A Formula for Coming Alive (Shannon Watts)

Listen now (64 mins) | “Living on fire is really a metaphor for figuring out two things: What is limiting you. And what is calling you.”

You can also listen to this episode on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Shannon Watts is the founder of Moms Demand Action, where she spent 11 years as the full-time volunteer lead before stepping back in 2023 to start a new chapter. Under her leadership, Moms Demand Action became one of the largest grassroots movements in the country.

I love Shannon for so many reasons. Personally, I’ve learned so much about life from the way that she leads, the way that she approaches challenges, and the way she thinks about failure and success. And I think her new book is exactly right—it’s just what we need from Shannon now. It’s called Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age.

We talk about how Shannon teaches women to do this. We talk about a certain double bind that women face, and what to do about it. We talk about preparing for blowbacks…the value of failing forward…how Shannon learned to channel her anger, and also to help others find joy. We talk about why incremental change is seen as a dirty phrase in some circles. And we talk about being okay with being both hard and soft.

I have no doubt that you will be lifted up by so many things Shannon shares today.

MORE FROM SHANNON:

Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age

Fight Like a Mother

Moms Demand Action

Follow Shannon on Instagram

Shannon’s Substack

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

ELISE:

I feel like you're on fire and you're just like a machine over there pumping out newsletters and lives and what is happening. Just all that energy needs to go somewhere.

SHANNON:

Yeah, I don't know. I thought I was going to take a break after mom's doing action. I was going to take a year off as you know, and that lasted all five seconds. I do have an insane amount of energy. I don't even know what to do with all of it.

ELISE:

Yeah, no. Shannon's got a Shannon. There's no putting yourself out to pasture, right? No. I also have a lot of energy, so I can't not engage.

SHANNON:

I desire to. I desire to disengage.

ELISE:

Yeah. Well, if you were built for a period of time, it's this period of time. I

SHANNON:

Kind of think that, yeah,

ELISE:

When I think about your path too spiritually and from an arc, it's almost like mom's demand action is some sort of express training ground for whatever your real dharma is, although that's quite a dharma too, but that there's something that you've been developing that you are scaling and the book is part of this and all of your work, but it's actually not the thing. I think you recognize that too.

SHANNON:

I totally feel that too. I don't know what the thing is. Am I going to run for office? Am I going to, I don't know what it is.

ELISE:

Maybe you should be the governor of Florida,

SHANNON:

Not the governor. No.

ELISE:

Why not?

SHANNON:

I mean I'm the carpetbagger obviously, but already I'm getting calls. Are you going to run? There's that woman who's slightly a lunatic who is a congresswoman where I'm going to live, Anna Luna, somebody. So I don't know, I think that my husband would probably jump off of a roof somewhere if that was the option that I pursued. But

ELISE:

It's interesting. I like sitting here in this with you and just feeling like it's present, but it's not completely clear. But this book is what I had asked you to write and what I want you to write, you have this, this is your gift. This is one of your zones of genius is the ability to create firestarters and then not only do that, but also be like, I'm going to actually control the blaze. I'm going to very carefully figure out exactly what we're going to do here, which I feel like many of us don't have. This is a rare skill, although I like the idea of you explaining how to do it to anyone who feels similarly called, but I was texting actually with Glennon and I was like, in these moments of time, I wish we had. In the same way that Moms Demand action creates both great relief for people like me and opportunity for those who are mission aligned in that direction. There's something about creating a lane and the clarity and this is what we're going to do and this is the playbook and this is how we get change. This is how, what do you call it? Losing forward.

SHANNON:

Yep.

ELISE:

Failing forward through changing laws locally and whatnot. And you can join it or you can support it or you can just be grateful that it's there while you focus on the environment or women's health. I feel like we're missing this meta structure because as women, there's this compulsion to care about everything and be involved in everything and it's obviously exhausting and that chaos is the distraction. And anyway, I was like, I'm talking to Shannon on Monday and I feel like she's going to have some sort of grand plan for how we string everything together and buttress each other's work and get organized across multiple issues. So maybe that's what I would really like you to do next. Maybe you're already doing that in some way.

SHANNON:

Can I swear on this podcast? Yes. Okay. So I think it's the double bind of fuck giving. We are told to give no fucks as women and to just lean in and do all the things, and we're never told how to handle the blowback, but at the same time we're told that we shouldn't get involved and the way to survive is to give notebooks and to just keep doing our thing and to fulfill all the obligations. And that is really a crucial decision right now. We kind of have to do both, which is a double bind that most men don't face. How do we care about everything but not care so much that we get lost or that we don't do the other things that we have to or we're told that we have to do? And I think we have to realize that first women aren't confused right now because they're weak. It's because we're wise. We know all of the blowback. We'll get the fact that the system is set up to give us all these obstacles every step of the way and that we're going to fail, that when we decide to be brave and to be bold, we're going to fail. And that does not feel good in the

ELISE:

Society. No, it certainly doesn't. That's why I think the definition that you created within Mom's Demand Action of failing forward or every failure is in of itself some sort of success. Either what you've learned or the wall that you've hit or maybe you made a little bit of progress or got people's attention. Whatever it is, is very, I think not the narrative that we're sold about how change happens.

SHANNON:

It's incremental. That is a dirty word in a lot of ways, especially activism. People want overnight wholesale change, and I totally get the frustration, especially young people, that is their role in activism for young people to be frustrated by incrementalism. But if you're over 50 like I am and you've been doing this work for over a decade, you realize the system is set up for these baby steps and if you decide to not engage in the system, you're not going to win. So you really have to be in it for the long game. When I started Moms Demand Action, it was very clear that when we took on the most powerful wealthy special interests that ever existed in this nation, we would lose a lot. And we did. And I thought, okay, when our volunteers get in the trenches and they spend all this time and effort and then they end up not winning, they're going to leave the organization, they're going to feel like it's not worth their time and effort.

And so losing forward really became our mantra, which was, okay, you lost that battle, but in order to win the war, what did you learn so that you win the next time? And if it's a piece of legislation, it could be that you grew your chapter or you now have relationships with lawmakers you didn't have, or you gained some insight into how the system works so that the next time you can get closer to winning. And that intuition was right because eventually we pulled our volunteers and said, okay, we understand why you come to the organization, maybe a lockdown drill or a shooting tragedy, but why do you stay? And they all said two things. One is they felt like they were winning, so that was the messaging that we had put it in. It is worth their time because they feel like they're winning legislatively or electorally or culturally and that it's worth their time and effort. And the second was that they found their people. And so that was really the secret formula for moms to in action, continually bringing new people into the fold.

ELISE:

It was so beautiful. I think too incrementalism particularly at this moment in time where it's like, whoa, we're watching these attempts at executive action and stripping back rights that we've taken for granted and just watching the edges being tested, broken dams permeated, but to also recognize or to see the response of like, no, that's not how we do things. So it's very scary and it's very chaotic certainly, and I don't want to suggest that it's not. And I also think if I can back up from my own anxiety about this moment in time, we're all getting this massive collective civic lesson both in terms of federal government and local government and how do these things actually impact my day-to-day life and who's harmed, but also watching people react, just looking at what was happening in Texas with school boards and just a resurgence of people recognizing, oh, I need to run for the school board.

This is happening that locally in such a small, seemingly small and insignificant way, but that's the garden that I'm meaning from and that's the garden I can reach. I don't know how you feel about this. I want to hope or believe that we'll look back on this time and say that's the moment that we collectively came alive and said, oh no, this is all of our problems in a tiny collective action way to have the world that we've come to expect or want or that this is what's required and we can no longer leave it to the federal election. And this is obviously your provenance state, local government. This is where it happens. So much of it.

SHANNON:

Yeah, I actually was somewhat heartened that I didn't see Americans jumping in and just doing things the way we did them in 2016. I think we can look back at 2016 and say, oh, some of those things were misguided or we had to learn from them in order to do the right thing this time. And also, there's something to be said for being strategic and not reactionary in the weeks and months after this last election, people were saying, oh, we're too tired, or maybe people are disheartened or they're giving up. And I actually think it was simmering under the surface, which was we have to figure out what to do that will actually matter and make a difference because this is such a dire circumstance. And what we're seeing, as you said, a lot of it is local. When I started Moms Demand Action, I thought, okay, we're going to pass federal legislation right away.

Our members of Congress, they're not going to see this horrific tragedy inside a school and do nothing. And yet Sandy Hook wasn't the impetus for moms to man action. It was all of the shooting tragedies before it when nothing had been done from Columbine to Virginia Tech to the Gabby Gifford shooting. And so there was this pent up anger and dismay and an understanding that they would probably do nothing again. And so it is a similar scenario to what we're seeing now, which is okay. Finally, it took this election cycle for people to say, okay, what is my role? How can I find a piece of the work that speaks to me and get involved and do that work? When I started Lost Man Action, I thought it was rallies and marches, and it quickly became clear, especially after that legislation I just mentioned failed that it was really organizing.

And I think we saw a lot of rallies in marches in 2016, and now what we're seeing is organizing. And yes, that includes running for office. I think there's a moral imperative in this country right now, particularly for women to run, women only hold about 25% of the 500,000 elected positions. We're only about 10% Fortune 1000 CEOs. The saying, if you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on the menu. And so many women, particularly marginalized women, are on the menu. And the solution to what we're experiencing right now is not a marcher rally. It is finding a piece of the work, picking it up and committing to doing it maybe for the rest of your life. And that is the opposite of a flash in the pan. It is incrementalism. It is rolling up your sleeves and understanding that this work may be with you forever.

ELISE:

And that is part of that. You got to find the joy. You have to find your community. It has to be nourishing and loving and not necessarily all fueled by anger. I can't remember who it was. He was like, you don't have to be angry to recycle. Right? We don't have to be furious in order to do things that feel loving and inclined towards the future that we want for ourselves and for our kids and for this planet. But yet I think in our minds, we have them equate at the heat. You have to be fired up and you might need some sort of spark to get it going, and then it has to be maintained. And joy is an essential ingredient and so is love and community, and those are more durable substances for keeping it going than just rage. Yeah, and I agree with you. 2016, I went to dc, I marched, I did all the things. And this time also it's like how I've got, we need stamina here. This is a marathon. To me, I'm like, where's the baton toss? We need an organizational level response where it's you're on for two hours, you take a break, you're on for two hours. Not this. I got to run myself until I die, which is I think the paradigm or the model that's passed down for women.

SHANNON:

Yes, and I'm guilty certainly of buying into that model in some ways, and I try to be self-aware and understand that that is a trap we get into. But I want to go back to the joy piece for a second. I believe everyone has a go-to emotion. And for example, if you ask my husband what his is, he would say loneliness. When he starts to feel pressure, he gets lonely or he's anxious, he gets lonely. For me, it's anger. It's been anger my whole life. I think I came out of the womb being angry, spoken

ELISE:

Like a true eight.

SHANNON:

Very special eight. I think that that anger, and I've had to spend a whole lifetime learning this. It's really bad and corrosive when it's used against myself or other people, but it's incredibly effective when I can figure out how to turn it into righteous anger, how I can make it turn into action that benefits other people. It took me a good 40 years to get there. But joy is also such an important part of activism. It is good to be angry about things and to be outraged as long as you're channeling that anger effectively. And I think that's sometimes where we get stuck, which is I'm angry, I'm acting. When I started Moms Demand Action, we decided to have this annual get together called Gun Sense University where we would come together for a weekend of learning. And there was a lot of anger involved in it.

There was a lot of sadness involved in it. We were talking about gun violence and hearing from survivors, there was some fear and some anxiety in there too, obviously. And so what we decided to kind of break that tension was to have a dance party at the end of every one of those weekends. And I got a lot of pushback, this idea that maybe it was sort of undignified or offensive, and I just felt intuitively that was something we all needed at the very end so that we could keep going, which actually became our phrase. A lot of women had that tattooed on their arms just to keep going. And that dance party where we just turn off the lights and take off our shoes and dance like maniacs and get all sweaty and kind of let go of all those big heavy emotions became the most important, joyful, memorable part of that weekend that people really looked forward to all of it, but in particular that dance party.

And I just don't think people will stay engaged if there isn't, it won't keep calling you back. And I would love activists to understand and to learn that you need that piece. And then the other piece you talked about, which is yes, activism is a marathon, not a sprint, but it is also a relay race. And I think this is an experience I hadn't, and I have talked about this before with permission for my kid, which is in the middle of my 11 year term of Moms Demand Action. I had a kid who developed a horrific eating disorder, anorexia, and they almost died twice. And so there was a point at which I would be on my way to the airport to go do a man action event across the country. And I'd get a call saying I needed to come home. And I had all these feelings a arise in me.

Part of it was guilt that I was going to have to give my work to someone else or I wasn't going to be able to do what I had committed to doing. And another part of it was, I guess the word for it would be, it's not competition, but it's more like my work someone else might take on. It was a worry, it was an anxiety. What if they did it better than I did? What if I wasn't needed? And what I learned through that experience of handing over the baton was the work will be there when you get back and when you allow other people in with new energy and new ideas, it will be even better and people will feel respected and

ELISE:

Engaged. Such a hard lesson, but it's so beautiful and so important. And two thoughts. I mean, I have many thoughts, but I love, I don't know if you've ever been in conversation with Loretta j Ross, but she's an amazing activist. She was the second guest on this podcast and I've had her back recently. She wrote this book about calling in, and she has worked with rehabilitating KKK people. She's a survivor of rape and incest who has rehabilitated rapists. She's gone there and she writes about joy. And also she has sort of great line, which I'll paraphrase where she's like, being a Nazi is not fun. Fighting Nazis is can be fun. You have to make it fun. And what I would also say, and a big part of your book is about this idea too, that if you take a spiritual context, which I try to do, and it can be really hard when you're in the grind of the material world to think any of this could be spiritually directed and any possible way, particularly when terrible things are happening.

But what's been helpful to me is, okay, if I adopt a view and anyone can do this regardless of how you're wired, that I chose to be here embodied at this particular moment in this particular meet suit, and I have these specific skills, then what am I doing? What am I supposed to be doing here? How do I come most alive? What am I being called forward for? How am I supposed to contribute, which I think you write about purpose. I think contribution can be easier for people where you're like, okay, I get it. What am I uniquely skilled to do? And coming at it from that context of this is a fun puzzle. Let me figure out my part in this play, I think makes it, at least for me, it makes it a little bit more fun. It becomes cognitive. I look at you and I'm like, I would never start a movement. I would never want to lead it, but I would love to organize the mailings and figure out the communication strategy and put the whole system together. That would be a great use of my skill. You are like, you're going to get out there with the blowtorch. Let's be real, right?

SHANNON:

Yes. That is my personality. And I think you're onto something when you talk about purpose can be a lot of pressure. People say to me all the time, oh, I'm so impressed or jealous because you found your life's work. And actually, I don't think mom's man action was my life's work. It was a moment in time for me. I was able to figure out what am I good at? And to be clear, I'm not a unicorn. I had one very specific skillset and that came from decades long career in corporate communications. I knew how to tell a story. I knew how to build a brand. I had been a spokesperson, so I knew how to handle the media. It was because of the input of amazing volunteers, total strangers from across the country who were website developers or lawyers or organizers or policy experts who brought their skills to the table that made it work.

And this is the formula that I talk about in my book that I figured out living out fire is really a metaphor for figuring out two things, what is limiting you and what is calling you? And I had a lot of things in my life that were limiting me, including a marriage I shouldn't have been in and a career I didn't love, and the resulting eczema that came from not facing those things. But then also what is calling you. And I had thought enough about those things in this formula, which is simply what are your values? What are your abilities and what are your desires? And when you marry those things, it is like magic. It's an alchemy that makes you feel like you're living alive. It makes you feel like you find your people finally, that you have found fulfillment, not necessarily your purpose, but what is fulfilling to you right then and there.

And for me, that was life-changing. And I have just met so many women along the way who either figured out the same formula and came alive through mom's demand action, or they started to encounter the blowback you get when you start to live that way. And they stopped and turned back. And you were talking about Glennon earlier, Glennon's sister, Amanda said to me, I interviewed over 70 women for this book, including Amanda, and she said, I just wish I had a manual that all women had a manual to see what is the blowback they're going to face when they step into the arena? And that doesn't mean starting an organization, it could just be having a tough conversation. What's the blowback they're going to face and how do they get through that?

ELISE:

Yeah. Well, I think that this too, and maybe this is a leap that won't connect with you, but you write about having to figure out how to shed your armor, strip away all the armor and lead with authority and authenticity and also being both hard and soft. And when you think about the masculine as a divine architect archetype, that's pushing us towards growth and individuation. And then you think about the divine feminine, which is integration, connection, relationship, and the way that those have been passed down theoretically and historically, the masculine to men alone to carry the feminine alone to women to carry and how asinine and crazy that is. But it's still the way that we've been conditioned. And I think then for women, you get it's, the growth in individuation is terrifying, and there aren't that many successful models of what that looks like without losing the integration, the relationship and the connection.

It's a circle of wholeness. And similarly for men, they're forced into growth in individuation, even if it might not actually be the way that they're structurally built and divorced from connection, integration, and relationship. And meanwhile, we all need to get the full chamber going all the time, and instead it's become incredibly difficult. And I think that then we think, oh, it's just because it's not natural for a woman or it's not natural for a man, and that's a lie, that's culture. But I think for so many of us, it's like how do you go out into the world open with appropriate armor, but soft, vulnerable feeling, all of the things,

SHANNON:

The double bind of fuck giving, how are you soft and hard at the same

ELISE:

Time? And men too, right?

SHANNON:

Yes. It is hard, and I only know this as a woman, and so I felt immediately when I started Moms Demand Action that I got so much blow back from people saying, you can't do this. You're not the right person for this. This can't be done or it's already been done or someone else is doing it. And so I had to put on this armor because I knew I had the right idea. I knew that this was something that could work, but I also had come from the corporate world, but I had been taught to lead in that armored way to be stoic. And so suddenly here I was leading volunteers who weren't doing this because they were getting paid, they were doing it out of the goodness of their heart. And I suddenly had to learn a whole new leadership style where I couldn't give commands or expect people to do what I was saying.

I had to convince them and I had to befriend them, and I had to be vulnerable, which is not something that really comes intuitively to me, and it was life-changing for me. One of my mentors in those early days was Lucy McBath, who is a survivor whose son Jordan Davis was shot and killed. A black 17-year-old was shot and killed by a white man at a gas station who said his music was too loud in his car, and Lucy really took me under her wing and had so much grace for me and so much wisdom for me and helped set the direction that our organization would go in neither of us realizing she would become a congresswoman eventually. But just being in an environment where I was around so many other women and I had to tap into that vulnerability and that softness that was such an incredible teacher to me and the women who are willing to show me how to do that. And I'm a completely different person now than I was 12 years ago because of that.

ELISE:

That's beautiful.

And as you said, it's a personal dilemma for each of us to solve right in our own lives. I think being conscious of those two impulses and trying to balance them in our own lives and to recognize, I mean, I've been through my own process in a much quieter way, but having to stand out in the world in front of my own work is a very different energy than being behind other people, either as a ghost writer or working at brands for that are fronted by much more visible, charismatic leaders has definitely been my preference historically. But yeah, then feeling like, okay, you can't do that anymore. I think for so many of us too, the shell breaks and you're off finding a new snail shell because it just doesn't fit anymore. Right. Whatever you were doing before fractured in that moment at your kitchen counter when you, wasn't it a Facebook post that kicked off Mom's Demand Action? How do you, in talking to other women who have started fires come alive, entered into this, I guess it would be like a chrysalis, a whole resurrection series. What do you think happens? Is it just so much anger, fomenting? What is it do you think?

SHANNON:

I've seen women come into the organization for all different reasons. I mean, one of the most often is because their kid had to go through a lockdown drill and they feel whatever they feel about that anxious, angry, whatever that feeling is that gets them to come into the organization. But then they come in and they realize they have a special skillset, so that's the abilities from the formula. Maybe it's someone who did accounting and they realize they would make a great data entry lead. There's a whole position around just putting in data around the members and the volunteers and the information, and they do such a good job at that, that they realize what their values are. And for everyone else that's different. Your values could be community or it could be compassion, or it could be spirituality. There's so many different things that you might care about.

So let's say this data lead cares about community, and suddenly they're in this group of other women, mostly women who are lifting them up and telling they can do this, that they can pursue whatever their desires are, which is a third part of the formula. And so this data entry lead decides to become a chapter leader, and then she realizes she's really good at that and she's meeting with lawmakers and she decides, oh, I should be sitting on the other side of that desk. I could be a lawmaker. And so it's very much a process where you have these baby steps, you come in for one reason, and then you're so buttressed and supported and encouraged that you just keep pursuing what it is that is important to you. And I think that there's that alchemy around that that turns into magic, and you figure out who you are and what you want and you get the courage to pursue it.

ELISE:

I love that. And too, the differentiation that comes in community feels really important. And as someone who's always liked to be a solo contributor or to sort of work by myself as much as I like to collaborate, but just to even remember, oh God, it is really fun to be on a team, particularly when you're driving towards some event and to know I need to go and sit down now, or I need to go and take a walk around the block and get a coffee and just knowing other people are not flagging at that particular moment and haven't lost heart, and that you can step away and recharge and then reengage. I think that's also an essential thing that in our disconnection, which I don't feel like maybe it has reconnected where people post COVID, that people are now together more. I don't feel that way, but it's also a function of my work. But it feels like we're still kind of dislocated. I don't know. Do you feel that way?

SHANNON:

I do. And I think anyone who's lived through a pandemic, if we could go back in time and talk to people a hundred years ago, they would say the same. Obviously it's much different now with social media. I am an only child. I'm an introvert. I've moved around a lot. Being in a community of women and having close friends does not also come naturally to me. I'm not someone people would point out and say, oh, of course she's going to lead the largest women led nonprofit in the nation. But what I have learned is that there is something very powerful that comes from those friendships and comes from real life connection. And I've written about this. I got into my fifties even though I was leading this organization, and I realized I didn't have close friends that I hadn't spent the time and effort to do that.

And I think when you join a community and you're doing something that improves others' lives, that comes naturally. And so I am now the friends that I do have come from the community of moms Demand Action, and I don't think this metaphor for living on fire, I don't think you can do that alone. I think it does take a community to do that. And in fact, something that has come as an outgrowth of this book is that there are all these women who have started small community organizations where they live that want to turn them into firestarter communities. So there's this organic creation now of communities of women who want to get together to talk about whether their fire is personal or professional or political. They want to come together and they want to bridge community. And so it's almost like moms man action without gun safety. It's just to come together and to support one another.

ELISE:

That's beautiful. I also love that idea of moms in a community coming together to talk about the community and also to map it. Again, I'm a systems person, but to be like, this is what's happening. This is where we need action and or attention or fire. You got to run for the school board and you're running for state assembly or whatever it is, but it feels that also needs ideally would come out of a community and a network and feeling, oh, I can go to bed at night knowing that I'm one of 50 people who are paying attention. I think we also forget that I feel that way where I love Jesse. Y has recently on Instagram started highlighting, I think readers are sending her look at the small town local hero, and she's been reading them and it's like, oh my God, once you remember, there are so many of us, far more of us than people who don't care about the community, who are engaged and paying attention and taking action, and it can be so easy to forget. I guess nothing's happening.

SHANNON:

I think what you're really talking about again is this idea of knowing you're winning because it can feel so overwhelming when you just look at what's happening right now at a federal level or a national level. But when you remember there are people in your community who really do care about immigrants or healthcare or childcare, whatever your values, whatever speaks to you, there are actually people who are coming up with innovative solutions, putting their literal bodies on the line to help protect others. They're showing up at city council meetings, they're showing up at town hall meetings, they're running for school board that feels like you're winning. It shows you this incremental change that can lead to a revolution because it really does start locally, and a lot of us don't know our neighbors anymore. When you come together in real life in your community, and I'll just give you an example.

I went to a community group recently in San Jose, which is about an hour from where I live and it's called the Gigi's. I don't even know what that means, but it was this woman who decided to start this group of other like-minded women in her community to have conversation. And when you look at what's fracturing us in this nation, even if you're looking at, and I don't love these differentiations, but college educated women versus non-college educated women, we're not having conversations and yet we're in our communities together and we probably agree on a lot of the same solutions to the problems that are ailing, that are maybe endangering our families or our schools. If you look at gun violence for example, we know Republican women and democratic women agree on the exact same solutions, and yet we're so isolated in our communities and we don't come together because we either don't like each other or we're scared of each other or we don't have a reason to come together. And so I'm hoping this idea of a firestar community or whatever community exists that you can join, I do think even though that will take a while, that is what is part of this incremental change that will lead to a revolution. We have to come together more and really look in each other's eyes and understand where we're coming from.

ELISE:

Yeah, I just had this professor on recently psychology professor named Kurt Gray. I don't know if you read his book, Outraged. Anyway, it's excellent. And he's a moral psychologist similar to Jonathan Hate, but whereas Hate saw all these differences between liberals and conservatives, essentially Kurt's like it's not accurate. And really the only thing you need to understand when you go into any engagement or encounter is that there are differing perceptions of harm. You were talking about this monolith of white women and we're seeing harm. I can think of a lot of being from Montana, rural women who don't have as many means who are like the harm is happening. I'm looking at my husband, he's completely diminished. I'm looking at my son. He has no prospects. I cannot get outside of that circle of concern because I see harm. And that's very different than someone like me who lives in an urban setting.

And I think immigrants make the world go round. I mean, my father's an immigrant, et cetera. Our perception of harm is incredibly different. And yet I completely understand if I go and talk to those people, I get it. I understand and I understand why there is a perception of harm. And there is, right? There are these crises unfolding all over the country for disparate groups, and most of us have a collective concern. I can say to that, mom, I know you want to blame and immigrants, but I think the people who are denuding the environment, outsourcing all jobs, shipping jobs overseas who don't look like me and don't look like you and are not brown though, that's our collective. I don't even like the word enemy, but we're on the same team here and yet we've been convinced that we're not.

SHANNON:

That's a really important point. There are a couple things. One is having grown up in the seventies and eighties with Sesame Street, I never imagined that empathy would be something that was denigrated or seen as a weakness instead of a strength. And so that is something that we have to figure out an answer to, which is how do we embrace empathy? Because at the end of the day, those differences can be bridged often if we feel empathy for another person instead of anger. There's also the issue of disinformation. There's constant disinformation coming from all angles, and it's really difficult to sort through what is real and what isn't. And obviously I don't have a solution for that except that conversations are an important piece of that. And having data information. When we would say to moms to be an action volunteers, when you're having conversations with people about gun safety, you have to be armed with two things.

You have to have data and facts, and you also have to have anecdotes that are going to move people, stories of survivors and people who have been through these experiences. And you can only do that when you're having conversations. And then I think the other piece that you just touched on is we are often siloed in our communities. When I started Moms Demand Action, it was this idea of school shootings that we were going to be talking about mass shootings and school shootings. And when we came together in community, there would be often women who were black or women of color who would say, but what about my community? You all are over there in your community of mostly white women. There has been gun violence 30 miles away from you every single day for the last three decades, and it took this school shooting to wake you up now.

Okay, thank you. We're glad you're here. But what are you going to do to help solve the gun violence in our community too? How are you going to prioritize that and make that just as important? And so it is very easy to just see your own situation, your own harm, and getting together in community I think invites and opens the door as long as you're not just getting together in the community of your own people. And I remember I had a book event in my last book, it was in Boston. It was mostly white people and a black woman who was our data lead stood up and said, I'm so glad you're all here. Thank you for coming tonight, but let me ask you a question. When there is a shooting or a trial or something happens in a community near you that is mostly people of color, do you show up there too? And that was just so poignant, right? You can't just have conversation in your own community and expect people to come to you. You have to go to other communities too.

ELISE:

Have you read Michael Kimmel? He was sort of canceled, maybe. I think he got swept up and I don't really know all the intricacies of everything, but the work that he does aside from whatever happened personally is quite valid. He wrote this book called Angry White Men, and he talks a lot about school shootings and the context sociologically of the way that in black communities we attribute it to a culture and with white communities we attribute it to individual pathology. So rotten apple, mentally ill child, whatever it is, rather than recognizing, no, this is all cultural, same culture showing up, manifesting in different ways. And that yes, the school shooters, the mass shooters are these white, typically middle class, upper middle class, suburban, rural, bullied, often gay aided kids. And the interactions in the inner city are more direct and they just don't capture our attention in the same way. And then we're like, oh, violent culture, violent culture, but this is all, they're just symptoms of the same culture. And it's really interesting reading just to also understand some of the entitlement and rage that we've been talking about in terms of looking at each other and the horizontal hostility that happens versus recognizing what's really happening from top to bottom.

SHANNON:

I think in many ways the issue of guns was a canary in the coal mine because back in 2012, before we were even talking about fascism, we were seeing these armed mobs begin to form. We were seeing men show up with AR fifteens to try to silence our volunteers. We were seeing open carry become embedded in the culture, all things that you see in autocratic societies throughout time. And there really was this shift, especially when women were standing up to these armed extremists who are mostly men, mostly white men. There was this backlash and now flash forward 12 years, this is the manifestation of that culture that we were allowing extremists to have easy access to arsenals and ammunition and then letting them out in society without background checks or permits or training and really using guns to intimidate and silence other people. And so this, I think what we're seeing now is in many ways that whole culture coming to fruition.

ELISE:

Yeah, no, it's true actually. It feels very meta and now obviously we have an incredibly armed informal militia in this country, right? Yes. It's quite stunning. When you put on your hat of prophecy, Shannon, and you look 10, 15, 20 years down the road, how do you take the temperature of what's happening? What do you think is going to happen?

SHANNON:

I have done this work long enough to see that politics is cyclical. If you had told me certain states were going to become blue and adopt gun safety laws back in 2012, I would've said there was just no way. But you see over and over again that a lot of what we're worried about is temporary and that when you're in a crisis like this, it is often when the leaders step up. I really do believe we're about to see some amazing leaders, people we may not have heard of yet who are going to come to the forefront and be incredibly important in shepherding us to the other side, whatever is on the other side. Miriam Kaba always says, hope is a discipline. I believe that very strongly. It is so easy to be cynical, and often that's an excuse to stay on the sidelines and to not get involved, right?

Cynicism is a recipe for inaction, but when you decide every morning that you're going to remain hopeful, which I do, I did in gun safety and I do now in this administration, you can see all the ways things might be better on the other side. And you can see this as an inflection point where we decided we were going to embrace empathy and we were going to protect marginalized people and we were going to value democracy and maybe finally recognize the promise that has been told to us about this country for so long. I choose to believe that, not to diminish how painful and horrific what we're going through is, particularly for people who are vulnerable, understand that I wouldn't wish this on us, but at the same time, I think it can be a really important inflection point, like so many other painful points in our history where we say, this made us better, this made us stronger, this made us different.

ELISE:

Yeah. Well, one of the things that I think is happening too, and every sort of spiritual leader or psychic or any, I keep interesting company, Shannon, as you know, but everyone is saying the same thing too, which is that what we're experiencing in some ways is not the end of hierarchy because we need functional nested hierarchy in that Ken Wilber way. There are different functions that need to exist, and at the top of the hierarchy hopefully will be wisdom and not just power, but that there is some sort of structured form of society and organizing businesses and it doesn't work to be entirely horizontal. That said, I think what we're going to see or what everyone is saying is going to happen is there will never be another Oprah. There will be 50 people, a hundred people who sort of occupy that space and organize information.

Yes, we will have a president, but maybe we will start to, maybe we see people run as full cabinets. I don't know. I'm sure that's complicated and problematic, but this idea of this is a distribution, this is a system. You need to care about who the head of the education department is going to be, and you need to care about the cabinet and local government, your governor, your mayor should be celebrities in your own life. And the way that we venerate the president, I hope that's what's happening because to your point and fired up, it's incumbent on all of us to step up and serve in whatever way we're designed to do. And I think that's this new era, energetic. We're not just along for a ride. We're all participating in reality.

SHANNON:

I think a lot of us, and at times I've included myself in this, have gotten complacent about democracy and what it takes. I too was very angry after this election and I felt like Democrats had no plan. And then I realized, oh, wait a minute. To your point, it is the people who have to have a plan. It is the people who have to rise up in activism. And I experienced with this with moms to mean action. You could either be too top down and it's very controlling or you can be too bottom up and it's very chaotic. Activism is always trying to achieve a balance of the two, and democracy is the same way. You need it somewhat top down, but you also need it very bottoms up. And I hope that is a lesson that we learn during all of this, which is even if things get better, so-called better, maybe we win in the midterm elections and there's some restraint put on the president, that doesn't mean that we can go back to our normal lives and just assume that democracy will heal itself.

I think democracy is like a sick child. When your kid is throwing up at 3:00 AM you don't look at them and say, this has been a really long night. I'm exhausted. I got to go to bed. I wish you the best and let's reconnect at 8:00 AM You hang in there and hold their hand no matter what. No matter how tired you are, no matter how exhausted you are, no matter the fact that you want to give up. And I think democracy is the same way. Democracy is a sick child and it's very sick right now, and it's on all of us to hold its hand, but not just until it feels better. Alice Walker said activism is a rent I pay to live on the planet. We have to adopt working on democracy as part of our job as a citizen. It's literally a job and we will have it for the rest of our lives.

ELISE:

It's beautiful. I'm so glad to know you. I'm so grateful for all the work that you do. I can't wait for everyone to get your book. Anyone who wants to start anything, there's a formula and a formula I would say, which I loved this part too, because I think no one really talks about this. You talk about this idea of founders and that so many of us who start things don't know. We've taken it as far as we can and now we need to go. And that inherent in that often is that people will sabotage. We so need to be needed that we'll destroy our creation so that it can't carry on without it.

SHANNON:

I think there's something to the divine feminine in this part because there's so many people who want to hold onto power. We do see that right now playing out in Congress. When I started Moms Demand Action, as I said, I had a bunch of women I didn't know call me, and one of them was in Palo Alto from the tech world, and we were getting off a call one day and she said to me, whatever you do, don't get founder syndrome. And I said, of course not. And I had no idea what that was, so I had to go Google it. And it's this idea that when you start something, your identity can become so enmeshed in it that when you leave, it fails or you burn it down because you don't want it to survive without you. And so I made it a practice to ask myself every year, is this the year I step back knowing that my power was finite, I was not going to stay at this organization the rest of my life, even though I founded it.

And every year it was no those early years. And then it became maybe, but there was legislation or a tragedy and I thought, okay, I'm going to stick around. And then I was standing in the Rose Garden in 2022 when President Biden signed the first federal gun safety legislation and a generation into law. And I wasn't even thinking about it. And suddenly I just felt it, heard it, knew it, which was this is the bookend to your activism. This is the time for you to hand the baton over in the relay race. And I did. The person running Moms Demand Action now is a black woman with four children who lives in Washington, D.C. She has a much different viewpoint of gun violence than I did. She's bringing new energy and ideas to the organization, but I also knew it would be very personally painful for me to manage my ego and my identity.

And so this was a conversation. I started with a therapist. I made sure that my friends and my family held me accountable. I started to think about what else I could focus my attention on. I spent an entire year planning to leave, and I think that there are a lot of lessons I've learned in that about the feminine release of power and handing it over to other people. And a lot I've learned about myself. Gun safety wasn't my life's work. I think summoning the audacity of other women is my life's work, and that was a piece of that. And now I have the ability at 54 to have a whole new chapter in my life, hopefully many more that I can start because I was able to let go and say goodbye to that.

ELISE:

Yeah, it's a beautiful testament to what you've created, but I think it's also indicative of the fact that this was, I think, your training ground and not your dharma, and I will be watching to see what it is that besides teaching, teaching other leaders, which you have been doing and will continue to do, and obviously this book is part of that. There's something else, obviously palpable that's coming. Can't wait.

SHANNON:

It'll be a surprise for both of us.

ELISE:

I know. Well, I'm going to be thinking about it. Shannon is a hero and she is a model I think for a very specific type of leader, and she's inspirational to me in part because we're wired so differently, and so in recognizing that I understand my life's work, if that makes sense. And it's funny, Kiki, this woman who works with me recently said to me, she was like, don't forget, you're not an activist. You're a writer. And it's like, oh, right, that's true. My job in this particular baton race is to create the context and to underline or highlight the system in which these actions are happening and to help bring greater understanding to why we're doing what we're doing. My job isn't to sort of provide that type of direction about what needs to happen, and Shannon really understands what needs to happen and how has been able to sustain an incredible amount of energy to make that happen.

And we all owe her a huge debt of gratitude for what Mom's Demand Action has been able to achieve, mostly on the local level, but the number of red flag laws and otherwise that they've pushed over state lines is really quite remarkable. And obviously the work continues. I just wanted to read one bit where she was talking about this idea of giving zero fucks and why it's so hard. She writes, this in Fired Up: “But to protect your fire, you have to learn to give zero fucks. You must stop caring what others want from you or what they think about you. It's a pathological predicament that requires women to be both soft and hard in the world. Depending on the situation. They must be both impenetrable and vulnerable. I have no remedy for this dilemma because I know firsthand that it is almost impossible to strike an acceptable or tolerable balance of fucks. All I can tell you is that to survive the blowback you will inevitably face, you must get comfortable with making other people uncomfortable.” I feel this acutely. This is the life work of all of us. I think as on our quest toward wholeness, and the job I don't think is to be both impenetrable and vulnerable simultaneously, but to cultivate both throughout your life. If you like today's episode, there are several ways to support the show. I produce it myself, so this helps me to continue to make it. First, please rate and review the show on the platform where you listen and consider sharing this episode with a friend. That's how it grows. It is so helpful. Second, please support my sponsors who make this show possible. And if you are interested in sponsoring the show, you can email me at admin@eliseloehnen.com.