Voice Lessons Podcast
Merle Hoffman is an internationally known leader in the struggle for women’s rights, opening one of the first abortion clinics pre-Roe in 1971. Throughout her activism career spanning over 50 years, Merle's mission remains the same; for women to fight for their own reproductive choices and to recognize that each individual woman can make a profound decision for her own life, and has the right to speak up for that choice. You just have to practice courage.
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Becca Rea-Tucker has been "saying it with sugar" since 2018 and now more than ever, this feminist baker is helping to shift the conversation and inspire change around women's issues by using a more unconventional platform: cakes.
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Jennifer Freed, Ph.D, M.F.T. is a psychological astrologer who believes that your cosmic DNA serves as a roadmap for your life. Even when we are experiencing oppression from our societies, if we learn to embrace our past traumas, use our unique gifts to create change, and incorporate movement into our day each day, we can make joyful choices that allow us to show up for ourselves and others during times of hardship.
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“What are you?” It’s a question Dr. Sarah Gaither was asked a child growing up mixed race. Now she studies the effects of that question and others related to identity at Duke University's Identity & Diversity Lab. In this episode on belonging, we talk about identity denial, identity accessibility, and why she’s using her own multiracial identity to help create a more inclusive world.
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Dr. Louann Brizendine was among the first to explain why women think, communicate, and feel differently than men. Now she’s on a mission to rebrand the “M" word: Menopause.
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Ronit Plank's mother left to follow the Indian mystic, some would say cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (also known as Osho) when she was five years old. Through the process of writing her memoir, When She Comes Back, Plank rewrote her definition of forgiveness.
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Dana Marlowe turned a moment into a movement. What began with the question, “What can I do with my old bras?” led to the creation of I Support the Girls, a national non-profit organization that provides a source of dignity, self-esteem, empowerment, and support to marginalized women via the donation of bras and menstrual hygiene products. As a human rights advocate in the intersections of feminism, menstrual equality, health, and dignity, Dana works tirelessly to better the lives of the most invisible populations.
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Brandy G. of Authentically B wants everyone to know that it’s ok to be you. Because when you do, the divine might just present you with your heart’s desires. The moment Brandy decided to be visible as her authentic self was the moment that her transition from full-time school teacher to model and lifestyle influencer unfolded. And she’s owning it.
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Kristen Richardson comes from a long line of debutantes but she chose not to debut. In this, “Lesson on the Unwritten History of Women”, find out why curiosity drove her to research this enduring tradition and why the role debutantes play in a family’s story, is much more complicated than it seems.
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Seventeen years after Mara Smith left her career as an attorney to raise her family, she's back full force not only with the valuable skills she learned as a mother but with the drive to start a successful Tequilla brand in the spirits industry. Got a great idea for our next episode? Nominate a guest or send us a note to
info_outlineShannon Watts was a stay-at-home mom folding laundry when she heard the news of the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. It was at that moment that Shannon decided to get off the sidelines and encourage other women to join her, starting the largest grassroots movement in the country, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Shannon and her army of mothers (and others) have bravely gone up against the gun lobby, proving that when you “fight like a mother” you can do anything you set your mind to. In this “Lesson on Doubling Down”, we talk about the business of building a movement.
TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
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How and why Shannon started Mom’s Demand Action (MDA).
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How the organization dealt with the rapid growth of the movement. *As of 2018, Moms Demand Action had 761 local groups and 6 million supporters.
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Every mom is already a multi-tasking organizer.
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Movements are like startups.
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The three things MDA focuses on that they believe will save the most lives.
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Stand Your Ground is a gun law that is rooted in racism.
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Gun violence affects everyone.
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Dealing with criticism.
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Using your losses to fuel motivation.
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How to create a revolution in our current system and doubling down instead of backing down.
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A major moment with Starbucks and Howard Schultz when Shannon trusted her gut.
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How women lead differently in activism and political efforts.
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Women lead with their maternal strengths.
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Women are a political asset but they are scared to jump in.
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Shannon’s spiritual practice.
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How women with big visions can take the first step.
#LESSONUP:
(5:01) I think that was a moment in America when so many people wanted to get involved in 2018 and we tripled in size as an organization and k have kept growing ever since. And we're actually larger now than the NRA.
(5:25) We have over 375,000 donors now. And so that has enabled us to outspend the NRA in the last two election cycles.
(7:30) I’ve been really focused myself on Ahmaud Arbery the last few days and the stand your ground laws that have made it possible for private citizens to be vigilantes. And I'm curious if those laws will come into focus for you guys at all. And if you know the statistics on keeping people safe by focusing on repealing those.
Yes. So I mean, we're still learning all the facts, but it sounds like one of the three DA's who the case was passed on to before arrests were made, was somehow claiming that, citizens arrest laws, open carry laws and even stand your ground laws, made these two white men within their rights to pursue and shoot Ahmaud Arbery. And you know, these laws are rooted in racism, especially stand your ground. We know they disproportionately impact people of color and too often they're used by white people to shoot and kill and ask questions later. So we fight these laws everywhere they come up and we work to roll them back where we can.
(9:00) The bigger picture is that too much gun violence in this country impacts people of color, particularly black men and boys. And you really cannot talk about gun violence without talking about the systemic racism that causes it.
(10:45) I think it's incumbent on our organization to involve all white women, Republican and Democrat alike to speak out and to get off the sidelines and to not just care about the school shootings and the mass shootings, which frankly are only about 1% of the gun violence in this country, but to care about the gun suicides and the gun homicides that happen in rural America and in city centers. And that's what we've done. We have been very committed to diversity, equality, and inclusion efforts internally as an organization and externally. And it is incumbent upon us to continue to learn and to listen and to hold up the work that others have done for decades.
(11:06) Black women have been putting their literal bodies on street corners to stop bullets where they live and, and really their work has been invisible for too long. And so it is on our organization to make sure that that’s always a priority.
(11:30) You don't get involved in social activism in this country, not expecting to lose or if you do, you're going to be sorely disappointed. I always say, this is a marathon, not a sprint. And incremental change has become sort of a dirty word. This idea of something being incremental that somehow if it's not an overnight revolution, it's not worth doing. And you know, if you spend any working on activism on the ground, you very quickly realize the system is not set up for an overnight revolution.
(12:09) How do you create a revolution in our system? You do it by showing up for years and years and years, like drips on a rock and you do the heavy lifting, the unglamorous work of activism. And I think women in particular are cut out for that.
(12:34) It's almost always women who are willing to stay the course and they play the long game and we lose a lot, but we win more than we lose. But if we, if we gave up every time we lost, we wouldn't have gotten this far. And so you have to come to see failure as feedback. It's not fatal. It's just a stepping stone and you have to look at how much you won when you failed, and then use that information to point you in the direction of winning.
(16:10) Women worry that if we don't know enough, we can't just jump in. And I don't think men have that same gating factor. Women feel like they have to cross all the T's and dot all the I's and know everything and be perfect and not fail. And men just don't have that same concern about jumping in. I say in my book Fight Like a Mother, if you don't use motherhood as a tool for you, it will be used against you.
(17:59) This is just about restoring the responsibilities that go along with gun rights. We're not anti second amendment, we're not anti gun. Many of our volunteers are gun owners or their partners are gun owners. This is simply about replacing the responsibilities that the NRA has eroded for decades.
(19:53) You talk about staying put as a seismic act, which I thought was really beautiful and that women go in and they knit and they breastfeed. And we've had this come up in conversations a number of times where women breastfeeding becomes an act of anarchy in some way.
(20:52) And I am just so amazed by how organized women are and how industrious they are and how entrepreneurial and creative and innovative, the ideas they've come up with have been just spectacular over the last eight years. And it's, it's why we are where we are.
(23:20) I had to decide, am I going to back down or am I going to double down? And I decided the ladder, I decided that I was not going to be silenced or threatened if I lost my kids. I had nothing left to lose and it really has become like white noise. I simply do not care.
(26:28) If you're passionate about something, you will be good at it and you will find a way to bring your time and your talents. It doesn't have to be starting a national organization. There are many different ways to get involved in different things. But if you do want to start an organization, if it's in your neighborhood, your community, in your state, in the country, you can do it to.