Here's Where It Gets Interesting - How to Seek Truth and Find Freedom in Our Stories with Lisa Sharon Harper

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

In today’s episode, Sharon speaks with Lisa Sharon Harper, whose book, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World–and How to Repair It All, is the result of thirty years of family history research. Lisa believes that there is a power in knowing your story and the story of your ancestors. Many African Americans face the challenge of gaps in their family history, origins obscured by enslavement histories. It’s when we know our stories and our truths that we can start to heal and release. Seeking and telling the truth can be like wading into troubled waters, but it’s the only way to find freedom. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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struggling Asian actor who gets a bigger part than he expected when he witnesses a crime in Chinatown. Streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Hello, friends. Welcome. I am absolutely delighted to have author and speaker Lisa Sharon Harper with me today. And she has written a book that is so remarkable. It's called Fortune, How Race Broke My Family and the World and How to to repair it all. So my goodness, I just cannot recommend this conversation highly enough. Let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am so excited to be joined today by author and speaker, Lisa Sharon Harper. Thank you so much for joining me. I am just thrilled to be here, Sharon.

Thank you. Appreciate being here. I like your middle name. You know, a lot of people do. People often call me Sharon and I always say, is my mom around? Because that's my mom. So Lisa Sharon Harper. It's Lisa.

But call me Lisa. Absolutely. When I say over a hundred times a day, that's not even an exaggeration. People want to talk about things like this nation's history, topics of race. They want to talk about these issues from the perspective of truth and reconciliation and how can we move forward as a nation. And I fully believe that there is no moving forward without the truth. And I'd love to hear you talk about that. Amen. Well, thank you so much for, first of all, for bringing me on to speak with your audience and to have relationship with you for this time. And I'm honored and I a hundred percent agree. That's the reason why we wrote, why I wrote, sorry, me, myself, and I wrote Fortune.

It was 30 years of research into my family's story. It's a story that stretches back to 1682 and the second colony ever on American soil, the colony of Maryland. And it is absolutely about the hierarchies of human belonging that we crafted for ourselves back then and entrenched over the next several hundred years. And it still impact us to this day. So I did not begin the research thinking I was going to write a book. I began the research just to know who I am. As an African-American woman, the reality of our lives in America is that the documentation kind of comes to a screeching halt when you get toward the civil war,

beyond the civil war in history. But I was really amazed to find that the documentation on the fortune line of my family didn't. I mean, their names were on the census in 1850 and 1840 and 1700s. And I'm like, what is this? Because the only way that you could have your name on the census was to be free. So this meant they were free. And I did not know that story. I'm like, how do we have free people in our family in Virginia as early as the 1700s, the mid-1700s? Well, come to find out that this family stretches back most likely to a woman named Fortune Game McGee, who was born to Sambo Game and Maudlin McGee. So Sambo is a Senegalese name, and it actually comes from the Wolof people, and it means second son. So from his name, we actually understand a little bit more of his story that we would not have known before.

But I realized that this fortune line stretches way back to them. Modlin entered on this land in 1682. And they had a child, 1687, Sambo and Madeline in 1687. Madeline was married. She had an affair with Sambo. Hello, somebody. And they had a girl that they named Fortune, which I just think is amazing. Wow.

But that little girl's body and life and future absorbed the wrath of the very first race laws that were crafted on this land. And what that means is that it impacted every generation that came after. And I started realizing this is not just my story. This is the story of America and race, and it needs to be written for that reason. So that's why I wrote Fortune. I would love to hear more about what uncovering some of your ancestry, your family history, what has that meant to you? Let me just say that there's something about knowing who you are. You know, if you don't know who you are, you're not anchored. If you can only go back to your parents' generation or ask any adoptee, adoptees live most of their lives with a feeling of unknowing, something that is not known about them that they don't know. And they either have to reconcile that or they live their lives searching.

It's very, very similar, actually, in the African-American experience. And I actually think to some degree in the European American experience, because both of us to some degree had to renounce or let go of our heritage, our people's stories, our cultures, our languages, our norms in order to become racialized on American territory. For people of African descent, we were forced to be racialized, forced to be called Black. And Blackness doesn't have a history, a people, a language, a culture. Blackness was meant to do one thing to determine, according to the law, the law that was passed in Virginia 1662 and Maryland 1664, to determine one thing, who can be enslaved, who is not a citizen and therefore can be enslaved. And whiteness was

meant to determine one thing, who is meant to rule here. So in order to get the right to rule, the capacity to rule, people of European descent had to renounce their Lithuanian heritage, their German heritage, their German language, their story. They had to disconnect themselves from their own story in order to become white, to get the riches of whiteness on this land. Likewise, people of African descent were forced to let go of their Senegalese language and culture and family story and people's story, and then adopt this new identity, which was only rooted in one thing, lack of power, powerlessness, the presumption that you were created in order to increase the profit of those who are called white, right? So now that we have DNA research and we have ancestry.com and 23andMe, and let me tell you, I've done them all. There's a way now that we as people of African descent have the ability to reach back and lay hold of that part of ourselves that was cut off from us when we were first brought here.

And there is the very first time I ever got the ancestry.com DNA. And by the way, they're not paying me to say this. The first time I ever got my DNA story back from them, I wept. Sharon, I was the first person in 340 years of my family's story on this land. I mean, think about that. Centuries of us did not know where we were from. We only knew that we were enslaved. We only knew when I didn't even know we were indentured, but we were indentured in fortune's era.

knew when I didn't even know we were indentured, but we were indentured in fortune's era. So now I know the story and there's a rootedness and anchoring that happens with knowing one story. It was, let me tell you also when I got the, so I did africanancestry.com as well. And that's, that's DNA as well. It's not just a family tree, but it's, it's, in fact, it goes back 1000 years. So it asks the question, where were your ancestors on for me, the matrilineal line 1000 years ago. So that's like, way before enslavement, you know, when we were in the kingdoms of whatever. And I don't know that an ancestry.com can't give you that 23 me can't give you that. 23andMe can't give you that. But they traced my mother's, mother's, mother's, mother's to the thousand years ago to the Hausa people and the Yoruba people of Nigeria. I wept again. And then I did all the research. I found out that the Hausa

people are horse people. And then the Yoruba people are storytellers. That's where you have the griots. They call them the griots, the story, the keepers of the story. And so there's a way that the knowing is a part of the connection. It's actually essential to becoming reconnected. I think also, Sharon, there's something about understanding who your family is and how your family got to be the way that it is, right? So if your family is full of a particular kind of people like artists or government people or butchers or ranchers, you begin to understand who you are by understanding your family's story because your family's story got you to that place.

Likewise, you begin to understand some of the brokenness that's in there or even that you have family brokenness because you're so familiar with it. You don't even realize it's brokenness. But then when you find out, oh, this happened to my mother or my dad or my grandmother, and I'm still feeling the reverberations of that three generations later. Oh, that's what happened to me when we were researching my father's story, the Weeks family. They were brought to Barbados and their first interaction with the West, in other words, brought on a death ship that they called a slave ship, was around 1750. They were brought to Barbados. We know that from Ancestry.com DNA. They can now actually trace the years that people were brought, which is amazing. One thing we know is that within one generation, they were all scattered to the wind. They were literally

scattered throughout all of the Lesser Antilles, sold into the Lesser Antilles. That's basically all the really, really small Caribbean islands. They were in all of the islands. So that is family separation in one generation. And that family has basically a pattern of separation that still goes on to this day. Also, that side of the family had big, significant issues with abuse, physical, emotional, mental abuse. And now I understand having researched enslavement in the Caribbean, well, this is where this comes from. I mean, the island where they were just before abolition hit the Caribbean, St. Kitts Nevis, the death rate for people who were brought there was they were dead within one year. So it was that brutal, but my ancestors survived. They

were among the strong ones that survived, but that meant that they also absorbed a lot of violence and that violence then was passed down in the families. And that all of a sudden I understand, I understand my father a lot more. And now we're, we're beginning to learn so much more about the science of epigenetics and how things like family trauma affect multiple generations down the road. And we used to just sort of think of like, well, that was in the past, you know, and yes, clearly those things are in the past, but science doesn't even fully understand all the ways that it affects the future. Yes. You know, part of the research that I did, the question came to mind was, okay, what's the actual vision? What are we working toward here? Because if we only do

truth-telling and reparation, that's actually not going to get us that beloved community that Dr. King talked about, right? It's not going to get us that space where people are well, where people are allowed to and set up to flourish. So that requires healing and healing requires forgiveness. Those of us who have lived under the weight of this hierarchy of human belonging and bear the scars of it, how can we heal? belonging and bear the scars of it. How can we heal? And the primary first order of business for healing is to release that which cannot be repaired, that which can never be restored. The people who died, the communities that have been completely busted up and just are not coming back. When I think to my own family story and my great-grandmother, I think back to

the land that was lost. My great-grandfather Hiram owned a whole block of homes in Philadelphia, a block, right? After having moved here from Indiana and here, I am sitting like a block from where he lived, from where his wife Ella Fortune lived actually. And he owned a block of homes that was then taken from him by eminent domain. That was a very common, very common experience among African-Americans. Our communities were busted up. Those are not coming back. So we can demand that that be repaid, that that be restored, and we'll be blue in our face till the day we die. And we die with a deficit. So what will it require for us to have, to be released, to thrive, to flourish? Release, forgiveness. Forgiveness means to release, to release the ones who owe us

from that debt. They cannot repay. It's not possible. And then to turn to God, because I'm a person of faith and to say, God, you are the one with cattle in a thousand hills and you are the one who moves mountains and you are the one who changes the course of rivers. So Antioch, and I believe it would be God's good pleasure to do that. and you are the one who moves mountains and you are the one who changes the course of rivers. So, Ante up. And I believe it would be God's good pleasure to do that. Visa and OpenTable are dishing up something new. Get access to primetime dining reservations by adding your Visa Infinite Privilege Card

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and together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It's Steve Carell in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from The Office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink.

You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. What does it mean to tell the truth? That's a great question. Truth-telling is like wading into deep water you know my mom used to sing over me as a child she sang one of the slave songs wade in the water this is how it sounds when she i would lay in bed as a little six-year-old seven-year-old after we watched roots, she would sing, wave in the water, wave in the water, children, wave in the water.

God's going to trouble the water. And that was a song that was sung on plantations throughout the South whenever someone was going to escape. And it was a beckoning to them, wade into the water because the dogs can't sniff you in the water. That's the way to get North. That's the way to get to freedom. But the thing is those waters are troubled waters. There are alligators in those waters. If you are in Florida, there are snakes in those waters. If you are in Florida, there are snakes in those waters. If you're in South Carolina or Georgia, but you have to wade into them in order to get free. So telling the truth in America today is like wading into troubled waters, but we have to

do it because it's the only way for us to find freedom for us to be free. So truth telling requires the humility to know that you don't know all that there is to be known that that is important to know. It requires the humility to understand that there are those who might know something you need to know. And then it requires seeking and you may not even be ready for it if it does come to you and you're not seeking it, right? So you have to adopt a posture of leaning in to the process of seeking truth. I love that. I love the subtitle of your book, which is how race broke my family and the world and how to repair it all. How do you feel that just from a personal perspective, how has race broken your family?

Thank you for asking that question. Well, when you go back to the very first race laws, right, you can go back to Fortune. Fortune was standing there in a courtroom in 1705 in Somerset County, Maryland. And the reason she was brought to court is because her father was an enslaved Senegalese man and her mother was an indentured servant. And the very first race law in Maryland was crafted in order to deal with exactly that situation. White women getting together with enslaved black men and having their children. And as it turned out, there were a lot of these women. And that was a perceived issue on the ground. Something I learned in my research

is that law never just pops up because people think it's a good way to live. It's usually pops up in order to deal with a perceived issue on the ground. The perceived issue on the ground in Maryland was white women marrying, actually, enslaved Black men and having their children. And of course, that hit the issue, the egos of the planter class white men. And so they said, OK, we're not going to have this. And so you know what they did, Sharon? This blew my mind. They said, if any white woman marries an enslaved black man, she herself will be enslaved until

her husband's death and her children will be enslaved in perpetuity. In other words, forever, like a thousand years plus. If their ancestor on their mother's line traces back to a white woman who married an enslaved black man, well, guess what happened after that? That was 1664. They started forcing indentured Irish and Ulster Scott women to marry and have children with enslaved Black men. Why? Because it increased their bottom line, increased their profit margin. They now got free labor in perpetuity from their children. So they begged off of that for, I mean, you know, after a while for other reasons. And then by the time Fortune is standing in that courtroom, the way that the law has come down

is to say, if your mother is of European descent, you cannot be enslaved. But if your father is Black, you will be indentured. So she was indentured. And if you have children while indentured, your children will be indentured for 21 or 31 years, respectively. And her children were indentured and their children were indentured. And so I did a little research to say, OK, why are all these kids cropping up? And there's never any mention of husbands. And I found that there was like a page of matches with the surnames of the people who indentured Fortune and the people who indentured her daughter, Sarah. So how did race break my family? It introduced the separation of

mothers from sons and daughters. And so family separation, what does that do? What would it do to your family if you were separated from your daughter or your son forever as a child? Them leaving, having been taken as a child, what does that do to someone's psychology? What are the pathologies that develop in a family? Now, take the racialized laws that came after slavery. South Carolina passed a law that said that people of African descent can only work in two industries. That's right. I said, what? They passed this law. And why would they do this, by the way? They did this because Reconstruction, that era was the era of absolute flourishing for people of African descent. There were more than 2,000 people of African descent that were elected to public offices across the country. They passed this law that said Black people can only work in two industries, either in the fields as field laborers or in domestic service as housemaids. or in domestic service as housemaids. And I mean, it even went farther than that, Lisa. It was like,

and you must sign a contract for the year's employment and you're not allowed to get out of the contract. And if you try to get out of the contract more, you can be put in prison. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And guess where that prison is? Guess where the prison is? The prison is the plantation you were just freed from. That's right. Because the constitution permits the enslavement of criminals. And so if you can criminalize not having a job, then we can re-enslave you legally. That's exactly right. And the practice was to work people to the bone in those, in those quote, jails that are actually plantations. I visited Sugarland, which is located in Texas. It's right outside of Houston, Texas. I visited a couple of years ago, 2018 for one of our Freedom Road podcasts, actually. And so you can actually, you know, visit yourself through that, through that

episode. But what I learned was that the common practice on these peonage farms, convict leasing farms was to work the men until they drop and to bury them where they drop in peonage and convict leasing. They just had a steady stream. They didn't have to care for them at all. They literally could just pick up another vagrant and by vagrant and then somebody sat on a park bench for too long. Talked on a street corner for to a friend because that was also illegal. Stood on a porch, people watching. The amount of normal human behavior that was criminalized because it was visible to the white law enforcement for the purpose of being able to obtain more who say that now these legal systems, these structures that were very prevalent, prominent in America, that these have been abolished.

We don't have legal redlining anymore. We have integrated schools. Now we have the 14th amendment. We have the civil rights act, the voting rights act. We have all of these things, the voting rights act. We have all of these things now that protect all Americans. And so consequently people need to get over themselves and they need to just like, stop talking about race. They need to stop bringing it up. They need to just move forward, just move forward, just move on. Like nobody's being discriminated against anymore, except by a couple of people with

white hats. The rest of us are not doing it. Do you agree that we just need to move forward? Do you think the perspective is something different? Where are you on that topic? Well, first of all, think about it this way. If you have an alcoholic in your family, right? And maybe let's say your grandfather was an alcoholic

and your alcoholic grandfather lost his job often because he would come to the work drunk or, or maybe he, he beat your, your father or your mother. And now you have issues in your family that are passed down to the next generation because of the alcoholic grandfather. And then they have maybe the same issues. Maybe they become alcoholic because we know there's a gene, right? There's actually a propensity, but there's also social problems, social issues that are passed down because of the abuse that they suffered. So in America, we did outlaw redlining in the 1960s, but it still happened. Our alcoholic parent, that segregationist who wrote into the algorithm that our land would be worth less. But you know what we did when we said, okay, no, no, no, redlining is now outlawed. We never gave the

value of the land and the wealth that could have been accumulated over those four decades between the writing of that law and the time when it was outlawed, the redlining without law, we never paid it back. We never actually gave reparation. We never repaired what that broke. And so from that point forward, people of African descent and those communities were now in a deficit. They were now, not only were they behind, they were operating six feet underground, right? Below sea level, because the poverty entrenches gets deeper and deeper with each generation that it's not actually filled in. And it's compounded. It's not just one thing. So we can talk about the redlining, but then we also have to talk about the

drug wars, right? So we also have to talk about when there's a confession that took place in 1995, it was Nixon's legislative director, John Ehrlichman, who confessed that Nixon conceived of his drug wars not to deal with drugs. He conceived of this war on drugs, says John Ehrlichman, in order to justify going in and breaking up his two political enemies, Black people and hippies. Right. So the hippies and the Black blacks, they were his two greatest foes. So he declared war on drugs and then pumped drugs into Philadelphia, this neighborhood where I'm sitting. They pumped opioids into this neighborhood. And my uncle died of a drug overdose, My uncle died of a drug overdose, a heroin overdose, one block away.

The wealth gap between white and black in America is tenfold. So black families have one-tenth of the wealth that white families have in America. This is the reason why, y'all. This is the reason why. Somebody didn't sit up in an office, you know, wringinginging their fingers and saying this is what we're going to do they made choices policy choices that the repercussions of those policy choices was the gutting of this community and the gutting of black wealth and heritage and legacy and think of the college educations that could have been funded the wealth that was passed down by these homes. If the community did not have crack pumped into it,

if the city did not literally come in at one point and remove all of the trees, removed the trees. It's impossible for people to understand. And the health impacts of that. That's right. The true long lasting generational impact of your community is worth so little. You don't even deserve these trees. And when you don't have trees, that means you don't have shade cover, which means the streets are hotter, which means potholes come up more and, and sidewalks buckle. It also means you don't have the ability to filter the air because trees filter the air. So all those particulates that are in the air, you end up having higher incidence of asthma,

higher incidence of heart disease and diabetes, because people don't go out and exercise as much because it's too hot and there's no green space. And we were created, we were created to be in relationship with the rest of nature and rest of creation. I have two things that I really want to make sure that I hit on before we wrap this up. The first one is what would you say to somebody who feels like talking about matters of race, talking about the truth of American history that has no place in a school? Because you know, this is a very prevalent conversation that is happening all over the country right now.

I do. I know. That we're just making white children feel bad for being white and that we should just like, everybody's great. Whatever your skin color is good for you. Just be that color. Let's stop talking about it because children are feeling bad. What would you have to say to them? I say we are, we are destined to repeat history. If we don't know it, we have to know who we are and how we got here. That's all.

That's all we're really doing. Somebody talked to me, you know, about critical race theory. And I have to say, I learned about critical race theory for the very first time two years ago. And I said, what is this critical race theory thing? I've been teaching on race for 20 years and never even heard of it. Like, what are you talking about? Wait, where is this a secret thing that I've never heard of before? Like, what are you talking about? Is this a secret thing that I've

never heard of before? Like what are we referring to? Yes. Yes. Well, I'll tell you, I did. I mean, I did a little study. I got the books. I said, okay, I'm going to go back to the source and figure out what, what is this thing? And it turns out it's, it's a theory that was literally a theory developed in a legal in law schools in the 1980s. And it was this guy named Derrick Bell and a few other people who were really kind of pushing back. And ironically, they always say it's Marxist. Well, actually, no, it's not Marxist. It was actually pushing back against Marxist thought. It was saying there was a movement within progressive legal scholars to say, we need to embrace Marxist theory. That's going to be what solves

America's problems. And Derrick Bell, black man said, that's not going to solve America's problems. Marx was a white guy in a white community, in a white nation, the white world. He didn't have to deal with race. So anything you deal with there, you're talking about class. Okay. Class is a part of it, but if you're not dealing with race, you're not going to solve anything in America because race goes back to the roots of American law. That's the whole theory. The theory is you cannot deal with who America is and the legal structure of America and help America to become America without dealing with the legal constructs of race.

As is, you know, I didn't even set out to do this, but in researching fortune's life, we see this 1705 she's in that courtroom and the law that shaped her family's life was developed in 1664. You know, we're talking about, about 30 years after the founding of the second colony ever, right? And about 50 years after the founding of the first colony ever, Virginia. So in the very roots of who we are as a nation, race is there. It has to be dealt with. It has the power and has shaped whole people groups lives. That was the theory. So I was like, well, that's kind of like, duh. So when you say you're going to ban critical race theory, what you're really saying is you're going to ban the teaching about who we are and how we got where we are. And you know what that does? It limits our capacity then to become better. It limits our capacity to get to the place where we can all flourish.

Isn't that what we really want? Don't we want a world where we're all able to flourish? That is possible, but it's not possible if we don't know how we got here. I love that. I have to ask you too. I really am very curious about, because a lot of the work that you do around this topic is in a faith community. It's in churches. It's with faith leaders. And I would love to hear more about how you view perhaps the difference between talking about these issues with perhaps more secular audience versus a faith community. Well, I think that it's just really important that people of faith struggle with these questions, wrestle with these questions. You trace race all the way back to Plato. I mean, in my research, I was able to trace it back to Plato. 360 BC, Plato comes up

with this concept called race. And he says race is the different metals that different people groups are made of. So he says gold people serve society in this way, silver people serve society in that way, copper in that way, and whatever. And it's debatable about whether or not there was hierarchy there. But 10 years later, his acolyte, Aristotle, comes up with actual hierarchy of human belonging. He says, if a group has been conquered, it has shown itself that it was supposed to be, it was created to be enslaved, right? And scholars pretty much agree that back in his day, what they would have seen as a full human being is someone who is white like them, male like them, and able-bodied like them. So then you flash forward about a thousand years and you get Pope Nicholas V and Pope

Nicholas V, again, the church. Pope Nicholas V says to a family friend who's going to go exploring, sure, you can go exploring and I'll give you a blessing. And here's what I'll do. I'll do you one better. If you come across land that is not civilized or Christian, then you can claim that land for the throne and enslave its people. So we actually literally get the entire world as we know it, its people. So we actually literally get the entire world as we know it, the colonized world as we know it today, from that edict. It became the legal basis that we established North America, South America, United States. I mean, the whole thing, that is the legal basis. It became known as the doctrine of discovery. And so that's not the end of it though. In Fortune's day, And so that's not the end of it, though. In Fortune's day, the church becomes the manager of the oppression of the image of God on earth,

the one that keeps the records and enforces whether or not someone is going to be enslaved or indentured. And that is the case all the way through until the Revolutionary War. And then in the antebellum period, half of the church broke off from itself. Like literally every denomination in America split over the question of slavery. So while you had half of these denominations supported abolition, the other half said, no, enslavement is fine. Slavery is fine. And then they tried to justify it through the scripture. We have work to do in the church. We have been part and parcel of the problem. We have

been at the center of the construction of this thing called race in the world. And it's our theologies that either have entrenched it or who have, that have not spoken a word about it. And so therefore let it happen. Are you finding that churches are resistant to doing that work? No, I'm actually finding that the majority, the middle of the church, and certainly those who have already been working in this area for many decades, that we are very much at the place where we know something's wrong and we need to fix it. And if there's no greater evidence for that, there's nothing else that is prompting the church to figure out what is wrong with us. It is the fact that we have young people streaming from our churches, like they are just not coming in. They see the lack

of integrity. They see the fact that what we've been preaching is not working. And it's working to get us the kind of politics, the kind of conversations about how we should be living together that are permeating our everyday lives today. So when I talk about politics, I'm not talking about partisanship. I'm talking about the question of how do we live together in the world? And we've made decisions

and we are making decisions about how we live together in the world right now. And it is, unfortunately, it's those people who might likely spend the most time in those churches in that part that never hears from me, right? That they're the ones who are making a decision about how we live together in the world that is according to, bowing to the power of the hierarchies of human belonging that fortune had to deal with in 1705. How do I not make this podcast 11 hours long, Lisa? I have so many things that I want to talk about. The only answer is that you're going to have to come back if you would be willing to do

that. I have so many things that I would love to talk about. And I really want to encourage people to read this book. It's called fortune. And I love that you end the book with how to repair it all. Oh yeah. And I want to have you come back and have a deeper conversation about that so we can give it the time that it deserves. But this has been just an absolutely, I treasure this conversation. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for your labor and educating the rest of us for being willing to step up to the plate and do that. And the inordinate amount of time that you put into researching this story that can then benefit the rest of us.

I'm so grateful for that. And tell everybody where they can follow you, where they can find you, all that good stuff so they can go out and buy your book, Fortune. Thank you so much, Sharon. I really appreciate that. Folks can follow me online at lisasharonharper.com. That's the place that's kind of like the one-stop shop. You can find everything there.

If you want to go directly to social media, I'm on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. And by the end of the year, I'll be on TikTok too. I'm a little scared for TikTok, but I'm willing to go there. But definitely, definitely check out Fortune at fortunebook.us. So fortunebook.us. We have a video journal that you can actually use to kind of work through the book on your own or in small groups. It's an opportunity for us all, all of us to grow and to move forward. If you want to move forward, here's how to do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. And it starts with telling the truth. Yeah, that's right. Thank you. Truly. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening

to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out

so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.