Drama Queens - Work In Progress: Shannon Watts

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Activist and author Shannon Watts has an important message for women - it is not too late — and you are not too old! — to go after what you really want. The founder of Moms Demand Action is back on the pod with Sophia to chat about the inspiration and message behind her new book, "Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age." Shannon opens up about the turning point in her life, the phone call from Maria Shriver that led to her new book, and the inspirational stories from women living their most authentic lives.  Plus, real talk from Sophia and Shannon about living with ADHD, Michelle Obama's parenting advice, and the importance of practicing hope . . . especially through the next four years. "Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age" will be available for purchase on June 17. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Hello and welcome back to Work in Progress. Today we are joined by an old friend of the podcast who is absolutely one of the most inspiring humans that I know. None other than Shannon Watts, the founder of Mom's Demand Action, which is the nation's largest grassroots group fighting against gun violence. She has gathered over 10 million women from disparate geographies, backgrounds, political parties. She is known as a summoner of woman's audacity.

And she used Mom's Demand Action not only to fight for the future of our families and our children, but also as a field experiment. mobilizing women. She has figured out what fires us up and keeps us engaged. And though she passed the baton of leadership at Mom's Demand Action, to another leader so she could take a much deserved year off after working seven days a week, almost 24 hours a day for 11 straight years on this, did she take a sabbatical? No. She decided to write a book. Shannon is here to discuss her new book fired up how to turn your spark into a flame and come alive at any age. I can't wait to hear about the lessons that she's learned, the gems that she's gleaned, and the way that she sees women as a bonfire when they gather together, work for community, and figure out what truly

makes them happy. Let's dive in with Shannon Watts. Hi, my dear, and welcome back to the show. I'm so thrilled to be here with you. I'm just so excited. We're here in person, too. I feel like you and I have to, so often when we want to be together, figure out what city we're going to overlap in during what month of the year. And so to get you, I like, I want to squeeze you with just far enough away that I can't. You can squeeze me.

I will. I'll squeeze you. again after we're done. I know this is a really loaded question these days, but how are you? Hmm. It is a loaded question. You know, I'm good. I think, as the famous activist has said, Miriam Kambay, that Hope is a Discipline, that's always been my mindset, that it is very easy to be cynical and therefore disengaged. If you actually practice hope, if you look around for the things that are hopeful, then you can stay engaged and you can take breaks but come back to the work. And I think the next four years is going to be a discipline, a practice. Yeah. I love that.

I think it's a thing I've been, I don't want to say meditating on, but really thinking a lot about and trying to do so consciously is what it means to hold so many things to be true at the same time, especially when some of those things feel oppositional to each other. Things are wonderful and terrible. There is joy, there is pain. You know, how you can be grateful for your own life inside the four walls of your home and also really know that the world around you needs help and figure out how to give to your point the hope to both the joy and the hurting.

Yeah, joy, I think, is a really important word. When I started Mom's Demand Action, we came together each year, all of the volunteer leadership. And it was a weekend for training and lifting up the stories of survivors and talking about legislation. You know, it was tough stuff. And we decided to add a dance party at the end of the weekend. And there was a lot of pushback, particularly from non-survivors who said, like, is this appropriate? Are we being unsurious? It ended up being the most popular part of that weekend.

The lights went off, people took up their shoes, they got all sweaty, they danced, and they had joy. What is the point of activism or life without joy? And so to imagine that we're going to get through this next four years just bare-knuckling it and still be able to be activists. And it's just not possible. We have to look for joy. And that comes in community. Absolutely. And I think that the idea that you have to bear knuckle it or you're unsurious, particularly for women, is such a vestige of patriotic.

You know, this thing that we're meant to suffer, it's why so many women get so burnt out. Yes. Because we're told our joy makes us unsirious, unprofessional. And I love the way that even in this break that you've taken from mom's demand, you know, you're stepping back from running the organization, you've really leaned into your activism as a woman having frank conversations about burnout and joy and aging and life. And it's, it's been really beautiful to watch you put this sort of energy and specificity that you poured into an organization and out into the world for so long into you. And then by seeing you do it, I think we all feel

we have permission to do it. That means a lot to me. I think what I realized in creating moms to inaction, which was not only the largest women-led nonprofit in the nation with 10 million supporters, but it also became the largest real-life laboratory for what empowers women, what makes them come alive. I saw this over and over again. And you were just talking about women and suffering. What I saw so many times, and even in my own life, is that women are taught to fulfill their obligations and men are taught to follow their desires. Yes. And what would our lives be like if the only question we asked ourselves was, what do we want? I love that you said that because it is the emotional version of what happens to women versus men around money.

If men are taught to chase and fulfill their desires, they are taught to seek and be poured into, to pour into themselves. If women are taught to fulfill their obligations, they're taught to give and give and give and give and give to others. And one of the things that was the most arresting to me really starting to work on gender equity in terms of finance, in terms of access to capital, the work NIA and I do at the First Women's Bank is the data around how when women begin to accrue any version of personal wealth, it can be $5,000 or $5 million, they are approached to become philanthropic donors. And when men begin accruing any version of personal wealth, they get approached to invest it. So they get approached to go out and fulfill and pour into and make more. And women are asked to give and giving, giving, giving, give and give. It's so interesting you bring this up because I talk about this, which is in many ways the bucket of the passion tax. Because women are passionate about something, because they care about something, they're expected to do it for free.

I am guilty of this. Me too. I worked at Mom's Demand to Action. I say worked. I was a full-time volunteer for 11 years. I did not take a dime. All the money I made from my book, from speeches, all got funneled back into the organization.

And I write about this in the book that we're going to talk about. And I thought I was being really noble and maybe I was actually being a martyr. I thought I was a good girl for doing this. And that no one could point a finger at me and say, oh look at that woman, she's enriching herself because of, you know, gun violence or all the different reasons I had for why I shouldn't take a salary and get all of the other, mostly men who were working in the organization did. And it set an example for our volunteers, right? Chapter leaders, it's all volunteer work. And so I think there's a really important conversation

to be had about why do we expect women to put their blood, sweat, and tears into things and not be compensated. And that isn't the case for men. Yeah. It's so surreal. You know, we talked about this because you were one of my first guests in 2019, so thank you so much, having a long-time friend of the podcast. I know that I asked you then what it would be like if you could spend some time with your younger self. If you would see yourself in her, if you think she would be like, I get how I turned into that woman. What does it feel like now, you know, almost six years later? after you've been through so many life shifts, when you think about maybe more than one of the younger versions of yourself that you carry with the woman you are today, what would have changed?

What's the advice you might give yourself in college or yourself in middle school from this seat at this table on this day? Oh, I love this question. So when we met for this podcast five years ago, I was in a very different place. You know, I still had young kids. or youngish kids who were teens and I was kind of figuring out who I was as an activist and what

was next and here I am now a 54-year-old woman who's gone through menopause who has grown children. And what is really interesting to me is that for, I interviewed over 70 women for this book and when I asked them what they were worried their deathbed regret would be, almost all of them, maybe one or two, almost all of them said to me, I will regret not having spent more time with my children while pursuing what was important to me, which is tragic, because I don't think there is a man who would have the same answer. And now that I'm on the other side of that, 54 years old, my youngest is 24, I can promise you that my kids have not once said to me, you missed the soccer game in 2002 or you didn't come to the fifth showing of my Peter Pan play.

What they say is, we are so incredibly proud of you. We are so grateful you took us along on your activism journey. You gave us permission to pursue what is important to us. I think it's really important for women to remember that they are human beings before and after their children and that you don't want to get to the end of your life and feel like you didn't burn. you want to have lived a life that is fulfilling to you, and that doesn't make you a bad parent. And so that's who I am right now,

trying to tell all the women who are worried about that, who are fulfilling their obligations instead of wondering what their desires are, that you can do all of it. And I think it's important to realize not only do you as an individual outside of your children, your marriage, your career, deserve it, but that you model it for your kids.

you know, two of the most profound parenting lessons I've been given in the last few weeks. One was on this show and one was at our home for Easter weekend with some friends. And the person who came on the show, what an insane sentence. Like, we've done some really cool stuff. You know, you and I, I know you have these things where you go, I can't believe what I'm about to say out loud. When Michelle Obama was on the show two weeks ago, like, what an insane? I would just open every show with that. Right.

Be like, just in case you missed it, she was here. um she said something to me when i asked her about you know this amazing empty nest phase which people talk about like it's a bad thing and i'm like you have like a freedom nest you taught them to fly they flew what are you doing in your in your big nest now you know we were laughing about some things and she said um that it would be really impossible to talk about the ways that she learned to mother without lessons from her own mother and how her mother said to her her whole life I'm not raising babies, I'm raising adults, and empowered her and her brother to feel like they could have agency, to feel like they were in control of things, you know, to learn lessons and know that they were pursuing their adultness. And then my friend Genevieve this weekend said, the best thing you can do, especially for your daughters, is to live a full life as well.

a woman in front of them. Yes. And so she was talking about her six-year-old and how she makes sure she meditates in front of her daughter. She makes sure to move her body in front of her daughter. She makes sure to go over her calendar for the day the night before in front of her daughter. So her daughter sees her having executive meetings, understands that on a Tuesday night she has a business dinner, but she'll see her when she gets home. And on Wednesday night, they'll be home together and they'll cook. And she talked about the balance because she will wants her daughter to be able to do exactly what you're discussing and to always know that she can, not to feel like she's starting to reclaim her time in her mid-40s or in her mid-50s

or in her mid-60s event. And it's such a generational shift because, and I don't say it critically, my mom made her whole life about me and my life. And it was a really jarring transition for her to then have me leave to go to college. I was going off to learn something, and when I left, she had to learn a whole new thing too. And we talk a lot about how in our adulthood together we've found a different way of being. And I just, I don't know, I think it's really profound what you're talking about and what you're helping encourage other women to do because maybe our generation gets to be the one that helps shift it for our kids. What you're talking about is leaving a legacy. And I don't think we ask women a lot what they want their

legacy to be. We think of legacy as your name on a hospital or a huge endowment or a foundation. But it's not. It's simply knowing that you lived a life that is true to you. And what you're talking about is the second half of life, which my mother's generation was not expected to have. You turned 40, 45, and you were sort of invisible, and you went off and did whatever until you know, the end of your life. That isn't true anymore. I'm 54. I feel like I'm just getting started.

Well, also look at your face. You have perfect skin, enviable hair. Like, and it goes back to that thing where women are supposed to be serious or they're just girly. Yes. I'm like, no way. I'm coming in with the hair out and the outfit on. I know all the points of this policy we're arguing and we're going to go lobby in D.C.

And figure out it. We can do it all. Yes. I just think we have to give. ourselves permission to actually do what we want and to have the courage right and and to ask yourself to check in regularly at all stages of your life what am i doing is this fulfilling to me am i leaving anything on the table you know and i don't want to get to the end of my life and feel like i haven't burned i mean that's the whole that's the whole thing okay so can i ask you because you use that

phrase a lot and for people at home what do you mean by burned do you want to feel like you haven't burned. Yes. How do you, how did you select that word and what's the ethos for you? So the metaphor for the book came up because I was talking about, it was at the home of an author who was helping me figure out my book after Maria Shriver made the generous offer of writing about what I'd learned about women, which is sort of, you know, a lot. How do you boil that down?

And this woman, this author said to me, you're very fiery. Like, that is your personality. That is who you are. And so fire became the metaphor of the book. And when I started to think about what is living on fire, it is the ability to see things clearly, two specific things, what is limiting you and what is calling you. And there is a very specific formula for that that I learned in my life, but that I saw women come into mom's demand action and replicate over and over and over again. And that is, what are your abilities, what are your values, and what are your desires? Because when those three things come together, you are burning. You are creating a fire in your life. And your life is a series of fires. It's not just one thing.

It's not this, you know, sometimes we're sold this idea of a purpose as if we're only here for one thing. And if we don't figure out what that is, we somehow, you know, are not living a life that is true to us. That's not true. You know, after Mom's Demand Action was over, and for me, I stepped away in 2023. I thought, who am I without Mom's Demen Action? This has become my identity. And yet, I started another fire. I wrote a book. I became a surrogate for Kamala Harris. After this, there are more things that I want to do. And I will continue to implement that formula in order to make those things happen. And I want every woman to try this formula. Right now, out in the zeit, guys, there's so much about what. What are women in midlife doing? What are older women doing? Not a lot of how. I want to show women the how. How do you get to where these other women are that you're learning about? Because you can do it too.

I love that. We'll be back in just a minute after a few words from our favorite sponsors. To your point, you know, I think this idea, even when we talk about midlife, when we talk about older women, all of the terminology has been used to kind of shame us. even you hear those things in society like well men just get better looking with age and women just age and it's like again I look around at our group of friends I'm like I actually think we've never looked better I think I'm way cuter than I was in my 20s early odds fashion was very questionable and horrible I had a very bad haircut I have very bad 90s you well also same those thank God there were no iPhones then those pictures are buried and locked away forever um I over plucked my eyebrows

for a while. I mean, just not good. And I'm excited about this fiery woman kind of iconography, because what I've realized in doing this myself is we only grow in power and purpose. And I think when you have the courage to reinvent yourself or to say, I'm not having a good time at this party, I'm leaving, and I'm going to plan another, it can be so jarring for people because they're not used to seeing us choose ourselves. I experienced that going through a divorce. I've watched women, other friends of mine experience it in that way, leaving careers, changing careers, moving to another country, you know, whatever it might be, women choosing themselves seems like it freaks people out. So when you think about how you

began to focus on this, and I want to hear the Maria Shriver phone call story, But how you began to say, okay, I'm going to interview all these women about how they burst into flame in like the most beautiful way. How did you even really know where to start or were you also, do you think the questions came from you saying, I'm doing this? And I want to know who else is doing this. Sometimes for me, when I think I'm going to do something terrifying or requires so much courage, it's really helpful for me to know other people doing it. Like my best friend in the world and I literally got, we got engaged and then married and then divorced in the same timeline together. And we were like, wow, do we just learn lessons like the hardware? Can we only do things together? Maybe we should have gone on a trip. It would have been

so much cheaper than this life lesson, you know. But there is something about having someone you love model that kind of courage for you. You know, make legal recommendations. for you, teach you how to go get a job or have a baby or whatever it is. So do you think the book came from you seeking out other women doing the next stage of life firebuilding? Oh, absolutely. You know, I start with my story and I had this experience. I lived a very meh life, I call it, until I was in my 40s because I married right out of college. My parents were going through a horrible divorce. And so I think I was seeking out solace of my college boyfriend. I got pregnant three months later. I got pregnant three months after that baby was born. By the time I was 29, I had

three children. I was married to someone I wouldn't have married had I waited until I was after 30 years old. I was in a job I didn't like. I wanted to be an investigative journalist and I was doing public relations. And I found myself one day in the emergency room. Absolutely covered head to toe in eczema. In every orifice on my eyelids, on my ear, I mean, horrific. I couldn't sleep. I was miserable. I was suffering.

And I tell the story of being in that office and the doctor really connecting with me and I just had a breakdown. And I realized I was at a crossroads, right? I could look at my life and the mistakes I'd made and make different choices going forward or I could continue to live this life. And it wasn't easy to leave a marriage

and leave my career and start all over again. And I'm so glad I did because I would never have started mom man action. I would never be where I am now. And so I wanted to talk to other women who had had those experiences. And I tell so many stories because I think stories are the model to help other women do these things. And so I talked to one woman named Amber Goodwin who applied to law school, almost two dozen right out of college, didn't get in. Then when she was 40 years old, after Donald Trump was elected, she decided, you know, if he can be president, I can become a lawyer. So

She applied again in her 40s, got in, and ended up being the president of her law school and now is working to get other women of color into law schools all over the country. I talked to a woman who wanted to be an author because of her financial circumstances. She took a job as a gym teacher, did that for 30 years, retired, started volunteering at an animal shelter, came up with this idea in her head of a love story between two people who meet at the shelter, taught herself how to write dialogue, how to create a book, wrote a book, And then decided she deserved to have it published. She sent it to 218 publishing houses and got rejected every time. On the 219th, she got a two book deal and became a published author in her 70s. Wow. So that's what I wanted to convey to other women.

It's never too late. You're not too old. You have something important to offer, no matter what age you are, no matter what stage of life, if you pursue it. Yeah. I love that. Did you see that talk that went sort of viral? online. I feel like we have similar algorithms. So maybe you saw it as well. Of a professor, we'll have to do a little research and put it in the show notes. He gave a talk at a university.

I think he's a, I don't know if he's a biology teacher, essentially asking the question, what are women in their third, in their last third of life for? And you know, the class kind of gets like, you hear the murmurs. And he says, and I don't mean that in the way that you think. He said, but, you know, men can be fathers into their 80s. No one judges them when they do that, by the way. But God forbid a woman in her 40s as a kid. That's for a separate day.

But he was saying, you know, women, once you go through menopause, you cease being able to birth a child. So, societally, what are women for? And he says, you know, we outlive men, almost always, and by quite a long time. And essentially, long story longer, I'll try to paraphrase, is that he posits that women, as they enter the grandmother stage, whether that's you have grandchildren or you are a grandmother in society, that we are the ones who are the wisdom givers. Yes. We are actually the teachers.

And I thought about it for weeks after. after I watched this talk because I thought, oh, women have actually been taught that our only value, our biggest value in society is motherhood. But actually, essentially, men's only value add is fatherhood. And they can do it forever. We literally have a third of our lives where that is not our value where we serve a greater purpose. And when he started to talk about us being the wisdom givers, the teachers, the ones who continue to shepherd society. I was like, oh, we've inverted our roles. There's a reason that women have been, you know, removed from so many of the holy books around the world, right? It's that they're scared of our power. The divine feminine.

Yes, the divine feminine. There used to be the goddess for the God and they've tried to, you know, really reduce us. And it makes me feel like we're finally getting back to something. as I look around at all my friends from their 40s to their 70s doing what you're talking about, because I actually look at women as the ones who hold the most power and the greatest ideas and who teach the most generously. And to pursue a book, a second career, whatever it is you love, feeds you as well. So I think it shifts that give, give, give versus take, take. And it actually creates a healthier cycle, something more natural that moves, you know, in and out, ebb and flow all the time.

Do you feel like you've got your personal ebb and flow in a place where you love it? I do. Right now, I do. But I want to be clear, like, it does ebb and flow. You're going to have ups and downs. Oh, yeah. That doesn't mean you should back down, right? I made a choice when I started a mom's demand action and I started receiving all these threats that I didn't expect, you know, I had to back down or double down. And I decided to double down. And, you know, I had someone say to me when I was writing this book, I wish I had had a handbook for all the blowback that I will receive. It doesn't mean you're starting a huge thing like an organization. It may be just a difficult conversation. Maybe you're getting out of a relationship. Maybe you're pursuing another job. It can be personal, political, professional. But if you

apply this formula and if you know what to expect you know that you will feel imposter syndrome that your perfectionism will get in the way that you will start to think people don't want to hear your story or you don't have a story to tell if you know there will be a messy middle then you can get through it and and that is what this is really you know a guide for that wow messy middle messy middle can be brutal it's hard but you learn so much there you do but I think you're right a guidebook would have been helpful. You know, we, we bonded and became friends in activism. I was not prepared either for not only how much the world hates an outspoken woman, with a politically educated woman. I was like, oh God, very much. Here we go. And, you know, nobody tells you how to deal with

the threats. Nobody tells you how to deal with, you know, the blowback. And it's not lost on me that I think, as an observer. You can tell me if it's correct. think part of the reason so many people were so incensed by mom's demand is that it was so nonpartisan. You got so many people who have been cultured or encouraged or algorithmically targeted to fight a culture war. A red versus blue, a left versus right, yada, yada, yada. You got them all to say, oh, yeah, every country in the world has mental health issues. Every country in the world on par with ours has access to the same video games. Everywhere is basically the same when you are in a similar country of, you know, population and economic means and all the things.

The only difference here is the access to the guns. It's the guns. It's not anything else. And I say this is a kid who got her first gun for her 12th birthday. You know, people are always very shocked when they find out that, like, their liberal Hollywood, blah, blah, blah, person they want to scream about is, like, actually a sharpshooter. I'm like, yeah, we can be many things, guys. it's the guns and when you had moms

from San Francisco to Oakland to Texas to New Mexico to Florida to Northern Vermont rallying together I think you really scared a lot of people because they knew that the truth was more powerful than the PR the facts are more powerful than any

money the gun lobby spends and you can't unsee something once you know it. And yet we find ourselves back here in this dystopian Trump 2.0 land. How, I know you took a break, which you deserved. You know, you did the most wonderful thing that I think women do, which is they build power and then share it. You didn't say, I'm going to run mom's demand until the day I die because it's mine. you passed the baton, but from outside, still having built it and being so close to it,

how do you want to speak to those women about what we do now? Because it feels like for all this progress we've made, the people with the most money who want the progress for themselves and not for any of us are winning in this moment. And they're just, they're lighting everything on fire and not in a good way. not in a fired up way in like a tornado burn it all down nightmare kind of way so what do you if you were still at the helm of mom's demand or if you were just going to talk to us i don't know on instagram on a saturday morning like what would you what do you want to say to the women who go but

shannon what do we do now you know i knew intuitively the day after the sandy hook school shooting that women were the secret sauce to taking on the largest most powerful well wealthy special interest that's ever existed, right? The gun lobby. And I simply put out a plea on Facebook that women come together like they did through Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which was so incredibly influential to me as a teen in the 80s. They made unbelievable progress in under a decade. So I thought, okay, we need women to take on the gun lobby. And I was right. This was the gun lobby's worst nightmare that women would rise up against them to protect their children in their communities because women are so powerful. Yes, we only hold 25% of the 500,000 elected positions

in this country. We are less than 5% of Fortune 1,000 CEOs. So we're not pulling the levers of power that really make the policies that protect our families and communities, but we're the majority of the voting population and we can use our voices. So when you combine voices and votes, we're unstoppable. And so that is why when millions of women began to show up in state houses, in their city councils, even at Congress, we went from a quarter of all Democrats in Congress having an A rating from the NRA to none now. It's a seismic shift in American politics. It's how we passed the first federal gun safety legislation in 22 in a generation. And that is a formula, just like living on fire, right? That is the formula for successful activism.

Women have immense power. When we come together in community, and I talk about this in the book, is building a bonfire. You know, you take your flame and you put it with other women's and it just becomes this huge unstoppable fire that, you know, shows you what you want to do, but also shows you the people you want to do it with. And that is what moms to man action became. And so I think in this moment, it is so, we're all talking about community. It is so important to find your community. It doesn't have to be gun safety activism. It doesn't even have to be activism. But find your community and find your strength because that is what we need to get us through the next four years. And I will just say that as an Emerge America board member, this is an organization that

trains women to run for office, I think there's a moral imperative for women to run for office in this country. Yes. I don't care if it's county coroner. I don't care if it's city sheriff. It can be a very small elected officials office. But if we are able to do it, we need to do it because only having 25% of the elected positions, you know, the saying is when you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on the menu. Yes. Many women right now in this country are the main course. Yes. And now a word from our sponsors that I really enjoy and I think you will too. Well, I saw a statistic today. You know, the administration is saying they want to give baby bonuses. They want more children born in America.

And I'm like, oh, you mean you want to give families a baby bonus that's over $1,000 less than the child tax credit that your party killed that lifted 50% of all families in poverty out of poverty? Interesting. So you want women to have more babies in a country where you are making it impossible to access maternal health care, where you're defunding cancer research for children, where you are trying to take away women's rights to IVF. So if they actually want to have children, they can't. And the list just goes on. you're defunding education, you want everybody to have guns. Why do you think people maybe are scared to bring children into this world? Weird. It's so crazy making. And I think it's why it's so important what you're putting in the book and also what you're reminding us out in the world is to see and identify the problem and then congregate in community to figure out how to fix it.

And you are right. One of the ways we have to fix it is by taking those seats, women running for office, whether it's, you know, Emerge America or Emily's List or any of these groups that is helping, she should run. Yes. Helping women run for something. Oh, that really feels like a shift that has been a long time coming. From your vantage point, do you see more women in your peer group, you know, women whose kids,

are off in college and so they're beginning to reclaim more of their daily time. Do you see more women talking about it, thinking about it, gearing up for it? I do. You know, women don't not live on fire because they're weak. It's because they're wise. They see the system is set up for them to fail. And the only way to fix that is to find the courage to step out into the arena. And, you know, this formula I was talking about, your abilities, your values, and your desires, that is different for every single person. My abilities were my communication skills. I had been in comms for almost 20 years

before I started Mom's Demand Action. My values were protecting my family and my community. And my desire was to be an activist. I had grown up in Rochester, New York, where I was taught that people like Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony, and I think she's been canceled now, but like all these different activists, right, who sort of were women at the forefront.

Right. And each one of us has that different recipe, the different formula that will come into play. You know, I've seen women come into Mom's Demand Action and they decided to be a data lead because maybe they were an accountant in their professional life. And they come into the organization and they're surrounded by other supportive women

and they think, wow, I'm really good at being a data lead. I'm really doing a great job at this. Maybe I'll try to be the chapter leader. And then they become the chapter leader and they say, wow, you know, I'm really smart and I'm getting people to feel good about themselves and to make progress. maybe I will run for city council and they do and they win and it is just really those it's like

taking the next fiery step over and over again yeah so coming into writing the book you you dropped this gem earlier that you got a phone call from maria shriver did you have a book in the works and she heard about it what what happened tell tell me that story because that feels very cool I had just stepped back from Mom's Demand Action, and I thought, okay, I'm going to take a year off, figure out what's next. You know, I'd been working seven days a week as a full-time volunteer for over a decade. And Maria Shriver had DM'd me out of the blue on Instagram and said, can I have your phone number? And, you know, this was a few weeks went by. I'm running on the treadmill. And I look down on my phone and it says, Maria Shriver. And obviously, I get off the treadmill and answer the phone. And she says, you know, I so admire your voice. I think you have a lot to tell women. I have a book imprint called Open Field. would you write a book for me? Which, you know, is a very big question. Like, you can write about whatever you want. And I said yes.

You know, I could have said no. I could have said, I'm not the right person. I'm not an author. I'm not, I don't have anything to tell. But I knew that wasn't true. You know, I knew that I did have something to say to women, that I had learned so much through my leadership of moms and man action. And then I wanted to empower other women, especially women my age,

to keep doing things till the end of their life. And so I said yes. And I had written a book before, but I had written it with a co-author, and it was very fact-based about gun violence. This was something different. This was my story and the stories of other women. And I'm not going to say it wasn't hard.

You know, there were days when I thought, why did I take this on? Why am I not on vacation? What if this isn't good? What if people don't like it? And I had to push through. all those feelings, all these stories, these narratives that I was making up and telling myself. And I've gotten such incredible feedback. I mean, the poet Maggie Smith blurt this book,

and she was reading it, and she would email me and say, I wish I'd had this book when I was getting divorced. So many women who I admire have supported the book, are supporting the book, women like you. And I'm just so glad. I said yes to Maria Shriver, a perfect stranger who has become a friend and is interviewed in the book. That's so cool. That's just so cool. Something that you've also talked about, which I really cherish because it's been my journey as well, seems common in our kind of overlapping generation. You've opened up a lot about your struggle with untreated ADHD, getting diagnosed later in life, you and me both, sister. And in one way I feel so relieved to understand that some of what is hard for me is not a personal

failing. It's literally how my brain is wired. It also is probably part of the reason I can go through policy so quickly because I have a weird memory for that kind of stuff. Don't ask me what day it is anytime, anywhere. What was the kind of push, pull, the relationship, the relief and the, oh, I wish I'd understood this earlier for you. You know, what's interesting is I was a speaker at a conference a couple of weeks ago in Orlando, and I was asked by the moderator, what did you learn while interviewing women for this book? And I said, over a third of them had ADHD, either undiagnosed or late in life diagnosed, and that it was the secret sauce for becoming who they are now.

Do you know that the entire audience began to cheer and some of the women started crying? like that touched women so much this this phenomenon of ADHD I was actually diagnosed when I was 14 really in the 80s so that tells you how bad my ADHD was wow because women girls were not being diagnosed in the 80s so uncommon I mean then and especially even for young women now and I had all the comorbidities I had OCD I had anxiety I had skin picking I had nervous ticks like I was you know a kid who was really struggling and I started to fail out of school in the eighth grade and that's when I got diagnosed. But there was such a stigma around medication that I was never medicated. And so it didn't get better. It got worse, right? Throughout my

lifetime. And it wasn't until I was in my mid-20s and I think my brain was fully developed that I would learn workarounds for things that come intuitively to other people. But it was a real struggle. I tried medicating myself when I went through menopause because I saw the symptoms becoming so much more severe. And it just didn't work for me. I think my brain is so now solidified in the way I do things to get around the ADHD obstacles. But this is a real thing, particularly for Gen X women, who, you know, I have a lot of resentment for the way that my parents handled it, the school system handled it. I was treated as someone who was weird or different or unsuccessful, right? Like I was always destined to be a loser. I tell this story of, I was like, I was like,

Catholic school and there was an English assignment sent home. And it was compare your daughter to someone in history. I was an all-girl school. And people would come in and their parents would have compared them to Joan of Arc or, you know, the Virgin Mother. My parents compared me to Willie Loban, the tragic figure in death of a salesman. Oh my God. Because I was kind of a loser, right? Like I had potential, but I couldn't live up to it. And that's how I felt my whole. whole life. And my parents, you know, I don't mean to be too harsh on them. But, you know, as an only child, they didn't, they didn't know why I was so different. But I'm so grateful now that I had that experience. And it certainly prepared me to be the parent of three of my children have

ADHD, right? And so I think that that made me who I am. And you were talking about hyperfocus. How else could I have worked on gun violence prevention seven days a week, 12 hours a day for 11 years, only because of my ADHD. Yes. Absolutely. Because people, people will say to me, how do you get so much done in a day? And my response is always, I never even get halfway through my to do list. Yes. And then people who love me have had to sit me down and say, I think you do too much in a day. I think you need to go for a walk. Like, it's going to sound so crazy, but I know you'll get it. My therapist gave me an exercise and said, when you are working from home or you know when you wrap a podcast or whatever it is because obviously not everything

can be broken into these increments but when you're in control of your timing I want you to set a 30 minute timer and when it goes off I don't care what you're doing stop doing it and walk outside to the end of the block and back take five minutes and go for a walk and then come back and start the 30 minute timer again that's brilliant on five off 30 on five off for me that feels like learning Mandarin. We're not in the same alphabet. We're not in a language I understand. And it's so simple.

But what it's beginning to do is help my brain take a breath. Because hyperfocus can feel like holding your breath all day. And it shouldn't be that hard for a 42-year-old woman to walk to the end of the block and back, but it's hard for me to stop doing what I'm doing. And I am learning this thing that would probably be easy for a five-year-old, but for me is difficult.

And it is really transforming not only the way I learned to pause, but what I realized kind of emotionally recently was, much like you, in my own way, I was going through my own massive life shift and the eczema and the sort of physical stress response was my body, my body had been trying to talk to me for so long. that it stopped talking and it started screaming. And I had to start to pay attention to it. And the coolest side effect I've realized of this 30 on five off thing

is that I'm teaching my body, it can trust me. When the alarm goes off and I get up and I go for a walk and I look at the sun and I take deep breaths and I jump around and then I come back to work, my body knows I'm going to give it what it needs. I'm not going to ignore what it needs. And in this very weird way, I almost feel like I'm reparenting myself now that I understand how my brain works. And it's so difficult in a relationship, too, because what you're talking about, you know, is the same thing with my husband wondering, where do I go? When I become so immersed in something, you know, I organized a Zoom conference to raise money for Kamala Harris, the white women answer the calls.

Yes, let's get into that. I disappeared for like four days. My husband would just bring me power bars in liquid. And he's had to adjust too, right? Like, this is what she does. This is where she goes. But it's also part of your superpower. Yes.

That's your hero stuff. And what I think is really precious is, especially when you've tried to do what the world tells you to do and you have woken up realizing you're in the wrong marriage. And you go, okay, I have to start over. I think when you are in the right one and someone sees you and says, don't get up, but I'm going to slide this bullet food in front of your face. This is who you are, and I'm going to take care of you.

You know, during the election, much like you, I was just in it. I was on a plane every day. When I was home, I was on 40 Zooms a day, it felt like. And I'd be on a Zoom, and I would just, I would like see Ash appear from the left. And she'd hand me this, like, beautifully cooked breakfast and just, you know, pat my arm off camera and walk away. And I was like, you angel. We have the same partner. Right?

Like, it's like, what is it like to be loved? What? And I think there's something so special in when you're seen and supported so you can be who you are. And I don't know if you have this. I do know it's quite a common thing for people with ADHD. You know, we start to do something and then get distracted. And I know for someone like her who is the most orderly, cleanly person, clutter or a mess can drive her crazy. And instead of losing her mind when she finds like next to the.

bookshelf my plate with peanut butter toast half eaten amidst the books she just texts me pictures of the weird places that I leave things around the house and is like you're ridiculous I love you and it makes us both laugh and so it's so sweet because I'm like that's where I left up like I couldn't find my smoothie and it was like you know on a shelf in the hall closet and it's it's so different to have a person who can see your thing. Yes. You know, you've got someone with an endless supply of power bars because he knows and loves you. Exactly.

And it's really special. And now a word from our sponsors. How was the call organizing itself? You're obviously so amazing at it. I mean, you know, 10 million women you organized from every disparate place, space, political background for Mom's Demand. You mentioned earlier you got the first gun legislation in a generation passed. Then you decide to take a break. And then we get into an incredibly consequential election.

And as you do, you do things big. And you organize this call that really helped collect. a lot of women that look like us. I remember because I was in France for the Olympics and I was on the HRC call which was at the same time as your call. So I had two computers open going back and forth

making sure I could do my speaking thing and watch everybody here and I was like God, I'm so inspired. I'm sad now obviously thinking about it but there was so much energy. Yeah, what did it feel like and how did you build it? So I was reading on Twitter.

There were these tweets from a woman named Joteca Edie, who has run Win with Black women for a long time. And I saw all these Black women on Instagram and Twitter saying, I'm on this call for Kamala Harris. Now there's 1,000 people. Now there's 5,000 people. Now there's 10,000 people. We have to call Zoom.

They have to open. I mean, it was so exciting. Yeah. And they raised millions of dollars, right? And then the next day, my friend Roland Martin got together with a group of black. men and did the same thing. And they had even more people and raised more money. And as I do, when I wake up in the middle of the morning because of menopause like at 4 a.m., I just tweeted out into the ether, when are white women going to do the same thing? Yeah. Not thinking, oh, I'm going to

organize this. You were like, turns out I volunteered as tribute. That was a question. Not a, not a suggestion. It was just a question. So all of these women started DMing me. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. when is this? Tell us when. And so that was the beginning and I got connected to Jotaka and thought, okay, this seems like there's a lot of interest. But I never imagined it would be what it was. I mean, we used a simple Zoom link and we used my own fundraising link that I had from the campaign, not even Act Blue, right? Just to my link. Suddenly, the Zoom started crashing and coming back on. It was like we were writing waves. We got an email from Zoom saying, congratulations. This is a largest Zoom call in history. By the end of the call, we knew from my link,

we'd raise $2 million. And I thought, well, that's great. That's good. How cool. The next morning I get a call, now it's $5 million. Then it was $8 million. Then it was, ended up being $11 million in two hours. And look, I still am disappointed in the way white women voted, but there was a five-point increase from Biden among college-educated white women. I hope we can build on that progress going forward. And, you know, people always are bashing so-called identity of politics. I think it was a really important conversation that needed to be had, which is why do white women vote in their own self-interest and not in all women's best interests? But I think the question goes deeper than that, because white women are not voting in their

own self-interest. They think they are. They think they are. They think they're voting to uphold some semblance of normal. see for their family, their husband, their neighborhood, but they're actually voting against all of our interests. As my friend Brittany Pagnick Cunningham says, your white, my favorite lady. Your whiteness will not save you from what the patriarchy has in store for you. And I think that's the illusion that patriarchy has given to us is that, you know, these men are

here to protect us. I look at women and I go, protect us from who? Yeah. Men, men. I don't want to be protected from them. Yeah. I want to be protected in the law. I want to be protected in ways that can't change with their mood. Because you see these men in power now. You see Donald Trump. You see J.D. Vance.

What they say is not what they're doing. Yes. And what they're doing is so abhorrent, especially for women. And I guess I want to know why you think so many white women bristle. at the phrase white women. Why? Why do so many white women get upset when we say,

hey, if we center black women in American politics, American politics will get better for every woman, including white women. Why do you think that makes people feel so upset or so left out or so like high school,

click, terrible? What is that reaction about? I think because we know that deep down inside, there is truth to the fact that we vote with white men, whether it's our father's, husbands, sons, and not with the backbone of the party and the people who are truly the most vulnerable and the people who would truly benefit from our votes going in their favor. And that doesn't feel great, right? There's sort of an innate defensiveness. I remember, you know, after Hillary Clinton lost and there was a big discussion about this, I wasn't quite there yet. I was like, don't criticize me. I voted for Hillary Clinton. And then I thought, there's actually so much more I can do because a lot of white women in my family did not vote for Hillary Clinton. And those are conversations I'm obligated to have. That's not the work of black women or women of color. It is the work of white women who are positioned in friends and families

and who have impact and affluence that say, here's how I'm voting and here's why. And that is almost like living on fire, right? That is a brave and important conversation. to have. Yeah, it's a thing we have to do. And it's interesting. I have a, I have a woman in my life who, if we met today, we would not be friends, but we've known each other a long time. We have fought over equality, equity, civil rights for a long time. And I have people in my life who say, just be done with it. And the thing I keep saying is, I will not sick this woman on any woman of color that I love. It's not their job to teach her. Part of my job is to sit with her and work on these issues, work on explaining the truth,

work on helping her undo her own internalized misogyny, her own illusions that whiteness is going to protect her, these things. And it feels important to me because it doesn't feel by accident. And I think that has been a great learning for me. In 2016, I was like, if you voted this way, we cannot be friends. I'm done. This isn't political. This is about humanity.

And I realized that that's actually a very privileged reaction. Yes. Because I can be done. Yes. But many of the women in my life can't be. Yep. And so I've actually doubled down on long, patient conversations where I don't get into any facts for 30 minutes to an hour. I talk about personal experience, emotion, my own story, their own story. And then it's,

this will bump into your confirmation bias. You will not want to believe what I'm about to show you because it will trigger shame. We can talk about our shame together. Here's what's really going on. Here's the bills they've passed. Here's what they're doing to IVF. Here's what they're doing to access for hungry children to have food in school. Here's what they're doing. let's talk about it and it requires an immense amount of work but i do feel like for me it is part of my flame i've learned that that's part of my fire and what you're talking about is incremental progress and um oh but it's so hard to be so patient it is it is and and it's such a dirty word particularly with young people incrementalism but i have seen incrementalism lead to revolutions well that's

And I think also when you talk about privilege, you know, Rebecca Traster, the feminist writes about this, women, white women are used to winning. And when they don't win, they walk away. And so we really do have to not back down, but double down. And keep going, even when it's hard. Yeah. I think it's really, really important to be willing to do that. And I also think it's really important on this subject of walking away, you know, to do that self-inventory and figure out when we want to walk away, maybe why. But then to also take that out into the community and be really honest about the fact that activism doesn't end after an election. Yeah. You know, there would have been a lot had Kamala won. There would have been a lot we would have been pressing

her on. There would have been a lot we would have pressed that administration on. I think we would be in such a better position, but we would have still had work to do. Now we are in a worse position, and we have so much more work to do. How do you inspire listeners or suggest that they not lose hope despite the amount of backsliding we're seeing because we didn't we didn't start a little ahead and then get ways to go. We started potentially a little ahead and then we slid all the way back and now we got to double, you know, the yardage essentially. How do you not just get exhausted and stop? You know, it is a marathon, not a sprint, but it's also a relay race. And when you have to Bass the baton, you do that, right? I had many instances during the 11 years I led moms to

in action where I had a kid in crisis or I had other things in my life I had to pay attention to. And, you know, I think women are reluctant to give other people their work. They feel guilty or they feel worried that other people might, you know, do it better. There's all that stuff built into us. And I felt that way. And what I realized was when I came back, the work was still there. And other people brought their energy and their ideas to it. That's what. What it makes, that's what makes a community, right? Leaning on one another. So I would say, think of it as a relay race, but also lose forward.

And this was a motto at Mom's to Man Action. You are going to lose. It's always going to be two steps forward, one step back. It's the incrementalism we talked about. But look for the hope. Look for the wins. Maybe you lost on a legislation that you were trying to pass. But what did you win?

You grew your chapter. You created new relationships with lawmakers. You figure it out what it will take to win the next time. And I saw this happen over and over again where, you know, in states, you would think we would never make progress, either by defeating bad bills or passing good bills. And we did. It's cyclical. Politics is cyclical. What we're going through now will not last forever. So build that foundation you can build on when we win again.

I love that. When you talk about Emerge America and she should run and all these organizations, do you ever see yourself for a election? office? I get asked that a lot. I never say never. I'm actually becoming a resident of Florida, which is exciting to me because California is great, but it's not as much of a uphill battle as Florida, which I think will be fun to kind of get in the middle of. Oh, she's ready. But, you know, I think what I learned during moms doing inaction, yes, I'm passionate about gun safety, but that wasn't what kept me going. I live to summon the audience. audacity of other women. And so encouraging other women to step up, to run, showing them they can do

this, show them they can do anything, personal, political professional. That is what I'm focused on right now. Yeah, I love that. So then what feels like your work in progress right now? My work in progress is bringing this book into the world. It has been like giving birth, writing it, and now announcing that it's here and letting people read it and getting their reactions. I'm so excited about that. Firestarter University is going to start in the fall. So it's a year-long online program based on the book. And

then maybe I'll say, oh, I'm taking that break that I talked about last time and he knows what will pop up. I know. I think back to when we were all away for our friend's birthday and you were like, guys, I'm going to do it. I'm going to take a sabbatical. Yep.

We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We can plan more getaways in the meantime. Maybe our sabbaticals are just meant to be 72 hours at a time. That's okay. You know, good bottle of wine, nice view, and then we're right back at it. Thank you so much for coming today. Thank you for the book.

It really is. I'll echo Maggie. It really is exactly what we all needed, and I'm glad it's here. Thank you. This is an IHeart podcast.