Elizabeth Lesser | Where the Feminist and Spiritual Paths Meet
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#261 Oprah Winfrey calls Elizabeth Lesser, “a friend and one of our favorite spiritual teachers.” Co-founder of Omega Institute, New York Times bestselling author (Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow and Marrow: Love, Loss & What Matters Most), former midwife, and popular Ted Talk speaker, Elizabeth Lesser is here to discuss the power of the stories we tell ourselves, the #1 game-changer when it comes to self-care, and the ways in which we can begin to heal our society from the inside out with her newest book Cassandra Speaks: When Women are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes (Sept 15,2020).
xx Ellie Knaus
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Elizabeth Lesser and Ellie Knaus discuss Cassandra Speaks:When Women are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes (Sept 15,2020)on Atomic Moms Podcast
Transcript
Elizabeth Lesser on Atomic Moms with Ellie Knaus
[00:00:00] Ellie Knaus: You're listening to Atomic Moms, a modern parenting podcast about the joys and complexities of caring for our children and ourselves. I'm Ellie Knaus. And since 2014, we've been celebrating and commiserating with world class experts, bestselling authors and parents around the world.
Hello, everybody. I'm so excited to share my new favorite book with you. It's called "Cassandra Speaks: When women are the storytellers, the human story changes." It's out September 15th, 2020, and it's written by Elizabeth Lesser. Oprah Winfrey calls our guests today, a friend, and one of her favorite spiritual teachers.
Co-founder of Omega Institute, author of bestselling books, including "Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow and Marrow: Love, [00:01:00] Loss, and What Matters Most, and also popular Ted talk speaker with over 3 million views. Elizabeth lesser is here to talk about the power of the stories we tell ourselves.
We're also talking about a sticky thing that can happen in our relationships with men these days. And she shares a new vision for power and insights from her new book. Listeners, do me a favor before we get to this conversation, just pause the podcast, go to your favorite app and press subscribe.
Because we have a couple of very exciting episodes coming up. We have one with Dr. Shefali Tsabary who will be a three peat guy guest on the podcast. She and her coauthor Renee Jain will be discussing anxiety and some tools that our children can use to help them cope. So we're talking about children and anxiety next week.
You don't want to miss it. And then in [00:02:00] two weeks, we're speaking with Chelsea Clinton. She has a new children's book coming out called She Persisted in Sports. Don't forget to subscribe and message me on Instagram @atomicmoms. Oh, I I'm just buzzing from this conversation that I had with Elizabeth lesser.
We'll be right back. [Music].
Elizabeth .Thank you so much for connecting with us today. Your newest book: Cassandra Speaks. It's broken into three sections and you explain, "Part one explores the myths and stories that are in the DNA of our culture. Part two looks at women and power and redefines what it means to be courageous, daring, and strong, and part three offers a tool box for inner strength."
So let's go back to the beginning. Let's start with part one. And I'd love [00:03:00] to talk about this exploration of myths and stories in this book. Can you please share with us the meaning behind the title: Cassandra Speaks?
Elizabeth Lesser: I will. First. I just want to say thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
You might wonder why somebody who has grown up children listens to a parenting podcast, but I do all the time because I have grandchildren who live next door to me. And so, especially during COVID times, I've been very much in their life, their education. And once again, I'm like, how do you do this? Stop fighting, all this stuff.
So I love what you do and I thank you for it. So, okay. I hadn't thought about the Greek mortal woman, Cassandra in years, maybe ever. I don't know. My mother always would read to us from the Greek myths, but I really hadn't thought about it about her very much. [00:04:00] And about, I don't know, 25 years ago, maybe more, I was the only woman in leadership at my organization, the conference and retreat center, Omega Institute. You know, it started off really small when I was just in my early twenties, but it quickly grew into this very large organization. And none of us really quite knew what we were doing, but I was the only woman who didn't know what she was doing, but the dudes all acted like they knew what they were doing.
And I tried so hard to enter their world. With energy and intelligence, but it was a struggle. And on top of it, I was a single mom and just barely making it every day. So I was in the faculty dining room at Omega, which is this small room at the back of our large dining hall, where the most amazing people have gathered over the years.
Omega has, you know, everything from spiritual teachers to business leaders.
[00:05:00] Ellie Knaus: Yeah. (Laughing) Let's do some name dropping.
Elizabeth Lesser: Yeah. Well, anyone you can think of in the like meditation, yoga, but also social change arts. We've had amazing people teaching everything from dance to singing, really a who's who of our cultural Mavericks and, and authors and just wonderful people.
And I, I had the amazing experience of sitting in that room and watching people, speaking to each other, creating businesses and books together, it's just been amazing. And that particular day there were a whole lot of great people in the room at the time, can't remember exactly who. There were a couple of NBA, basketball players and African drummers and the holistic mix of, of thought leaders, so to speak and, um, I was sitting in the corner with my two little boys who were, um, fighting with me.
They didn't want to eat the quote unquote Omega [00:06:00] food. They wanted to, um, go down to the country store and get some fried chicken. So finally they won and they left and all the interesting people left. So there's one woman in the corner of the room who was slurping soup and dripping it on her sweater.
And then I realized, Oh my God, that's my sweater. I had lent it to her. I was helping this group of teachers from the night before who were studying myth in modern culture. Oh, people like Robert Bly and people who had been taking, especially from an, uh, Jungian vantage point. But one of the people was this professor from a noted university, a very erudite woman.
And I was staring at her mostly because she was dripping soup on the sweater I had lent her the night before, and she felt my eyes on her, and she motioned to me to come over, and we ended [00:07:00] up having this conversation where she kind of, you know, when people sometimes ask you, "How are you, but they're really asking, like, what's wrong with you?"
She was kind of witchy in that way. She was like, what's going on with you? And I found myself spilling my guts to this stranger that I was the only woman in power. I'd been in meetings all morning where no one was listening to me. I didn't know how to speak the language. And, um, some things I'd say that would then later come out of the mouth of the other guys.
And I just like,. I didn't know what it was. I said, I know some things this organization needs, but no one will listen to me. And she said, "Do you remember the story of Cassandra?" And I said, "No." She said, "Well, I'll tell it to you." So Cassandra, to make it really quick was a Greek mortal woman, the most beautiful woman and all the [00:08:00] gods and all the men wanted her.
And they were all trying to woo her and the God Apollo, wooed her with the promise of prophecy, that, that I will give you the gift of seeing into the future. Well, who wouldn't want that? She said I'll take it. So he gave it to her, but then, he pretty much said, "And the price for this is having sex with me."
And she said, "No," and he was furious. So instead of taking the gift away, he said, "You know what? You will see into the future. You'll see everything, but no one will believe you. And as this woman was telling me the tale, because she went on to know all the terrible things that were going to happen, especially in the Trojan War, all of her family being killed the city being in ruins and going up in flames, all the things that was going to happen to her culture, she saw it and she would warn people and no one would believe her.
They wouldn't even have had to listen to her. [00:09:00] So. I took away from that story. And this woman told me, you know, she raised her finger at me and said, "Don't be Cassandra." Like, know what you know, feel it in your bones, women. Because women know something that the culture needs now and say it and make sure you're listened to, and don't stop saying it until you're heard.
And the culture changes. So over the years, I've led lots of women's retreats and organized conferences at Omega about women and power. And when I was writing the book, I remembered that story and I decided to call the book., "Cassandra Speaks."
Ellie Knaus: I had a dream when I was little and it was a recurring dream, and it was so upsetting that it stuck with me forever.
And it was that I was in a cave, and I couldn't see what was behind me, but I knew it was something awful. And at the outside of the cave, there was a metal [00:10:00] fence. And I was trying to shout to my father and to other people out there that something was coming from inside the cave but they couldn't hear me and they wouldn't listen to me and they shrugged it off and didn't believe it.
And that was, you know, a dream as a young child. And obviously we continue to get that feeling in our culture. And that's why your work is so important. What do you say to women today who are really deeply feeling that... Let's say with COVID, if you're an epidemiologist and from the January, you've been saying, "Wake up, wake up, listen to me, listen to me!" What advice do you have for us when we feel like we're not being heard?
Elizabeth Lesser: Well, that's why the third part of the book, you know, I was just going to have the [00:11:00] first two parts of the book, most trying to leave off my roots of kind of meditation and inquiry and therapy. It's like, I just want to write about, you know, stories and women, but, you know, I always come back to starting on the inside because: yes, work in the outside is so important laws and rules and changing whole structures, structural racism, structural sexism, so important. We must do it. But I also know for sure in my own life, as a woman leader and from watching so many other people that so much of the work of being heard starts with at first trusting our own voice.
See my problem, especially in those years that I was talking about when I met the woman with the sweater in the soup, um, I didn't, I didn't really [00:12:00] believe that I had what it took to lead. had a severe case and I still have bouts of it: of imposter syndrome. And also the voice that tells women to be quiet.
Women shouldn't be aggressive, assertive, authoritative. We shouldn't want power. Strength in women should look a certain way. And even though it's 2020, and we may think that's not true anymore. It is. We labor under it. We labor under it in the way we're told to dress and look, and sound and be. So, so much of the work for me has been going inside and strengthening, not just my sense of being an authority, but -- yeah, this is the difficult thing I'm trying to express. And tell me if you understand what I'm saying or if there's a better way to say it. [00:13:00] We have been taught as a culture that power looks a certain way, that the hero looks a certain way. Strength and power look a certain way. It comes from the old stories, but men told the stories.
You know, the old stories stick to us, they stick to the culture, but they left a huge amount of storytellers out. How would our idea of what it meant to be a first responder? Let's say, have changed . If women had written the early stories about courage. Why isn't it courageous to give birth, courageous to school children, courageous to care and love and connect?
Why don't we call that power and courage. So you're answering your question. How does a woman be heard? [00:14:00] I would say the first thing is for us to believe that what we know to be true is true and we are valid to feel differently about the way the world is going.
Ellie Knaus: It's funny, when you said the voice part of it - the trusting our own voices - when I started this podcast in 2014, I was terrified because I hated my voice. I got made fun of as a kid for my voice. And I was ashamed of my voice and I was, it was always tight and I got a lot of sore throats growing up, and I went into anaphylaxis once, and it's like so much stress here.
And then, I share this because you were a midwife. When I had my births, I was so surprised by how much sound came out of me and how vital that was for me to be able to own the experience [00:15:00] and really go through it. And it's because: Yes, we're taught to be quiet, to make yourself smaller, to end our sentences with a question mark...
Elizabeth Lesser: I looked at the very first story in Western culture, our, our origin myth. Adam and Eve.
Ellie Knaus: Can you please represent her in a defamation suit right now? My parents were lawyers and I was like, "Oh, I'd have to ask Elizabeth to do this. Like we're in court."
Elizabeth Lesser: Yes, I take the job. We all know that the story of Adam and Eve, I mean, it's probably the story we all know best. They were in the garden. Well, first of all, Adam was in the garden and it was perfect. He was all alone and it was perfect. And he, you know why? He was made in God's image. So he was perfect and then he was lonely, but actually the words in the Bible are he [00:16:00] needed a help mate. So God made Eve the first woman to help Adam.
And he gave them both a warning. Don't eat the fruit of that tree. Lest you will die. Now. The Bible is parable and parables are symbolic. So many biblical scholars have said, when God said, lest you will die. He did not mean you will physically die. He meant the, the child part of you will die and you will become autonomous beings.
There are many, many translations and interpretations that say the snake in those days was not an evil creature. The snake was wisdom. The snake represented wisdom. Wisdom came to Eve in the garden and said, "Eat, this. It's delicious and it'll make you [00:17:00] wise." She was like, I want to be wise. And it does look delicious and she ate it, and she gave some to Adam.
And that was the beginning of women being branded as: second in creation, first to sin. And there are so many stories throughout Western mythology and liturgy that woman is the first to sin. Everything was fantastic until she came, she sinned and the curse came upon humanity.
Ellie Knaus: That story is a curse because I grew up, whenever anything would go wrong, my first thought was: Did I inadvertently somehow cause this?
Elizabeth Lesser: Yeah, well, I, I know it comes from psychology, but it also comes from the stories we are fed. And if you look at the rest of the hero stories in the Bible, whether it's Job or Noah or [00:18:00] Jesus. They were all heroes who had to test themselves through great difficulties.
And the point of the hero's journey all the time is you leave home. You're an exile. You leave home. You have to leave parents, you have to push off from what is known, and then you go through all sorts of trials and tests. We all know this in our own life, whether it's illness or divorce or whatever painful things we'd go through.
And that's where character gets built. And Eve is the only character in the Bible who is punished for that exact same urge to, to test herself outside of the garden. Outside of the parents and why she is punished yet the dude's are heroes? It's something we should all think about.
[00:19:00] Ellie Knaus: And in reading this book, I was also thinking about my own ancestors and the stories that we have told about them. Right? You share a lot in the book about that. Like why, when you go through Central Park, the statues are of war heroes, but what, as you said earlier, what about the other first responders? What about the inventors? What about the people who have made life better and my listeners will remember that when my grandmother passed away, right before she died of lung cancer, I flew to Chicago for a day to be with her.
And I pulled out this box because she had all these papers and stuff. Someone way back had been really interested in our lineage. She didn't care much about it, but I was going through it and I was sifting through all the "guy history". And then I noticed something that no one had ever shared. So I went to Smith College in Western [00:20:00] Massachusetts, which was totally bizarre because I'm from Texas, and in sifting through this box, I mean, this is something, no one ever bragged about my great grandmother's grandmother had gone to Mount Holyoke. Right down the road. In the 1800's, but no one in my family had mentioned it. Nobody cared. You know, you always hear about the men or who became doctors, who went to war, but here was a woman who went to the college in the 1800's. And why weren't we celebrating that? I just wish other people in our family had cared but it was because she was a woman.
Elizabeth Lesser: Yeah. Each one of our stories adds up to the world's story. And why is it important? I feel, especially at this time, it's important for women's stories to be told from our own perspective, because we have a different perspective now.
Not all women are the [00:21:00] same, and we're a huge group of humans, but there are several qualities that women share, whether it's from nurture or nature, it really doesn't matter to me anymore. I mean, a lot of what we share is because the only roles we were allowed to have were the caregiving roles. It has been stamped in us, this propensity to care.
To care as much about the All as the Me, the We as the Me, and we need that. Now the world isn't going to make it if we don't have that kind of leadership, and by leadership, I don't just mean Angela Merkel, or someone like that. I mean: you, I mean: me, I mean you and your family, in your relationship, everyone who's listening. Everything you do is a form of leadership. And to the extent that you can trust what you know is true and good, and then bring it out and [00:22:00] stand for it and be courageous in it, I think that's what we all need to do now.
Ellie Knaus: Hmm. I love how in the book you encourage us to of course be aware of the news, know what's going on, but also to find our own news. Like who are the people who are our own heroes? You share a lot of examples in the book of women who have stepped up and made a huge difference for our society that we often overlook. Cause it wouldn't sell in the headlines. Um, but I know that, especially as having two daughters, myself, I do need to seek stories out in the present, but also in the past.
And I, I have this gorgeous quote. You had travelled to France and you'd gone to see the caves and you write, "Why have we been led to believe that our ancestors were merely violent [00:23:00] survivalist bent on protection and conquest? What about the mothers and caretakers, the artists and the mystics and the healers whose hands had painted and molded the cave art?" I am definitely... I need to make a list. I've been focusing so much on the headlines and it's really stressing me out.
Yeah.
But we have these people that we can call upon. And I can think of my ancestor who went to college in the 1800's as a woman. Like there are people who have done courageous things and have stood up for the right kind of power.
Elizabeth Lesser: We've been led to believe that it's cool to be a tough, you know, like the sort of like... If a girl is told she's a tomboy, it's somewhat cool, it's kind of an honorific, right? She's a [00:24:00] tomboy. But if a boy is called a sissy or a mama's boy, that is a shameful thing. So we all go around thinking that toughness and verging on violence is kind of cool. And therefore, it's not cool, it's kind of Pollyanna ish to, to talk about love and cooperation and sharing. These are words for like kindergarten teachers. But I'm all about making ordinary people heroic and soft power words, powerful, so that, that we can change what power actually means. So when I look at like one of the stories of someone I like to focus on in the book, um, she was a, uh, she [00:25:00] worked in the front office of an elementary school or a middle school in, um, outside of Atlanta. We remember all the names of the young men who shot up schools in America. We don't remember Antoinette Tuff's name because she stopped a shooting before it ever happened. So literally hundreds of kids could have died because a young man came into her school.
She was the first person he saw. She was the secretary sitting at the desk and she said to him, "Honey, what are you doing here?" And he was brandishing his gun and she took him into a room and she started touching him and straightening his hair and saying, "Baby, what are you doing, sweetie? Hey, I'm having a hard day too. My husband just left me. My son is sick. What's [00:26:00] happening in your life?" And she just armed him through compassion. Now I'm not saying this would work with everyone, but it worked with a kid with a semiautomatic gun and lots of ran rounds of ammunition. She kept him in that room for hours. The police wanted to storm in.
She wouldn't let them, she was like, "I'm going to take care of this boy. I'm gonna, I'm going to take care of this boy's heart. And you gotta promise me when you bring...you treat him with dignity when you come in ." And he left. And they disarmed him and we never heard of her again. And those are the kind of heroes, people who use emotional intelligence and not just reactive violence to meet violence. This is why we need, and I believe women, if we trust ourselves, have a lot of know how born of centuries of being the [00:27:00] caretakers to do this.
Ellie Knaus: I have one complaint, Elizabeth Lesser. Now that you are my favorite author, that I, it took me so much longer to read Cassandra Speaks this weekend because I kept having to stop and holler for my husband to come over. So I could read him passages.
I really appreciate how you delve into masculinity and power, and I need your help with something because you share that there's a shadow question I must continually grapple with: am I asking men to be more vulnerable and communicative, but still holding them to the old standards of manhood?
And yes, that is true for me. I grapple with that shadow question as well. And so it was extra meaningful to get to [00:28:00] read these sections to my husband, because what can we as women do when we find ourselves getting a little like uncomfortable when our partner shows their vulnerability?
Elizabeth Lesser: You know, that's in a chapter in the book called "The Shadow" and most of you listening probably know that term. It's a Jungian term. It's means that there's parts of ourselves. we just don't want to look at. It's a lot easier to blame other people. We all do this, than to look at ourself. And it's a dangerous thing for women to do right now because we tend to always look at ourselves and take the blame. So I'm not saying go into this like a hundred percent, but you know when there's something sticky that you're avoiding and you don't want to look at, [00:29:00] or if you don't know it, you'll find out because something keeps repeating over and over. You keep having the exact same fight with your husband or the exact same issue with your kids.
And sometimes not always, but sometimes.
Ellie Knaus: Yeah. Like my mother is my daughter. Like what, how did that happen? The both treat me the same?
Elizabeth Lesser: So then when that happens, "My mother is my daughter." You're like, okay, what am I doing in this? Yes, my mother is someone. Yes. My daughter is someone. I'm not God. And I'm not, you know, I'm not guilty about everything, but is there something that I can learn?
The question really is. If I truly want the world to be a better place, my family to be happier and healthier, what can I do? What can I really do? And the shadow thing has been the hardest. And the best spiritual practice I've done to really look at myself and say, [00:30:00] "You're a hypocrite girl. Like the very things you're blaming, you're doing.
So let's clean up your bullshit. " Okay. That's what shadow work is: cleaning up your own bullshit would the thing you brought up is one of my biggest bullshits I have, and that's, and I've done it for years and years. I've been married twice. Uh, I have three sons. I have three grandsons. I've had a lot of men in my life.
I was born into a family of four girls, but I got paid back by having all these boys. So. My second marriage. I married someone who also wanted to do the work. And it sounds like your husband is someone like that too. Like I have a partner who, even though so much of the time, he's a jerky guy, um, he is willing to get off his stuff and he [00:31:00] is willing to confront me with my stuff and we are spiritual practitioners together, and that's helpful for me in testing out what I'm saying here. I want him to be sensitive. I want him to be vulnerable, but sometimes when he is, my, what I call my internalized patriarchy, the part of me that subscribes to men being strong and women being nice, it still lives in me. It's not only men. It lives in, it lives in me.
So I sort of punish him twice. It's like, you're not being sensitive enough. And then he's sensitive. And I freak out because I want someone to save me. So what do you do? You do the hard, the hard work is, look at yourself, admit it to yourself without beating yourself up. Know that we're all doing it. So it's not just you. And then be super honest with the [00:32:00] people. It's not just your mate and it's not just this thing about men and sensitivity. There are times when you can humble yourself and just say, "Oh honey, I just did that. I can't believe I just did that. I asked you to talk to me sensitively, and then when you did, I walked away and didn't listen. Cause it made me uncomfortable. Let's try that over." I don't know why that's so hard. That is so hard, humbling ourselves that way, but it's magic. It is fricking magic because the other person, most people are good and want to play fair. That other person will be so grateful that things will move in the relationship.
It's a miracle. I have to prove to myself over and over.
Ellie Knaus: With me, just even sitting down to meditate, it's like, I have to like drag myself to the chair [00:33:00] every time. Speaking of humbling ourselves, another main component of this book is humbling ourselves to the Other and this idea of otherness and not only being concerned with our own truths, but also being humble enough to listen to someone else's. My mouth is starting to get funny and tense as I say this, Elizabeth,cause there's a lot of areas of my life where I am very openminded. But there are a few things where I get real tight and I don't want to see the other side. I feel like I play the devil's advocate for them anyway. So why waste my time talking to them? Because I won't be able to convince them otherwise. How do I sit with that? Especially if it's a relative? Cause I feel like now in this crazy [00:34:00] pandemic times, and with this election coming up, it almost feels like there is a civil war happening in our country. How can I invite the Other and listen and accept?
Elizabeth Lesser: Well, I'm not going to pretend it's easy nor that I do it well all the time. I did a TedTalk about this called "Take the Other to Lunch". And as serious I had started just doing my own little experiment with inviting those family members or the guy who has the, um, NRA sign on his lawn.
Or, and I have a, uh, you know, planned Parenthood sign on my lawn and just saying, I'm going to invite him to lunch and I'm not going to try to change his mind. I'm just going to say, why do you feel that way? [00:35:00] Tell me some things in your life that led you to feel this way. Do you think, do you understand why I feel the way I feel?
And then we just share, and I started doing this, I did it with the oddest people, um, and it was so educational to me about myself and to them. I think of myself as an open minded person, but I, I was just so ignorant about other people's realities. And if you study history and you, you study places like Rwanda or Cambodia or Nazi Germany, things started out just like they are right now in our country.
You kind of can't fathom that it could go from now to absolute, um, genocide and war, but it can. And [00:36:00] it's regular people who can make sure that doesn't happen. So I take it as a serious responsibility to do this. I don't take it as like, no, I'm not good at this. You know, it's, it's like you better because nobody else is being very good at this.
So let's, let's be better at this. Not good because it's really hard. Like I was driving through my town just yesterday and I live in a little town. In the Hudson Valley and it's become really crowded , half of New York City. And there were lots of people. It was a beautiful early fall day and lots of people walking in the streets and lots of them didn't have masks on.
I was getting more and more pissed off. And I don't even remember rolling [00:37:00] the window down. Suddenly my window was open and I was yelling: MASK!
I thought, wait a minute. So I didn't have time to correct that because the traffic move, I started going
Ellie Knaus: Well, and you might've gotten COVID because you can't talk to them if they're not wearing a mask.
Elizabeth Lesser: Yeah, exactly. Window up. But it did remind me. Okay. Let's let's not do this, this doesn't, first of all, it doesn't work. Okay. It just alienates people further -- does not work. Go to Thanksgiving with your uncle who's a homophobe. And you start yelling, doesn't work. Even, even the gentle conversation where he would be humiliated.
You know, there's all these studies, men and humiliation are toxic. And to call out a man in front of other men [00:38:00] about a super held belief, not a good idea.
Ellie Knaus: I did that one Christmas with my uncle. I still feel bad about it. Cause the whole family had to leave and I felt so bad for the kids. Cause you're right. That humiliation, which by the way, when you're a smart woman who feels like she's not being heard, we're really good at knowing what those soft spots are, but you're right. It's not helpful.
Elizabeth Lesser: Well, you know, sometimes. You know, I look at what's happening with the Black Lives Matter and the demonstrations, and that's a storyline of white supremacy that the country is founded on. The country is founded on stories. That's what everything is founded on. Whether it's Adam and Eve, our country was founded on. Yeah, we can enslave these people because we're better than they are. So that is a story that is being interrupted now by super brave people who are like, I don't care if this is [00:39:00] humiliating you, wer'e going in.
So I don't want to say that you can't all, you should never raise your voice and say the truth. I'm saying when your life isn't, depending on it.
Ellie Knaus: Yeah, when it's over turkey.
Elizabeth Lesser: Right. There are other ways to do it. And most of the time it is over turkey, so to speak. Most of the time we can say, let's try to get to know each other's humanness, so we don't go down a river that our country will never recover from. So there's, there's two ways to deal. One is really, really powerfully in the moment. Come what may sometimes that's called for, and women have to do that too, but I think we have a super power which is being able to see the other and see that other's humanness.
And it comes from years of being the caretaker when you would like to just spank your little [00:40:00] kids butt, but you know, not going to do it, time out, going to love, going to see the soul of my baby right now. We can see into the soul of the Other. And that I do believe is a woman's super power.
Ellie Knaus: Well, I stumbled in my super power last night. Speaking of wanting to spank little butts because we're staying with my parents. They had COVID this summer, everyone. So don't worry. We're not going to get them sick. Now. Luckily they're immune for awhile, at least. And I proudly showed them one of your TedTalks and I put it on the Apple TV and it was on the big screen. And my, my dad and my stepmother were so into it. And I was so proud of myself that I was going to be interviewing you. And my dad was like, "Oh my God, I didn't know a cervix was like this to this," (laughing) which is like a huge moment. My dad used to do commercial real estate. He's like 6'4", and really [00:41:00] goofy. He's never listened to a midwife in his life, let alone, um, midwife talking about the infant of going through pain and childbirth. And I was like, this moment is happening. And then my seven-year-old runs in the room and it was like right at the climax of your TedTalk. She goes, "Where's my unicorn snot?" And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. She's like, "I need my unicorn snot." It's just like lip gloss I gave her for her birthday, and I'm like "Sabrina, not right now, not right now." And she wouldn't stop and I go, "Are you going to ruin this for me right now? I was like, Oh,
what is it about those moments when you're most open that we are all, I am also, man, when I most open, when I'm really riding that wave, someone's going to like mess it [00:42:00] up. It's like, it's almost like a "Shoots and Ladders." Like I just go, right down that slide, right back into my most petty defensive bickering self.
Elizabeth Lesser: Such a powerful question you just asked and you framed it so beautifully.
That's what the practice of meditation is all about. And yes, I too have to be dragged to my seat and I've been doing it for 40 years, but the practice of meditation is about, um, you know, meditation teaches us to pause before we react. That's the, that is something that if you meditate enough, it becomes second nature. That instead of to react, especially in heightened moments, either heightened moments of glory or heightened moments of trauma [00:43:00] too. And it helps so much in both of those moments because both of those moments are other parts of our brain have taken over and other hormones have taken over either the, the fight or the flight.
And when you have trained yourself through meditation over and over and over, or even just started. In meditation, it's like you sit there and your insane mind immediately starts going. It tells you get up, this is boring, or I wonder what I'm going to make for lunch and all the things. And you don't hate your mind.
You don't hate yourself. You're just like, Oh, interesting. My mind is doing its thing and the mind slows down. And then for half a second you experience the [00:44:00] big sky of just being and then your knee hurts , I'm getting up. I hate this. But then you calm down and you move a little and then you're back and you do this over and over.
And you train yourself to take a pause before reacting. So let's say you were in a better space and you weren't hijacked by your glory?
Ellie Knaus: Oh maybe that was it because, but it also kind of hijacked almost by my peace. Like I was really riding that wave and I didn't want her to, like,
Elizabeth Lesser: I know, but what if you had said: Hold on parents. Can you hold on a second? I'm going to pause this, sweetie. It's over there. I saw it. It's under the bed. Okay. Now we go. So that, that, that could have happened. Most of us blow it all the time.
Ellie Knaus: I was afraid of ruining your, the crescendo with the pause.
But
[00:45:00] Elizabeth Lesser: that was sort of like not trusting that your parents would wait
Ellie Knaus: Totally!
Elizabeth Lesser: Having a sense of like gotta do it, gotta do it, and being totally pissed at your kid, which like who isn't half the time.
Ellie Knaus: These days.
Elizabeth Lesser: But, but there's a sense of faith that, it's not just me here orchestrating this.
Ellie Knaus: Oh yeah. It was total control. It was like, ADD dad is actually paying attention.
Elizabeth Lesser: Yeah. Totally desperate for that. And like the desperate I'm not-- I'm picking on you, but we all do it.
I'm asking
Ellie Knaus: for it.
Elizabeth Lesser: Okay. Desperation hijacked something that could have solved it right then and there. I'm just going to pause this guys. This is amazing. Don't go away. All right. I swear. It's going to take one second. Honey, the goop or whatever it's called is under the bed, and then she'd run off and maybe it wouldn't work. Maybe your father would have left and daughter would have [00:46:00] said, I hate you. I don't know.
Ellie Knaus: Would have gone back to the Astros game.
Elizabeth Lesser: But a lot of times that capacity to pause is wonderful and it's developable.
Ellie Knaus: That's beautiful. Thank you. I'm ready to ask my daughter for a do-over. In closing I wanted to share this one idea with our listeners that you bring up about self care. And since I'm a white woman in my thirties, I thought I had already read everything there was to read about self care and how I should be encouraged to do it. And there's podcasts about it. And it's, it's all the rage and you really shook it up for me because I had never heard about "the first law of healing". And when I read that, [00:47:00] I thought, "Oh, I'm going to go about this differently now." In closing, can you share that with our listeners?
Elizabeth Lesser: Yeah. Well, I made up "the first law of healing", so don't think it's some sort of scientific thing. Um,
Ellie Knaus: That's why I hadn't heard of it!
Elizabeth Lesser: From my years of being, uh, a fly on the wall of more self-help workshops than is probably legal from being at Omega where every single self-help person from psychologists to diet people and exercise people, you know, I just was exposed to so much.
I began to see that, um, a lot of it worked for a little bit of time. And then you were onto the next fad or you just didn't follow through. And so much of it had to do with this sense that there's something wrong with me. There's something wrong with the way I look, with the way I act, I got to fix me. I'm going to fix me. I'm going to [00:48:00] fix this body of mine. Cause it's too fat, too dark, not buff enough. Wrong wrong, wrong and so much. And it's even more so for people who don't fit the very narrow thing of skinny, white blonde person, women of color, disabled people, women who are not sized to hello, how many people are.
And if you are, how, how much are you hurting yourself to be it? So the first law of healing is to love your body. No matter what it looks like, feels like, sounds like color of your skin tone of your skin, hair, quality, weight, knock kneed, funny nose, big ears, whatever it is you look at in the mirror and hate on, the first order of business is to love [00:49:00] yourself just as you are the same way you love your child.
You don't get your child to do things by being angry and hateful to your child. You try to love your child, that's the care you give your child. So why don't we give ourselves that same care? It is much easier to change something that you love to change something through love. So fall in love with the fact that you have a body.
That you can walk, that you, I mean, for me in my sixties, loving my, the what, how gravity is just kind of making everything go down, and my wrinkles and my knees, like every day I work on, I am grateful that at 60 I'm alive, and thriving. Yeah. I don't look the way [00:50:00] I did. Yeah. I've got the rolls where I never had them. I love, I love my body and I'm grateful for my body. And then I want to take care of it more. You want to care for the things you love, just like your children, just like this precious earth. We want to care for the things we love. So work on love of self first.
Ellie Knaus: Elizabeth Lesser. Thank you so much for spending this hour with us listeners. You can find all of Elizabeth's work if you go to ElizabethLesser.org. Oh my God. I can't wait for you all to read "Cassandra Speaks." Again, it's "Cassandra Speaks: When women are the storytellers, the human story changes" out September 15th.
2020, go get it. Now Instagram message me how much you love it. Cause I know that Glennon Doyle wrote a blurb [00:51:00] for this book. And when I interviewed her, you all just kept writing me how much you appreciated her most recent book. And this is the perfect companion. Everyone get it. It's so important for us, for our culture, for our children. Don't forget to check out our episode next week, we have Dr. Shefali Tsabary back on the podcast with Renee Jain. We were talking about anxiety and our children, and then in two weeks, Chelsea Clinton's coming on the podcast to discuss her new children's book "She Persisted in Sports" and I cannot wait to have both "Cassandra Speaks" and
She Persisted in Sports" to gather on our bedstands. Until next week. Trust in your goodness. Live out your greatness. Rock on Atomic Moms.
Elizabeth Lesser
ELIZABETH LESSER is a bestselling author and the cofounder of Omega Institute, the renowned conference and retreat center located in Rhinebeck, New York. Elizabeth’s first book, The Seeker’s Guide, chronicles her years at Omega and distills lessons learned into a potent guide for growth and healing. Her New York Times bestselling book, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, has sold almost 500,000 copies and has been translated into 20 languages. Her third book, Marrow: Love, Loss & What Matters Most, chronicles the journey Elizabeth and her younger sister went through when Elizabeth was the donor for her sister’s bone marrow transplant. Her newest book Cassandra Speaks: When Women are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes reveals how humanity has outgrown its origin tales and hero myths, and empowers women to trust their instincts, find their voice, and tell new guiding stories.
Elizabeth cofounded Omega Institute in 1977—a time when a variety of fresh ideas were sprouting in American culture. Since then, the institute has been at the forefront of holistic education, offering workshops and trainings in: integrative medicine, prevention, nutrition, and the mind/body connection; meditation and yoga; cross-cultural arts and creativity; ecumenical spirituality; and social change movements like women’s empowerment and environmental sustainability. Elizabeth is also the cofounder of Omega’s Women’s Leadership Center, which grew out of the popular Women & Power conference series featuring women leaders, activists, authors and artists from around the world. Each year close to 30,000 people participate in Omega’s programs on its campus in Rhinebeck, New York and at urban and travel sites, and more than a million people visit its website for online learning.
A student of the Sufi master, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan for many years, Elizabeth has also studied with spiritual teachers, healers, psychologists, and philosophers from other traditions. In 2008 she helped Oprah Winfrey produce a ten-week online seminar based on Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth. The webinar has been viewed by over 40 million people worldwide. She was a guest on the Oprah Show, a frequent host on Oprah’s Soul Series, a weekly radio show on Sirius/XM, and is one of the Super Soul 100, a collection of a hundred leaders who are using their voices and talent to elevate humanity.
In 2011, she gave a popular TED talk called “Take The Other to Lunch,” a call for civility and understanding as we negotiate our differences as human beings. She gave her second TED talk in 2016, about the power of truth-telling.
Elizabeth attended Barnard College, where she studied literature, and San Francisco State University, where she received a teaching degree. In 2011 she received an honorary doctorate from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, in Palo Alto, California. Early in her career she was a midwife and birth educator. Today, besides writing and her work at Omega Institute, she lends her time to social and environmental causes, and is an avid walker, cook, gardener, friend, mother, grandmother, and homebody. She and her husband live in New York’s Hudson River Valley. - ElizabethLesser.org
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The Mother's Journey: Confronting the Unknown | Britta Bushnell, PhD
#161. You may not feel like a goddess right now, but it turns out we have a lot in common with Inanna, the Sumerian mother goddess of Heaven and Earth. Drawing upon mythology and decades of experience as a childbirth educator, Dr. Brita Bushnell brings healing light to the unique challenges and identity shifts we experience as mamas. After all, motherhood is the ultimate rite of passage. Show Notes Here.
xx Ellie Knaus