Stories Heal, Stories Connect, Stories Matter
Your heartfelt responses to Amy Ferris’s extraordinary post “I Matter” tell me I’m not alone in being moved by it. Amy’s plunge into the coldest, deepest wells of pain–her courage to swim around in those emotionally drenching experiences, then emerge to share them– and at the same time to share her liberation from the most debilitating parts of her story.
All compelling stories require an antagonist as well as a protagonist, it’s tempting to see Amy’s mother as the villain of the piece. But I’ve also been thinking about something my friend Angela (not her real name, pending permission) said to me one day last February, as we were power walking along the canal near my Scottsdale home. Basking in the desert’s relative winter warmth, I was delighted that Angela had found two days to pop over for a visit after a board meeting in California. Her distinguished career includes having led important nonprofit and governmental organizations in two countries; now she serves on 10 prestigious international boards.
Yet Angela talked about none of that. Instead, she ruminated about her lifelong struggles with weight and body image: “How can any girl feel she’s OK when her mother told her she’s not because someone had told her she wasn’t OK?”
There are patterns of cultural “you’re not OK” messages designed, consciously or not, to keep women self-negating, in order to retain “power over” women’s bodies and by extension, our lives.
What’s different and amazing and to the point of miraculous about this moment we’re living in today is that women are finally positioned to break out, to reject those negatives and embrace the positives, to declare as Amy has, “I matter.” To take the “power-to” and do anything we choose with it. Because we do matter and what we do matters.
INTENTIONING
Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women
Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good
The new book from Gloria Feldt about the future, taking the leadership lessons learned from this disruption and creating a better world for all through the power of intention.
It takes many individual, painful, personal redemptions like Amy’s to combine into an alchemy of cultural change. But even that’s not enough to create the structural, permanent change that is needed to set the world aright.
Writer and teacher Maria Clara Paulino commented on her SheWrites.com blog last week:
Everything I write is inherently political though I do not write about politics. Nothing inspires me to get political: I am political because I am human and, because I am human, everything I think, feel, and do is personal. Politics is inextricable from living and living is a personal affair.
It’s not too surprising that both Amy and I happened to spot and reply to Clara’s post. As Aletha has pointed out in a comment to Amy’s story, it takes concerted political engagement, propelled by the simple, powerful act of sharing stories: stories of courage and prevailing over odds to change structures so future generations can thrive.
With our power tools, can we do it?
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.
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thank you gloria for you wisdom & insight & love..
i read your piece twice, and i come away wanting desperately to help woman, guide them so they can RIGHT THEIR LIFE. SHARE THEIR STORIES, SPEAK THEIR TRUTH & KNOW- KNOW – THEY’RE NOT ALONE. i read Halle Berry’s piece today and i was once again knocked out by how many of us are ONLY NOW gaining self-esteem, SELF WORTH. a long battle, that seems to grab hold, and once it does, there is no turning back.
you lead by example gloria every single day – through your words, your actions, your wisdom. and therefore, so does the women who you write about. you give them a voice. and on & on & on…
it’s time for us to stand shoulder to shoulder, declare our worth, PLEDGE our “I DO MATTER” stories, and make sure that no girl or woman ever gets left behind.
all my love.
WE MATTER.
Bonnie Marcus, who is a super duper executive coach and works with many very successful women recommended this post with the accompanying comment on Facebook:
“I am always amazed at how many women still believe they’re not OK and lack self esteem. Great blog post on the subject.”
I recently facilitated a panel on body image for the International Lion of Judah’s annual conference. We did two sessions with about 100 women in each one. These are leaders in the Jewish community and among the most accomplished, philanthropic, and affluent people in the world, male or female. And they were almost to a person struggling with the same issues for themselves or a daughter.
Ms. Paulino made an intriguing observation about how her experiences here differed from Europe, which shed some light on a phenomenon that has continually baffled me, “…my observations on social situations I found baffling were left hanging in the air, as if discussing them was rude, or hostile.” I have found myself in a similar situation many times, for instance whenever I opine that women ought to declare political independence. Rarely does this elicit any response, which always surprises me, since what I am suggesting is so controversial. I do not know if this is due to overwhelming cynicism about politics in these United States, as if politics is too far gone to be of any use to women. That may be, but when a system is hopelessly broken, does it make more sense to be satisfied with whatever crumbs can be wrung from it than to create an alternative that could really shake things up? The problems plaguing society may seem overwhelming, but they were created by a paradigm that serves only an elite few. Those elite few may have great power to keep people in general relatively powerless, but they are not all-powerful, and there has to be a way people can organize to throw off the shackles.
I can only hope this happens before people are forced to realize the survival of our species is at stake. It is now fairly well understood that the way things are going is unsustainable, but what is not so well understood is what kind of euphemism that word unsustainable is. The implications are dire, and probably not nearly as far off in the future as the powers that be want people to believe. They want everyone to believe they have things under control, that technology will solve all these problems in good time. No, the powers that be are getting what they can while the getting is good.
I have a theory, Aletha, that the way we in the pluralistic U.S. have reacted to our diversity of thought is to avoid it in the interest of “getting along.”Many times that aversion to engaging controversial ideas keeps us from solving social problems. This is exactly why I created the power tool “embrace controversy” and why I teach and talk about the “7 C’s of Controversy” so much. I fear that democracy can’t survive with vibrant arguments about alternative ways we might address problems.
Gloria – I couldn’t agree more with your “theory,” as you put it, that the way people in the U.S. have reacted to diversity of thought is “to avoid it in the interest of ‘getting along.’ Many times that aversion to engaging controversial ideas keeps us from solving social problems.” The European evening chat I mention in the blog post you quote from includes agreement + disagreement + likely argument (all of the above, often about politics – but no name calling) + a hug (in southern Europe) + friendship (more often than not).
happy new year gloria. here’s to a joyous, loving, peaceful, amazing, creative, sexy, GLORIOUS, kind & fulfilling (in every way possible) new year.
all my love.
I have been thinking about your observation, Gloria. I think it is more of an observation than a theory, actually. But does this mean USA is largely a nation of sheep, or lemmings? How can people go along to get along with leaders who are leading this nation (and because of its outsized influence, the world) off a cliff? I can only conclude people here think things are really not all that bad, and will get better. Certainly if one looks to the stock market as a predictor of the future, one might believe that.
The mainstream feminist groups occasionally get angry with the Democratic Party, but it seems nothing ever comes of it. I still recall NOW threatening to stop supporting the party because of its promotion of Senator Robert Casey, muscling out of the race a pro-choice woman, Barbara Hafer, because the party bigwigs thought Casey would be more likely to defeat Rick Santorum. The Women’s Campaign Forum has documented many similar instances where the Democratic Party promoted a male candidate because he was considered more likely to win than a woman. Perhaps this is the way the party thinks to keep women off balance, to alternate between placating us and slapping us around. That is the psychology of a batterer.
It is hard for me to comprehend how women can allow the powers that be, still overwhelmingly men, to make such a mess of the world. What will it take for women to realize we have to stand up and clean up that mess? This has been happening in some other nations. Has our relatively comfortable lifestyle, and/or the masters of spin, lulled us to sleep, to trust or at least put up with our leaders, as if this is the best we can expect?