Transcriber: Tracy Nguyen Reviewer: Taher Koja
I remember feeling so proud to be growing up in the post-feminist era.
I was deeply inspired and moved by this
so many women that had gone before me that paved a path forward and took
a stand for equality and freedom and did everything that they needed to do
and took some risks in order to make a difference for women throughout
the world and throughout human history.
I was deeply impacted and influenced by what the feminist movement had birthed,
that at some point in my life, I had promised myself that no matter what,
I was going to pay it forward and make a difference for myself,
my children and the upcoming generation and women as a whole.
And it was at that time that I realized that freedom and impact
were my highest values. Which led me down
an interesting path in life from really young I had left home before
I even finished high school.
I put myself through college and I was moving up the ladder in
the legal arena before I was even 20 years old.
Needless to say, I was a high achiever and
I was going to follow my heart no matter what and
not let anyone or anything stand in my way.
And so by my mid-twenties, I was married,
we had bought our first home,
we were going on lots of vacations and I was I started my own business making
a six-figure salary, and I was on my way to becoming a mom with
the love of my life. Everything looked great on the outside,
according to our friends, our family, our culture, society,
we checked off all those boxes.
We had all those things and everybody that would meet my husband.
I would never hesitate to tell us how much we inspired them,
and all was glamorous on the outside,
but it actually didn’t really feel that way on the inside. And it wasn’t until
a certain point in my life where I started to notice that and say,
I have all these things, I checked off all the boxes,
I did all the things that I was supposed to do. Why am I not feeling fulfilled?
Why my feeling some resentment here?
And where is the joy that comes with achievement?
And I was actually so far removed from my values of freedom and the impact that
I even felt resentment. And I even started to feel guilty because I was like,
How can I feel all these feelings when I've been blessed with all the blessings
and got all the things that I ever asked for?
And so I ended up tucking away,
tucking it away and tucking it away and not addressing it.
And the more I did that, I realized it wasn't going away.
And it was costing me what mattered the most like my health.
I was diagnosed with a chronic condition, an autoimmune disease,
that was affecting my health and causing even more burnout.
It had cost me my marriage.
My husband and I were bickering so much that divorce looked like the only remedy
for us at the time. It had cost me my parenting my children.
Now they're older, can articulate with me that they saw something was off
and they asked me questions like, Mom, what was going on when we were little?
Why were you so irritable? Why were you unhappy? Why were you yelling?
And that just breaks my heart so much because I know I was trying my hardest
and doing my best to be the best mom.
Again, trying to fill this quota of Best Mom award or something.
And it was pulling me further away from that as well.
And so I came to this place in my life where I had a massive breakdown.
Let's call it midlife crisis, sometimes we refer to it in that way.
And I was in a place where I realized everything
I had worked so hard to create and achieve
and have actually led to something counter-productive,
actually led me to this place where I was about to lose everything.
It was crumbling down. So something about this path wasn't sustainable if it
was leading to this crumbling down of everything I ever worked so hard for.
And that led me to get help and support.
And talk about it more, finally,
and I met a lot of women as
I talked about it that said they were going through the same thing
and also just did not talk about it.
Most of us just didn’t even know what to do about it. It was so confusing.
It’s like, how can you be doing everything so right and it looks successful,
but it’s actually disguised
because it feels like failure.
So we were really confused and we realized we all have this relatability.
And it was at that point that I started to take a really hard, long, vulnerable,
authentic look at my life so I could notice what's going on here.
And it led me down questions and questioning in my line of work is
the true path to breakthrough.
It's what leads us to change and makes possibility available to us.
And so I started to ask some really difficult questions that had me reflect
back and wonder, whoa, is there some sort of conditioning or agreement?
What did I subscribe to hear exactly and not even notice it?
And one of the questions that was really difficult for me to just sit with for
a minute was what if we only took that first step?
The feminist movement was just the beginning to something bigger.
And it didn't end there. We haven't evolved from that point.
What if it was just that very first step towards something bigger?
And what is actually next on the horizon for women? Does this system still work?
What started to create a shift in me and
I started to wonder if it would create a shift for others as well?
See, because it's not just happening to women on an individual level,
it's happening everywhere.
Corporations right now are also scratching their head and saying,
we have to start from the beginning.
We're not sure how to support women in the workplace anymore,
especially when we're experiencing real phenomenon like the great resignation,
where millions upon millions of women are off ramping from their careers to take
care of their loved ones, elderly and young ones.
They are leaving this massive investment they've made in their life,
whether it was through time or money or college,
they’re removing themselves from something that they love to take care of something
else. They’re in this place where they have to choose.
And so what's happening is corporations are left with women leaving
the workforce. And as I look at data from the Department of Labor
and statistics that shows that this is a rising trend. It is not looking good.
And if it's having an impact on ourselves as individuals
and it's having an impact on corporations,
what would the impact be on our global economy?
What would the impact be on our families?
What is the impact on our own personal dreams?
I see that if we continue at this trend, that data is highlighting for us,
it is not going anywhere good. We are being called to address this.
We have a real problem and we are being called to look at it
and not take it away like we have been all this time.
Something is not working what is going on and if we continue to do things
the same way, we're only going to have the same results or worse.
I remember it was Einstein that said,
if you continue to do the same thing and expect a different outcome,
that is a version of insanity. So where do we go from here?
Well, like I said, it's great to ask questions.
And the one question that was a huge turning point for me
and the companies
and the women that I work with is to sit with the possibility that perhaps,
we’re going about this in a way that’s not productive anymore. What if
men and women are actually not equal?
So why don't we take this at face value, at face value,
men and women clearly and physiologically have different needs,
and their emotional needs are different and their lifestyle needs are different.
As data shows us that no matter what,
women are always doing extra work at home and nurturing and caregiving.
We are seeing that the lifestyle needs are different,
so we have to address the needs differently since they're not the same.
And how about we realize this may have been so since the beginning of time?
What we have found is some interesting information that shares with us that back
in primal days, men and women had different roles, just like they do now,
and there was a Hunter and there was the Gatherer,
the Hunter was the person that worked, provided food and shelter,
went out there to go ahead and do that.
The nurturer and the gatherer was the female that would stay back,
everytime the Hunter would leave
the tribe, would stay back and nurture and gather food until they returned.
Something that we have found that’s really interesting though,
is that the females oscillated back and forth between two different roles.
They would go from gatherer, nurturer
and mothering to hunter provider to protect their tribe, their species,
their offspring, while the male were away.
And they had to protect their young,
so they would they would transfer into Warrior Protector Provider mode from
nurture mode. So we have found information that shows us that they were
able to go back and forth. And where did that lead women today?
Well, it led them to wanting to do both. And, hence, the feminist movement.
And if they have evolved into this place where they want to do both
and both are satisfying and fulfilling,
and they actually need both to feel that completion, how do we support that?
And I'm not saying that men don't also support staying home.
In fact, they really do, and they did back in primal days, too.
That's what they did when they weren't out hunting with their tribe.
They stayed home and took care and played with the kids and
did the nurturing as well. And they still love to do that today,
which is why I so appreciate countries like Denmark
and Norway that invest infrastructures that support males to stay home with
the family unit so that they could nurture that, at least for the first year.
And I think we can take a lot from those books and bring them into systems here
so that we can support our family units,
and they're not brought to a place where they have to choose between one or
the other. We're constantly being faced with this situation where we have to
choose between passion and work, purpose and family, you know, nurturing and career
It’s we’re constantly being pulled in two different
directions, and if we go with one,
we feel unfulfilled because we still want the other one.
And if we go and we feed the other one would still feel unfulfilled
because we're still missing the other, the opposite one.
So where's that common ground?
Let's ask some questions and try a few things out.
Here's a couple of ideas that I have tried out there.
One of them being something that companies have been doing since
the beginning of business success, which is the concept of surveying.
Surveying is something that businesses do for growth and success all the time,
they gather feedback from their market.
They collect data and information from their customers,
their clients in order to improve their services or their product.
And I have found that when companies are surveying their staff, their teams,
their inner environment, their work environment,
they're getting back information that is highly valuable,
just as valuable as market data.
And now they're collecting exactly what they need to know.
As far as breakdowns bottlenecks,
what are the specific and unique needs of the people that are working for me?
And when we know that, then we can start moving towards
a solution based conversation.
So that survey will provide breakthroughs that will allow us to support the needs,
will allow us to support our staff to succeed both at home and at work.
From there, another great idea that I have found to be pretty productive and
successful is to ask a very unique question
to our female clients.
Which is, what exactly are your specific needs
and what will support you in your work and home life?
The reason why it's important to ask our female staff members these questions
is because as females, we are nurturers and givers and we like to give give give,
and we don't often or often as much stop to think, Well,
what do I need if they are invited to sit with this question?
What is it that they need to receive to fill their cup and keep giving from there?
It will provide information for themselves and for the employers,
and for their home teams to get
a better understanding of what needs to be implemented and introduced into
the system. Where do we go from here? It looks like a long path ahead.
Well, maybe it is, but you have to start somewhere and I believe that,
everything that I’ve been doing out there can be duplicated.
We all have to start somewhere. You start asking those questions.
It will start the path for you to start getting this right.
You may not get it right right out of the gate.
You may have to test and try things out,
and it’s the intention of wanting to do it differently and succeeding at it
that’s actually going to get you there.
And to reach the goal of finally cracking this code of how can we stop this decline
of women in the workforce and how can we support
and empower women to continue going forward?
Because the thing is, we’re sitting out here
and we’re providing all this messaging out there for, you know,
this is the age of entrepreneurship and you can have it all
and anything is possible, which I believe it is.
And yet we are modeling something so different for our kids right now.
In fact, we're just showing them that, no, you can't have it all.
You always have to choose one between the other because
it’s just too much to have everything.
Well, there is a way to crack this code,
and there’s many of us out there that are doing it
and then you do have to start somewhere.
And so I invite you all to be committed to realizing that it's OK to change
things up. Change is a good thing.
Not always easy, but it's OK for us to say, Hey,
maybe the way we thought about this initially was a good starting point,
but now it's moving us further away from our goals as information shows us.
Maybe it was a good starting point. What do we do now?
What has the evolution been? And things have changed, so we have to catch up.
And I'm happy to share that I have brought a lot of this,
not just in the life of my clients. I have brought this into my personal life.
I have asked these questions myself first and I saw the breakthrough in my life.
My husband and I, I’m happy to report are together and living on purpose
and living on a mission because I think deep down,
that is really what we are all ultimately aiming for to live that aligned,
congruent life. While we're also not compromising our families
and not compromising our careers, our dreams, our passions.
We do want to have it all deep down, and we're still trying to figure it out.
And if I was able to do it and my clients are able to do it,
I know you and everyone else can, too.
It's just a matter of starting somewhere
and be willing to let go of what's not working and start either new ideas
or perhaps start something that has been working, like surveying and
I can see the impact that it's had in life,
I love to pay it forward and help others figure this out.
Since it worked for me, I believe I've been called
so to speak to share this information
and which is why I'm really grateful to be here.
I am grateful to have a thriving family.
My kids are now teens and the bonds that we have is truly
the most enriching part of my life and my health has been reversed
and restored, thankfully. And so yes, we could have it all.
And yes, we need to share with others.
And so I hope this sparked
and inspired something in you to imagine what life would look like if we went
from equality to collaboration.
The feminist movement to the collaborative movement, where we’re
working together to figure this out and realizing what
the true needs of today are and understanding that we can model
and pay this forward just like the women behind us did during
the feminist movement. We can do this differently during
the collaborative movement where we are figuring out exactly what that looks
like and not having to give something up for something else. We can do that.
We can model it for our kids. We can pass that baton and look forward.
To the collaborative movement. Thank you so much.