense that I knew I was going to do something — something of substance. I just didn't know what at that time.

Dāli: I can relate to a lot of what you said, because I think of people who are on a larger stage like say Tony Robbins and he shares the same exact I'm sure that you have shared that your conditions were not perfect, they're not ideal and you refuse to become that statistic or that negative, whatever people expected of you. And there are so many kids who choose to be what they're in, and then others who do totally the opposite thing. And it's really beautiful to see that because it just shows the power of your mindset at a young age to start making those moves gradually — not really knowing exactly where it's gonna lead to but it's not that negative experience you're in. And I always tell my kids, my 14- and 15-year-old about you are Julie, all the women that I find so inspiring that have come from conditions that are less than desirable. And I remind them, look, you have no excuse, there are ways to achieve what you want to even if you don't really understand exactly what you want, just start exploring. And like Julie said earlier, she's got nine nieces, I actually have 11 So there are so many little girls that now have you to see. And hopefully one day we'll get to see you on a huge stage nationwide because we need more Latina representation. I used to take it for granted saying that representation mattersbut there really is a lot of truth to that. It's so important. And a lot of people just laugh at that. But then you hear people talk about their success and they mentioned something like, oh, when I was this old, I saw so and so and I'd never seen somebody like me. It’s crazy that you don't know what kids are watching or listening to whatever that person might be seeing could be the person that just helps them turn their life around or routes their life to this great success.

Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington, and you're listening to The Passionistas Project Podcast.

Are you looking for the perfect holiday gift for the women in your life? Visit ThePassionistasProject.com to order our subscription box filled with products made by women-owned businesses and female artisans to inspire women to follow their passions. Get a free mystery box with a one-year subscription using the code WINTERMYSTERY.

Now here's more of our Passionistas Persist Awards ceremony.

Julie: Danay, we've talked a little bit about how you elevate people in the community. But for the people who are new to the work that you do, could you talk a little bit about the actual work that you do day in and day out to elevate the voices to elevate the community, and to really push forward initiatives that help to support the Latino community?

Danay: First, let me tell you a little bit about what I do for a living. I own a digital agency. I've been in digital marketing for over 25 years. I joke that I'm a digital dinosaur but really I am. And so I have the privilege of working with brands to connect them to multicultural consumers, mostly Latino consumers in the US and in Latin America, also in Spain, and Portugal. And so I have this point of view, that's very different. Because being that I have to deal with the data, I see just how important we are as a demographic. We represent over two trillion in GDP. Two trillion in GDP. That's a country. That's like right behind Italy, or France, I can't remember which one it is. We're like number seven, or eight or nine. But my point is, we create the GDP of a country. Not even a developing nation, like a full-on country.

When I see those numbers and I see what we represent — and I do a lot of work with market research and because we want to make sure that our clients know how important it is to work with us — I see that and it absolutely fuels me because I know most Latinos do not know this information. Again, that narrative has always been pretty damn negative. And it's just gotten worse since that election.

So I really, really wanted to make sure that number one we were educated about how important we are. And then number two, that I could find resources leveraging the clients that I work with, to really help out. And what I mean by that is when I launched Meetup, for example, in 2018, I made everything free. Everything was free. We had this multi-city tour of events where we had Latina professionals come in. I had sponsors that wanted to reach this demographic fund these events. And what did we do, we gave free headshot photography to every single woman that showed up that wanted to have a new professional headshot. We introduced Latina brands at all of these events so that they didn't have to pay to be marketed to their demographic. All of that was free. And a lot of professional development opportunities, again, all of a free because I really believe that the brands could fund that and we could have all of these resources for people that really needed them. We did a bunch of like scholarship opportunities. We give away a lot of free marketing to the community.

So when the pandemic hit in 2020, we couldn't have any in-person events anymore. So I translated that into we started having Zoom events. But it really didn't feel the same. And then Clubhouse happened. And I got onto Clubhouse in December of 2020. I can't remember anymore. So, I just got on there, and I didn't see any Latinos, but my brain was already — the synapses were sparking. And I was like, there's something here, there's something here, there's an opportunity. So I just started having these networking events every single morning. And every single morning, we get more people joining and more people joining. And the community ended up, being like 38,000 strong. And we started having events where we featured Latinos you should know which really has been a great integral part of tha. We've interviewed Latinos that are doing great things in our community, whether they're an author or a speaker. I mean, we had the president of the Girl Scouts. We had so many amazing people. I just wanted to make sure we connected them with our community so that we could support Latino initiatives. We’ve done recruitment events to get people jobs. We've done educational stuff. All of it framed around supporting our community and giving opportunities and connecting people with opportunities — like we did with the Comcast grant initiative.

There are so many things that I want to talk about but we don't have all day. Those are some of the things that we've been able to do with these communities, always keeping everything 100% free, because I really believe that the brands will support it.

Julie: As a business and life strategy coach the opportunity to present small BIPOC community with grant opportunity. And you've connected them with a major brand, which is Comcast. And you're bringing these spaces where people can come and find out, hey, how can I get money from my business? How can I grow? How can I expand what I am doing? And I think that that is so terrific. And I appreciate all of the efforts. I also love, I'm a big proponent of social media audio like Clubhouse is a great place to be able to connect with individuals. You've made some great introductions and bringing guests that are relevant. We do have these conversations where people that are Hispanic descent and LatinX are really showing the world that we matter, that we also can speak with our dollars and can bring an influence to what is happening around in our communities.

Dāli: As you were creating Latina Meetup and Amigos on Clubhouse. One of the things that I know for sure, that has made people feel accepted is that you invite them to be participants by hosting their own rooms and promoting themselves. And that is huge because so many people will only allow you to do that if you pay. And this is very powerful because the people who have started — like I remember I found you through Facebook on Latina Meetup — and then you invited me to this thing on Clubhouse’s Amigos Club. I was like, oh, I had no idea what it was. And you asked, would you like to be a moderator? And I was like, sure, why not? I had no idea that this little thing was going to become something so huge. I'm forever grateful because growing up Nicaraguan in California, I never found a place or a community of Latinos where I felt included because I was always too different. Then I found Amigos and Latina Meetup and it's like, oh my gosh, I am home. And as we've had so many rooms, I always hear that from people. They always say, oh, my gosh, I found my tribe. I found my people. And we've had people from all over the world. We have had some Syrian-Mexican people, we've had Canadian Mexicans, we've had Colombian, Puerto Ricans. And it's like, whoa, mind-blowing, because we're also learning about our own diversity within our community. And that is really beautiful.

The other thing that you always emphasize is the power of networking and collaboration. And people come into our networking rooms, and they say, hey, I just want to let you know that I got so many clients from this networking session, or we did this collaboration, and it was very successful. And I think when people hear that, and see the consistency of you always creating those opportunities in that space, people just keep coming, because they know that there's true value there. And what's really exciting now is that now that LinkedIn is doing their audio app to now we're moving over to that platform. And I think it's just going to be even bigger and greater because you have formed that essence that we are professionals trying to move up, trying to help communities and just trying to prosper,

Dāli: Danay, said something that I want to go ahead and counter she said that she is a dinosaur in the digital space, but really she is an early adopter. She speaks my language. I am the first one who's going to try to adopt new technology. I'm not sure how it works at first but I know that this is one of her strengths. The fact that she explores and is not afraid. She is not a but kind of person. She is a yes and. And that adoption of technology of resources and being inclusive and creating the inclusive spaces for everyone. And again, one of the things that I've heard her say about the community, but also about what we do, is that yes, we are the Amigos Club of the Latina Meetup, but it's not exclusive to we are open to everyone and anyone who wants to be a part of the community and help to kind of link arms and go forward and move ahead and support one another in a way that we can continue to grow. That is rarely seen in many communities. A lot of communities like or I only do this and I have that. But this really speaks to me and how you embody this award of persisting no matter what the challenges are, and looking at the bright side of anything that you are doing. And making sure that you forge a way for others to have a seat at the table and be engaged in definitely benefit from all the different opportunities that come from being present.

Danay: I will say that, when you said, having a seat at the table, I feel like we're creating our own table. We really are creating our own table. And we're creating our thought leaders and it's not a lot of work. Basically, when somebody has the passion to become a thought leader, for example, Dāli amazing work in the anti-bullying, parenting space. And I'm like, why isn't she on 20 million stages, talking about this because that's her passion. And she does amazing work with it. I mean, you just have to listen to one of her podcasts to see how great she is. She deserves to be highlighted. She deserves to be a leader. She deserves for people to look at her. And the same thing with you with the coaching and the confidence and the Tiny Habit stuff, which I absolutely adore listening to you're talking about it. You should be leading you should be people that other people are looking at for information, for knowledge exchange, for learning, for mentorship. And it's about time that we have our spaces where our community does that where our community can grow into leaders and show people their strengths because it's about time and you're there. Nobody's creating you. You guys are the creation. You guys are the thought leaders. So we need to have spaces where we can really, really feature you and focus on you.

So yeah, I love that you said that about the table. I think we have our own table. It’s an amazing, beautiful table to be sitting at where it's so multicultural and so diverse and yet unify all at the same time.

Julie: When I look at the world is with the lens of my heritage, of my Hispanic heritage, I think yes, this whole table analogy is so important. Because in our countries, right, no matter how little you have, there's always a seat at the table for people you meet in the street, and come on over. I don't have a lot, but whatever rice and beans I have are yours. I love that mentality that we are inclusive and open and want to give a voice to the people who for so long, haven't had a voice. We want to rewrite the narrative of what many people believe or the view that people have when it comes to the Latino community. This is a community with buying power. This is a community highly educated, as well, with very strong roots. It’s more than just the narrative that sometimes we might be presented to in our current media or current events. It's so important that people like you, Danay, especially through your work and many years, but really creating the space as we continue to move forward. It’s super important. I so appreciate. I think that this is persistence that you have done this for so many years.

Danay: I just wanted to say one thing that because we're talking about that table analogy. I'm sure we can talk like we can riff on this forever. I know you guys have heard this, I'll say it in Spanish. And then I'll translate it which is — donde comen cuatro, comen cinco. And it's if there's a space where four can eat, five can eat. And that's a huge, huge theme across all Latino culture. So yeah, I love that you said that.

Julie: I've been the recipient of many tables that it's not a lot, but it's enough. And with a smile and a little music and a little dance, you can make a party happen. It's just the attitude, and the openness that again, you embody. One question for you. We talked a little bit about this but one of the things that you are the Founder of is the Mira.Click Program. Tell us a little bit about how you can enable bloggers and YouTubers that are Latino to monetize their traffic. Bcause I think that this is, again, another place where you are creating space for people to benefit from things that are out there already.

Danay: This is an affiliate network and an influencer network. It's called Mira.Click. And basically, if you have any type of audience, and I'm talking about the five people who read your blog, or the 10 people who listen to your podcast, or the 100 people that follow you on Instagram, wherever your audience lives, there is a way to monetize that audience. The narrative has always been, oh, you need millions of followers to really make some money. You do not. You just need the right match for your audience. And so the network, the Mira.Click Network, brings in offers from brands. And then if you are someone with an audience, which we call an affiliate or an influencer or now the new term is creator, if you have an audience, you can jump onto the network, find brands and find programs and products and services that match your audience, promote them and make a commission.

It’s not always about generating a sale. A lot of the times it's about a click. We pay for clicks, sometimes. Sometimes we'll pay for a lead. Sometimes we'll pay for a phone call. Each offer is different. Each campaign that we have is different. We have hundreds of campaigns and different types of payout models. But the most important part about it is that there is a way for you to monetize your audience as a creator, affiliate influencer, however you want to call it. But yeah, there's an opportunity to monetize.

Julie: That's terrific. And again, creating spaces and allowing people to leverage their buying power and allowing people to leverage what they're already doing to be able to move to the next level and improve. Danay, what's in the future for you.

Danay: Oh, total world domination.

Julie: The power being a Passionista for sure.

Danay: The future is my goal right now is to continue to build our community and continue to teach people how to be influencers, some people already are, they just need a little bit of help with the branding or whatever. Again, always being free. So my view is, in the next two or three years, we're going to have an army of Latino influencers that are going to be doing great, whether they want to be paid as a creator or whether they want to be a speaker. But hopefully getting them to also continue to share the message that we are important, we are powerful and we need to stick together and be unified. So that's, in a nutshell. You know, a little bit of world domination.

Dāli: Thank you so much for all the work that you do, and also for allowing us to be part of that journey. It's really special and I really feel blessed and privileged to be within your circle because. you've actually helped me grow personally and professionally. And, and I look forward to seeing the journey continue.

Julie: Danay, I also echo with Dāli said. But I also want to follow up because one is one word that you want to leave with the listeners. They're not meant necessarily a Latino or part of the community but how can they participate and be a part of the community and part of our table and also make an impact?

Danay: There is a word in Spanish that I use a lot. It's dalay, which means let's go. So for me, it's if you are passionate, if you're looking for a community, if you're looking to grow, to be mentor to mentor comm come hang out with Amigos and dalay! Lets go!

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to the Passionistas Persist Awards presentation with Danay Escanaverino. And thanks to Julie DeLucca-Collins and Dāli Rivera for the amazing interview. To learn more about Julie visit goconfidentlycoaching.com. To learn more about Dāli, visit Dālitalks.com. To learn more about Danay, visit lunasolmedia.com.

And if you're looking for the perfect holiday gift for the women in your life, visit thepassionistasproject.com to order our subscription box filled with products made by women-owned businesses and female artisans to inspire women to follow their passions. Get a free mystery box with a one-year subscription using the code WINTERMYSTERY.

And be sure to subscribe to The Passionistas Project Podcast so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests.

Until next time, stay well and stay passionate

Kim Roxie Is Bringing Love and Kindness to Makeup

Kim Roxie, founder of LAMIK Beauty, has created a clean cosmetics line for women of color, women who historically have been marketed more toxic makeup options than their counterparts. She continually breaks new ground with LAMIK, including becoming the first black-owned clean makeup brand to launch on ULTA.com. Most importantly, Kim has built a company that embraces two core cultures — to be kind to people and to be kind to the planet. Kim is building an inclusive community for women across the country and is passionate about serving that community. And she's creating the highest quality products with the purest ingredients to promote the health of her customers and her community, all while being dedicated to promoting environmental stewardship.

Learn more about LAMIK Beauty.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Passionistas: We first met Kim Roxie, founder of LAMIK Beauty, when she participated in a panel at the Power of Passionistas Summit in 2020. We were instantly drawn to her company's mission to create a clean cosmetics line for women of color, women who historically have been marketed more toxic makeup options than their counterparts since the launch of LAMIK 2.0.

In 2020, Kim has turned her own struggle with hair loss into the one, one of the most impactful beauty lines on the. And she continues to break new ground with LAMIK, including becoming the first black owned clean makeup brand to launch on Ulta.com. Most importantly, Kim has built a company that embraces two core cultures — to be kind to people and to be kind to the planet.

LAMIK supports and celebrates women in all of their glory. Kim is building an inclusive community for women across the country and is passionate about serving that community. And she's creating the highest quality products with the purest ingredients to promote the health of her customers and her community, all while being dedicated to promoting environmental stewardship.

Kim has been named one of the Houston Business Journals 40 Under 40 of the American Business Journals most influential young executives, and one of the 30 Black Stars by Face to Face Africa. The city of Houston, formally named June 23rd as Kim Roxie Day in her honor, and she received the Barack Obama Lifetime Achievement Award for community service. She is, without a doubt, a superstar, which is why it was our distinct honor to present the 2022 Passionistas Persist Nova Award to Kim Roxie.

Kim: Wow. Am I floored right now? Am I grateful? Um, the words that come to my mind are, you know, people don't have to show you appreciation. They can go along like it never happened. And, you know, I appreciate the Passionistas because they have put their passion into action. And for that, I am so grateful. Being on this journey of creating an inclusive, a very, uh, kind makeup line in a world of beauty that sometimes seems intimidating. Um, took a lot of passion and it took a lot of grit and it took a lot of belief.

Um, and so I thank. Um, you all for endowing me with this award and seeing the work that we're doing at LAMIK is once to be honored. Um, and I honor you for that. I honor you for seeing me. Um, I honor you for seeing LAMIK and what we're doing, so we're gonna continue to make makeup that is speaking to all skin tones, that's showing up for all skin tones. Uh, but more than that, we're gonna continue to be there for women in ways, uh, that others have forgotten about us. Thank you.

Passionistas: What are you most passionate about?

Kim: At this point, to be honest, what I'm most passionate about, about is, is almost like a variable that's changing right now. What I'm most passionate about is, um, Is enjoying every moment and getting others, encouraging others to do the same.

Like that's what I'm really passionate about right now is soaking in every single moment and giving others the freedom and reminding them that they have the freedom to do the same. Um, and so in beauty, I'm always in a woman's ear, right? I'm always there for her. And right now, that's my, that my, that's my most pertinent, passionate, uh, message is to enjoy every moment. Right now.

Passionistas: What inspired you to create LAMIK Beauty?

Kim: I have the inspiration for my mother, uh, who believed in me when I was 21, who helped me financially. Put her $500 to help me open up my own makeup shop when I was graduating from college. Um, but she later developed metastatic breast cancer and passed away, um, the year before my daughter was born.

And now my daughter is named in honor of my mother, Loretta. Um, but I have the, the, the passion of my mother inside of me. That's part of my inspiration. She wore makeup every single. And she trusted that the makeup she was using was okay. Um, but come to find out, as we did our research, it wasn't, And so I have that inside of me that's inspired me to create this line.

And then I also have the desire. For all women to see themselves in beauty. And so I remember going to the makeup co, uh, counter when I was in high school, senior in for prom and getting my makeup done and looking like a ghost when I left, cuz my face was so ashy and so gray. And so like a cast, uh, on my.

And I was thinking to myself, this doesn't make me feel beautiful. This doesn't make me feel good. And thinking we need, we need makeup that makes people feel good. All skin tones needs to be accepted and appreciated. Um, and so that, those are the themes, right? And when I created my first product for amic, um, it was inspired by my personal, uh, diagnosis with.

Alopecia the, um, a form of alopecia that I have that cause hair loss. And, um, my first product was inspired by that, our revelation brow duo to fill in my own eyebrows so they could frame my face. Because 75% of the framing of your face comes from your brows. Why was it important to you to build not just a company but a community of women?

Because I. You know, women will realize how powerful we are together. So there's this staggering statistics that talk about, and, and that I know, um, that 0.006% of black women raise venture capital. Um, 2% of women, uh, raise venture capital. But with crowdfunding, for instance, women actually, um, do better. Um, with the raising funds in the crowdfunding atmosphere and what does crowdfund take?

Crowdfund takes community. So I remember going to iFundWomen.com to set up a rewards based crowdfunding campaign, and I was able to raise the money that I needed to launch my website, do all the stuff that I needed to do to get ready to launch. And all of that happened because other women read our story.

Believed in our mission and said, Hey, I'm gonna put $25 behind it, $50, a hundred dollars, $250. And that's how we were able to raise the money to launch LAMIK. So I think that, you know, for me, community is everything because we get to show each other what we can do when we come together, when we band together.

Um, and everybody's input and contribution can add up to mean a lot. And now our community shows up. In so many different ways for us to be on Ulta, Ulta.com. That was because our community showed up and voted for us to win a pitch competition, and that's how we got on Ulta.com. It wasn't because I knew the buyers or anything like that.

All of this work is from the ground up. This is like, I'm just like anybody else who's watching like you. Prob people watching are probably more important than me. Like I am not a celebrity. I am not anybody important. I'm just a regular old girl from Houston that you know. Um, has gets to travel a lot of different places so I can expose myself to different things, but I, it is nobody I knew, you know, that was gonna gimme sort of this leg up.

Right. Um, all I had was my faith in God and utilizing that to say, Hey, when we come together, I seen it happen in church. I seen people raise money at church to, to pay, you know, one of the ladies light bills or something like that. You know, I've seen people come together, do stuff and that's why I saw it and I, and I sort of mimicked it in crowdfunding. So that's why I believe in community.

Passionistas: Why have you decided that kindness is a cornerstone of your business?

Kim: I remember someone asking me what LAMIK stood for, Nancy. And um, I was originally, I'll tell you, LAMIK actually was my name spelled backwards and the LA from my middle name. Um, and. But I never had told anybody that.

That's just something. That's how I created the name and that's what I had. But when someone asked me what LAMIK stood for in that moment, I said it out. I was like, and it was the first time anybody ever asked me what LAMIK stood for. And I said, Love And Makeup In Kindness. And so the first time somebody asked me what LAMIK me stood for, I could not say Kim's about backwards like that didn't even come out.

All the work I did to put into creating le me, I was doing it beyond myself. Like it. If it was for me, I would've not done it. Like I would've stopped. Like, once the challenge comes up, I would've been like, Mm, I'm good. Let me go do something else. But it wasn't about me and it's not about me. And so in that moment when someone asked me, What does LAMIK stand for?

I said, Love And Makeup In Kindness. And I said, love and kindness is your true makeup because beauty is revealed and not applied. I think that for, you know, for me, growing up, makeup and all of that was associated with people. You had all these different stereotypes and connotations towards makeup. I didn't identify with some of those.

I didn't feel like I was just this pretty girl wearing makeup. Then I didn't feel like, you know, I needed to, I didn't feel like, Oh, I wanna just cover up and I wanna put on makeup. I didn't feel like I was fitting in those, these boxes that people had put. And I was like, my love and my kindness the way I am, the love I have for life and for people and for myself and for others, and the kindness that I show.

That's what makes you beautiful, that makes you walk away from a person and says, Man, that's a beautiful. Right after you talk to a person or after a person does a kind act, you're like, that is a beautiful person. Right? And so I think that the beauty that is revealed is the beauty that's lasting.

Passionistas: Tell us about a time that you have persisted in your life and how you got through that.

Kim: I had my makeup shop, um, that I ran from 2004 to 2018. And, um, closing that makeup shop in 2018 for me was almost like how people feel when they like leave their corporate job. Because I was so used to opening up that store every day, working inside of that store, having my staff there, like was so used to that life that when I closed it and I, and I initiated the clothes because I had this vision of a building, a makeup line for 2020.

And, um, when I closed it, I was like, okay, excited, you know, I got this vision, you know, I'm gonna revamp, I'm gonna, you know, really concentrate on the products. I'm gonna launch LAMIK, you know, the product line, you know, all this. I had this like vision, but about three, you know, I, I joined an accelerator the month after I closed my store, April of 2018.

In, in Austin, Texas, when I first got in there, I was thinking to myself, Oh my God, this is not what I thought I was going to. What was go it was gonna be, I thought it was just gonna be like, Oh, just, just come up with some cute packaging. Pick out some colors, some branding, launch a brand, you know, And that's not what it was.

I got tore down to the bare bones. I got tore down almost to just like the foundation, you know how the people say like, you can, like, you know, you tear everything down, but keep the foundation and we're gonna build back up. That's how I felt. I felt like I got torn down to the foundation and, um, it was like, No, you gotta, you gotta really think through this.

And so, um, 2018, 2019, I. I had to be persistent to get through those times. You have to imagine. All I knew was having that store, having it open, and I'm trying to figure out e-commerce and I was used to brick and mortar. This is when I had to persist. I had to persist in learning. A lot of us think about persist, persisting in working.

Right. We think about just stay persistent in the work. What about when there's no work, it's only for you to learn. What about when you're in a learning season? And for someone who's used to, you know, having a, uh, cash register full when they get done at the end of the night and all of that, right? But you're in a season of just learning and it's like you have to be persistent in.

Wow. That was a season. So when 2020 came and we were ready to launch for March, 2020, that was our date. The pandemic happened, everything. But for me, everything closed. What I did in 2018 happened for everybody in 2020. Brick and mortar closed. Everybody closed. But I was opening up, and to be honest, it was the right type of, um, attention for e-commerce business to launch in. And so it gave me the opportunity and it, and it gave me a spotlight opportunity to come through with exactly what I had. And if I wouldn't have taken that time to get ready for 2020, I wouldn't have been ready. I would've still had a brick and mortar.

I would've been reactive, I would've been reacting and responding to what's happening versus p. Putting in the market what needed to be there for that time. And that's what I came in and did.

Passionistas: What does the term Power of Passionistas mean to you?

Kim: When you think of passion, um, you think of being relentless. Um, you think of being unwavering. Uh, you think of being crazy you think of being, um, you know, um, even to a certain extent, misunderstood. And, uh, and, and sometimes it's not that you are doing something wrong, but it is other people's understanding. They're missing it. They're missing it. Right. And they're under stating what you're doing.

And so, uh, but then at some point they, they, they rise up to the occasion to understand what you're. At some point, at some time, at some juncture. Um, and you have to be persistent enough to keep going until people get there, right? So when I think about the power of passions, I think about this grid of power of, of people, of human beings, of women.

Are so passionate, so relentless, so crazy, so, so misunderstood that they would continue to go beyond and be like a power grid for others to plug into. That need another moment that they need it. And so what you all are doing, what you're standing up, this power grid that you have that others like myself, are able to plug into along our journey to give us the charge, to give us the battery life, to get through this journey of entrepreneurship and life and professionalism that it takes. So, you know, you all just power grid.

Passionistas: What's your dream for women?

Kim: To know that we are, we are feeling a blank after that. Okay. We are the, the, the, the salt of the earth. Okay? We are, we are. The divine beings at birth life, right? Like we are. I just want women to know that we are what we've been waiting for.

We are the answer I want. I want women really to fill in that blank at the end. I do believe in, in in self-advocacy, and I, uh, uh, And that's the reason why I answered that question towards my daughter. Cause I already know the promise that my daughter has on her lifestyle. I notice she is. And when I think about women, I know that we are, you know, and you know, for women it is a weak situation.

You know, I think, you know, it is about us banding together. Um, that's why I love the power grid of the power passions. Power the passions. But I think that it's, it's just that we, and that we are, and we get to fill in the blank blank. We are a chemist. We are, you know, Um, uh, owners of trash companies, we are, you know, beauty pioneers.

We are, you know, we are that fill in the blank. And I think that that's what I want women to know. It is time for us to just show up and define, uh, what womanhood looks like, um, and know that we are.

 

Miry’s List Helps Families Resettle in America

Miry Whitehill is the founder of Miry's List, a non-profit that helps families resettling in America as refugees get the support they need to start over by connecting them with their new American neighbors.

As Executive Director, Miry had the opportunity to learn about refugee resettlement through the eyes of the family she works with. She's spoken at universities, companies of all sizes, schools and nonprofit organizations, helping people learn about how the refugee resettlement system in America works, how it feels for families and how they can help.

Learn more about Miry's List.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Passionistas: Hi, and welcome to the Passionista Project Podcast where we talk with women who are following their passions to inspire you to do the same. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington, and today we're talking with Miry Whitehill, the founder of Miry's List, a non-profit that helps families resettling in America as refugees get the support they need to start over by connecting them with their new American neighbor.

As Executive Director, Miry had the opportunity to learn about refugee resettlement through the eyes of the family she works with. She's spoken at universities, companies of all sizes, schools and nonprofit organizations, helping people learn about how the refugee resettlement system in America works, how it feels for families, and how they can help.

Please welcome to the show, Miry Whitehill.

Miry: Thank you so much for having me.

Passionistas: What's the one thing you're most passionate about?

Miry: Well, my children, I am just, I just love them so much. I have two uh, sons. They are six and nine, and I just love being their mom. It's actually very connected to the thing that I'm second most passionate about, which is helping people, and I love to do that with my kids, and that's kind of where I will be happiest is getting to do those things.

Passionistas: So how does your love for your kids fuel that and, what inspired you to start Miry's List?

Miry: So my youngest, his name is Savo. He's six years old now. When Miry's List began, he was just five months old. And, um, I tell him that he was the one that started the whole organization and he loves to tell other people that, that he was the whole beginning of it.

Because the very first family that I was introduced to, um, it was, uh, by my neighbor Suzanne. She had met a family who had just moved to LA as refugees from Syria. She had met them through her. And she thought to introduce us because they had also a five month old baby boy. And so she called me and she said, Hey, I just met this family.

They have a baby who's just about the same age as Savo and they just moved here. They need some supplies. Do you have a baby bouncer chair that we could give to them? And that's really how it all began. And from the very first visit with the very first family and in the months that followed that, I got to know them better and got to learn more about their.

My kids were with me, and in those first couple of years they were with me for all of those visits with the families. And fast forward six years, this has been an extraordinary journey for all of us. My kids have friends from all over the world. They're bilingual themselves. They speak English and Hebrew, but they also are able to understand like how many languages are spoken in Afghanistan and they are.

Aware of so many things that they wouldn't have been aware of had they not had the experience of getting to meet all of these people through Miry's List. And the same goes for me. I have now thousands of friends who have come from all over the world and it's been an extraordinary experience, really eye opening.

And, and for me it's like, it's the most fun, like when I. Meeting new people. For me, it's like I get to be on an adventure. That's how it feels for me when I meet a new person. So talk about like passion. This is for me, it's like this work is the Venn diagram of my passion, but like coming into a circle,

Passionistas: Describe the mission of Miry's List and how you support these refugee families.

Miry: The mission of Miry's List is to improve the experience of families who are resettling in the United States as. And the way we go about that is through the lens of what would we need if we were new somewhere? And when we say what, we're not only referring to things, we're also talking about more emotional, more intangible things as well.

And then also programming and support and education. And so Miry's List is a 12 month partnership with a family who's. And we will take them through the three pillars of our program, which are survive, hive, and thrive. And based on where they are in those three pillars, we're going to offer them programming that's specifically customized for the challenges that a new arrival family might face in that phase of their resettlement.

So for example, many Afghan families, right? Are, um, coming out of living in motels for a very long time. Back in August, there was a major evacuation of allies and families, um, living in Afghanistan. Many of those families were brought and put into army bases here in the US and then were quickly moved into motels.

All over the country, there's a national housing crisis, and so I think what was expected to be a short-term visit at a motel turned into a very long term visit for many. For families that are moving from a motel where they were with their, you know, maybe mom is with her husband and five or six kids, you know, maybe the kids haven't even been enrolled in school yet.

You know, it's hard to picture enrolling your kids in a new school when you're living in a motel and you're gonna move and you don't know when. We help with, you know, just getting that home set up. So, you know, from the very basics, how many pillows do you need? How many blankets do you need, how many bunkbed frames do you need?

Try to fit beds for eight people in a one or two bedroom apartment. You know, you gotta be pretty strategic about it. And there's some amazing things out there. But, but really it comes, it comes down to, you know, no matter where a family is in that 12 months, it comes down to just asking what do you need?

Passionistas: Get more, a little more into detail on the three pillars, the survive, hive and thrive.

Miry: Survive, hive and thrive is some is a framework that we developed basically giving a name to a thing that was already happening. It was something that we saw that when families were arriving, they were often coming at what we identified as survival mode, which means they have, for an extended period of time, been separated from the ability to make decisions for the.

Survival mode is not a choice. This is not a consensual thing for many families. This is not something where a family decides one day, Okay, we're gonna be refugees now and we're gonna begin this refugee journey. That is not how this goes down. Often when families are leaving, they are expecting to come back home within a couple of weeks or months when things settle down.

So the packing of the bags is not intended to be a long term trip and. For families, for example, coming from Syria, often they would walk by foot to a neighboring country like Jordan in that neighboring country. They are living as, as silos, often without rights, without the ability to work, um, and roll their children in school.

Applying for resettlement in the United States is a gamble. It is literally, I think we looked at the numbers a couple of years ago, but it was like 0.01. Of the people who need a safe haven after fleeing violence and persecution are actually making it to the US to resettle his refugees. So once a family goes through all of that, it's likely that they're gonna get here and they're gonna be exhausted, both emotionally and physically.

And so that first pillar of the program is all about giving families what they need to rest and feel safe. So it could be, does everyone in your family have beds to sleep? Okay. You're sleeping on the floor. Well, it's probably gonna be hard to like talk to this person about enrolling in community college next month and learning a new.

If their back hurts. And so that's kind of how we are able to ensure that when we are providing these resources to families and we're asking them what what they need, we're able to prioritize it based on the urgency. Families with little kids often need a lot of things for kids. School supplies maybe help to enroll the kids in school.

There's families that have immediate health concerns when they get here that they are just needing to see doctors. Parents come here, they're expecting babies and they haven't seen OB GYNs in many months. And so that's kind of the most important thing up front is for families to know that their, um, safety, their comfort is prioritized by the people that work at Miry's List and are volunteers.

Once a family moves into the second stage, which is hive, kind of imagine like surrounding at family with the people and the things and the programming that they need. And so we're gonna work with them to create a wish. That's going to be an extensive list. It could be 30, 40, 50 items of things that they really need to get that home set up to be functional for everyone in the family.

And it could include things that aren't even used in the home, like bikes. Somebody who doesn't have a car and is not familiar with public transportation. A bike might be a really critical thing for helping them learn about their new city and to get to know their new city. And then that thrive phase, which is the third.

We are hoping that that's where all of our families end up. And typically what that looks like is that everyone in the family who's school age is enrolled in school. Everyone in the family who is able to work is working and is learning English, and people generally report having a sense of wellbeing and a sense of a community support system that they are able to call.

So, you know, when we say, do you feel like you have a community support system, really what we're asking is, do you know anyone outside your family? Like who can you call? And when we look at the numbers, the difference between somebody having a support system and not after 12 months, it could be three or four people.

I mean, it could even be one, like just remember like a time in your life that you were new, some. And there was somebody who had, you know, the wherewithal to see you and, and make you feel welcome. That can be transformative. We like to offer our families abundance, and so you know, what we're, what we're striving for is 11 people that at the end of the 12 months, each family will have 11 individual people that they know who are not in their. Who they can call on and vent about their family too. No, just kidding. But we all gotta do it, you know, so.

Passionistas: Tell us a little bit more about this Miry's List community. Who are these people that are working with you and how do you connect them with the families who are resettling?

Miry: So, our community, we, we just call them the hive. This is all of the people that are involved in supporting Miry's List, whether. Volunteering their time, um, coming to our events, working directly with the families, coming to one of our welcome workshops and packing supply kits for families is a really fun way for people of all ages to get involved.

Also, donating money, and that could be something like $10 a month. Like you would be amazed if you would see our reports. I'm just like blown away to see what's possible when a lot of people are giving five and $10. It means we can plan because a monthly donation is something that we can plan around.

And then also one time, um, donations from individual people. I think there was over 10,000 individual people who gave to Miry's List last year, which is mind blowing cuz we've only been around for six years. So the way that we connect. People in our hive with our families is by, first of all, asking them what are you passionate about?

And somebody who really wants to tutor a resettling high school or in English, we have a program for that. It's called Sauna. It's named for someone, a young girl named so who came into our program in 2017. The program name stands for Supporting American Newcomers at Home, and it's a virtual learning program.

We have volunteers that are working with families to help them get jobs to help them figure out how to get a driver's license in their city. We're also working with families in 22 states nationally, and so it is quite a big endeavor of really, really nice people who are being really proactive about wanting to get involved with the families in their community.

And there's only 18 people on staff at Miry's List and. When you look at the numbers, you know, we enrolled our 940th family in our program this week. That's thousands of people at this point. You know, it's, it's, it's really, it's grown a lot and we're very, very lucky to be able to support 32 new families each month.

You know, looking forward, I think we're going to be doing even more to connect American people directly with their resettling neighbors. It. So beneficial and fulfilling and fun on both sides. And you know, that feeling of an adventure, you know, some might feel it as social awkwardness, some might feel it as, I don't feel like myself in this environment because this person doesn't speak the same native language as me.

And I feel just, it feels awkward and like that's okay. Like that's to be expected. And if you've ever tried to have a conversation with somebody who doesn't share the same first language, That's okay. It's supposed to be there. But remember this, if you are having a conversation with somebody who is new here and they don't speak English fully yet, and you are working with them and being patient with them to understand what they're saying, that awkwardness that you feel, you are sharing in the awkwardness that they probably feel all the time. And that is a tremendous gift and, and a memorable one as.

Passionistas: So how do thousands of people are coming into the country? How do you figure out who those 32 people are each month that are gonna be participating?

Miry: We have a process for that, that is through our website. And, um, the majority of people who are enrolled in Miry's List hear about us through a friend or family who's in, um, in the program. So it's a lot of word of mouth. We also talk with lots of people who work in the refugee resettlement sector, so case workers who are working at government resettlement agencies. Sometimes they're referred to Miry's List by their case worker, but typically it's by a cousin or an aunt or an uncle or a sister in the program.

Our application is available online. It's in English, Arabic, Farsi, Ukrainian, Russian. We're expanding to have it available in even more languages. Families apply on the first of the month. Our application will, um, go online at 9:00 AM pacific time, and it will stay open until we are at max enrollment for the month.

So that's 32 families. So what that means is that 32 families have applied uploaded documentation to prove the refugee status and arrival. And we have notified them that they've been accepted into the program since August, 2021. The application has filled within three hours each month, and so during those three hours, we're actually receiving hundreds of applications.

And so to make this feel like we're not doing enough, 32 is actually a really big number for us. A couple of years ago, we were enrolling 12 families each month, and we went from 12 to 25, and now we're at 32. And we hope to be at 50 families a month within the next six to 12 months. But for us, you know, we have to grow at the rate that is doable for the size of our team and the size of our community.

And you know, the worst case scenario for us would be to enroll too many families and then not be able to respond to. However, we know that we are in no way able to keep up with demand. So as far as looking into the future, there needs to be more Miry's list in the future. We know that families need this community support.

It is not instead of what's available to refugees through the government, it is in addition to and to put yourself into the shoes of somebody. Is new here. Might have young kids or maybe an elder parent to care for, maybe they speak English, but the other members of their family don't yet. So they're really worried about, you know, their kids succeeding in school.

You know, we have straight A students who are coming from Afghanistan and then their parents are worried, like, are they gonna be able to excel in another language? And by the way, spoiler alert, the answer is like, yes. Over and over again, our kids are succeeding and they are achieving. They get the certificate.

They are passionate about what they are learning in their schools and make, and the friends that they are making and the teachers that are giving them the attention that's needed. It is so hard to learn a new language at any age, but I think it's really impressive. You know, when I, when I see these success stories, when, when our proud parents are messaging us pictures of their kids', um, in incredible projects and work and, and.

You know, this is, this is what it's all about. You know, getting people to a point where they can just do things that are age appropriate and, you know, for a parent to go from, you know, in six months to go from, Do we need to flee our home because it is not safe for us to live here, to check out this book report?

You won't believe it. They read a whole chapter book in. I mean, that's important. We hope to be able to provide this kind of community support and this cheerleading for as many families as possible, but we're not doing it alone. There are community-based organizations all over the country that are working with resettling families and their communities in addition like us, in addition to what's provided by the government.

And those are the organizations that I feel really, really need the support. Although, you know the agencies that are working on behalf of the go. They are, you know, they're underfunded, they're understaffed as well, but we are the ones that are knocking on the doors and, and really, and really talking to the families about their needs.

Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington, and you are listening to our interview with Miry Whitehill. To learn more about how you can support her mission to assist families resettling in the United States as refugees and contribute to her Friendsgiving with Miry's List. Crown Funding campaign, visit miryslist.org.

And if you're looking for the perfect holiday gift for the women in your life, visit thepassionistasproject.com to order our subscription box filled with products made by women owned businesses and female artisans. To inspire women to follow their passions, get a free mystery box with a one-year subscription using the code WINTERMYSTERY.

Now here's more of our interview with Miry.

What impact do global events like the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Ukraine war, what impact do they have on Miry's List?

Miry: That's a great question. I mean, in the last six years, we have seen, I would say at least three to five refugee crises happen, and, and I'm including Covid in that because Covid impacted vulnerable community.

More than the average person, although everyone was obviously impacted by COVID and still is to a to a degree. In August when Kabul fell and the evacuation of Afghan allies began, we saw a tremendous wave of support. Meaning we had more people filling out our volunteer form on our website. We had more people paying attention to our, our newsletters and our, our calls for help.

Also, the need increased dramatically, and so we raised an extra $250,000 at the end of the year in, in 2021. But we spent an extra $300,000 buying beds and mattresses and pillows and plates and forks and knives and spoons for these families that were pretty much dumped in empty apartments. You know, now we are seeing Ukrainians arrive through the resettlement system and the situation for them is also very difficult.

And it, and it is different, but it is also very difficult and. We are, you know, doing what we can to make sure that we have, that we provide access to support to as many people who need it as possible. So for us, it's looking at, okay, what languages are our documents in? Are people gonna know how to find us if they find us?

Do they have support to enroll? Is it just as easy for somebody from Ukraine to apply and successfully get into our program as someone from Syria or Afghani? And so that means asking, doing more calls for help, asking people who speak more languages to get involved and be on our support teams. We now have an admissions committee.

It's all volunteers. They speak something like 10 or 12 languages amongst the committee, and they have a hotline. And a family could call them and get support in any of those languages to apply for our program. And that's something that we didn't have make available until the last few months when we realized that this was something that not only was difficult for our families, but was very burdensome on our team.

Cause we have, you know, like I said, there's 18 people working at Miry's List. All 18 of us are working directly with families, including myself and. To be able to make sure that the families who are not in the door, but right outside the door, that they are able to access programming. You know, that's its own beast, and I think that that's what we have to do more of, kind of regardless of what's happening in the world for refugees, we know that there is a ongoing need for community based support for newcomers, and we wanna be.

We didn't, we didn't see this last Ukraine refugee crisis coming. But between the time that we heard about it happening and then the time that Ukrainian families started to arrive here for resettlement, either through the system or by presenting themselves for humanitarian and parole status at at the border, you know, we had time to prepare ourselves by, you know, getting those resources translated by bringing on more.

And that's kind of what it looks like. And we're not a licensed resettlement agency. There's literally nothing that Miry's List can do to make it more likely that the US government will approve more refugees to come to these. This country, we don't work with the government. We don't take money from the government.

We don't apply for government grants. We are here for the families who have arrived and so, Maybe you've heard about, um, the Biden administration increasing the, uh, refugee cap. They approved a hundred thousand. Ukrainians would be resettled here as refugees. Those are things that we pay attention to, but those numbers are often the ceiling, so it's a up to.

And so even if we have an increase of the refugee cap, Keep in mind that that isn't up to, So when the families arrive, that is when we are paying attention, not when a government agency makes an announcement that is all over the news and it's in the New York Times about, Oh, it's so great that there's this presidential executive order, but what does that look like for families? Okay.

Are are, is this gonna be a hundred thousand people that are gonna be stashed in motels for six months until nice people figure it out and invite them to stay in their guest houses? Like what else is the government doing outside of this? Honestly, it's a very broken system and I'm curious now, I mean, I, I, I've always been curious about this, but I'm extremely curious right now.

Historically, Miry's List has supported families who are from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, maybe five or six other countries, but most of them are in that region. This is our first time having families from Europe in our program. I'm wondering why are there challenges so different? You know, and this is just based on the, you know, I think we're now working.

Somewhere between 10 and 12 Ukrainian families. I'm trying to learn as much about what their experience has been as possible, because I wanna understand how the government is handling this, and also I wanna know how we can jump in to fill those gaps. So this is kind of something that's unfolding. While we're having this conversation.

So I guess it's like, thank you so much for prioritizing this. Um, and like, and just inviting me to talk about this today. What are those different challenges? How are the Ukrainian families challenges different from the other countries that you've experienced? So far, we have not seen the same process when Afghan families were evacuated, um, beginning in August.

And, and by the way, Afghan families can continue to arrive. Most of them, as I mentioned, started out in army bases. So we had hundreds and thousands of people in army bases just kind of continuing their refugee experience here in the US for. We don't have army bases full of Ukrainian families. I just don't understand that.

Why is their experience so different? This is the same system. It's, it's the state department's refugee admissions program. So why is, What is the difference? It's upsetting also. It's like not their fault. And like we have to remember that no matter what we learn, you know, like what we're talking about right now is something that's like deep seated systemic racism.

That's what we're talking about. You know, there's a lot of really, really difficult things that I have learned about that, about how the system works for refugees. And it started back in 2016 when I met that first family, you know, just visiting them in their home, looking around. I'm like, Why don't they have a crib mattress?

They have been living in this apartment for three weeks and we couldn't get a safe bed for the baby in that. Like the first day I met them, I brought a mattress. I just had an extra one in my garage. But I'm like, how is this a system that doesn't prioritize the safety of a child? And that was the beginning of me learning about this, this system.

Um, I also learned a lot about the financial burden of resettling, which means that it costs a lot of, For families to come here through the refugee admissions program, and also they often have to take on debt to do so. That debt is held by the resettlement agency or the government. So, you know, imagine like inviting someone over for dinner and then giving them the bill, except a dinner is what, $30 a flight, which by the way, is a one-way flight for them.

This is on average incurring debt of $1,100 per person, and that's just based on the hundreds of families that we surveyed about their, their, um, refugee travel, loan debt. What were they thinking?

Passionistas: So they bring them here, but they charge them for it?

Miry: And they start out in debt. The bills are become due six months after arrival, which is a full three months after the case worker has closed their case.

Often at six months, people are still under. What were they thinking? Here's what they were thinking. This this system was designed. Oh, well, let's find a way that refugees can build credit when they arrive so we'll, we'll have them sign a promissory note so they'll reimburse us for the cost of their flights.

I, I know it's a ridiculous thing because it doesn't build credit. It actually means that families are starting out with bad credit because the system is not supporting them to get jobs and just like everything else that's needed to be able to pay a bill on time. So there are so many difficult and really kind of icky things that I have learned about the way that this system is.

Ultimately, who is the one that is most impacted? These families? These families who did not choose this? These families who miss their home very much and the family members that they had to leave behind. And all they want is to live a normal life, which means being able to wake up in the morning, drop their kids off at school and go to work.

You know, I don't have an explanation for all of this and like I often will be in conversations. People who ask me questions about, you know, why I don't understand. They told us that we could come. Why are we still in a motel? Why can't we find an apartment? I don't know why the case workers can't get them into housing, and I know that this is a problem across the whole country.

Some places it's a little easier than others, but in Sacramento it's a ma major crisis in, in Orange County, this is affecting hundreds of people in San Diego. Same story. I have personally co-signed apartments for at least 12 Afghan families in the last six months because it is impossible to get an apartment without a co-signer without cash up front.

Some landlords are even asking families to pay a year of rent up front in cash in order to give them an apartment. So that's why families are living in motels long term. A individual person jumping in. Okay. Yeah. I'm gonna co-sign for you cuz I have a credit score and I can actually un established credit is actually worse than no credit.

I'm sorry. Un established credit is worse than bad credit because you can't even pull a credit report for somebody who has a social security number that was just processed.

Passionistas: Tell us about a, a couple of success stories that you've witness.

Miry: I sent out, uh, our newsletter every, every two weeks. We send a newsletter. It's called Hive, Around Five, and we feature five families with their photos. And we have a bio and a link to their family's wishlist so people can be part of this support hive for these five families. At the top of this week's newsletter, I had a letter from a young man named Mohamed. He comes from Afghanistan.

He's a highly skilled engineer, software engineer, and. He arrived with his wife, uh, who was several months pregnant. They originally were in an army base in Virginia. And ultimately when it was time for them to, uh, to leave the base, they kinda asked, Where do you wanna go? ? Pick a city in the, in the un. And he, um, did some Googling and he was like, All right, well for what I do and this kind of engineering that I do, I gotta be in silicon.

And so he and his wife, his pregnant wife moved to Silicon Valley and she's also, um, in the same industry as well. She's also an engineer, but they, they met working at the same company in Afghanistan, I think she was in the HR department, and he was in the engineering department. And, and that's how they met and that's their love story.

And when they came to Sacramento, we were able to link them up with a computer engineer who, um, is in Silicon Valley. Somebody who volunteers with Miry's List because he wants to help people get jobs and they were able to work on their, on his resume together. Um, he ended up securing a position, an engineering position at, that's at the same level that he was at, at his, in his position in Afghanistan.

They also had their first baby, a little girl. And she is thriving. And, and, and mom and dad are doing very well also because they are feeling that they have a community of people who care about them. And it's not only me and the other people that work at Miry's List and this nice volunteer George who has really made it his priority to make sure that he has access at, you know, to networking and professional opportunities.

But it's also just like we are updating him about all of these families that we're helping, and it brings him peace of heart to know that it's not just their family that has this, this support that we are able to do this for many, many more as well. You know, one of the things that we see when families get into that third, um, pillar of Thrive is service is a big part of it.

So we have lots of families participating as volunteers, not only as interpreters, but also doing things like donor outreach and involved in a. All kinds of ways at Miry's List and then also other organizations. We're not like, Oh, you have to volunteer at Miry's List, but encouraging people to be involved in service work in their community, it is incredibly gratifying.

Passionistas: How can people get involved and what can they do?

Miry: I'm so excited to send you all the links. We have so many great ways to get involved through our website. Not only writing welcome letters, but also getting involved as a volunteer either virtually or in person. All of those opportunities are described on our website.

Ultimately, what we want is for people to be volunteering in ways that are really meaningful to them, because that means that they will stick with us. Also, there are plenty of people that volunteer one time, and that's great too. And as far as the writing, welcome letters, that is something that can be done by all ages.

You can do it at home, you can do it in a classroom, you can do it at a birthday party. It's something that is, it can be quite fun. Um, we have a guide, so you can either write from your heart or you can use our guide or somewhere in the middle, but it will take you through five steps to write a perfect welcome letter.

We have big goals and you know, not only to be able to support more families. But also to be able to scale what we're doing and to reach more people in more resettlement communities across the us. And so in order to do that, it's not just about getting people involved by sending gifts to our families and writing letters, we also need people to support our organization, which is the infrastructure.

It means that we can hire people and train them and make sure that they have everything that they need to help the people in their c. This is something that we, we fundraise for annually in the entire month of November and into December as well. It's called Friendsgiving with Miry's List and it's a crowdfunding campaign.

We launch it on November 1st, and um, we are raising the funds needed to support families who will arrive in 2023.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to our interview with Miry Whitehill to learn more about how you can support her mission to assist families resettling in the United States as refugees and contribute to her Friendsgiving with Miry's List crowdfunding campaign, visit miryslist.org.

And if you're looking for the perfect holiday gift for the women in your life, visit ThePassionistasProject.com to order our subscription box filled with products made by women owned businesses and female artisans. To inspire women to follow their passions, get a free mystery box with a one-year subscription using the code WINTERMYSTERY.

And be sure to subscribe to the Passionistas Project Podcast so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring. Until next time, stay well and stay passionate.

Three-time Presidential Appointee Rebecca Cokley

Rebecca Cokley is a Program Officer, developing the U.S. disability rights program strategy at the Ford Foundation. Prior to joining Ford, Rebecca was the co-founder and director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress (CAP). She was responsible for organizing a campaign that resulted in an unprecedented 12 Presidential candidates developing disability policy platforms.

Prior to her work at CAP, she served as the executive director for the National Council on Disability where she worked on sexual violence on college campuses, policing reform, and the civil rights of disabled parents. A three time Presidential Appointee, Rebecca served in key policy roles at the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as a successful stint at the White House where she oversaw diversity and inclusion efforts for the Obama Administration. 

Learn more about Rebecca and the Ford Foundation.

Learn more about Cara Reedy.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Passionistas: Hi, we're sisters Amy and Nancy Harrington. We founded the Passionistas Project to tell the stories of women who are following their passions and fighting for equality for all. The more we spoke with women for our podcast, subscription box and the annual Power of Passionistas Summit, the more we saw a common trait in all of them. They are unstoppable.

Whether they chose to use their voices to start a women owned brand or fight for the rights of the marginalized, we found that all Passionistas are resilient, compassionate and persistent.

Each year, we honor women who embody these qualities by presenting the Passionistas Persist Awards. This episode of the podcast is an interview with one of the 2022 recipients.

Our final award this evening is the Passionistas Persist Humanitarian Award, which honors a woman who spends her days in pursuit of equal rights and promoting human welfare for all people. The award is being presented by Cara Reedy, a journalist, actor, director and photographer. As the director of the Disabled Journalist Association, Cara knows that the world is missing out on some of the best stories on the planet, and the journalist in her knows that can't stand.

Cara: I met Rebecca three years ago when I was interviewing her for a documentary I was working on at The Guardian. Literally, the moment we clapped eyes on each other, she screamed, "You don't get down with that LPA bullshit either." I knew we would be friends immediately.

Rebecca is a second generation activist. She's been around since she could ride on her godmother's wheelchair to, uh, protest. She was the co-founder and director of the Disability Justice Initiative at Center for American Progress, where she built out a progressive policy platform that protected the rights and services disabled people depend on for survival and also developed an innovative solutions like a proposed disability disabled worker tax credit, and increased access to capital for disability owned small businesses. She stewarded a campaign that resulted in an unprecedented 12 presidential candidates developing disability policy platforms.

She's a three-time presidential appointee. Rebecca served in key policy roles at the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as oversaw diversity and inclusion efforts for the Obama administration. I'm honored to present her with a Passionistas Persist Humanitarian Award.

Rebecca: Thank you so much, Cara. It is such a tremendous honor to accept the 2022 Passionistas Persist Humanitarian Award. 43 years ago, my parents, both people with dwarfism, recorded an interview for a local news station where they said that they hoped for a future for their child or people with dwarfism would not be jokes. Could achieve any job they desired and live a life free from discrimination. Their work as activists and advocates paved the road that led me to youth leadership programs, to the University of California, Santa Cruz, Go Banana Slugs, the White House, numerous campaigns and today at the Ford Foundation.

As the mom of three, I find myself honestly wishing the same thing for my children. 43 years later. If there was anything I learned from my mom, a single mom who became a single mom when my dad left us after she got accepted into college, there was a lesson in persistence.

Sometimes the only way out is through. And in troubling times like these, there is no one else I would rather be in the trenches with, working our way through all of this hot mess, than all of you fellow Passionistas. Thank you again for this tremendous honor.

Cara: I always like to think about like how people grew up and like I grew up in a, in a house full of black people cuz we were black, that persisted through the Civil Rights Movement, but I didn't have a full understanding of like disability as an identity, how they intersect. Just I, I was a little behind kind of in my understanding of disability and oppression. How do you feel? You being a second generation, um, activist in this space has prepared you to attack the problem, the problems of oppression of disabled people. How did your understanding of your oppression as a child lead you to this and, um, having your parents kind of lead you to.

Rebecca: My parents never hesitated to talk about either our oppression that we faced as people with the warism or the privilege that we faced. And you know, you see, I have a good trouble banner up in the background.

Um, my dad was the son of a federal judge in Selma, Alabama. I have no problem using the term, a white supremacist federal judge in Selma, Alabama. Um, who. Routinely through Freedom Writers in Jail who oversaw the travesty. That was the Reverend James Reeb trial and who, uh, filed an injunction that made it, like, made it a violation of the law for three or more African Americans to congregate in Selma and talk about voting.

And that history was never hidden from me. My parents were very open in talking about. How my dad was raised, how he was brought up, um, his parents and, and siblings perception of the world and their place in it. And you know, for my dad, yes, he was, you know, the younger son of this, this big time jackass of a judge.

But my dad was also the only little person in his family. And so, you know, wherever they went, yes, he was the judge's kid, but he was also the d. Um, and his older brother had schizophrenia. So in a, in a very southern, very patriarchal family. Both sons were disabled. And I think that was something that was never lost on my dad.

His, his brother became institutionalized when my dad was a teenager and his brother was in, was in his early twenties. Um, and so while yes, he grew up with a lot of privilege, he also grew up with a brother. You know, nobody talked about. Um, and then he was the heir, or, you know, you had the air and the spare if we're gonna, you know, use a, use a, um, a monarchy term.

Um, and the spare was a little person. And so, uh, you know, my dad. Spent a lot of time thinking about what, what his life was like. And my dad grew up with gay friends in Alabama and saw how they were treated and ended up at a little people convention where he met my mom. Who was the, the number five of nine kids, all red haired flower children.

And it was love at first sight. My dad went home to Alabama and packed up the 69 Camaro and drove her from Selma to San Francisco. Um, and they got married like six months after my mom turned 18. And, uh, my mom was also the only person with dwarfism in her family. And growing up at the bay at the height of the AIDS epidemic, my dad ran a Center for Independent Living.

My mom ran a disabled student center at a community college. . And so they were losing friends and students and clients left and right. And I remember as a kid, like my parents skipping my ice skating lesson for us to go to funerals. And I remember like being like, Why are we going to another funeral? And my parents being like, Nobody deserves to die alone.

Like, we have a responsibility to show up for people. Um, and that was always my parents' core value. And you know, we would talk about things like, I remember. When I had the realization that my dad's best friend was gay. And I remember asking my dad, Why does Uncle Don's roommate come with us whenever we go anywhere?

Like, why, why does, why does Mark come with us? And my dad was like, Well, that's his, you know, that's his roommate. And my mom was like, Come on, Billy, Like, give me a break. And my dad was like, That's his partner. They love each other. And like, I was six. And so it was like, Oh, they love each other. Ok, that's cool.

Like whatever. Um, you know, so my parents were really open in both talking about sort of the, the ways they moved about the world, but also the fact that like, that there was oppression and that we had to talk about it, and that it wasn't always like stiff upper lip or, you know, pick yourself up from the bootstraps. That there are days that it really sucks being a disabled person and like they didn't hide that. .

Cara: You also kind of touched on like grief being a really big part of being disabled. I don't say that lightly. But what I, whenever I say this or, or bring up something that's negative around disability, people are like, We knew it.

And it's like, no, not, you don't really get it. Like, that's not what we mean by that. But it's, but there is a level of grief that is involved in being disabled. Um, because the systems let you down so often. How do you navigate your grief, um, to keep moving?

Rebecca: I was in your spot and I was interviewing Senator Tammy Duckworth, um, when we launched the project that I was running at the time at the Center for American Progress.

And I asked her about it, um, as a disabled woman veteran, and she said, You know, Becca, sometimes you just have to embrace the. And I thought that phrase was so perfect, and I was like, I've never heard anyone just say it like that. And she was like, Yeah, there's days. It totally sucks. Um, and there's days that it's really rough.

And that's, that's the reality. And we don't tell the, we don't do any of us a service by not being willing to talk about that. And I think as a, you know, as a kid, growing, My parents, um, handled people staring at us very differently. My dad being a southern kid and being a judge of son, was it, you know, eternal politician would go be like, Hi, my name is Billy.

And me like, I was sitting in the corner like going like at like six and I remember the first time I did that and my mom, like the other parent, grabbed my mom and was like, Do you know that your child just flipped off my. and my mom pulled me aside and was like, Did you just flip them off? And I was like, No.

I gave them the finger. And she was like, That's what that means, . Um, and I was like, Why is it okay for them to act that way towards me in public? Like, why am I supposed to be, um, okay with it? Um, you know, it's not okay. And like if I can't act that way in public, Like, why are they allowed to act that way?

And my mom was always like, Well, you know, different people are raised differently and whatever. But like there are moments like I find even now as a parent watching my kids grow up. Um, and, you know, two, three years of a pandemic meant my kids weren't in school with their peers all of this time. They were remote learning.

And I remember my son's response the first time. He saw his best friends from, that he had been going to school with from kindergarten on after this break. And he was like, Mom, they got really tall. And I was like, Yeah, they did. And he was like, Oh. and it was a reminder for my hus, like my son is a, is a jock.

He loves sports, he's super outgoing. But I remember when I was on softball teams and I remember when it got to the point where my 100% was literally dwarfed by their 100%. And no matter how hard I tried, like I couldn't keep. And that's like, and, and going through that period of time. And I remember coming across a, a book on dwarfism, um, recently actually that had my mom's story in it.

And my mom talked about how when she was 16, my grandpa, to me woods just north of San Francisco and with the family of nine kids, nobody got alone time with parents. It just doesn't happen. And my grandfather sat in the car with my mom in the, in the Volkswagen bug that they had and told her she was never gonna get any.

And, and her talking about her morning process and like that wasn't something my parents took for me. And so, you know, there are days when it sucks. I mean, I remember there was a job I really wanted a vice president for health justice for, for a progressive women's organization. I was a finalist. And then they called me to tell me I wasn't getting the job.

And what they said, and I quote was, Our organization is not ambitious enough to hire someone. Oh, and I was like, What the, like what the hell? Like, am I, is that a compliment? Is it an insult? Like, how do I even take that? And I remember being like, Oh, okay, like you're proud that your organization has such a ba like backwards view about the world.

Um, you know, And so I think it's just, it doesn't, doesn't mean you're not proud in who you are. It actually means that you have just. Like, you know who you are.

I've spent a lot of time like investigating ableism that like ableist ideas I have and um, I feel like you end up kind of almost mourning that like period where you're like, Oh, this isn't gonna get any better.

Like, it's always gonna be like this, but that's okay cuz I know how to do. And you have people to do it with. I think, you know, growing up with community, with people with all different types of disabilities, with role models, with dwarfism, um, had such a positive impact on me because, you know, did I know when I was like a teenager that like the people that I looked up to had the same insecurities and fears and whatnot that I didn't know they were the cool teenager.

Who managed to get their parents to pay for altering acid washed jeans and let them crimp their hair like they were cool. Um, and like being able to see that was really important. Being able to, um, . I remember the first time I ever saw a porn and I was at my godmother's bridal shower and I was, I was, 15 and in a room with a whole bunch of women with a whole bunch of different types of disabilities.

There were deaf women, there were cerebral palsy, there were women who used communication boards to talk. It was like the most like pro feminist, rabel, rousing crew of like disabled, crippled women on the face of the planet. And this porn came on. And I remember just like being like, I dunno what to do with this

Ok, this is interesting. And like they thought it was the funniest thing on the face of the planet. I remember just being. This room of like real, like what does it say that this room of really, like, we're sitting here laughing at the ables doing like sex acts on TV as a room of like disabled women and just being like, this is funny.

Like, right, this is funny. Like, am I supposed to laugh at this? And I remember my mom just be like, I cannot believe I'm watching this with my 15 year old daughter. Um, you know, and, and I think it's moments like that where, You share space or, I mean, as, um, my, Patrick and I just watched almost Famous the other night and they talk about the, the currency of being collectively uncool.

Mm. And I think there's something about that, like among other disabled people or among other people from other diverse communities too. Cause I've found similar, um, similar support and comfort among like my black women friends. You know, one of my biggest frustrations is, doing media and having the article come out later that's like little person, big, whatever.

Or you know, Rebecca's personality is so big. I never noticed she was small and it's so enraging cuz it's like, so you don't understand my reality and you don't know me. From the time I wake up in a bed that's oversized and huge and made by Restoration Hardware and I have to high jump to get on it, even though I really love it.

Um, I wake up in a world that's been structured for average type people, so I have to talk to you like a child because you're acting like a child. Um, you know, And so I think that there is this, I I watch media claim to try to. But that would actually require, as, you know, like the, the labor that comes with doing the work versus being able to say, Well, let's just like slap a reality show tag on it and call it a day.

Passionistas: We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and you are listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast. Are you looking for the perfect holiday gift for the women in your life? Visit ThePassionistasProject.com to order our subscription box filled with products made by women owned businesses and female artisans to inspire women to follow their passions. Get a free mystery box with a one-year subscription using the code WINTERMYSTERY.

Now here's more of the Passionista Persist Award ceremony.

Cara: I find there's a lot of. Language around sensitivity. Like, Oh, we are going to be sensitive to, to disabled people. And I'm like, well, I don't care about your sensitivity because this is fake sensitivity. What I need you to do is do your job and investigate things. I don't care about your feelings. Which kind of brings me to my next question about you building out your the Ford Disability Program.

I, I feel like one of the things that you do the best, you do a lot of things great, but like one of the bigger, biggest things is that you're such a connector, but you not only connect dots, but you. You understand how to fund them and like it's, it's been amazing to watch just from the little bit. I know. Can you talk a little bit about how you've approached kind of building this groundbreaking sort of platform and base for so long?

Rebecca: The number one thing holding back work in the disability rights and justice base. We don't have money. And so I remember, um, when I was at the National Council on Disability, I should know even before that, I remember when I was working for President Obama and I needed to find people with disabilities that were experts in housing policy.

And I made like 30 calls and I couldn't find anybody. I was just like, Oh my God, this has, this is ridiculous. Why is there this problem? And you know, part of the problem is because people with disabilities live in a state of legalized, codified poverty. And so folks don't go to college or can't go to college, can't afford going to college, or if they go to college they can't work.

Cause if they work, they lose their health insurance. Um, and I remember just being like, what would it be like if like money wasn't the problem? Like, what could we build? And so I started years ago building this list that was originally entitled things that We Need. And it was like a cross disability rights community housing portfolio, like policy agenda.

Like what, what do we like? What are the issues? What are the problems, et cetera. Um, like what else do we need? Why do we keep, I remember saying like, why do we keep funding exoskeleton? When disabled people by the thousands die every year as a result of bed sores, like Jesus, do we need another GA exoskeleton?

And why is money going to this? And people are like, Oh, the, the averages and the ables are like, Oh, it's exoskeleton. So, yeah, but I'd rather not die of a bed. So, um, and so I just started building a list and then, uh, when I was asked to apply for the job at Ford, the list became a bit more formal and turned into cool shit.

I want the Ford Foundation to fund at the back of a notebook and in it, um, I'm very specifically laid out like, we need a place doing work on immigration reform. We need to fund work, uh, supporting. Native and indigenous folks with disabilities. Um, we need a disabled journalist organization. We need a disabled, or we need an organization of disabled doctors.

Um, you know, especially during this pandemic. And so much of the, the health reporting is just so crappy. So if we have good journalists and we have good doctors, like as a package deal, we can, we can move something forward. Um, you know, and real like, I need a disabled economist. I wanna be able to break down the numbers.

So we can actually tell the real story around disability and poverty and like, if we're talking about reparations, have we thought about how reparations would impact disabled African Americans? No, we haven't. Well, how do we make sure they don't screw African American disabled folks? Um, and can I get an economist to build out that work because I know we're really gonna need it, but no one's doing it.

Um, and that's like the most fun part of the job is sometimes just like sitting back and being like, Okay. So if we get this, this, and this, like what's the next thing? What would be really cool to do? Like who? And also at the same time being at a place like Ford, like I joke all the time that when I was at the White House, everyone took my calls.

No, like 90% of people took my calls. 100% of people take my calls when you give away money. . And I was lucky that I had friends that worked in the foundation space that were like, Enjoy it now. Cause when your time is up, nobody will answer your calls. They're like, so like, use it. Um, and so continually thinking of like, what are the spaces we need to be in and how can I use.

The privilege that I have in my role at the Ford Foundation to get our people into those spaces and make sure that they're supported in those spaces and that they can thrive in those spaces. Cause it's not just getting in the door. Cause like you can get in the door and then be surrounded by a room full of assholes.

Um, but how do we make sure it's the right door? How do we make sure whatever we're funding is set up to thrive? How do we make sure the people on the other end get it and are going to, to, to truly welcome and embrace, um, not just accept, but amplify and support disabled folks and disabled issues in that way.

And, you know, I think through my career, like having the, the sort of sense of scale of the community that I do and sort of the sense of the progressive world as it is, you know, just always continually like keeping, keeping track of who's doing cool work, Like who's doing something that's really neat.

Who's doing something that's different.. And is there a way that we can fund it? And if not us can I like connect them with another funder that can help support their work?

Cara: Your kids are third generation now activist, and they're already

Rebecca: Mouthy, obnoxious, persistent.

Cara: They're persistent, which is, they're persistent. Where do you hope to get the disability right? Civil rights space to hand off to them?

Rebecca: I want them to not have to choose whether they're black or they're disabled. Like I want them to be able to walk in a space, whether it be a disability, majority space, um, uh, African American majority space, and be welcomed and celebrated and support.

For who they are, regardless of who their mother is. And what I had to do to, to lovingly encourage those organizations to stop being butt heads and let them in. I want them in those places and thriving, you know, if they, if they wanna be. I've made a point of never running for office in LPA because my mom did that my entire life.

And I told myself I was not going to be an LPA officer because I wanted to be the parent at the pool with my kids. I wanted to know who their friends. I wanted their friends to know me. Um, and, you know, if they want to move in these spaces, I want them to feel comfortable with it. I want Kaya to be proud of the fact that Elizabeth Warren made her pinky promise to consider running for president one day that Elizabeth Warren called her to ask her about her presidential platform that you po that she had me post on Twitter, you know, and at the same time, I want ki if Kai wants to say, You know what?

I wanna be a teacher instead, or I wanna be a mom. I want those choices to be her choices and not choices she feels are imposed on her or limited by society. And I want Kendrick to feel okay for just being an average. You know, I want good jobs for, for average kids like. Light bulb turner is just not good enough. Like person who hands down stuff to their mom from the top shelf at the grocery store. No. Like he can go to college too. He can do real things.

Cara: What are you most passionate about?

Rebecca: It's hard in this moment to think about things that we're fighting for. You know, like I won't, I frankly, am struggling like a lot of people and figuring out what is it I'm passionate about in this very moment because it's hard to feel excited about stuff as a disabled person and watching society be like, Oh, we're just going back to normal. And like I was talking to somebody recently and they're like, Well, as we go back and our grantees go back to to the office, and I was like, Who's grantees? I was like, my grantees aren't going back to work.

My grantees are still afraid of going outside and dying. My grantees are mad that they have to take a, you take a bus to the pharmacy to get some damn in 90 fives, because our government didn't think enough about sticking them in the box with the task kits. I wanna get to a place where I can be like positively passionate about something I adamantly despise.

And I pour JK Rowling in all of the horrible things she says and does. But as somebody that grew up, uh, reading Harry Potter as a, a late stage adolescent slash early adult, I remember like reading the first book on the plane when I realized that they wouldn't card me as a little person on the plane.

And like drinking a Corona at like 19 on a plane was like the first Harry Potter. But I have a, I have a tattoo that says constant vigilance, um, which is Mad Eye Moody's, a constant warning throughout, um, book four. And I got that tattooed when Trump became president because I never wanted to take my eyes off of what was happening.

I knew it would be really easy to turn away and just be like, I'm just not gonna listen to that guy. He's a reality show. Blow. And we need to be in the fight. And so I dream I, I am passionate about getting to a day where I don't have to be constantly vigilant. Tell us about a time you persisted back when I was at the Center for American Progress and we were starting to talk about the 2020 election, and I remember a colleague of mine.

A dude who, um, was overseeing some parts of my work and may have contributed to giving me more aggressive migraines, which I still live with today. I'd never realized that somebody could actually give you a disability, but like this person gave me an extra disability and like I never even got to thank them for that said to me.

What are the two or three things that you would like to see presidential campaigns buy into as it relates to your people? And so at the time we were thinking, well, elimination of sub wage marriage equality for disabled folks on SSI and means tested programs, um, greater funding of special education and home and community based services, HCPs were like, Those are the four things.

And I remember sitting there and being like, Yeah, that. And I remember getting a phone call as I was walking through the airport, um, and I answered it and it was from a, a five 10 number, so it was Oakland and I answered it and it was a staffer for then Senator Kamala Harris. And they were like, Hey, so we wanna build a disability platform like it's own standalone platform.

We don't just wanna like weave stuff into. The senator is is talking about, but like we want our own standalone. Like this is where she stands on these issues. And mind you, at this point in time, there were 25 Democrats running for president. So the field was beyond full. Um, and I remember talking to them as I like walked through the airport and being like, Well we could, like, these are like the four things.

And they're like, Well, what else? And so I remember being like, Well, you know, we could look at, let's break down income inequality. Let's make sure that any income data is broken down by race and disability and race and disability together. Um, and they were like, Huh, okay, that's cool. You know, we talked about a couple other things and, and the phone, and then we hung up the phone.

Then like three days later the phone rang and it was Senator Booker's staff, and they were like, Cory wants a disability platform. And so what I realized at the time, there were a couple things. One, everyone was looking for a way to stand out. And everyone was looking for a, a piece of vote that hadn't been claimed yet.

Um, and the other part was on the cap website. Disability was right between climate and the economy. And so as they were going through pulling platform ideas from the organization, Like putting disability between climate and the economy. Alphabetically was genius because they were just like, Oh, let's call the disability people.

Hey, I guess we need to have a disability platform. Cap says we should have it. Like, let's do that. I remember like after talking to, um, to, to Senator Booker staff being like, you could get bigger than this. What if it's not just four bullet points? What if we could get every can. To have a platform. And I remember people at my office being like, Oh, that's never gonna happen.

And mind you, these were the same people that told us, Oh, this project's never gonna do anything. No one's ever gonna give you money. Like, ho hum, whatever. This is a trend. It'll go away eventually. Um, and then I remember actually like getting towards the end. And we had had, um, Pete Budha judges' platform come out and, and hiring Emily Vorge as a, as a campaign staffer.

Um, Secretary Castro, Senator Warren. Um, and at that point we were waiting on, on on, on, uh, Senator Sanders's platform. And I was on a train and my phone rang and it was a a two one oh number. And so I answered the phone and it was Secretary Castro. And I was like, hello, this is Rebecca. And he is like, hey Rebecca, it's Julian.

How are you? And I was like, Good. And he's like, look, I'm just calling to say thank. For what you did for writing that platform for us, I'm really proud of it. We're really excited and like this is massive for people with disabilities, for Texans with disabilities. He's like, this was a learning moment for me.

And we talked for about 10 minutes on the train and I hung up the phone and never in my entire life had I ever received a call from any of the candidates I had worked with. And then the next week, Senator Warren called to say thank you. And to date, they are the two political candidates, um, that I've ever called to thank me for my work.

Called me personally and just been like, Thank you. It was awesome. Like we learned. And it blew my mind because like, like I had expected we would get some things done. I expected, I was like, maybe we'll have an impact. But to see then Secretary Castro stand on the debate stage and get asked a question about education.

And him talk about, and then also specifically turn it around to turn it into a disability question to see Senator Warren take a disability question, See, you know, second now Secretary Buttigieg. Um, to see Senator Sanders talk about home and community based services after he released a 40 page plan that included everything and the kitchen sink.

God bless Bernie. And then to have to fight Biden and Biden's people who were my friends that I had worked with in the white. On putting out their disability platform and actually having to create a hashtag, hashtag access to Joe to shame them that he was the last man standing. We still didn't have a platform.

And um, finally getting that out and then being able to take a app and just being like, I'm gonna take a nap now. Like, and then somebody was like, But what about Marion Williamson and Andrew Yang? And I was like, Nope. Had nothing to do with them. B bye bye . Um, you know, and today to still have the relationship.

Secretary Castro and his team and Senator Warren and that they haven't given up. It wasn't a fluke, and if we hadn't have fought for it, we wouldn't have gotten it.

Cara: Why is it important for women to lift each other up?

Rebecca: We have a responsibility to do things better than previous generations, you know, and Richards used to say there's a special place in health for women that don't support each other, and I totally believe that that's true.

Cara: What does the Power of Passionista mean to you?

Rebecca: It's the power of the fight. It's the power of not giving up. Um, it's the power of the possible. The thinking about in this moment, feeling not excited about the world, but still not losing hope, like still having hope that we will get to a place where.

Um, we can live our fullest lives, be bring our whole selves unabashedly and proudly and excitedly to whatever table we go to. Or if we don't like a table, you know what? We pull out a chainsaw. We saw the damn thing down. Set it on fire and we have a campfire and we set a campfire that we can all bring our whole selves to.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to the awards presentation with Rebecca Cokley and thanks to Cara Reedy for the amazing interview. To learn more about Cara and the Disabled Journalist Association, follow her on social media at InfamouslyShort. To learn more about Rebecca's work as the program officer for US disability rights, visit FordFoundation.org.

And if you're looking for the perfect holiday gift for the women in your life, visit ThePassionistasProject.com to order our subscription box filled with products by women, own businesses, and female artisans. To inspire women to follow their passions, get a free mystery box with a one year subscription using the code WINTERMYSTERY.

And be sure to subscribe to the Passionistas Project Podcast so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests. Until next time, stay well and stay passionate.

SNL’s Laraine Newman on the Power of Comedy

At just 24, Laraine Newman was part of a renegade group breaking down doors for the next generation as a member of the Not Ready for Primetime Players on Saturday Night Live. But that's only one of her many accomplishments in her multi-decade career. She's appeared on hit television shows like St. Elsewhere and Friends, and worked in film with legendary directors like Guillermo del Toro. Laraine is on the board of San Francisco Sketch Fest, regularly appears in the long running award-winning Broadway show, Celebrity Autobiography and has written for Esquire, the Believer and McSweeneys. And she's one of the most prolific voice over actors in the business, lending her talents to animated classics, including Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Despicable Me and Shrek.

Follow Laraine on Twitter and Instagram.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Passionistas: The night that Saturday Night Live premiered in 1975, we slipped downstairs after our parents went to bed to watch the show with our older siblings. Our lives were changed forever. Before that moment, the comedians and actors we saw on TV were our parents contemporaries. But when the Not Ready for Primetime Players blasted through our set, we saw our sisters on the screen.

At just 24 Laraine Newman was part of a renegade group breaking down doors for the next generation. Laraine hit the SNL stage with impressive credits already on her resume. She had studied mine with Marcel Marceau in Paris, was a founding member of the legendary Los Angeles improv troupe, the Groundlings and honed her skills developing original characters.

SNL launched Laraine into rockstar status. But it's only one of her many accomplishments in her multi-decade career. She's appeared on hit television shows like St. Elsewhere and Friends, and worked in film with legendary directors like Guillermo del Toro. Laraine is on the board of San Francisco Sketch Fest, regularly appears in the long running award-winning Broadway show, Celebrity Autobiography and has written for Esquire, the Believer and McSweeneys. And she's one of the most prolific voice over actors in the business, lending her talents to animated classics, including Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Despicable Me and Shrek.

As she says in her memoir, May You Live in Interesting Times, she bore witness to and participated in many significant cultural moments in the country. And that's pretty cool. And through it all, she persisted. So it is our distinct honor to award the Passionist to Persist Icon Award to Laraine Newman.

Laraine: Thank you so much to the Passionist Project for this award. It's a privilege to be able to follow your passions in life, in my case, all things comedy, and to ultimately make a living at it. I don't take that lightly. The field I work mostly in now, animation voiceover, is very egalitarian because nobody can see you. You're anonymous.

They just know what you can do with your voice. What I've learned is that in a business like mine, you have to be good enough at what you do as to be undeniable, and that takes courage in the face of so much failure and rejection. Well, courage and what the hell else am I gonna do? I don't have any hobbies.

I continue to try and improve my skills to learn new things and see what other people are doing, New voices, points of view and style, that inspires me so much. Although I've worked hard, I suspect I've had less obstacles than the other people that are championed by this wonderful organization, the marginalized to specific.

As the mother of two LGBTQ children, I see progress. The world is more open to them than it might have been say 20 years ago, but we have a long way to go and thankfully there are entities like the Passionistas Project that are the uplifting gatekeepers, if you will. Again, thank you so much.

Passionistas: What are you most passionate about?

Laraine: Well, I'm passionate about, I guess justice, in the first place. I'm passionate about my kids. I'm passionate about my interests, which range from cooking to comedy. So I guess you could say that's a distillation of some of the things I'm passionate about.

Passionistas: You were one of the founding members of the Groundlings with your sister Tracy. So what was the atmosphere like for women in improv at the time?

Laraine: Well, we had a great director, Gary Austin, and he was, uh, you know, it was a meritocracy for sure. Whoever had something funny, that's what went up. And, um, I think that the world of comedy at that point was just at a turning point. You know, the Comedy Store had just opened, uh, there were lots of clubs along Beverly Boulevard.

There were drag clubs, there was Waylon Flowers and Madam. There was a great, uh, Australian comedian named Daphne Davis, who was also an impressionist. And, um, there was a, a openly gay comic at the Comedy Store named Falstaff Wilde. So I think, you know, even though there is a polemic about women in comedy back then, uh, I never experienced that.

Passionistas: So you went on to be part of the original cast of the Not Ready for Primetime Players on Saturday Night Live. So talk a little bit about what it felt like to be involved in creating this iconic show, and if you ever even imagined the groundwork you were laying or the doors you were opening?

Laraine: Well, it was impossible to have that kind of perspective. Uh, I just knew that all of us represented a different kind of style and tone from the disparate parts that we came from. Chicago, you know, um, Toronto, New York, um, California. And it was just, it was a great kind of stew of a whole new generation of people that represented something that you'd never seen on TV before.

We, you know, were so kind of, you know, the redheaded stepchild for NBC, wanting to just slam something into that time slot, you know, because Johnny Carson didn't want the reruns on Saturdays. So, um, we never even imagined anybody was watching us, but it was thrilling to be able to say, Hey. I wanna, uh, write a sketch about a girl who's from the valley as a stewardist.

Well, I'd have done that in the Groundings, but, you know, uh, can I do that? Yes, you can. What? Great. You know, so it was that kind of thing.

Passionistas: Do you feel like you and Gilda and Jane supported each other, leaned on each other back then? And what kind of ways did you do.

Laraine: Because we all came from an improv background, that's a very cooperative art form. So, um, naturally we supported one another. You know, uh, the high stakes competition we weren't really aware of until later. But we all knew that none of us could do what the other one could do. So it wasn't a matter of competing with each other. We were really competing with ourselves.

Passionistas: You were one of the queens of creating characters. So what's that process for you?

Laraine: The process of creating characters is, uh, my God, usually in the beginning for people, it's an amalgam of the people they grew up with, the things that they noticed. And I was such a myna bird. I mean, I just, uh, I was fascinated by dialects and there were just characters all around me that I later exemplified.

Passionistas: What's the power of comedy?

Laraine: It offers so many things. It offers, uh, the ability to frame things in a way that, uh, tells the truth without being necessarily threatening. I think George Carlin's a really, a good example of that because he distilled things and he arranged the anatomy of things like hypocrisy and corporate greed and, and, you know, organized religion.

He arranged it in such a way that people could see, you know, the uh, the flaw and the argument. And um, so I think if anything, you know, hopefully it furthers, uh, the dialogue on things.

Passionistas: You have two incredibly talented children, Spike and Hannah Einbinder. What's your dream for their future?

Laraine: They're already pretty much self-supporting, which, you know, it's like I've done my job as a parent, you know, uh, I'm so proud of them for that.

They have a great work ethic, so it's not like something that I have to worry about them having they already have it. Um, I hope that they see a world that is a lot better than the one that is around right now.

Passionistas: What advice do you give to them?

Laraine: Like they would take my advice. I've learned as a parent that, you know, unless it's solicited, it's perceived as criticism. So if they seek my advice, then, you know, always it's like, uh, continue to learn. That's all I can say.

Passionistas: Is there a moment in your journey of following your passions that you think would be most inspiring to people?

Laraine: The moment I decided to, uh, pursue voiceover, even though it was really hard world to break into. I just knew that I, I figured out that that was what I was perfectly suited to do. I wasn't as invested in being an actor or being on camera. I loved the idea of working and acting with my voice, and I. I auditioned for shows for two years and I, I got roles, but I didn't get series regular roles.

And then I studied with a guy named Charlie Adler and Chris Zimmerman. And you know, I think the willingness to continue to learn and recognize that there are certain aspects of a technique that you might need help with, being willing to do that is so important. Being willing to continue to learn is everything.

Passionistas: What does the phrase Power of Passionistas mean to you?

Laraine: Passion drives everything we do. The wish to, uh, achieve, the wish to evolve. Um, so, you know, I think helping others to recognize the process of achievement and the struggle of achievement is a really great endeavor.

 

 

Lindsay Gordon on Her New Book ”Right for You”

Lindsay Gordon is an award-winning career coach, author and speaker on a mission to help people stop doing what they think is "right" in their career and start doing what's right for them. Through her work, she assists leaders in making clear and confident decisions so they can move forward in their careers (and lives) with purpose. Lindsay loves baking complicated pastries, barbershop singing, and applying her engineering brain to helping people be DECIDED.

Learn More about Lindsay.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

 

TRANSCRIPT:

Passionistas: Hi. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington founders of The Passionistas Project. And today we're talking with fabulous Lindsay Gordon. Lindsay's an award winning career coach, author, and speaker on a mission to help people stop doing what they think is right in their career and start doing what's right for them. Through her work, she assists leaders in making clear and confident decisions so they can move forward in their careers and lives with purpose.

Lindsay loves baking complicated pastries, barbershop singing, and applying her engineering brain to helping people be decided. So please welcome Lindsay.

Lindsay: Thank you for having me. It is always a pleasure to chat with you too. So I'm just happy to be here.

Passionistas: We feel the same way about you? I remember the baking, but I, I vaguely remember the barbershop singing. Was that something you started doing in college?

Lindsay: I, it was actually way later than that. So I did musical theater growing up through high school. I mostly chose to do dance in college, but I think it was about. Gosh. I don't know if pandemic time, I feel like it was maybe five or six years ago that I was like, I wanna get back into singing. And I discovered barbershop singing and was like, where have you been? My vocal?

Passionistas: That's so cool. And what vocal range?

Lindsay: I am a baritone. So excellent. It, it seems very fitting based on my engineering background. Yeah. Cause I feel like all the baritone are like the accountants, the lawyers, the engineers, because it's such a, it's like the leftover note in the chord. That just sounds so bad if you sing it by itself.

Passionistas: That is awesome. And is your quartet all women or is it men and women?

Lindsay: It was all women. Yeah. So that was cool.

Passionistas: That's cool. And, um, and baking is something you, you would kind of consider doing it professionally and then realize, I don't think so. Right. And that's part of your whole journey that I found fascinating. Can you talk about?

Lindsay: So the title of the book is basically everything I do in my work "Right for You". So this launched last night, I still can't believe that I'm being introduced as an author, but, you know, we'll let it sink in and. Yeah. I think everything I do in my work is to help people make choices that actually feel good to them.

And oftentimes one of those questions is, do I want to do this thing as a job? Or do I want to do this thing as a hobby? And for me, I love. Baking. And I love complicated baking. I take professional baking classes for fun, but I kind of took myself through my own framework in this book. um, how would this engage the things that are most important to me. And I found that if I were doing it as a full-time thing, it actually, wasn't going to be the things that I really need to thrive in a job. So I got to say, this is my hobby and I love it. And I actually don't need to do it at this moment in my life as a career.

Passionistas: That's so cool. And we say that to people all the time, you know, it sounds so easy to say to people like, follow your passions? Right. Um, but we're like, yeah, but you don't have to do that for a job. Mm-hmm it could just mean like, have a great hobby that you like to do on the weekends or. You know, and your passions can change.

Lindsay: Yes.

Passionistas: You all the time. You don't have to decide what you wanna do when you're 18 and do that for the rest of your life.

Lindsay: Boring. Would that be…

Passionistas: no way? No way. So the people who don't know you, and, and haven't heard our episode of the podcast with you talk a little bit. Your original career and, and your professional journey that led you to become a career coach?

Lindsay: Yeah, I am on my third career so far, and I like to say that I have fallen into all of them as we, as we do with career transitions. Right. No plan over here. But I started my working life as an engineer. And that's actually why I call myself a career coach for analytically minded people, because this engineering background is quite unusual, did engineering for a little bit.

I was working in recycled water in Australia. Then I completely fell into technical support at Google and discovered that I am a human who love. Customer service. I love it. I love it. I love it. So that is a weird, delightful fact about me. and then as I was doing technical support, I. Was doing onboarding and training and all of our new hires were so stressed about their career.

And they were like, how do I talk to my manager? And what if I get stuck on this support team for forever? So I accidentally was having all these conversations about career. And, you know, people said you would be a coach. I didn't know what that meant. So I went and experimented and, and ended up doing a year and a half long program.

And then people started popping up and saying, are you taking clients? We have people to refer to you. So I ran the business on the side for a little bit, took it full time in 2016. And here we are six years later.

Passionistas: Amazing. So talk about your approach to working with your clients now.

Lindsay: Yeah. That's so much fun. I get to bring my engineering brain to a career. And what we do is we create a tailored framework of what matters to you in a couple different areas. So that you basically have a cheat sheet to say, okay, these are the things that are important to me. How does that relate to any opportunities that come my direction?

So the framework is in the book and it has four pieces. So first we look at values. What is important to you in life? And how does career fit into that? Next, we look at your fulfillment in different areas of your career. So things like results, relationships, career development, creative self-expression so that we can start to articulate what are the actual areas that I need for fulfillment.

Then we move into strengths and what I find with my clients, um, the, the strengths chapter starts with a client who said, Why did it take me until my forties to know what my strengths were and I think often, you know, people have that experience of nobody really teaches us how to discover that. We'll get you clear on strengths, the contribution you wanna make.

And then the fourth part of the framework is about environment. So what are the working conditions that you need in order to thrive? And then you've got this framework of, okay, this is me and who I am and what I need out of a career. And I'm gonna say yeses in this direction.

Passionistas: That's so cool. And one of the things I love about you. Well, I think you said like 50% of the people that you work with actually stay yeah. In their current job. You're not like encouraging everybody to just kind of like go up and try something new. You're helping them decide whether they are actually in the right place for them, which I think is really interesting.

Lindsay: Yeah. It, it has been such a fascinating finding over the six years because I mean, I like to honor. People's risk averseness because I think sometimes we say, you know, I'm risk averse with this like negative connotation because we get these messages of like, oh, well you should be taking these big leaps and just quit and do your passion.

But for most people that is not a. Thing that they really wanna be doing. It disrupts your stability. You know, if you are providing for a family or care taking for parents or whatever it is, quitting is not going to be the right thing for you necessarily. So that's always been kind of the way that I work with people, but I, yeah, I like to joke that I'm running a employee retention program because so many people come to me convinced that they need to quit.

What I find is that when you don't know what you're looking for and what's right for you, quitting is really the only option that you can see. So I help people get clear about what is actually right for them. Then they get to step back and say, oh, okay. I, I might actually choose this job. Even if it's not perfect, even if I don't choose it for the long term, but I know why it is right for me in this moment.

And yeah, as you said, over 50% of my clients do not end up quitting. So I feel like people have more chance of quitting if they don't work with me.

Passionistas: I also think people have this. Fantasy that the next thing is gonna be perfect and devoid of any issues. It's like every job has its pluses and minuses. Yeah. And. Is what you're going. Like, why are you going to where you're going and what you gonna find there. Yeah. So I think it's really great that you have them look at. Yeah. And it's sort of re reframing how you think about your current situation. Right?

Lindsay: Right cause it's always trade-offs. Right. And so if you can articulate, these are the things that are in alignment or out of alignment here and I either choose that or I don't choose that. And if I'm choosing to make a move, these are the trade-offs. I will be accepting over here. I am choosing it for these reasons. And I know that these reasons might not be the perfect alignment. So I think there's just so much calmness when we know why we are making the choice we are making.

Passionistas: Yeah. Agree. Yeah. So what's the first step somebody should take. If they're thinking about a career change?

Lindsay: Yeah, the first step I always love to have people start with is an unusual one. So it is to identify all of the pressure that you feel about your career, because if we don't identify it, then it is just long for the ride and it might even be motivating.

Your desire to make a change. So you might have family telling you that you need to do a particular thing. You may feel a lot of pressures from society of what work should mean to you or, um, where your passion and purpose should come from. And so if we can get really clear about that, sometimes even from that moment, people are like, wow, somebody else wants something different for me.

But actually for me, this might be right. I remember a phone call I had with somebody many years ago, who had no intention of working with me. He was actually very satisfied in his job, but he did a phone call with me to get people in his life, off his back, because they were telling him like, you should have a job.

That's more, this, that, and the other. And you need to go talk to a career coach to, to figure out how to make that change. And he was just like, yep. I'm actually quite happy. I know why I'm choosing it for me. Um, so thanks for this conversation, but I'm good. So I, I think really looking at why are you making that choice? Is it a true desire from you? If so, awesome. But if it's coming from somebody else, let's like set that aside so that you can be really happy where you are .

Passionistas: Is there a success story from people you've worked with that stands out to you as one of your?

Lindsay: I think the one that stands out to me at the moment is the courage it takes to not do the traditional path. So I worked with a woman who is a VP of finance at a large multinational company. And she came to me saying, You know, for a VP of finance, the next logical step is CFO, but I actually don't think I want CFO and I'm getting all this feedback and pressure and noise that well.

You should want CFO and how do we get you to CFO? And you're on the CFO track. And so throughout working together, she was able to really solidify that insight that she had in the beginning, that she was pretty sure was true, but felt a little shaky. So she really solidified that. And just seeing the courage of somebody say, you know what, I'm not.

Choose the thing that everybody thinks is the logical next step for me, she ended up staying at the company and moving to a different part of the organization and doing something she loves now. But that takes a lot of courage. And I have story after story, after story, after story, after story of that kind of courage in the book.

And, you know, really that's, what I wanted to do is share the stories of what does it really look like when people choose to do what's right for them. Yeah.

Passionistas: So tell us about writing the book. Tell us about the process, why you started it, how it went

Lindsay: Oh my gosh. This has been a wild process. And thank you for that question. I'm so excited to share, cuz I, I want more people to know that it is possible to write a book. And you can, you know, I chose to self-publish and that's been a fun adventure, but I think the more voices that we get to hear from the better. So for me, I chose to work with a program called the inspirational book writers, and they're actually based out of Australia and challenge.

This is not gonna work for everybody. I, I like to, you know, not glamorize anything about running a business or writing a book. Their challenge is to write your book in a week. And that felt really fun for me because. I had a business coach say, I think, I think you need to write your book this year. I think it's time for that.

And I said, really, are you sure? Like already, no, no. That's far in the future. So I had to be challenged and then sit with it. But once I was on board, it's really fun for me to set an ambitious challenge and what my business coach has said was. Listen, you've been writing this book in your head for the last six years, right?

Like I know you, you have your framework, you say similar things to clients. You've been writing blog posts for six years. And so I really got the courage to say like, okay, if, if I believe that it's all in here and it's also been written down and at some other places, how long is it gonna take me to put it all together?

And so I ended up doing that process in a week. And then I decided that I wanted to do the, the fast track publishing in three months. And so I think my coach challenged me on February 22nd of this year to write a book and book is now in my hands in physical copy as of yesterday, September 5th. So that's incredible.

Passionistas: That's amazing. My new hero and. And you did the, the doodles, right?

Lindsay: I did. Can you show some of the doodle? I love the doodles. So here's, here's the cover doodle and I'll show you one of my favorite ones and I don't consider myself an artist,

Passionistas: But, but they're so cute. They totally express. Like they're so perfect. Blown the way back. Yeah.

Lindsay: I, you know, I want the, the joy and the levity and the not taking myself too seriously. And the, we are not about perfection around here. Here's one of my favorites. Um, there's a lot of them are also like really sad and, you know, having a challenging time. So some of them make me feel a little bit sad. This is one of the guys, like so much pressure. So yes.

Passionistas: But I love that cuz it is such a, like, It feels at the end of the world sometimes mm-hmm it does when you're making that kind of decision. It it's just so stressful. Mm-hmm the fact that you can add levity to it

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah. It can be super lonely, super isolating, you know, why is this only happening to me? And so I like to balance, you know, really just honoring how. Much it sucks, honestly, to be unhappy in your job. I have been there. And so I, I want to give a lot of love and support for that. And I want people to know that we actually do get to have fun in this process and that we get to add levity and we get to add grace. And then at some point, people are, you know, fired up about. Now that I know my strengths and I have this framework, you know, I gotta get out there and be the contribution that I wanna be in my job or in my life. So I, I feel like the doodles kind of ease the way to the fun .

Passionistas: Oh, great. Did, did you find that during COVID things got heightened with people wanting to make a shift and how did that impact?

Lindsay: Yeah, it's been interesting. Cause I think there's been ebbs and flows that I, you know, couldn't have seen coming in the very beginning. I think there was a very clarifying moment of we only have one life and I need to think about, is this the contribution that I want to be is this job where I want to spend. However many hours of my life I am spending. And so there was just a very clear, like, I want to know more about my own contribution and where I wanna be.

So that was one of the phases. We've also gone through phases where, you know, it's been really rough and people are saying, you know what? I'm just going to stick it out where I am, do the best that I can take care of the family and manage my mental health. And a change is not right for me at the moment.

And then more recently I've had many leaders come to me saying I'm being asked to go back into the workplace X days a week, and that might not actually be right for me. Anymore. Um, I've found a lot of flexibility. I'm able to pick up my kids. Um, it really supports my health. So I think that's kind of the phase that we're in, of going back to the office really is not the right thing for some people and for others. They're excited about that. So that's been an interesting thing that I've seen.

Passionistas: Yeah. That's amazing. It's been such a crazy time for all of us.

Lindsay: Oh my goodness. Yeah. Oh my goodness.

Passionistas: But there's the word? Joy. Which is your watchful. Yeah. So why tell us about that.

Lindsay: Joy? Joy's just so important to me. I feel like it's one of my values. The other word that that occurs to me is delight. And I think that actually is what ties in the customer service. You know, I think of, of companies like Ritz, Carlton, and Zappos who are trying to really create delight in their. People and in the world and in their, in the human interactions and something about that.

I think also because it's such a hard time and career, you know, I do wanna bring the delight, the joy, and part of that, that was really edgy for me. So I like to say, if you think I just wrote this book for everyone else, you'd be wrong because I also get really challenged by. How I feel I am supposed to be as a business owner.

And especially because I work with senior leaders, I'm like, do I need to be more professional? And you know, do I, I almost didn't have a doodle on the cover until my community was like, where's, where's the doodle love you. But like, we need the fun. That is part of who you are. And so for my launch party, that was last night, I basically dialed up the joy and delight, like in the realm of business as far up as I could go.

Um, the, the one liner is that I, I, I modeled the launch party after like a PBS inspired pledge drive and we had people calling in to pledge to do what was right for them in their career. and I would change ball gowns every time we got 50 pledges, because I love dress up. I own a lot of ball gowns. That's like one of the things that's really fun for me.

And so I got to experience, you know, bringing the. Full delight of me into the business realm, which actually felt very vulnerable and needed a lot of courage. And, you know, had a, had some tears in the process, even though I know I wanted to do it, it was actually quite challenging for me. So I, I just love delight.

Passionistas: So how many gowns did you get to put on last night?

Lindsay: We got to 13.

Passionistas: Oh God. you have that many gowns?

Lindsay: I might have more than that, so.

Passionistas: Well, if we do the Emmys again, next year, we know where to go.

Lindsay: Oh my gosh. Yes.

Passionistas: But what I need to know more about this. Why do you have so many. Why do we not have so many question?

Lindsay: I think I was telling my friend the other day, for some reason. You know how sometimes you see an outfit and you're, and you say, when would I ever have the chance to wear this? And then you don't buy it. Mm-hmm, there's something that is missing in like the synapses of my brain with that message. So I, and most of my dresses are, you know, From second hand stores from thrift stores, um, from Ross dress for less.

Like, I just, I love them. And whenever I see a dress to me, it's just like, oh my gosh, like this wants to be on a stage somewhere. This wants to be in a photo shoot. Like of course I would. Own this dress and then I will find the opportunity to wear them. So I think it's, it, it kind of goes back to my musical theater background.

I love dressing up. I love photo shoots. There's something so playful about being a character. And I like to call myself an introverted ham because I do. I do feel I'm introverted. I need a lot of alone time for recharging but put me on a stage and I am a ham. So I think the dresses really support the hamminess.

Passionistas: Well costumes. I love it. I love that. And you're always ready for Halloween worst case. Yeah, go was a bachelor.

Lindsay: And if anyone, yeah. If anyone needs like a, a professional bridesmaid or like a black tie wedding attendee, I am ready at any moment.

Passionistas: the perfect extra. That's great. That is awesome. That's so awesome. Um, you know, one of the things that you talk about is that managers and business owners should be helping the employee kind of find their place in the organization. Right. So talk about that. The people who are listening, who are on the other side of it and they have employees and they wanna help them settle in or be in the right spot.

Lindsay: Yeah. I think managers are sometimes really trying to help people get into the right spot. So I want to acknowledge the managers that are really like, Hey, I can tell that you're not quite in the right spot or you're not satisfied. How can we help? Where can we put you? What do you want? And from my experience, what I see on the employee side is that people actually get very. Embarrassed and ashamed that they don't know the answer to that question.

And so it goes into the spiral of like, oh my gosh, my manager's even trying to support me. I don't know where I wanna be. Why can't I answer this question? So basically my hope is that this is a resource that a manager can say, look, I definitely wanna get you into the right place and make sure you're feeling fulfilled.

Here's the framework. Read this book, and then we can have the best conversation about the contribution that you want to make, and what's gonna enable you to thrive so that everybody wins. So I really, the, the hope for this book is that I am enabling conversations between employees and employers to have actual conversations about.

Where people fit in. And also if you discover it is not the right fit for somebody to be in your company, that's actually lose, lose for everyone. So can we have more clear and open conversations about. I realize that this might not be the right spot for me. Let's, you know, get me to the next spot. And then the, the company gets to put a person in who's really excited to be there.

So I think it's pretty edgy to be having those conversations, but I really want to connect with companies who believe that it is in their best interest and they actually want to support their employees to be in the right place for them.

Passionistas: Excellent. That's amazing. So where can people get the book?

Lindsay: Yes. So it is on Amazon and there is ebook. There is paperback. There is hard cover. If that is for you, you can go for, to write for you book. Dot com and that will take you directly to the Amazon link. And if you are seeing this now, you might actually be able to still sneak in and get the ebook for 99 cents. It is a launch price sale, and, um, Amazon is gonna be updating that soon. So if it hasn't updated, we don't know how long it takes. So jump in and get a copy. Get copies for your friends, anyone who is like really struggling in their career, anyone who is complaining to you, um, if you wanna have different conversations at the Thanksgiving table about what actually is right for you rather than, you know yep. I'm still unhappy in my job.

Passionistas: Um, and then make great holiday gifts. Not too early holiday gifts. Yes.

Lindsay: Yes. Um, and then if you wanna learn more about my work, my website is ALifeOfOptions.com.

Passionistas: So at some point, do you think you'll take another week off and write another book?

Lindsay: I have already been asked about my future books. And apparently this is something that sometimes happens. Like once you write the first book, then you're free to think about like what could come next. Interestingly, I have been asked to write my next book on adult female friendship. and how, like my viewpoint and I have frameworks for everything again, engineer.

So I have a, an interesting kind of like framework and thoughts about friendship and it kind of fits in the right for you. Right. It's like, what is right for you in career? Okay. We've written the book on that now. Maybe it's like, what is right for you in friendship and how do you build friendships that really feel fulfilling based on what you know about yourself. So stay tuned. That could be a fun.

Passionistas: Love that love that idea. Mm-hmm excellent. Wow. That sounds great. All right. Well, so anything else that you wanna talk about that we, any other fun hobbies? I mean, I'm, I'm baking with you. I'm going and buying ball gowns.

Lindsay: Yep. Definitely do the baking. Do the ball gowns. Yeah. Whenever you see something next and you're like, when would I have the opportunity to wear that? Just think of me. Get the outfit, whatever it is, and then create your own opportunity to wear it. Um, I think the, the only thing I would say is just to have a lot of kindness and grace for yourself, wherever you are in your career, know that there is so much pressure out there. It is hard to do what's right for you. And also there are a lot of systemic barriers that can get in the way of that. So, you know, racism, sexism, ageism, ableism. So we talk about that in the book and how to find your agency, but if you can give yourself more kindness and compassion, that is my hope and my gift for you.

Passionistas: You're the best. Excellent. So glad we did this.

Lindsay: So nice to see you again so much fun. Thank you so much. You two are fantastic. And I just wanna acknowledge you for all of the, the joy and passion and love that you are putting in the world. So thank you for being you.

Passionistas: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Really do. And uh, hopefully we'll see you in person soon. Yes, yes. And, um, we're gonna post the winners of the tickets in the chat so everybody can check there. And, thank you so much, Lindsay. We really appreciate you being here. Everybody go by Lindsay's book right now, before you miss the special.

Lindsay: Get it quick.

Passionistas: Thank you. Good night everyone. Thank you so much.

 

 

Kelly Mosser Helps Women Business Owners Explode Their Impact and Income

Kelly Mosser is an Aligned Success Coach and Consultant based in New York City. She supports big-hearted entrepreneurs in optimizing their businesses and doing their inner work so they can explode their impact and income while staying in radical energetic alignment. Kelly is also the host of the Top 10 podcast: “The Aligned Success Show.”

Learn more about Kelly.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

Full Transcript

The Passionistas: Hi, and welcome to the Passionistas Project Podcast, where we talk with women who are following their passions to inspire you to do the same. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington and today we're talking with Kelly Mosser, an aligned success coach and consultant based in New York city who supports big hearted entrepreneurs in optimizing their businesses and doing their inner work so they can explode their impact and income while staying in-radical, energetic, alignment. Kelly is the host of the top 10 podcast, The Aligned Success Show. So please welcome to the show, Kelly Mosser.

Kelly: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so honored to be here. You two are just both so inspiring and I'm just already lit up talking to you. So, thank you.

Passionistas: Kelly, what's the one thing that you're most passionate about?

Kelly: I am the most passionate about helping people do the inner work. Like you mentioned in my bio just now that I think is the key to so many things. And I think it's something that we aren't taught growing up. And I think a lot of us kind of realize it a little bit later on in life and if we had known 10 years, 20 years earlier, not to say things would turn out differently, but maybe we would've had a few fewer hiccups along the way.

Maybe we would've had the opportunity to make decisions that were more in alignment with who we truly are and who we truly wanna be. I think there's just so much pressure from the outside and from our parents and our friends and the people we went to high school with and society, TV, magazines, whatever Instagram now. It's wild and I think that there's a real loss of intimacy with self, and that's really what I'm so passionate about doing, cuz I think that really is the foundational building block that everything else gets built on top of. And so that's what I'm the most passionate about in the whole world.

Passionistas: So speaking of parents and friends and high school and all that stuff, what was your childhood like? And were you already building these kind of blocks when you were growing up?

Kelly: That's a really great question. My childhood was very unique. My father tragically was murdered. Sorry for, trigger warning, was murdered when I was 16 months old in my family home with my whole family home. And that obviously is a really formative experience to have as a young kid.

So I actually grew up with a lot of grief around. I grew up with people who were obviously very, you know, very sad, very angry, still, very loving and I'm so in awe by every single member of my family, but there was a lot of grief around and there was a lot of fear because if this can happen in our home, what's gonna happen outside.

So I was a very fearful child and I actually didn't know, but I grew. Basically from 16 months old, when that event happened until I was about 21, I had PTSD and I did not know it. So I was operating with a very dysregulated, nervous system, but I adapted to it because it was, it was kind of like, does a fish even realize there's swimming in water?

It's just, it's all, you know, kind of thing. I didn't realize there was a more optimal way for me to be living. I didn't realize that other people weren't terrified of everything. I didn't realize that other people weren't anxious 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So that, was obviously a huge event in my life that required years and years of healing from, and it still is really fresh and raw sometimes.

But that I would say was the catalyst for understanding how my brain works. Because when I got diagnosed with PTSD, I obviously didn't wanna live in a state of over stimulated, over tax nervous system forever. So I said, I have to figure. How to heal and I didn't choose what happened to my family, but what happens next is up to me.

So that's kind of my, my healing story. I fell in love with meditation through my PTSD diagnosis, because I was told that that was something that could help me. And it was really not helpful for a long time. It was, it actually made things, kind of quite a bit worse. And I think that is why people start and stop a lot with meditation.

We start when we feel okay. And then as soon as things start to bubble up that feel sticky and icky, we say, you know what, I'm just gonna put this away and I'm gonna turn on Netflix instead because that's less icky to sit with. It's much more comfortable to sit and watch “Bridgerton” than it is to sit with trauma of 20 years.

 

So that's what led me to meditation, which led me to all of, kind of the inner work that I do now. And the coaching that I do now is really based on intimacy with self nervous system regulation, inner peace. So that's kind of how, how all of this came to be. I do want people to know that that it's possible.

Like it's not going to be an easy journey, no matter. Happens to you. And I'm, I'm very much against this idea of like comparing traumas. I think every, every traumatic event is awful. And I think that there is, there's always a step forward for you. There's always, a next step you can take, there's always support available to you.

So that is a big part of my message as well. Like you can make it through anything, even though I wish you didn't have to I wish that nobody ever had to go through, you know, those terrible, challenging things, but we do it's life. It's kind of just the nature of what happens here on this planet earth. But yeah, we can always move forward.

Passionistas: Was there an event that made you finally decide to figure out how to, how to move past this?

Kelly: Definitely. So I grew up in suburban New Jersey, which is, you know, a relatively quiet place. All my siblings were much older, so I had a lot of quiet time, you know, growing up and I liked being alone. I was, I'm a little bit of an introvert, so I always felt like I had my space.

And then I moved to New York city after college. And I started working in the corporate world in a very sort of demanding stressful. Maybe a little bit toxic environment. And I was just, I, my anxiety was through the roof. It was just one day I felt like I can't even function, I'm just barely getting through the day.

I'm just hanging on by a thread and I have to do something about this because New York city, as it is, is overwhelming the noises that people I'm also very sensitive to energies and sounds like, I think that's all just a product of having such a heightened nervous system my whole life. That I felt very much like a shell of a human being, living in New York, working in this job.

And I realized that I was not gonna do very well if this is the life that I continued to live. So that really was the turning point for me.

Passionistas: You took a little detour. You said you were in the corporate world, but you went to Georgetown to study and got a bachelor's degree in foreign service. So tell us about that choice and why you wanted to do that and why eventually you didn't.

Kelly: Oh, another great question. Wow. You, you all just understand all my, all my juicies questions. I did go to Georgetown. I was really in love with travel and places and people and the world. And so I wanted to study foreign service because I wanted to be a journalist. I thought that was going to be, I'm a huge fan of writing.

I love communication and so that felt like the thing that I wanted to do. And then I actually got an internship in a newsroom my senior year and I was like, what am I thinking? This is the worst place for someone with a heightened, nervous system or the history of PTSD. It's like every day in here is another traumatic event.

So that didn't work out. But I'm one of those people who I get to say, I really just loved everything that I learned in college. It was amazing and so much fun. So even though my degree doesn't apply to anything that I do now, or really have ever done, except that we did have to learn an entire map of the entire world countries, cities, rivers, lakes, currencies.

So that feels like some, some interesting once in a while, I'll have a good jeopardy moment. But other than that, it's a little bit useless, but I had so much fun learning and it, it showed me that, and now I'm continuing my learning journey in a totally different direction, but it just let me be okay with.

Learning for the sake of loving the subject and loving the topic and not because I had to go on to, so I let myself just let go of the news dream. It was the worst possible thing. I also think it's interesting. It just proves that your brain wants what it knows and I, because all I had known was like, stress and that's what I was so programmed to thrive inside of that, that's I just chose the most stressful thing I could even fathom.

So I'm very glad that I did not choose to pursue that path cuz I don't think I would've. I don't think I would've handled it, but I did get into the business world. I, my first job out of college was for a major retailer working in the buying office and I had a really good time there and just life, you know, it's amazing.

You just never know where you're gonna end up. You just never know. You just can't predict it. So you make the best choice that's available to you at the time and say when the next right choice is available, I guess I'll choose that.

Passionistas: So you went on this personal journey of exploration. How did you decide to make that a business and to help others?

Kelly: It really started as just a passion as my Passionista. It was just a hobby. I was really passionate about helping people who were in kind of similar situations or who were on some sort of healing journey. Um, just supporting them through coaching or whatever it was. And I had. I started to kind of build this just side hustle, air quotes, um, because it was fun.

And I had a pretty demanding job at a startup in New York, in the wellness space. And I really loved that, but there's also sometimes this moment where you're doing something that you love and you say, I think there's something that I would love even a little bit more than what I'm doing right now. And I think it's letting a big part of my journey has been letting myself follow those little nudges, even when things are good. Definitely when things are bad. Definitely. I follow I've learned to follow my nudges when things are bad, but even when things are pretty good, I'm like, I wonder if this could be even just a little bit better.

So I started building my coaching business on the side and then I realized, wait, I actually have this. Working in strategy and operations the whole time I was in my other roles in my other career. And I realized that I also had that really, I had a lot of skills in that area, too. I had a really strong brain for strategy and operations and I thought maybe I could just combine these two things. Wouldn't that be kind of cool. So I didn't actually go full-time in my business until my mom got very sick in 2020. She's totally fine now thank goodness. But I had to quit my job. I had to move in with her full-time and be her full-time caregiver for about six months.

And after that, I was like, well, this is my opportunity to really take a chance on myself and see if I have the chops to do this full-time and create a full-time income and business off of this thing that previously has just been a little side dream. And I'm so glad that I took the chance.

Passionistas: Talk a little bit about how you combine spirit science and strategy to give your clients a 360 degree approach to their healing and success.

Kelly: Hmm. For me, the spiritual work is kind of the foundational work for everything. And I think about spirituality in a very grounded way. For me, it really just is what is your relationship with yourself? Who are you when your fancy job title gets taken away? Who are you when your Gucci bag gets stolen? Whatever it is like, who are you at the core essence of who you are underneath, even your thoughts and your emotions, the ways that you identify in the world, the roles and responsibilities that you have.

Who, what are your values? How do you show up for yourself? How do, what do you think of yourself? So that kind of spiritual element, I think, is so important for anybody. I mean anybody, but especially people who are on a path of entrepreneurship or who are stepping into some sort of leadership role, cuz life's gonna knock you down and you're gonna have not, hopefully not macro failures, but you're gonna have a lot of tiny little failures along the way.

And if you don't know who you are and what you stand for those little things that shouldn't be big, things can turn into really big things. So that's kind of where the spiritual work comes in. The strategy piece. I find that, when I'm coaching people, I find a lot of times that the things that they need help with, they think they need help with mindset.

They think they need help with, you know, resilience and really a lot of reason, a lot of the time, the reason that they're coming up against so many experiences where they need to be resilient, where they need to really connect with themselves is because they're following a strategy. That's not actually aligned for them.

They saw it on Instagram. They bought it in a course and decided, this is my thing. That's this is my ticket to everything I've ever wanted. And when you start with a strategy, that's not actually quite right for you. You need a lot of coaching because it's really hard to get yourself aligned with something that is just not meant for you.

So that's where the strategy piece comes in. I find that people need a lot less. Ongoing coaching and mindset work and resilience work and confidence work. When the strategy that they're following is perfectly tailored to their strengths, their values, their goals. And I don't think that there's any strategy that doesn't work.

I think absolutely any strategy can be successful for you. As long as it's aligned for you. If it's not aligned, could be the best strategy in the world, it's not gonna work. So those are how those two things kind of go together. Alignment is a word I use a lot, you have to feel aligned and alignment is something that you can actually feel.

I'm sure you, we've all had that experience of maybe showing up to a job that we know now wasn't aligned for us, but it's a physical feeling. Your body communicates with you when something's not in alignment. And when something is in alignment feels really good and there's a lot less resistance and things come more easily to you.

So it's my goal to get people on that path. That maybe they don't even realize is possible for them. And then to support them in implementing and executing everything that goes along with that, because of course there will still be little moments of resistance and fear is a big thing that comes up a lot. And knowing that the path that I think people really need to follow is the one that is most aligned for them.

There's still gonna be challenges along the way. I fell in love with the brain, so I studying about the brain to help myself heal from PTSD was so important. It was like, if I'm someone who, if you tell me to meditate, I'm gonna say no, unless you tell me why on a mechanical level, how is this helping me on a biological physiological level?

How is this helping? Then, Now I'm now I'm interested. I have a, I have a lot of Virgo in my chart, so I like need to understand things. Otherwise I can't, I have no interest. So I really got passionate about understanding the brain better and I've taken a few courses now about the brain, um, and I'm going to continue to study neuroscience because I'm just so fascinated by it.

And I think it's a really important piece that a lot of people don't understand, but it's such a valuable to understand why your brain does what it does. Why it gets emotionally triggered or activated when certain things happen and how you can coach yourself through those moments of big fear or big self doubt, I think is just so valuable.

So those are my, my three pillars that I'm obsessed with. And I think in order to really create whatever kind of success you want, whatever aligned success means for you, cuz it's gonna mean something different to every single one of us. Being able to understand yourself on those levels and have a strategy that is totally aligned for you are just kind of non-negotiables. So that's why I cover those three pillar.

Melanie Childers: Hey Passionistas, I'm Melanie Childers, the business coach for feminist entrepreneurs and if you are ready to get off the hustle treadmill and create a sustainable six or seven figure business, head over to Melaniechilders.com, where I've got a free resource on how to have consensual sales conversations that feel amazing for you and your clients, so you can hit the ground running. See you there.

Passionistas: Where Amy and Nancy Harrington. And you're listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Kelly Mosser, to learn how to work with her and join the tigers eye community, visit KellyMosser.com.

We'd like to take a moment to invite you to the third annual Power of Passionistas summit his September 21st through 23rd, 2020. The three-day virtual event is focused on authentic conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion. This unique gathering of intersectional storytellers and panelists harnesses, the power of our rich community of passionate thought leaders and activists to pose solutions to the problems plaguing women and non-binary people today.

Tickets are on sale at the PassionistasProject.com. Be sure to register before this special discount rate ends. We'd like to thank our sponsors, Melanie Childer's Master Coach, Graceful Revolution, The Ossa Collective, Teas Drops, Aaron's Coffee Corner, Flourishing Over Fifty, Espanola Real Estate Team, Mermaid's Garden, Sarah Fins Coaching, Tara McCann Wellness, Espera Public Affairs and Trizcom Public Relations. Now here's more of our interview with Kelly.

Passionistas: Are there some tips that you have for people that are hearing this and wanna kind of start on this journey that, that are a foundation to get started?

Kelly: Absolutely. I think starting to become aware of how your body feels at different moments throughout your week, even throughout your day. So important. I find that the kind of key dynamic that I ask people to look for. Is, does this make me feel expansive and at ease, or is there some sort of contraction going on here? And if you pay a close enough attention, your body is always giving you those cues. Even if you turn on the TV and there's a show on that, you don't like, there's some part of your body that probably feels constricted or cold or tense.

So just start to pay attention to how your body's feeling moment to moment throughout your day. Uh, an exercise that I love to direct people to is to actually pull up your calendar from last week. So these are now we're working with memories rather than real live real time situations, which can be a little bit easier to tune into the body for.

Go back to last week and go day by day review all of the things that were on your calendar, all of your appointments, fill in how you spent your time after work. What did you do in the morning and go back and actually tune in and notice how your body feels thinking about the memory of that thing. And sometimes it's really helpful to go, oh, I'm thinking about this meeting that I had with this client and my body feels like I would not wanna do this again.

If I had to do it again in an hour, I wouldn't wanna do it. There's a message there for you and then, you know, that's your opportunity to do some journaling on it, dig into it, ask yourself what about this didn't feel so aligned for me and you'll start to learn about, oh, it's because I actually don't really love connecting with people one on one I'd much rather connect in a group. This person, this particular challenge that we were working with, I feel very, I don't really feel confident in actually helping people with that kind of challenge. And it brings up a lot of stuff for me.

When I think about having to do that, I don't think we stop and think a lot about, those small details to even just optimize what we already love doing. And sometimes, you know, people are in jobs that they really don't love doing and their whole week feels like a one giant contraction, one giant constriction. That's a great sign to, you know, start thinking about maybe making a change and even for people who love what they do, 99% of the time, what's feeling contracted that 1% of the time let's figure out what that is. Let's, you know, see if there's an opportunity for you to get even to a place of even greater alignment, even more ease and fulfillment. So those are, that's just a really simple, practical exercise.

And I'm a huge fan of just taking time to sit in silence with yourself every day. It doesn't have to be a fancy meditation. Doesn't have to be a guided meditation. You don't have to empty your mind of thoughts. You just have to sit with yourself with no distractions and see what comes up and that's it. It can just be so simple because I think we are all moving so fast and things come up that we don't fully have the time sometimes to process, or we don't give ourselves the time to process.

And then that just gets stored somewhere. So if you can just give all those things, the opportunity to come up and come out, as often as you can, it's not gonna feel as uncomfortable after a little while it takes a little practice, but the discomfort is good.

Passionistas: So we were introduced to you at a recent MobCon mini event from Mob Nation and you gave an amazing speech about the history of money and how it relates to your self-worth. And we just thought that that was such a great speech and really mind opening. So could you just like give us a little mini condensed version of that and tell us just the basic philosophy behind what you were saying there.

Kelly: Absolutely. So I struggled a lot with this concept of money. When I was starting my own business, I always felt like I was charging too much, even when I was charging $20 for a session, which that was the case at one point. It always felt like money was this very charged conversation and I realized that it's because my self-worth was so deeply connected to my concept, my understanding of money. So I decided to look into the history of money. I was like, why does this thing have such a hold over me? I'm sure it has a hold over other people too, I'm sure, you know, money is the driver of so many decisions that we make. And as I was researching the history of money, it kind of hit me that money is a manmade invention. It's a human construct. Some guy decided, you know what I think we need some sort of money system because the barter system is no longer working at scale, so we need some kind of money system. And for me to just realize that money is a manmade invention and it's not, I think sometimes we, especially if you are familiar with spiritual conversations about money or if you're in sort of tapped into the spiritual community on social media.

There's a lot of conversation around money in a way that almost makes it sound like money is like love from the divine or money is confirmation that you are a good person or that you're doing something right. Which is so different to, I know how a lot of older kind of religious dogma talks about money in the complete opposite way.

So it's kind of like we're ping, ponging back and forth between money is either the worst thing in the world, or it's the best thing in the world. And, but either way, it's directly tied to this, your morality to who you are as a person. And that just wasn't working for me, so to be able to kind of step out of that conversation and realize that money is just a man-made construct that's moving through a man-made system and humans are imperfect. Humans are imperfect. How could I not be worthy of something that has no inherent value of its own, money does not have in any inherent value. It's only valuable because as a collective, maybe it's not green is valuable and therefore I'm going to put stock in it and work in exchange for it and buy things with it.

But money like the actual paper. Has no inherent value. And we used to humans used to trade seashells and cattle and tobacco as commodities, like in exchange of money. And I was just thinking to myself, would I feel this stressed out about money? If it was cattle that we were talking about? No, I wouldn't.

So why do I allow it to be such a stressful thing for me now? So, kind of just stepping out of that deep enmesh between my self-worth and money. And just saying money is just a system. It's just a thing that exists made by humans perpetuated by humans. It could not exist tomorrow, but we'd all still be here.

How could my self-worth be wrapped up in something like that? And it allowed me to just have a much more kind of experimental relationship with money. It allowed me to really drain the emotion out of my experience out of my relationship with money. And then I felt much more comfortable with it. I just, you know, I decided that my self-worth is constant.

No matter how much money I make one month to the next, as entrepreneurs, we're like so focused on monthly revenue and it it's so exhausting and I just don't think that's how it needs to be. So if anyone is listening to this and they're, I'd invite you to think about how emotional is your relationship to money.

If it is an emotional thing for you, can you think of it more as just this manmade thing that was invented out of necessity? Your self-worth has nothing to do with it, if money stopped existing tomorrow, you would still be infinitely worthy because you're a human being. How could you not be worthy of something that has again, no inherent value of its own.

It's just green paper floating around. So hopefully that, you know, can help somebody who has an emotionally charged relationship with money to just, just experiment thinking about it that way and see if it works for you. If it doesn't by all means, let it go. But it really helped me, especially as someone who's like, this is my job now to make my own money.

I don't get a, a paycheck from an employer anymore. So yeah, it's. Been a really interesting reframe for me.

Passionistas: So what advice would you have for a woman who like you was trying to figure out how to price their product or service and they just don't know how to do it.

Kelly: I think that people put a lot of stock into getting it right the first time. There's a lot of pride around, I want to put something out there and I want it to sell the first time, the way I want it to. And what I would recommend is just, you have to remember that the laws of supply and demand are real. And while you are worth your value as a human being is infinite, what you might be offering to someone is actually subject to the laws of supply and demand.

So until you know what the demand for your, good or service is you don't really know how to price it. And I, someone just, someone said this to me once when I was agonizing over, I think it was a, like some kind of coaching package that I was offering. I was like, should it be this number or this number? And they were like, it's a hundred dollars different.

How do you, you don't know? You just have to try one. And I was like, oh, I just have to try one and see if this is the price that resonates with the person that I, want to work with who I can help, but I think we, we make it about us. We make our prices about us and we say, we talk about knowing our worth, your worth is infinite.

There it is not subject to laws of supply and demand. Your there's no price you could put on anything that you do that would accurately encompass how worthy you are. But I think when we are enmeshed with our pricing and our self-worth and know your worth, and what's my. all of that becomes very murky and muddy.

So my advice is find a price that seems to be appropriate. Make sure it feels good in your body when you're talking about it. It takes a little practice sometimes to get used to saying, this is what my price is, but just practice. It just takes practice and then bring it to the marketplace. Just the same way that any company like Coca-Cola brings a new product to the marketplace.

They don't know how it's gonna sell. You have to see, you have to experiment. A big, big thing that I stress with my clients is to have a mindset of experimentation. I always like to say, be the chief scientist, treat your business like a science experiment and not a soap opera, because if you treat it like a soap opera, every little decision that you make is going to have an impact on your self-worth and it's gonna bring you down.

So how can you just be more of like an inventor, like a scientist who just says, I'm gonna try this. And I'm really curious to see what happens here. That's all you can do. And if you know, you sell out, then maybe your price is too low. If you don't sell any, maybe your price is a little too high. Again, it has nothing to do with you.

It has to do with how much, how well people know you, how well you're communicating the value of what you do. There's so many different layers that go into it that I just hate to see people get so caught up in pricing when I would love to. And I think it makes them slow down and take too much time and they think too much about it.

And it leads to a lot of self-doubt where my advice is, just get out there with a price and see what happens. And if it's not the right price, you can change it. That's the beauty of having your own business. it's, it's it really is so much more is within your control than you realize.

Passionistas: So how can people work with you?

Kelly: A few different ways. So I do offer that kind of deep dive strategy consulting for people who are like, I, my business just feels like a mess and I just want it to feel easier and simpler. So I do offer that kind of strategy consulting service for service based businesses. I do have someone on my team who is a retail expert, so she supports retail businesses and product-based businesses with their strategy.

And then I also offer kind of ongoing support from a coaching perspective. So that’s implementing your strategy. That's what to do when you come up against resistance. That's what to do when an unexpected curve ball gets thrown your way. So there is kind of that those two different pieces and lots of people do choose just one or the other.

And a lot of people do choose both. I also have an amazing free membership that used to not be free. And it is just as of last month free and I'm so happy to offer it for free called my tigers eye community, which is like the ultimate one stop shop for inner work. So it's guided meditations, it's amazing live and on-demand workshops led by experts, not just me daily journal prompts.

It's, it's just a really good place to start if you're like, I'm curious about inner work, but it feels overwhelming and YouTube is so scary and I'm not gonna spend time searching for things on there. It's a totally free resource, no strings attached free forever.

Passionistas: Speaking of doing multiple things, what inspired you to start your podcast?

Kelly: I felt very, so I've been a big Instagram girl for the last four years or so. And I started to feel very, like, not so great on Instagram sometimes. Like I could, I only had people's attention for like five seconds and I couldn't fully express what I wanted to say. I'm verbose, as you can tell from this chat, I won't learn from this conversation.

I don't shut up. And I feel like I had more to say, and I wanted to provide a deeper level of value for people without them having to pay me anything. Because I feel like Instagram is just a little bit, I don't know. It's just like, it's like the, the bargain version. It's just a little bit cheap sometimes you can only get so much across, but I think there's something so magical, magical about being with people when they're on their dog walks and like being with people when they're commuting to pick up their kids.

Like that is so exciting to me and I think that you can just create a better relationship with [00:31:00] people and you can give them more. And so that was why I'm so excited about the podcast world. And I, I love it so far. It feels so fun.

Passionistas: So describe your show for people.

Kelly: Sure. So my show is called the aligned success show and it is a show that helps entrepreneurs master the magical alchemy between spirituality, neuroscience, and strategy.

So we talk about all those different things. Sometimes we talk about all three in one episode, sometimes we go, this episode's really focused on the spiritual. This episode's really focused on the brain. This episode is really focused on strategy and I've had a lot of people tell me that I'm not an entrepreneur, but I really like this podcast anyway.

So the strategy piece, is definitely more general. I would say that it applies to more people than just entrepreneurs. There's a lot of good value in there about just finding more alignment in your life, learning how to coach yourself through different kinds of challenges. So, yeah, so it's definitely super valuable for entrepreneurs, but valuable for people who are not entrepreneurs as well.[00:32:00]

Passionistas: What's your dream for women?

Kelly: Oh my gosh. My dream for women is that we all wake up in a world that where we all get to live lives, that we actually chose for ourselves and we didn't choose them because our parents told us we had to, or because our partners think that we should, or that society told us that we needed to. That would be my dream to just live in a world full of women who really had chosen what their life looks like.

Passionistas: Thanks for listening to the Passionistas Project Podcast and our interview with Kelly Mosser. To learn how to work with her and join the Tigers Eye Community, vVisit KellyMosser.com.

Please visit the PassionistasProject.com to learn more about our podcast and subscription box filled with products made by women owned businesses and female artisans to inspire you to follow your Passions. Double your first box when you sign up for a one-year subscription.

Remember to get your tickets to the third annual virtual power of Passionistas summit from September 21st through 23rd, 2022. Tickets are on sale now at the PassionistasProject.com.

And subscribe to the Passionistas Project Podcast, so you don't miss any of our upcoming inspiring guests. Until next time, stay well and stay passionate.

 

Nicole de Paula Is a Champion for Women’s Advancement Through Environmental Conservation

Dr. Nicole de Paula has been globally connecting policymakers and researchers for more than a decade to create a public understanding on key issues related to sustainability and public health. As a Planetary Health advocate, she champions the socioeconomic advancement of women through environmental conservation. She is the founder of the Women Leaders for Planetary Health and in 2019, she became the first awardee of the prestigious Klaus Töpfer Sustainability Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany. Nicole is the author of the book “Breaking the Silos for Planetary Health: A Roadmap for a Resilient Post-Pandemic World.”

Learn More about Nicole.

Learn more about The Passionistas Project.

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Passionistas: Hi, and welcome to the Passionistas project podcast, where we talk with women who are following their Passionistas to inspire you to do the same. We're Amy and Nancy Harrington. And today we're talking with Dr. Nicole de Paula, who has been globally connecting policy makers and researchers for more than a decade to create a public understanding on key issues related to sustainability and public.

As a planetary health advocate, she champions the socioeconomic advancement of women through environmental conservation. She's the founder of Women Leaders for Planetary Health and in 2019, she became the first awardee of the prestigious Klaus Töpfer Sustainability Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany.

Nicole is also the author of the book “Breaking the Silos for Planetary Health - A Roadmap for a Resilient Post-Pandemic World.”

So please welcome to the show Dr. Nicole de Paula.

Nicole: Hi, Nancy and Amy. Thank you for having me.

Passionistas: What's the one thing you're most passionate about?

Nicole: I think recently it's definitely planetary health. Uh, we've been advocating so much and at the beginning, the term was what is planetary health sounded like a horror cop thing. Right? So it was the, it was a term that sounded, it was a bit weird in some language doesn't translate. Well, I think in German, for example, it's, it's, it's hard to translate in Portuguese as well.

I'm from Brazil. So, uh, it was also a bit funny, but definitely is the topic that we should be talking about specifically. Now when we need to recover. Hopefully from this pandemic.

Passionistas: So tell us of what planetary health means and how it relates to what you do for a living.

Nicole: Yeah. So maybe what I do, I'm my background. I tend to say I'm a fake doctor, right? So I'm a, I have a PhD in international relations, so I'm not a magical doctor cause I've been talking a lot with public health experts. It's quite an interesting exercise. And so planetary health, uh, from my perspective is of very interesting narrative of things that decision makers should.

Talking about or acting. So it's basically everything. So the planet is changing, right? We say that if the planet is sick with all the climate change impacts biodiversity loss, pollution, you know, we, we don't know anymore what we have in our foods. So much chemicals there processed food, you know, and crisis.

We used to have a big problem of course, with hunger and. You know, half of the population is obese. So of course we're changing our lifestyles and the way the planet is changing and the way that we are impacting our planet. So that's why we say this anthropogenic impacts we need it's impacting public health.

So the decision normally is what is health at the end of the day, right? Is everything that is inside our bodies and is just this small system. Or we should talk about health. Connected to the health of our planet. So the planetary health is a scientific discipline or, um, not discipline is there is discussion that I think is started as saying as a discipline, but let's say it's an approach, a new area of studies calling that way.

I think many researchers were already discussing sustainability connecting to the, to human health. So again is very simple. It's just trying to connect sustainability to public health policies and on the, on the issue of. scientists are trying to understand how exactly climate change impacts, you know, human health.

We have heat waves that impact, you know, the most vulnerable in cities. Uh, so we're trying to measure that's. So that's not exactly what I do, you know, when people will do modeling and, but in the end, we need to communicate and inform decision makers of this field and say, what do we do about it? And that's the, what I'm passionate about.

How do we get the science and bring it to the people who can take these decision? And it's of course not an easy thing, especially this days, but we keep trying. So you mentioned COVID talk about how the relationship to COVID and planetary health. Like what, how is it affecting the world on the planet?

Yes, COVID is as, um, sometimes mentioned and I notice in a book it's. Of course, it's a very bad thing, but if every crisis brings an opportunity, that's the sad reality. If we need change, we probably learn through love or pain. Right. So it's very hard to change behavior if you don't have a big crisis and COVID is now showing I think stimulating this conversation about, okay, what is exactly connections?

It's, it's just, just a sanitary thing. It's, uh, the disease, but what you're learning now and, and. Trying to communicate. Actually, I think a lot of people have been trying to communicate this before, but the way, for example, deforestation, the way we are transforming our environment, we are, uh, increasing the chances of this contact with new viruses.

So for example, illegal wildlife. Trading, you know, if you're bringing species to different and because the world is so connected in three days, the whole, if you have a new disease in three days, the whole world is contaminated. So the COVID is really showing that we need to connect more. The dots. Between these issues of biodiversity conservation.

You know, this, there is a link with zoonotic diseases. When you have pathogens, frighten animals, jump to humans, we still, we don't have definitive answers about how exactly COVID was created, but six out of 10 new diseases come from animals. You know, so this, this zoonotic disease. So, so we know that we are creating some sort of this possibility of increasing diseases and, and climate change.

For example, Our natural ecosystem. So new mosquitoes there wouldn't be in Europe, for example, because of the climate. Now, if we find, so we have a new ecology of, of these diseases that it's important to understand and study again, we have, uh, researchers doing that. So planetary health brings this conversation and links, uh, this points.

Passionistas: So let's take a step back. You talked about the fact that you're from Brazil. Tell us a bit about growing up there. And when did you first become aware of these issues and what inspired you to pursue this field.

Nicole: Of course, I mean, I think I always wanted to, I remember as a, let's say teenager, the time you need to decide about university, I was between.

Two things. I think I, I love studying. So I think my thing, I love learning. So doesn't matter what it is. I people say, oh, what's your favorite? You know, subject? I liked everything. Uh, at the end I started being better at humanities and others, but I was still at some point. Good, very good in chemistry. Very good in math, some parts of physics.

So I wish I had more talent. I wish I had kept my talents. I found that time would be great for calculating it or model. Days, which I don't feel they're very capable, but I enjoyed, uh, learning and, and, and I enjoyed traveling. So that was a big thing. So I think, you know, if you're uncomfortable in new places.

So for example, from Brazil, I remember going to Portugal at early age and I didn't enjoy so much because it was so similar. To Brazil. And I think nowadays I would think, uh, differently because it's a fantastic city in LIBO, for example, it changed so much, but the traveling part was inspiring. And so I was trying to find things, you know, what is, what can I do that unite all this many disciplines that I enjoy and, and traveling.

So I initially, um, I also was very good at debating, especially my family. If I wanted something I would debate until they were tired. So it was, uh, some people found that of course, very annoying, but they thought would be, I would be a good lawyer. Right. So I thought about it. And in the end I found this brochure, that's saying, oh, international relation.

It was a new course at that point, you know, remember also globalization and all this. So that's something we have a very, of course at the university of Sao Paulo is let's say top university in Brazil, depending on the subject, but is very, uh, important center, but they didn't have international relations when I was applying for it.

So there was another univers. The head leading that in Sao Paulo and from Sao Paulo. And so I joined that and started doing international relations, but at that point, nobody knew what do you do with international relations? Right? It just, and in the first year it was, it was actually the time when the United States.

Was not ready to sign or, you know, was withdrawing from the Coda protocol, which is the whole, the initial agreement, uh, in the whole climate sphere. So as a student in political science, I was like, why, if it's such a good thing for the planet, why we have the biggest power saying that they don't wanna agree with this?

You know, that's, it's good for the plant. So that's how I entered the, the climate diplomacy conversation. So again, I entered the sustainability sphere through the political. Perspective. Right. And then from that on, I was started doing a lot of understanding how countries negotiate about the trees. So it was climate then biodiversity and quickly I could actually move to France.

So my university had an agreement. So I moved to France and then started studying a lot from the perspective of European union, which is another whole in region and negotiations of agreement to have a global position. So all that it's endless and it was fascinating. But I tended to focus on the sustainable stable development aspects.

And, you know, we have in Rio, Brazil also, we are very, it's a very important country for sustainable development. The Amazon has always been on the agenda. We have infinite natural resources, you know, is the mega diverse, uh, countries top.

So Brazil has been very important for this negotiations. And so that's why I started my academic life. And there was no specific moment, right. This, I had an aha moment for other things later, but for that, I just really enjoyed the disciplines.

And, and that's how I think also. We say the planetary health is really about multidisciplinary, you know, whatever we do, we need to unite disciplines. And international relations was always a, let's say a collection of disciplines. You did economics, law, sociology, you know, theology, linguistics things. And you had to make sense of all this.

So I think from the early age, I was maybe comfortable navigating multidisciplinary systems and which today is very useful because, you know, you're kind of comfortable. You're not there to protect a discipline and you're just free to kind of have this dialogue, which is so, so important. So tell us about some of the fellowships that you've done through the years, the international Institute for sustainable development.

Passionistas: What was your work like there?

Nicole: Yeah, so, well, the international for sustainable development is actually the it's more, um, it's a think tank and that's through this organization that I could. Actually be in the practice of sustainability tracking sustainable development in real time, because you are, uh, going to